I think the presence of guns on a farm in the 1960’s would be normal, but using them as part of birthday party would not.
This is an AI answer culled from various sources, so I can’t vouch for veracity, but it makes sense to me: “In 1960’s England, firearms were viewed strictly as functional tools for farmers, gamekeepers, and rural pest control rather than items for personal protection or general recreation.” Also, the UK’s Criminal Justice Act of 1967 drew the reins ever tighter on gun ownership: “In 1967 shotguns had to be licensed. Applicants had to be ‘of good character, . . . show good reason for possessing a firearm, and the weapons had to be stored securely.’” A quick history of Britain’s gun laws | Notes from the U.K.
So…a weird choice on Beth’s part for children’s entertainment.
Ha! Indeed. I am reminded of The Dry by Jane Harper, which the CC Book Club read several years back. Small town, complicated relationships, dark secrets, and a troubled investigator.
I agree. But it does make me ponder the time-honored literary tradition of the unreliable narrator. There are so many books where this technique is employed. How should an author do it “right”? Sometimes, it can be infuriating. (This is decades ago, but I remember being so mad at the end of The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart.)
Author Sara Pinborough (Behind Her Eyes) writes, “The only rule I have in how I let characters tell stories is that they must always tell the reader their version of the truth. No one likes being outright lied to, even in fiction.” Top 10 unreliable narrators | Thrillers | The Guardian
The discussion has tipped me one way or the other. My rating hung around the 3.5 level. Oddly enough - considering the less-than-positive discussion - I’ve upped my rating to four stars. Why? I invested, not in the characters themselves, but in the plot. I thought the setting well done. Yet the end made no sense to me. Why the choice to remove Leo from the equation? @Caraid’s post changed what I thought I knew. Instead of believing that Leo would be absolved by age and accidental death, I learned that would not have been the case. Actions that seemed inexplicable suddenly made sense. Not that I agree with the decisions made within minutes of Jimmy’s death, but I can understand why those characters made that decision. One of things that I like best about the CC Book Club is that it isn’t just an 1 to 1.5 hour discussion. We have time for a deeper look into the author’s reasoning into the why/what/when/ of her story. I’m always grateful for everyone who takes the time to add thoughts or links to author interviews, etc. (Nodding to @jerseysouthmomchess and @Caraid in particular this time.)
Anyway, carry on. Just taking a minute to say I like the discussion - all the positive and negative alike.
As you may know @ignatius I gave the book a five star review on goodread, but after reading this discussion I would probably downgrade to 4.
All the comments made me realize perhaps I was overly enthused with the writing, the setting, the plot, the time changes cleverly done, and keeping some mystery about the murderer, resulted in my 5, ( anytime I read a book in two days, page turner, I’m an easy grader
So just to say, this is the beauty of this amazing book club, ot isn’t rushed, time to digest, and it’s enlightening to see thru other eyes
Would any men read Broken Country? It seems like chick romance literature, al a Danielle Steele. I can’t think of any men I know who would be interested. Would it be assigned in an English class, like Pride and Prejudice or Tess of the d’Urbervilles?
My husband will read romances and chicklit. He reads very, very fast though so it’s not a huge time investment for him. He ended up reading all of the Bridgerton books and all of the side series, before the tv show’s first season was done.
I’m okay with the decision to protect Leo. But I didn’t like the ginned up suspense. I’d forgotten (because I hadn’t really worked it out yet) that half the attraction of Leo was that he was a real half brother, not just almost the same age as her son.
Clare Leslie Hall’s bio on her agent’s website says that after publishing two books in the UK (with difficulty, Hall herself admits in an interview), she decided to shift gears, change her pen name, and give Women’s Book Group Fiction in the U.S. a shot. It kind of bugs me that that’s a category, but it is. It’s the Reese and Jenna type selections that are usually decently written page turners, often with a central heart-wrenching romance or a thriller twist.
We’ve read our share of them in this book club and they are fun and can lead to good discussions, but they don’t always hold up under scrutiny.
@mathmom, I think your husband is an outlier! I can’t say for certain, because I only have one husband to compare him to, but that’s my hunch.
Neither my H nor my S have shown any interest in books that are similar to Broken Country. They tend toward SciFi and sometimes H will read fantasy like Lord of the Rings type trilogies and similar. He’s currently utterly absorbed in some VERY thick book (1000+ pages) about an imaginary place that I believe is fantasy. My nephew-in-law loaned him the book and D likes these books as well.
H did like Ann McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series–we both read them.
Same with the other book clubs I’m in. Page turners and fun take precedence. However, one of my IRL book clubs chose Emma by Jane Austen for the July choice. Made me happy because I hadn’t read it and knew I needed the push to do so while skeptical of the choice at the same time. Sure enough only two people read it - me and a close friend - while one read the cliff notes and several watched the movie. Most described it as either tedious or boring. Classics can be a hard sell for a book club, even this one which is the best of the best - let’s just say the number of participants slides. Still we read one or two a year, for which I’m grateful. Here they are for anyone interested:
The Moonstone
The Secret Garden
Bridge Over San Luis Rey
Jane Eyre + Wide Sargasso Sea
Things Fall Apart
The War of the Worlds
Lonesome Dove
The Hound of the Baskervilles
West with the Night
Far from the Madding Crowd
Persepolis
East of Eden
The Stranger
Pride and Prejudice
A Room with a View
Little Women + Behind a Mask (or A Woman’s Power)
Cheaper by the Dozen
Middlemarch
And Then There Were None + Whose Body
Three Men in a Boat
The Street
Shane + True Grit
Lois the Witch + A Christmas Carol
All Creatures Great and Small
Peyton Place
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
A Town Like Alice
Wuthering Heights
Persuasion
We have not read a classic yet in 2026, so I’d be up for that. And we can start discussing possibilities, since I think we’ve pulled most everything we can out of Broken Country.
There are a ton of “Classics-to-Read-Before-You-Die” kind of lists out there. Here are some ideas culled from those lists, by authors we’ve never read (with the exception of Dickens – we did read A Christmas Carol, but it hardly counts).
My Antonia by Willa Cather The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (fun classic duet — 1930’s boys school vs. 1930’s girls school, both are short)
From the list of classics above, I’d like to add Cheaper by the Dozen to the list. I think it would make for some good discussions (caveat: I’ve read it several times).
Otherwise, I’d vote for the pairing of the boys’ and girls’s school as being particularly apropos for this group!
I am always up for a classic although I often don’t join these discussions. I tried to re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn recently as I loved it as a teen but I only got through a couple of chapters. It has not aged well.
Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hutton and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (fun classic duet — 1930’s boys school vs. 1930’s girls school, both are short)
This would be my top vote
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. One of my favorites by Maugham and I would love to read any Maugham with this group.
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. Again an old favorite. Would love to read this again.
No preference between these titles.
My Antonia by Willa Cather The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Revisited by Evelyn Waugh The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The only addition to this list that I would suggest is Great Expectations also by Charles Dickens.
