A still from HBO's dramatisation of the Chernobyl disaster shows workers trying to clear deadly radioactive debris from the reactor roof
July's read was quite a tough one for the Tyneside Book Club. Svetlana Alexievich's Chernobyl Prayer relays the experiences of people caught up in the 1986 nuclear disaster.
Alexievich uses an unconventional approach, reporting the conversations she has with people caught up in the tragedy, with little in the way of biographical detail or narrative context.
Members all agreed reading this was a bruising experience. Many of the accounts were distressing and hard to read, and no punches were pulled with some of the detail and emotion the author captured.
For many though it also felt like an essential read - a capturing of voices that would have been lost otherwise. There was power and impact in the accounts of people living through the disaster, and those trying to carry on afterwards. It made clear just how far-reaching and lasting the impact was.
Despite the ugliness of some of what was described, members also found there was beauty to be found in the book in its style, language and content, with some finding it poetic. Nature and people proved resilient as well as vulnerable.
Some members did crave a little more detail about some of the individuals interviewed and perhaps more narrative about the disaster. Members who had seen the HBO TV series, or read more conventional narratives about Chernobyl, agreed it was useful to have that background.
Members who were less familiar with the events at Chernobyl found the book rad less clearly, especially as there seemed to be no particular logic around the sequence of many of the individual accounts.
The book exposed many of the defects of the Soviet system that helped create the disaster, but also catalogued the bravery and stoicism of individuals.
There were members who struggled more with the book, and found it hard to get through it, but most agreed that although that some of it was gruelling they were glad to have read an important and memorable piece of literature. It was agreed that the writer's unusual approach had largely paid off.
Alexievich uses an unconventional approach, reporting the conversations she has with people caught up in the tragedy, with little in the way of biographical detail or narrative context.
Members all agreed reading this was a bruising experience. Many of the accounts were distressing and hard to read, and no punches were pulled with some of the detail and emotion the author captured.
For many though it also felt like an essential read - a capturing of voices that would have been lost otherwise. There was power and impact in the accounts of people living through the disaster, and those trying to carry on afterwards. It made clear just how far-reaching and lasting the impact was.
Despite the ugliness of some of what was described, members also found there was beauty to be found in the book in its style, language and content, with some finding it poetic. Nature and people proved resilient as well as vulnerable.
Some members did crave a little more detail about some of the individuals interviewed and perhaps more narrative about the disaster. Members who had seen the HBO TV series, or read more conventional narratives about Chernobyl, agreed it was useful to have that background.
Members who were less familiar with the events at Chernobyl found the book rad less clearly, especially as there seemed to be no particular logic around the sequence of many of the individual accounts.
The book exposed many of the defects of the Soviet system that helped create the disaster, but also catalogued the bravery and stoicism of individuals.
There were members who struggled more with the book, and found it hard to get through it, but most agreed that although that some of it was gruelling they were glad to have read an important and memorable piece of literature. It was agreed that the writer's unusual approach had largely paid off.
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