Gentle readers,

So another book club meeting passes with the usual tales of love and loss, shock revelations and handy household tips. The book was good as well.

In fact, everyone seemed to like it, demonstrated by the fact that it managed to form the main topic of conversation for oh, at least a third of the evening….The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is rather like “Little Women Go To Africa”, complete with stoic mother, four daughters (airhead, intellectual, tomboy, sickly/dying) and an (emotionally) distant father. A story of colonialism, imperialism, fanaticism and survival in an alien culture told through the voices of the five very different women, each changed irrevocably by their encounter with Africa. Recommended.

And if it sparked your interest in the role of Europeans in the Congo (particularly the Belgians, Americans and British) then I recommend “King Leopold’s Ghost”, which tells how the king of the Belgians secured a private colony and a huge personal fortune at the expense of millions of Africans’ lives.

This shameful part of Belgium’s history prompted reflections on how and what we are taught about our own nations’ atrocities. While it seems Irish history teachers are rabidly anti-British, the oppression of the Irish barely gets a mention in British schools. The US doesn’t like to mention to its pupils how it destabilised Latin America governments after the second world war, and obviously the Germans don’t like to mention the war at all.

And in one of the shock revelations, we discovered from Darshana that Gandhi was not the saint portrayed by Ben Kingsley in the eponymous film, but a flawed man who played mind games with his children and was simply the most media savvy out of a group of people who brought about India’s independence.

Other topics included how to use cutlery, remove a red wine stain, impress an Indian husband, the need for heroes and why everyone can’t just be nice.

The other shock revelation was that Barbara is leaving Brussels early next year to spend six months in Argentina, and then on to Dublin. But we’re holding the next book club at her place, so catch her while you can.

The next book is: If nobody speaks of remarkable things, by Jon McGregor.