The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club is not a book to be rushed through; rather it's to be savoured and enjoyed, pondered over and slept upon. It's about so much more than a book club - or even the ladies - come to that; it is a book showing more kindness between it's pages than any I have read before.

Life in the Northern Territory is hard. With two seasons, dry and wet, both of which bring joys and hardships. Work is a seven days a week job. Clothes are worn for comfort rather than style and women don't have a lot of leisure time for hobbies except the necessary ones of cooking, baking and looking after others. So when Kate arrives at Fairvale Station, newly wed to Ben and with no-one else of her age around, mother-in-law Sybil sees an opportunity for a get together, principally for friendship but under the guise of a book club.

So five women, of very differing backgrounds and with incomparable lifestyles meet to discuss their chosen novel - and so much more. Slowly we begin to learn all about their lives, their families, their hopes, dreams and realities. We immerse ourselves in the Northern Territory and everything that goes with it and we learn about a completely different kind of life which those of us in the UK can only imagine. These women live in a tough, harsh environment but manage to keep their soft and caring side, and this is a wonderful, insightful read into life on the other side of the world and the unexpected beauty to be found there.

Time moves on in this book. I loved the lists of world events which demonstrated this perfectly. The life of each woman moved on - and not always in the way I expected, but always in a way that was right for the story. And it's absorbing and delightful, and not a book to be missed. If you enjoy a family saga / friendship based novel, then I would say this is one for you.

My thanks to publishers Sphere for approving my requested copy via NetGalley. This is my honest, original and unbiased review.

This book is pure escapism. It was a lovely way to spend a few hours on a snowy afternoon. The story is about a book club and the women in it. They all live in the harsh Northern Territory in Australia. They all have hardships in their lives and value and need their friendships. The title really caught my attention and made me want to read this book. I would definitely recommend it.

I would definitely recommend this book to friends and students - Grade 9 and upwards. Books are a link around the world and particularly in remote places, such as in this book. Although the book group met infrequently, it was a link to the outside world for most of the characters and the author had researched her subject very well. It wasn't the greatest literary work, but I enjoyed the book on a 4 hour flight and a week later, the story has stayed with me. I look forward to reading more books by the same author.

This was a wonderfully warm, uplifting story about five different women with diverse backgrounds, professing differing strengths, ages but all with a shared love of books and reading.

The women lived and worked in the Northern Territory of Australia.  An area so vast your nearest neighbour could be 25km away.  An area that had natural beauty with it’s deep earthy colours but the locality experienced two diverse seasons; a wet season that cut off families and friends for months on end and a dry season that could be equally as harsh to the livelihoods of the farmers.

Sybil had created the Fairvale Reading Club initially with the intention on introducing new friends to her daughter-in-law who had recently moved in to Fairvale with her husband, Sybil’s youngest son Ben.  Kate had travelled thousands of miles away from her family in England to start a new life with her husband.  A very daunting experience lay ahead for Kate as she had never met her husband’s family and hadn’t visited Australia before.  Sybil is the head of the household of Fairvale and I felt like she had a huge weight on her shoulders keeping the family and workers of the estate happy and healthy as well as sharing the load of running the farm with her husband Joe.  Sybil had this in-built knack of finding certain individuals that she believed needed help of some sort or other and bringing them together to learn and gain strength as a collective of women and this is were the book club came into it’s own.  Little did Sybil know at the time of founding the club that each member would be a valuable asset to each and every one of them.

The friendships that developed would give the ladies a strength, encouragement and love to face many hurdles that would fall their way. The ladies would also feel a community of overwhelming comfort from each other when times were rough.  With life’s hurdles challenges were faced and the ladies found a way of coping and moving on.

I really enjoyed the landscape of this story.  A landscape I wasn’t familiar with but the author soon made me feel like I was there.  The strength of all the women living in the outback and the small isolated towns was evident and I felt that the women were the glue that held many families and businesses together.

A wonderful tale of friendships, of love, of grief and of life.

I can never resist books which are set in bookshops or libraries or feature book groups - in other words, any books about people who love reading. I knew that The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club would be just my kind of book and I was right. I absolutely loved it.

The Book Club consists of five women who live in the harsh Northern Territory of Australia. The Territory being what it is, they're not exactly next door neighbours but live large distances from each other. Their book club only take place when it's the Dry Season as when it's The Wet, much of the area is cut off by rain-swollen creeks and flooded roads. Much of the travelling takes place by plane, such as the large distances involved. I thought the author described her setting perfectly, giving me a real sense of the vastness of the outback, the vivid colours of the earth, sky and plants and the difficulty of surviving in such an unforgiving landscape. 

The women were at the heart of the story and from their different viewpoints we come to understand all their joys, sorrows, hopes and disappointments. Sybil, who I think was my favourite charactre, could be described as the matriarch of the group. Along with her husband, Jim, she runs the vast Fairvale Station.  She has a new daughter-in-law, Kate, the English girl her son Ben met and married while on a trip to the UK and who is struggling to adapt to a very different life. Sybil's oldest friend Rita is someone she has known from her nursing days, who now lives in Alice Springs and works for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Della is a Texan who works on a nearby cattle ranch, a most unusual profession for a women in the 1970s when the story is set. Finally, there is Sallyanne who lives in town with her increasingly belligerent husband and their three young children and dreams of escaping her dull life. These very different women bring different experiences and different voices to the story. Yet for all their differences, they are brought together through their love of books. Through their book club meetings, they form strong bonds of friendship and become a support system for each other throughout everything that happens. Since the book is set in the 70s, expectations of a woman's role was rather different from today and it was interesting to read how the five friends either kicked against convention, were happy to accept it or quietly created their own ways of dealing with those expectations. With a list of significant world events at the beginning of different sections of the book, events which often then featured in the story to one extent or another, the author gave her book a firm sense of the times as well as jogging a few memories for me.

I thought the books the women chose to read were rather appropriate for the story. Their first book was the classic Australian saga The Thorn Birds and another was A Woman of Substance. Both these books, like this one, were sweeping sagas with strong women at their heart. Some of the things the women said about their book choices summed up this book too I felt. In particular when Rita talks about The Harp in the South, she describes it as being a  book "about hardship and love and surviving both," while Sybil describes A Woman of Substance as being "a sweeping saga of a woman....... going onto glory, despite challenges and dangers and whatever else you can imagine." The ladies of the Fairvale Book Club certainly experience all kinds of hardship and challenges, danger and love and more than survive them all.

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club was one of those books I was completely caught up in. I became immersed in the lives of these women while I was reading and I really didn't want to have to bid them farewell when the book ended. Like several of the books the ladies chose to read, it's a glorious epic of a book, beautifully written and one I highly recommend. If you happen to be in a book group, the author has helpfully included details of the book mentioned in the story along with suggested book group discussion questions.

In the desolate Northern Territory of Australia, five women find friendship and support through books.

I have to be honest and say I think the title The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club is slightly misleading, because although that meeting does take place and there are references to books dotted throughout the text, this is a book about so much more than a book club of five members in an isolated location.

I did struggle a bit at the beginning to work out who was who and what relation they had to one another, but once I got into the rhythm of the book I grew to understand them all and to see them as real people leading challenging lives. I felt closest to Della and Kate and I think it’s because they experienced the ‘otherness’ of Australia in line with my own experiences. By the end of the novel I felt quite emotional at how the five women’s lives had turned out.

Having visited Australia I enjoyed the geographical references and details as they illustrated just what it’s like extremely well. The more I read The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club the more glad I was that I don’t live with such extremes of climate and weather.

However, what I enjoyed most about reading The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club was the range of themes. The late 1970s era is very clearly presented and I railed rather at the way women were supposed to follow their husbands and thought the exploration of relationships was extremely deftly handled. The themes of relationships, love, ageing and belonging are beautifully presented in this gentle read and I thoroughly appreciated the concept that belonging doesn’t have to have a physical presence in a location for it to be equally valid.

I found The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club a gentle, affecting and entertaining read.

Loved this book and couldn't put it down!!
Sybil lives on a ranch in the Northern Territory of Australia. Her daughter-in-law has just arrived from England and knows no-one. Rita works at Alice Springs on the Flying Doctor run and is an old friend of Sybil's. Della is a female stockman on a neighbouring ranch and Sallyanne is unhappily married with three children living in town. Sybil gets them all together for a bookclub meeting, reading The Thorn Birds. Friendships are forged and this is the story of what happens to them all over the following few years. There is tragedy and laughter but friendship shines through all this.

Just loved this novel with its setting in the Australian outback. The harshness of the life was well described and women certainly had to struggle to make and maintain friendships. The fact that I was a similar age to some of the main protagonists at the end of the 1970s really brought home the differences between suburban England and the remote wilds of the Northern Territory. All of the women are strong and have to make changes to their lives to survive and try for a measure of happiness. Highly recommended.

As ever, I'm not going to reiterate a synopsis of the plot in my review (there are plenty of other reviews to read if you want that sort of information). This book isn't entirely about a book club (but it had drawn me in by the time I realised that!), more about the characters and the relationships between them.

The book is set mainly in the Australian outback. The descriptions of the seasonal extremes surprised me - I'd never really realised that there were such huge variations or how they affected people. I liked the mix of characters and how their friendships and lives became intertwined thanks to the catalyst of the book club.

There were some tear-jerking moments, but the overall tone is one of optimism and strength. Although I wouldn't say that this is my usual sort of book, I'd happily read another by this author.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for my honest review.

Fab story of life in the Australian outback from the female point of view. This is all about life on a farming ranch in Australia, during the 1970s. Communication is difficult, letters take weeks to arrive, the nearest town is a days drive away and there are very few women. A new English wife arrives at Fairvale, and her mother in law decides to arrange a book club as a social opportunity. The women invited soon become friends, supporting each other through good and hard times. This book is ALL about the women, their friendships, their problems and the ways in which they try to overcome them. The Australian outback flying doctor service features, as well as the difficulties faced during the wet season when the roads are unpassable. Positive and heart warming, with very believable characters, this is a fab and enjoyable read.

This is a story set in the 1970s in the hard Northern territories of Australia. To begin with I found that there were too many characters introduced too quickly, but as I settled into the story it became clearer.
What a lovely idea, for women living far away from each other and from civilisation, to form a Book club. Each woman had her own story, somehow winding itself around the others. Sybil, almost the matriarch, had had many disappointments, not the least was her relationship with her eldest son. We never really knew why that was so precarious, or what happened to Lachlan.
Sybil coped, a strong woman, with running a ranch after her husband died suddenly, and with mentoring and advising the group of women who had become friends.
I did enjoy the book, but wanted some of the ends tied up.
Amazon is not taking reviews yet.
Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for a review.

In this book I was transported to Australia, to the Northern Territory, to the end of the Seventies and the early Eighties where I got to meet a group of women who knew little of each other initially but grew from a small book club to a community to a close-knit family.

Sybil lives out on Fairvale Station, she moved their from Sydney to be with her husband and subsequently has two sons Lachlan who has chosen a very different path in life and Ben who finds Fairvale the place he wants to be.

Kate is Ben's wife and thousands of miles away from her home in London. She is struggling to deal with defining moments of the wet and dry season.

Della is also thousands of miles away from her Texan home but the station and the land whilst similar to that of her ranch at home gives her more opportunities. She meets Stan and she thinks she may have found what she has been running away from.

Sallyanne is struggling, three children, a drunken husband and isolation from everything all she has is her dreams and they are slowly being turned into nightmares.

Rita is Sybil's oldest friend and is a nurse in the Flying Doctors service and lives the furthest from her friend.

These women are brought together by the book club that was started by Sybil for Kate to meet some other people. It was clear that this book was more about their lives and their friendships then it was about the books. Although of course the books they choose to read are important and can give you a further reading list if you needed one. The books gave them a chance to escape their world as any book can do.

All of these women were faced with differing problems and the book dealt with, death, life, abuse, racism, sexism, depression and loneliness without actually having to wave a big flag saying this is what we are dealing with. These are the best books, the ones that deal with issues which are still so relevant today, even though the books setting is around forty years previously. Aimed at women readers there is something within these pages that most women will relate to. And if you perhaps don't then put yourself in their shoes, int heir lives and think about how you would deal with the events as they play out in the book.

This is a thoughtfully written book, which whilst dealing with emotive subjects does a wonderful job is showing what life is like on a cattle station in Australia, when it takes days to cross the land and muster the cattle, where you can't pop to the shops when you run out of milk without taking a two-hour drive and when it rains you are trapped with only radio as your means of communication with the outside world. For me fascinating stuff.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it for anyone wanting a change from perhaps the normal run of the mill commercial women's fiction - this book has a story to tell in itself.

The Inaugural Meeting Of The Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green is a wonderful historical novel about life, death and everything in between.
Set from 1978-1981, I hesitated to use the term 'historical' but realised there are many years separating then and now and the world is quite a different place. Each new year recaps the important events, setting the scene for the reader with the references that follow. This wonderful book is a snapshot in time.
The novel takes place in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is an unforgiving landscape. Life can be hard and isolating.
The book follows a group of women as they band together to share their love of books (many of which I had heard of and some I had read). They form so much more than just a book club. They offer a lifeline for each other. From various continents and of different ages and life experiences, these women become a group of friends. They share life's ups and downs - births, deaths, divorces, new loves, old loves, jobs, children - the list goes on.
I loved this book. The women, all with their unique personalities became my friends. I celebrated with them. I mourned with them.
This is a book with universal appeal, celebrating friendships. I have not been to Australia. I do not know the places they referred to but that did not matter. The women's lives were a microcosm for the macrocosm of women's lives everywhere at every time.
A wonderful book that will sink into your heart.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.

I'm a real sucker for books about book groups and this one didn't disappoint. All of the characters had well thought out story arcs and while Fairvale had an air of fairy tale to it the plots and characters stopped it from being a fantasy. I loved the references to Australian books that peppered the plot, especially the reference to 'We of the Never-Never' which was a great favourite of mine as a child, along with Cuddlepot and Snuggle Pie which I don't think anyone I know has read.
I think that the best bit of this book was that I was heartbroken it came to an end, I wanted to spend more time with these characters.

A little slow to start with but once I got through the first couple of chapters I really warmed to this tale of 5 very different women in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Great storylines, warmth and interest as well as references to historical events and contemporary novels.

4* an excellent book that I enjoyed reading

This is a gorgeous hug of a book. It is set during the late 1970s to early 1980s in the Northern Territory in Australia. Five women come together to start a book club, partly through love of books but also to develop friendships and diminish loneliness.
Sybil, the founder of the book club, is the matriarch of Fairvale Station who is concerned about the isolation of her young English daughter-in-law, Kate (wife of Sybil’s younger son, Ben), and is determined to do something about it. But Sybil also has her own reasons for starting the book club – her oldest son, Lachie, has rejected his family and abandoned them. Sybil is heartbroken by the bitter loss of her son and is in desperate need of distraction and companionship. She also invites her old friend Rita (a nurse with the Flying Doctors) to join the club; Della, a young Texan woman, whose experience as a rancher has led to her being the only ‘stockwomen’ of whom they have knowledge; and Sallyanne, a lonely young housewife with three children and a drunken, emotionally abusive husband. Through their book club and quickly developed friendship they help each other through the joys and tribulations of life.
The characters are a delight. The warmth of the friendship that develops is really enjoyable to bask in. The setting is a character in itself. The vast expanse of the Northern Territory, which seems bleak to so many but is a source of wonder and magic to those who know it, is a wonderful visual with its red dust and rocks and people making their lives against all odds.
I can thoroughly recommend this book as a delightful, warm read.

A great slice of women's fiction and a perfect book club read of its own, "The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club" is a real page-turner. Set in rural Australia, a land of vast stations, farming folk and isolated communities, it centers around the Fairvale Station in the Northern Territory, near the town of Katherine.
Matriarch Sybil, and her beloved husband Joe, manage the station with the help of their younger son Ben and his newly-immigrated English wife, Kate. Her older son, Lachlan, has flown the nest in mysterious circumstances leaving a big hole in his mother's heart.
Sybil's best friend, Rita, is a frequent visitor due to her work with the region's Flying Doctor service, but lives miles away in Alice Springs.
Into their tightly-knit world, Green introduces Della, a Texan ranch hand who moved to Australia to escape her male-dominated family, and create a new life for herself without the restrictions of home; and Sallyanne, a local mother of three desperate to escape her restrictive live as a mother and wife to a lazy, drunk husband.
Sybil sets up the titular book club in order to help Kate make some friends on her arrival at Fairvale. Sensitive to the fact that Kate's miles from her home and family, she brings together a supportive group of wonderful characters, all of them united by the common thread that they are avid bookworms.
The women soon form a tight bond, supporting each other through their individual story arcs, which involve many emotional events. I won't include any spoilers, but this is a great emotional rollercoaster of happiness, heartbreak, tragedy and elation. The women are all wonderfully imagined and their characters jump from the page.
As a fan of Australian soaps such as The Flying Doctors, Neighbours etc that filled UK TV in the 1980's, their world was instantly familiar to me. As was the fact that their inaugural title was "The Thorn Birds". Green takes these familiar settings and adds depth, warmth and humanity to the unforgiving landscapes. Hugely recommended!