The Birth House
By Ami McKay

I chose this novel for a BRA book club selection, having read a review on it somewhere and thinking that it sounded really interesting.

When Dr. Gilbert Thomas, self-proclaimed expert in hygienic, pain-free childbirth, opens a practice in a Nova Scotia coastal village during the World War I years, it sets the stage for a classic conflict between long-held traditions and modern medicine. Seventeen-year-old Dora Rare, the only Rare daughter within five generations, improves her lot in life by becoming the apprentice of Marie Babineau, the independent but caring Acadian midwife who helped bring several generations of Scots Bay residents into the world. The women of the village (not to mention their husbands) grow bitterly divided when Dr. Thomas calls the health and safety of expectant mothers into question. His vengeful actions toward Dora herself - a young woman looking for guidance with her own love life - turn particularly personal as well. Dora's development into a strong, independent woman is extremely gratifying.

McKay has fashioned what she terms a "literary scrapbook," reproducing and re-creating historical news clippings, advertisements, and letters within the text. This sensitively written novel of women's birthing rituals, strengths, and friendships will appeal to readers who enjoy gentle humour and plenty of homespun wisdom.

Peony in Love: A Novel
By Lisa See

Set in 17th-century China, this novel is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. The novel's plot mirrors that of the opera, and eternal themes abound: an intelligent girl chafing against the restrictions of expected behavior; fiction's educative powers; the rocky path of love between lovers and in families. It figures into the plot that generations of young Chinese women, known as the lovesick maidens, became obsessed with The Peony Pavilion, and many starved themselves to death. Th story offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China (including horrifying foot-binding scenes) and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals.

This was the April choice from my book club and I must admit that I struggled through it. I found the historical and cultural elements quite interesting, but was totally uninterested in the ghost story. It is not what I would describe as a "summer read". You need to dedicate time and effort to this novel.

The Blood of Flowers
By Anita Amirrezvani

This is the tale of a 17th-century Persian village girl who makes her way with her mother to a rich uncle's house in the city of Isfahan after her father's untimely death. As poor relatives, they are treated as servants. The uncle, a master rug maker for the shah, grudgingly teaches her his trade, his love and respect for her increasing with her perseverance and obvious talent. His greedy wife convinces him to accept a three-month "marriage" contract for the girl with a rich horse trader. She learns how to please her "husband" (and herself) sexually, but also learns that he has no intention of making her his permanent wife as she has no money. She vows to make beautiful rugs on her own, and thus ensure her and her mother's financial security. She is banished from her uncle's house when she tells her friend about the marriage contract. She trusts a foreign merchant with her rug and he steals it. Now she must beg and find shelter and a way to begin a new rug. The heroine's mother is a master storyteller, telling tales within this tale that Amirrezvani tells so magically.

The Blood of Flowers is a story of love, loss, learning and sacrifice. The young girl often makes rash, immature decisions and takes extreme risks - something unusual in a Muslim girl in 17th Century Persia. Some of these risks pay dividends, while others bring great misery. This book is also a coming of age story as the young girl moves to womanhood. If you enjoyed Khaled Hosseini's novels you will love this. All the Bra girls enjoyed this novel - it is beautifully written and sumptuous. I especially enjoyed cooking a traditional Persian meal for the girls when we discussed this book - and the walnuts were crunchy :-)

Cross Stitch
by Diana Gabaldon

The first book of a trilogy crossing 200 years of Scottish history. On holiday in the Scottish Highlands in 1945, Clare Randall walks through a stone circle - and into a violent skirmish taking place in 1743. She becomes marooned amid passion, violence, superstition and shifting allegiances.

In this time-travel romance, strong-willed and sensual Claire Randall leads a double life with a husband in one century, and a lover in another. Torn between fidelity and desire, she struggles to understand the pure intent of her heart. But don't let the number of pages and the Scottish dialect scare you. It's one of the fastest reads you'll have in your library. I didn't think that I would like it, but read it when several different friends ensured me that I'd enjoy it.

While on her second honeymoon in the British Isles, Claire touches a boulder that hurls her back in time to the forbidden Castle Leoch with the MacKenzie clan. Not understanding the forces that brought her there, she becomes ensnared in life-threatening situations with a Scots warrior named James Fraser. But it isn't all spies and drudgery that she must endure. For amid her new surroundings and the terrors she faces, she is lured into love and passion like she's never known before.

Gabaldon creates characters that you'll remember, laugh with, cry with, and cheer for long after you've finished the book. I can't wait to read the next installment.

The Wing of the Night
by Brenda Walker

In 1915 a troopship of Light Horsemen sails from Fremantle for the Great War. Two women farewell their men: Elizabeth, with her background of careless wealth, and Bonnie, who is marked by the anxieties of poverty. Neither can predict how the effects of the most brutal fighting at Gallipoli will devastate their lives in the long aftermath of the war.

The Wing of Night is a novel about the strength and failure of faith and memory, about returned soldiers who become exiles in their own country, about how people may become the very opposite of what they imagined themselves to be. Brenda Walker writes with a terrible grandeur of the grime and drudge of the battlefield, and of how neither men nor women can be consoled for the wreckage caused by a foreign war.

I found this to be a beautifully written, evocative novel. Although I read it as I'd set myself a challenge to read all the Miles Franklin short-list, I was particularly drawn to this novel as my grandfather fought at Gallipoli. The twists in relationships and the damage that war can inflict on those left behind and those who return is well told. Not the ending that I expected, but true to the story. Not everything ends up happyily ever after. I'd recommend this to others.

The Garden Book
by Brian Castro

After the exoticism of Shanghai Dancing, Castro returns to Australia in his new novel. Set in the Dandenongs between the Depression and World War II, the book revolves around Swan Hay, the daughter of a Chinese schoolteacher, and her relationships with brutal bushman Darcy Damon, and an American aviator and adventurer. A work of literary detection, it is tribute to the beauty and cruelty of the Australian bush, and Australia's identity crisis during the period of the White Australia Policy.

It took a while to get into this book. The first section about Darcy started to drag and the language was full of prose. Very beautiful but it took a long while to get any where. But I picked the novel up again yesterday and became mesmerised, reading about Swan, until the book was finished. I enjoyed it in the end but I wouldn't re-read the book. I felt real compassion for Swan and the mess that was her life and enjoyed the research of the rare books librarian to discover Swan's story (who it turns out, is his mother). If you enjoy beautiful writing or interesting poetry, you'd probably enjoy this.

Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden

A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of Japan's most dramatic history, it uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. From a small fishing village in 1929, the tale moves to the glamorous and decadent heart of Kyoto in the 1930s, where a young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York; it exquisitely evokes another culture, a different time and the details of an extraordinary way of life. It conjures up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice- paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most powerful men.

This book was a selection by the BRA (Book Readers Anonymous) Club that I belong to. I wouldn't normally read something like this, but I did enjoy it. The history and nature of geisha have always seemed mysterious and I'm sorry that they are becoming a dying breed, so to speak. I did lose track of time passing in the novel. It was not always clear how old she was and time did not seem a significant issue. It seemed to just float along. I am glad that all that she did in life did lead her to the Charirman - that was all that she seemed to exist for. Though I do question the notion that your life has no value if you do not have the man that you want. I'll be watching the movie. I imagine that it will be visually breath-taking. The novel did present some beautiful pictures that my imagimnation drew for me.

The Secret River
by Kate Grenville

After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is sentenced in 1806 to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a whisper that freedom can be bought, an opportunity to start afresh.

Away from the infant township of Sydney, up the Hawkesbury River, Thornhill encounters men who have tried to do just that: Blackwood, who is attempting to reconcile himself with the place and its people, and Smasher Williams, whose fear of this alien world turns into brutal depravity towards it. As Thornhill and his family stake their claim on a patch of ground by the river, the battle lines between old and new inhabitants are drawn.

I ejoyed this book. I had heard both good and bad about it. After it was short-listed for the Booker Prize, I decided to read it and make up my own mind. It is a simple, yet engaging, novel about a man who falls in live with an alien land and the ramifications of his decisions on his family. Well worth reading, especially if you are interested in novels of our early history or just a good read.

Watch the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club review this novel.