A Month of Sundays by Liz Byrski: A Book Review

I read this for book club. I made it to page 109 before putting it down and accepting that life is too short and my to-read list is too long.

Synopsis

A Month of Sundays is Liz Byrski’s tenth novel, published in 2018. Four women — Ros, Adele, Judy and Simone — have been in an online book club together for over a decade without ever meeting in person. When Adele invites them to join her for a month’s house-sit in the Blue Mountains, they finally come face to face. Each woman has chosen a book that reveals something personal about herself, and each is at a crossroads in her own life. It is a novel about friendship, ageing, reading, and the things women carry quietly for years.

My review

This is clearly a book with an audience, and I am equally clearly not it. Liz Byrski has written ten novels with a loyal readership, and A Month of Sundays has found the readers it was written for. I was assigned it by my book club, and by page 109, I had accepted that I was not one of them.

By page 15, I was already losing the thread. There is a full paragraph dedicated to an argument over the name Madeleine, specifically that she is not called Mad, and she would like you to know that. It is the kind of scene that fans of this style will find warmly character-driven. I found it the literary equivalent of watching someone else sort their sock drawer.

The plot, such as it exists in the first third, meanders at a pace that makes meandering look energetic. By page 77, one character’s profound anxiety about spending a few weeks with people she doesn’t know had been established at length. By page 92, we had witnessed a dog walk in the rain, a knock at the door that turned out to be a taxi, a car trip, a walk about town, and a planned supermarket visit. 

One of the characters owns a knitting business. People come from far and wide for her knitting business. I mention this not to be unkind, but because it captures something about the texture of the novel: it is a book of small pleasures, specific enthusiasms, and gentle lives. If that is you, this book was written for you, and I have no doubt it delivers exactly what it promises.

It was not for me.

What I liked / what I didn’t

What I liked

The concept of a book club where each member chooses a book that reveals something personal about herself.

What I didn’t

The pacing is so slow that I found it impossible to stay present. The scenes I read felt like filler rather than story; a sock drawer of scenes that didn’t build toward anything I could identify. I DNF’d at page 109, having felt nothing about any of the characters, and constantly checking how many more pages I had to go.

Final verdict

A Month of Sundays is gentle, cosy, and unhurried in its portrayal of women navigating the latter part of their lives. If you love a book that asks nothing more of you than a cup of tea and an afternoon, this may well be exactly what you need. I am not that reader, and I suspect this review reflects that mismatch more than it reflects any real failing in the book, as there is certainly nothing wrong with the writing.

DNF at page 109, and I wouldn’t recommend it, but your book club may feel entirely differently.

Where can I read it?