This month’s read was The Cameraman by Matthew Kneale. Described as ‘a captivating, thought-provoking road trip through a rapidly changing Europe in the 1930s’, this was the tale of Julius Sewell and his family’s journey to his sister’s wedding. Unusually for us, all members of the Reading Group had not only read the book, but actually enjoyed it!
Julius, a former cinematographer has just been released from an institution so he can attend his sister’s wedding. In fact his whole family are going, and they bundle themselves into a car to drive across Europe. While we are never told what is wrong with Julius, there are mentions of him continually clenching his fists and counting, and he also has two inner voices ‘ The Other’ and ‘The Predictor’. These voices took a bit of getting used to and proved to be rather unreliable narrators…
One of the group particularly liked the fact that the family were all bundled into one car for the trip as it reminded them of the seemingly endless journeys to visit family when they were a child. The car almost felt like a bubble – the family were all seeing the same things, but were viewing them through their own bias (his mother, stepfather and brother are members of the British Union of Fascists, one sister is desperate to meet Hitler, and another is a Communist). When they see a man get arrested and his wife assaulted by men in uniform, the family decide that they were ‘reds, probably’ and ‘a danger to the state’. There are several loose ends like this which are frustratingly never tied up – we don’t find out who the man was, or what happened to him.
The visit to Dachau made for uncomfortable reading. The work camp, as described by the guard, and seen through Julius’s eyes seems almost benevolent. It is only after he returns unsupervised that he recognises the terror of the prisoners. The contrast between the darkness of this scene and light silliness of things like the family card games played in the car, make the novel particularly poignant. We liked the plot device of the car, once pristine, getting increasingly battered and damaged as they travel across France and Germany to Rome . The car is almost a character itself, and the dog (Pazzo) that Julius befriends was also perfectly depicted. Some of the human characters were better written than others – there was a distinct hint of the cardboard cut-out with some of the family who weren’t travelling in the car.
No spoilers here, but everybody thought that the ending was abrupt and a bit of an anti-climax, and would have liked it rewritten.
We scored The Cameraman 3/5 stars.
The Golden Mole and other vanishing treasure by Katherine Rundell
September’s book choice is a globe-spanning tour of the world’s strangest and most awe-inspiring animals, including pangolins, wombats, lemurs and seahorses.
Each of these animals is endangered and so, this most passionately persuasive and sharply funny book is also an urgent, inspiring clarion call: to treasure and act – to save nature’s vanishing wonders, before it is too late.
Pop into the Education Centre Library to pick up your copy, then join us on 18th September at 1pm on Teams