The Used Women’s Book Club by Paul Bryers

Bloomsbury Publishing, 282 pages, out of print (c2004)

It’s only taken me about a year and a half to finish reading “The Used Women’s Book Club.” I was mostly interrupted by other, newer books, the lack of detective work, and the density of Bryers’ writing. The latter is a terrible thing to say, because the most attractive feature of “Used Women’s” is the density of the writing. Paul Bryers puts a lot into his sentences, his structure, and his characters, and it’s worth plumbing the depths.

In the end the book was not about the mystery of who the murderer was but why the murderer was. And in the end it didn’t really matter why either because the why was given fairly short shrift. What the book is about is how women and men come together before they drift apart, how men and women misunderstand each other and themselves, and the damage people can inflict upon each other. Finally, how responsible can one person be for the sins of others?

The not-so-little women of the book club are Meg, Amy, Liz, and Jo. Meg’s husband, Rob, has been murdered in his best friend’s house, which he temporarily was using, it is assumed, for an extramarital affair. Larry, the friend, is one of the main characters, as is Jo. The women’s personalities are vaguely reminiscent of Louisa May Alcott’s characters, but they are more appropriately 30-something modern women living in London. Larry is an anti-Laurie. He is vague, detached, uncommitted, untethered, traumatized.

At the time Rob was murdered, the women were having a meeting of the Used Women’s Book Club, an accidental misnaming of the original idea of a women’s used book club. “Men, who needs them” seems to be the motto of the group. But were all the members at the meeting when Rob was being murdered? Could one of them have done it? 

Jo, an American, is a scholar and actually reads Virginia Woolf. Amy pretends to be a Woolf scholar. Larry brushes against some of Woolf’s books. Amy and Larry give guided walks based on themes such as Jack the Ripper and Virginia Woolf. So somewhere in this book are a feminist tale, a tale of commodifying a famous name, a tale of ignorance, and a tale of forensic evidence.

Alas, I have been staring at my slightly opened copy of “To the Lighthouse” for the last thirty years, so I cannot tell you if “Used Women’s” is a parody, a tribute, or in any way a likeness of Woolf’s writing. Paul Bryers is clever enough to have written this book and may have indeed also been clever enough to have channeled the meat of Woolf’s style.

The last paragraph and last line in this book are the sweet payoff for the wait.