2025/099: The Story of a Heart — Rachel Clarke

Depending on your point of view, the transplantation of a human heart is a miracle, a violation, a leap of faith, an act of sacrilege. It’s a dream come true, a death postponed, a biomedical triumph, a day job. [loc. 199]

Keira, aged nine, is fatally injured in a traffic accident: her heart keeps beating but she is brain-dead. Max, also aged nine, has been in hospital for almost a year because his heart is failing. This is the story of how Keira (and, more actively, her family) saved Max, and of the people involved in the heart transplant - doctors, nurses, couriers, porters... It's a compassionate and engaging work of narrative non-fiction, this is the story of a heart transplant, and of how the death of one child and the saving of another led to a significant change in UK law.

While I was reading The Story of a Heart, it was announced as the winner of the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction: I hope this will prompt more people to read it. Clarke, trained as a doctor, is an excellent communicator of medical science: she's also adept at highlighting the little details. (Keira's young sisters, both convinced that she would have wanted to donate her organs, paint her fingernails orange while she's lying in intensive care.) 

I found this a moving, fascinating and sometimes sobering book: I think it's what I was expecting when I read Mend the Living (a novel that I thought at first was non-fiction) some years ago. They're both very good books.

interview with Rachel Clarke

2025/098: Maurice — E M Forster

He had gone outside his class, and it served him right. [loc. 2758]

A classic of LGBT+ literature, read for a 'published posthumously' challenge -- I managed to find an affordable Kindle edition. Splendid prose, intriguingly detached/omniscient narration, and appalling social tension. I felt a deep dislike for most of the characters, especially Maurice, and suspect it would have been reciprocated. ('Both were misogynists... In the grip of their temperaments, they had not developed the imagination to do duty instead, and during their love women had become as remote as horses or cats; all that the creatures did seemed silly.' [loc. 1301]. Miaow.)

Maurice forms a close friendship with Durham at university, but is repulsed when Durham declares his love. He then reads some Greek literature and decides that though homosexuality may be 'the worst crime in the calendar' he reciprocates Durham's love. There is a period of happiness, after which Durham declares that he has suddenly caught heterosexuality and is planning to marry. Maurice does not take this well. He has a liaison with a working-class man (Durham's gamekeeper Scudder) and -- after some disastrous miscommunications -- turns his back on his old life to be with Scudder.

Maurice is a sobering insight into the public (and private) attitude towards homosexuality in the Edwardian era. The Dean's translation class omits 'a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks'; Maurice rejects Durham with the words 'a rotten notion really'; a doctor refuses to discuss 'nonsense'. It's a subject 'absolutely beyond the limit'. And Forster, of course, did not publish this novel in his lifetime.

I did like Maurice's notion of life beyond conventions: 'Perhaps among those who took to the greenwood in old time there had been two men like himself—two. At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world.' [loc. 1779]. And apparently, in Forster's unpublished epilogues, that's what became of Maurice and Scudder. (source)

Forster completed the first draft of this novel in 1913-14. What would have become of Maurice and Alec in the war?

2025/097: Endling — Maria Reva

"Wasn't your novel originally going to be about a marriage agency in Ukraine?"
"Null and void... I was writing about a so-called invasion of bachelors to Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened. Even in peacetime I felt queasy writing right into not one but two Ukrainian tropes, 'mail-order brides' and topless protesters. To continue now seems unforgiveable." [loc. 1457]

The first half of Endling is the story of Yeva, a malacologist ('despite its inclusion of mollusks without backbones') who's determined to save endangered snail species. It hasn't gone well: she is down to one living specimen, Lefty, whose shell coils the opposite way to others of his species. (Yeva, similarly, coils the other way: she's asexual, though she has a passionate friendship with a conservationist.) Lefty is an endling, the last of his variant. Perhaps Yeva is too.

To finance her mobile lab, Yeva works for Romeo Meets Yulia, an agency that does 'romance tours' for Western men.You meet the most interesting people at these events. Yeva is approached by two sisters, Nastia and Sol, who also work for the agency. Inspired by their infamous mother, a flamboyant activist, they've decided to kidnap one hundred bachelors as a publicity stunt, and they'd like to use Yeva's van. It's a lab, Yeva points out, and twelve is the absolute limit.

So off they set, three women and a dozen bewildered Westerners (well, eleven: Pasha lives in Vancouver, but was born in Ukraine), on a road trip to nowhere. And suddenly there are loud noises outside...

The quotation at the top of this review comes from the middle of the book, where everything falls apart: reality intrudes, in the form of the Russian invasion of February 2022. The author also intrudes: that's her talking to her agent, trying to place this novel, to sell articles about Ukrainian humour. And the book seems to end, with Acknowledgements ('I would also like to thank Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for including my name on their personal sanctions list of Canadians who are now forbidden from entering their country. One of the biggest honours of my literary career' [loc. 1620]) and A Note on the Type.

But we're not even halfway through, and for the rest of the novel Reva's own voice enters the novel, worrying about her grandfather in Kherson, wondering whether one can write fiction about tragedy and war. Not that Yeva and her companions vanish. Instead, Yeva's conservationist friend tells her he's spotted another left-coiling snail, a female, in the background of a teenager's video about not wanting to leave his city. The city is Kherson...

I loved the playfulness of this novel, even in the midst of horror: I warmed to Yeva and to Reva and to the activist sisters trying to lure their absent mother into view with a high-profile stunt. And somehow even the snails were interesting -- not words I thought I would ever type.

UK publication is 3rd July 2025: Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy!

2025/096: Stateless — Elizabeth Wein

...turning your back on your family, I knew, wasn’t nearly as terrifying as turning your back on an entire nation. [loc. 3643]

Stella North is the only female contestant in Europe's first ever youth air race. It's 1937, and the European powers are desperately trying to avert war: 'No one who fought here twenty years ago and survived wanted to see their sons come of age and go straight out to fight another war'. Meanwhile, the young men who are Stella's (male) competitors seem to be obsessed with the war records of their instructors and chaperones. She's especially vexed by the French pilot, Tony Roberts, who strongly resembles the German pilot, Sebastian Rainer. Tony flew in Spain, during the Civil War: Sebastian has never heard of Guernica.

On the first leg of the race, a pilot is forced out of the sky by another plane. Stella is the only witness, and she's terrified that she will be the next target. Instead, she's under suspicion ...

This is a murder mystery, but it's also about the joy of flying, and about being 'stateless' (Stella's a refugee whose parents were murdered during the Russian revolution), and there is friendship and perhaps romance. Ignore the 'young adult' labelling: this is a well-researched and immensely readable novel, with credible characters and a complex plot. Wein handles the looming war -- which the characters dread, but don't know is going to happen -- with sensitivity, and the young aviators have a variety of perspectives and opinions ... many of which have changed by the end of the novel.

Wein's afterword, 'written in a terrifying present and addressed to an unknown future', mentions some of her sources and inspirations: she also writes that 'It was impossible... to ignore that the 1937 setting was on the brink of events that would alter civilization forever. During the two years that I worked on the novel, between May 2020 and March 2022, it felt rather as if I were writing a book set in the autumn of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.' (loc. 4791). Writing this review on the day that America has bombed Iran, I also feel that sense of being on the brink: but I've felt like this for so long now...

2025/095: Night and Day in Misery — Catriona Ward

...she understands, now, that she has not been alone these eight years, not really. She carries all that she is, and has been, within her. Stella gasps with the mercy and the cruelty of it all. [loc. 405]

Short story, part of Amazon's 'Shivers' collection: read because Catriona Ward is a favourite author and it's too long since her last novel.

Stella is visiting the motel where her husband Frank and son Sam stayed eight years ago, the night before they died when Frank's car crashed off a suspension bridge and into a river. Sam would be ten now. Stella's life has frozen: she's estranged from her mother (who advised her to leave Frank) and finds it hard to connect with her sister Dina. She blames herself for Frank and Sam's death, and just wants to be with Sam again. She writes a farewell letter and falls asleep: but dreams...

Too short, but very atmospheric: I listened to the audiobook, which was read slightly too dramatically for my taste, but still good. The prose is lovely and the story, though simple, feels organic and rounded.

2025/094: Return of the Thief — Megan Whalen Turner

Nahuseresh tells me I am not king. We’ll see if he really prefers the Thief. [loc. 3700]

Series finale, and it really delivers. The narrator, for the most part, is Pheris Mostrus Erondites, a vulnerable child who has been taught that his only safety lies in pretending to be a 'drooling idiot'. He's non-verbal, and has other traits indicative of something like cerebral palsy: his cousins have nicknamed him Monster. Eugenides (now annux, high king, of the Peninsula) has 'invited' Pheris to be raised in the palace, away from his family -- his grandfather is Baron Erondites, Gen's greatest opponent in court -- and quickly realises that Pheris' mind is as sharp as his own.

And Pheris observes a great deal. He sees that Gen is often ill; that he keeps returning to the temple of Hephestia, trying to get a straight answer from the gods; that he wants to reject his violent impulses, but also wants to go to war with the Medes. He sees, too, that Gen is willing to laugh at himself: one of the most delightful (and cheerful) scenes is a satirical play about a king named Emipopolitus, who's wasting the country's money on mad ideas. Gen clearly knows the playwright...

This is a novel about war and vengeance, treachery and death. It's presented as Pheris' 'chronicle of the high king' -- his Exordium reminded me of Thucydides* -- and though Pheris literally turns away from the most distressing scenes, there's a lot of violence. But there are also moments of joy, and several instances of divine intervention. And, unexpectedly, a happy ending for most (though not all) of the characters.

Pheris is a fascinating narrator, and a very credible character in his own right: damaged by his family more profoundly than Gen by his frequently-deplored cousins, non-verbal but fascinated by mathematics and keen to become literate under the tuition of Relius, ex-spymaster, possessed of stubborn courage and immense loyalty. I liked him a lot, and I liked the ways in which Turner showed us that his physical problems don't make him in any way lesser. 

Gen fascinated (and occasionally appalled) me all over again. He is, after all, on first-name terms with the gods -- and Pheris, fortunately for the chronicle, can see and hear them too.

And I love that the end of the series is full of hope and new life and possibility: that foreseen disasters are still in the future: that this is not a tragedy.

* Pheris: "I will include in my account what I did not see and hear myself only if I learned of the events as they occurred and from those who were present." [loc. 56]
Thucydides: "Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular enquiry." source: 1.22.

2025/093: Thick as Thieves — Megan Whalen Turner

There is freedom in this life and there is power, and I was ambitious for the latter. [p. 15]

Kamet is a slave, albeit an expensive and efficient one: he is secretary to Nahuseresh, the erstwhile Medean ambassador to Attolia. Disgraced by the failure of the mission to Attolia the year before, Nahuseresh has returned to court in Ianna-Ir, hoping for a new post. Unfortunately his latest request has not been granted -- and the court is a dangerous place for a man out of favour. Fearing that he'll be blamed for Nahuseresh's death by poison, Kamet accepts the help of an Attolian soldier who's promised him his freedom. Together, they flee across the desert, the Attolian constantly lauding his king, Kamet feeling effortlessly superior. But the two are becoming friends, despite the secret Kamet can't admit.

This is very much a road-trip story. It's told as Kamet's first-person narrative, and there is a great deal he does not know. (I am unclear, though, why he refers to his companion as 'the Attolian' despite knowing his name from early on.) He's convinced of his own value, and of the barbarity of Attolia. To entertain his presumed-illiterate companion, he recites his own verse translations of the old myths of Immakuk and Ennikar, who are reminiscent of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. And he finds himself thinking differently about loyalty, freedom, power and friendship.

Not my favourite of the series, not least because the protagonists of the main arc don't appear until late in the novel: but Kamet's growth as a person, and the echoes of myth in his friendship with the Attolian, are engaging, and the various secrets -- some hidden in plain sight, others only evident in the final chapters -- are cleverly hidden and revealed. (Kamet's poor eyesight, from years of reading in bad light, is a plot point.) And it's nice to see Medes other than the oily Nahuseresh, who's been portrayed as a dyed-in-the-wool villain (the novel opens with Kamet having suffered a beating for 'overreaching') but had, it seems, some redeeming qualities.