Group Read, July 2021: Blaming

Our group read for July is Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor. Please join in the read, and post any comments on this thread.

I'll be joining in shortly!

Anybody reading this? I have my copy and look forward to starting this weekend...

Mine has arrived from the library and we are back in lockdown and it is rainy winter weather - perfect conditions for reading!

I’m still waiting for my copy from the library. I have postponed ordering it so I can pick it up when I’m back from vacation.

Started last night - nearly finished.

Finished! I actually read a group read in the correct month!

I always like Elizabeth Taylor. Not really a plot driven book but I always enjoy her examinations of the minutiae of women’s lives.
This book is about regret and blame and how much we should ‘blame’ ourselves for the actions of others.

For the first 50 pages or so I kept wondering why I was reading this book. It just felt so pointless and empty. Now I'm over half way though and I am definitely intrigued by these characters. There is a moment where somebody asks "What would you have written on your tombstone?" and Amy says "She Always Meant Well" but at the same time, she knows that she didn't; I wonder what that has to do with the question of Blaming, the book's title.

For me, it also linked back to Charlotte in my last book, The Real Charlotte, who absolutely does not mean well and yet can, sometimes, elicit a sort of sympathy.

Amy certainly isn't the most likeable character but think she has become quite inert in her life. Taylor has written her as being from that last generation of women who it was expected that they were 'looked after' by men - first her father, then her husband, now her son is taking over, in a very obnoxius and patronising way.

I finished the book this morning and it was an ok read but nothing more than that. Some of the characters were annoying bordering on unrealistic - Martha sometimes, Isobel most of the time - but Amy was interesting. I think she is quite ressourceful but perhaps too preoccupied with keeping up appearances to act accordingly.

I don't understand the two marriages in the book. Martha is obviously more lonely than she lets on in the beginning, but it is still so obvious to her and the reader, that marrying Simon is a bad decision. Still she goes along with it, and Amy is apparantly going to marry Gareth even though it is only based on convenience.