Featured image: With world-class vineyards, elegant architecture, gourmet cuisine, and riverfront charm, Bordeaux, France is the setting for this month’s book| Photo by RossHelen via Envato

What happens in the book club…

by Sally Jane Smith, Book club co-host

Any book set in Bordeaux, France, is bound to be full of adventure. With its world-class vineyards, gourmet cuisine, and famous Garonne river, Bordeaux is a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its exceptional 18th-century urban architecture. It also features a prominent aeronautics industry and the Cité du Vin, a  museum dedicated to wine. known as the world capital of wine. What’s not to love?   

One of 12 books written by British expat Gillian Harvey set in France, The Bordeaux Book Club tells the story of Leah and her husband, who moved to France with the dream of becoming self-sufficient. But in truth, it’s not the ‘good life’ she’d imagined. So when her friend entreats her to join the new bookclub she’s forming, Leah decides it’s something she will do for herself. The chance to make new friends, to drink a few glasses of wine, and to escape into stories that take her miles away from the life she’d thought would be her own happy-ever-after. 

But the book club is a strange group of misfits. There’s prickly Grace, who lives alone and seems to know everybody and like no-one. Buttoned-up Monica, who says her husband is away and appears to be parenting her baby all alone. Handsome builder George, who has barely read a book before. And Alfie – who is a full two decades younger than everyone else, and is hiding a devastating secret. Each have each moved to France in the wake of a spouse, a parent, a dream – or through the restless wanderings of an unanchored heart. At their first, awkward get-together, it seems improbable that this collection of strangers and acquaintances will stay the course. We expect them to drift away, one by one, until the project is given up as a failed experiment.

Instead, as they set out to read a succession of classic English novels, they are drawn into the kind of friendship that feels like family. Their monthly meet-ups may feel familiar to our JourneyWoman book club regulars. So, too, might the sense of dislocation that can come with moving away from all we know – career, support network, even language – to settle in a new town or country. Because, as the five friends share surprising literary insights, a parallel emerges.

The protagonists of their book club picks may not be who they seem on the surface, but neither are the members of the Bordeaux Book Club. Beneath their obvious differences, they share common ground: the loss of connection, and an erosion of their sense of self.

Book Club Discussion Questions

1. The story is set in and around Bordeaux, France. Have you ever visited there? Did the setting feel familiar to you from your own travels?
2. What was your favourite passage in the book, and why?
3. How do you feel about prologues in a novel? Do they pull you in, or do you find them a distraction? How did this particular prologue help to set up the story?
4. Each character has a very different motivation for joining the book club. Who did you find most relatable?
5. Grace is always elegantly dressed, and her house is beautifully decorated, apart from her bookshelves which “stood stuffed with texts, ramshackle and disorganised”. How do you organise your own bookshelves?
6. How did you feel about Nathan’s desire to be self-sufficient, living largely off the produce from their own land?
7. Most of the book club members migrated to France in the wake of a spouse or other family member. Have you ever considered an international move for this reason? How did it work out?
8. Who do you think brought the most perceptive insights to the Bordeaux Book Club discussions? Did this surprise you?
9. Have you read any of the books mentioned in this novel? Did the discussions of the Bordeaux Book Club prompt you to think differently about their stories or characters?
10. Leah can’t read Pride and Prejudice “without seeing Colin Firth”. How do you feel about screen adaptions of books you’ve read?
11. George says he only worked out who he was when he was around fifty. Grace talks about the liberation of being a woman approaching sixty. Have you found fulfilment and contentment as you’ve headed into middle age (and older)?
12. What did you think about the character of Camille, Alfie’s girlfriend. Why do you think she was introduced into the story?
13. What do you think of Grace’s approach to establishing connections with others? Have you ever founded or joined a book club, or something similar, specifically to grow your community?
14. What did you think of the various couples by the end of the book? Did any of the relationships come across as particularly healthy, or worryingly toxic?
15. As the Bordeaux Book Clubs works its way through its book lists, the members realise that many of the protagonists possess traits which – while making for a great story – would have been insufferable in real life. Can you think of any such characters in books we’ve read as a group?
16. Did the book make you want to travel to France – or move to another land?
17. Can you recommend any other novels set in France, especially if they have great travel themes?

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