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April 2019 April 2019

In 2017 I stood for election on a mandate that the UK would be leaving the BERE REGIS BOOK GROUP
European Union, as voted for by the people in the referendum. I still believe that
this is the right thing to do, and I will continue to vote in Parliament accordingly.
For those of you who are pleased that this column is not usually about Brexit, I Our last three titles have all been by female writers, a
hope to resume normal service next time! fair reflection perhaps of the Reading Group’s gender
balance (eight women, two men).
As ever, if you have an issue that you need help with, please do get in touch;
email me on michael.tomlinson.mp@parliament.uk or contact my office on 01202
624216. You can also follow what I’ve been doing on Twitter @Michael4mdnp or The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Facebook www.facebook.com/michael4MDNP
In December we met to pass judgement on Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2002).
Moving between the murky intertwined worlds of drug dealing and the antique
art trade in New York, Las Vegas and Amsterdam, this is a fascinating coming-of-

age novel in which a thirteen-year-old boy, Theo
Decker, survives a horrific terrorist bomb attack on a
New York art gallery, ‘rescuing’ in the process a
priceless painting of a goldfinch by the seventeenth-
century Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, to which over the
following years Theo becomes obsessively and
perilously attached.

There are distinct echoes of Dostoevsky in the novel
(and not just in its length – over 650 pages).
LOCAL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is specifically referred to or
discussed more than once, and even has a whole
chapter named after it. Yet this is no pale
Michael Tomlinson MP  melodramatic imitation of the great Russian writer,
Michael.tomlinson.mp@parliament.uk
holds regular surgeries rather a searching dialogue with him. Thus Tartt takes
in the constituency. For  01202 624216 one of the central themes of The Idiot – the way in
details of forthcoming www.michaeltomlinson.org.uk which good acts can unintentionally result in evil
surgeries or to make an  consequences – and turns it on its head, having one
of her characters ask whether conversely evil can
appointment, please @Michael4MDNP lead to good. She then proceeds to answer this potentially explosive question by
contact his office. showing through the events of a totally convincing plot how that could indeed
be the case. The Goldfinch met with a divided response from the Group. Those of
us who liked it felt that Tarrt has produced a modern masterpiece to rival
Fabritius’s’s exquisite painting; others were not so convinced.

When you respond to advertisers, do please tell them you saw Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell
their advert in this magazine - it helps them monitor the In January we moved from the darker depths of The Goldfinch to the sunny
effectiveness of their advert and helps us generate more uplands of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (1861). Lucid, elegant prose,
infused with gentle irony; rounded, likeable characters; mockery of the English
advertising revenue!! caste system; exposure of provincial convention and hypocrisy: what was not to
like? Delightful set scenes such as the Easter Ball, where one’s social status is

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