The Map of Love

The group was ambivalent about this novel. Several people said they had enjoyed it in spite of themselves! Generally, it was felt to be very slow and the structure of the novel - a woman studying her great aunt's diaries - made us feel distant from the characters, so that we didn't really care what happened to them. There were other structural issues in that nothing much happens for the first four fifths of the novel and then it explodes into action, almost as if the writer was running out of paper.

People did enjoy finding out about the British occupation of Egypt at the turn of the 20th century and the early settlement of Palestine by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. One of our members is half Egyptian - Coptic - and she filled us in on many things and talked about her family's experiences. To be honest I thought what she had to say was more interesting than the book.