2018/45: Voyager -- Diana Gabaldon

"Do you think that the size of the book is justified by the complexity of the story?" Grey asked ...
"What is it -- twelve hundred pages? Aye, I think so. After all, it is difficult to sum up the complications of a life in a short space with any hope of constructing an accurate account."
"True. I have heard the point made, though, that the novelist's skill lies in the artful selection of detail. Do you not suppose that a volume of such length may indicate a lack of discipline in such selection, and hence a lack of skill?"
"...In this case ... I think it isna so. Each character is most carefully considered, and all the incidents chosen seem necessary to the story." [p. 168. Jamie and John are discussing Samuel Richardson's Pamela -- or are they?!]

I read Voyager (on Kindle, fortunately: the paper version is over a thousand pages long) in order to understand the context in which the Lord John Grey books are set. (See Lord John and the Private Matter, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Lord John and the Hand of Devils). Also because, as mentioned in previous reviews, I had found Gabaldon's prose easy, entertaining and engaging to read.

Voyager packs an awful lot of plot into its thousand pages. (That leading quotation indicates that Gabaldon is well aware of the perils of this approach.) Parts of the novel are set in 1968, when Jamie Fraser's time-travelling wife Claire resolves to return to Jamie in The Past. In the eighteenth century, it covers the period 1746 to 1767. The Lord John novels and novellas fit neatly into the gaps in Voyager, being set between 1756 and 1761: one pleasure of reading Voyager was the exploration of Lord John's complex friendship with Jamie Fraser, and his post-army career.

I didn't take to Claire, though she is a competent and passionate heroine. Most of her narrative is first-person, while other scenes are third-person: that jarred, and I might have liked Claire better if I'd seen her through a more objective lens.

Coincidences abound; the cast is large, and prone to melodrama and misbehaviour, as well as quite illogical flights of jealousy; a number of famous figures (or their ancestors) make fleeting appearances. Almost all of Jamie and Claire's friends and relations are disaster-prone: kidnapping, rape, blackmail, murder, shipwreck, betrayal ... And it is one thing after another, after another, after another. There's only the slightest sense of resolution at the end -- for, after all, there are another five books, so far, in the sequence.

I found the best stratagem was to suspend my critical faculties -- or at least the ones that focus on structure and credibility -- and enjoy the ride. And on that basis (and admittedly skimming some of the Jamie-and-Claire scenes) Voyager gave me exactly what I wanted: entertainment, amusement, engagement, and more of Lord John Grey's story.

2018/44: Lord John and the Hand of Devils -- Diana Gabaldon

‘I assure you, Tom, if the phallus of St. Orgevald does not protect me, nothing will.’ [loc 2251]

A collection of three novellas featuring Lord John Grey, who was my summer crush this year. (I prefer my crushes fictional.)

'Lord John and the Hellfire Club' is set some time before Lord John and the Private Matter. Lord John is approached by a personable redhead with a deadly (undisclosed) secret, who is promptly murdered. Investigations lead Lord John to Francis Dashwood's Hellfire Club and its ostentatious wickedness -- and to Lord John's former lover, George Everett, who's a member of the Club. Mostly interesting for the views on sodomy asserted by various characters. Lord John may have a fiery temper, he has had a lifetime of repressing his responses to homophobic slurs.

'Lord John and the Succubus' takes place between Lord John and the Private Matter and Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade. Major Grey is English liaison to the Imperial Fifth Regiment of Hanoverian Foot, and finds that his duties include riding his horse Karolus through a graveyard at night in order to identify the resting-place of a succubus. Grey, as a rationalist, perceives some logical issues with this task, but obliges anyway -- and discovers the corpse of an English soldier. Discovering the connection between the soldier's death and the rumours of a succubus, Grey also has to fend off the attentions of a widowed noblewoman, whilst wondering if handsome Stephan von Namtzen's friendliness is simple good nature, or something more.

'Lord John and the Haunted Soldier' was my favourite of the three novellas. Set directly after Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, it deals in part with the Commission of Enquiry to which Grey is called after being severely injured by an exploding cannon. Turns out that his half-brother Edgar may be implicated, as his mills made the gunpowder used in that gun. Meanwhile, Lord John still suffers after-effects of the explosion, and a shard of metal in his chest could kill him at any moment. And he's haunted by the ghost, or the memory, of Lieutenant Lister, who was standing next to Lord John when a cannon-ball decapitated him.

In all three novellas, Lord John's honour, his rationalism, and his compassion urge him above and beyond what might be expected of him: and his wit and intelligence (and his friends) save him from the perils incumbent on his actions. Gabaldon's prose is well-paced and very readable: she takes a joy in unusual words (for instance 'absquatulating', a forgiveable anachronism) and her humour -- or Lord John's, perhaps -- tends to dryness rather than farce. I enjoy her books, though (spoiler!) it will turn out in later reviews that I really just enjoy Lord John Grey.

2018/43: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade -- Diana Gabaldon

'Kindness and honor? That’s all well – but what of love?’
Grey valued love – and feared it – too greatly to make idle protestations. ‘You cannot compel love,’ he said finally, ‘nor summon it at will. Still less,’ he added ruefully, ‘can you dismiss it.’ [p. 260]

Seventeen years before the opening of this novel, the Duke of Pardloe (Lord John's father) died: apparently suicide, possibly to avoid being tried as a Jacobite traitor. Lord John has never really believed this, and it turns out that his elder brother Hal hasn't either. Now their mother is remarrying, and the old stories are resurfacing -- along with tantalising clues that there was more to the death of the duke than his sons suspected.

Lord John is not solely occupied with investigating the circumstances of his father's death. His new stepbrother Percy is a delight; his regiment is off to Prussia; his cousin is expecting her first child; and Jamie Fraser seems to be involved in some mystery, up in Helwater.

I think this is my favourite of the Lord John Grey novels. Lord John is a more rounded, and considerably more complex, person in this novel than in Lord John and the Private Matter. The keystone of his character is his strong sense of honour: it's more important to him than anything, though his tamped-down emotions do occasionally become impossible for him to ignore.

I liked several of the supporting cast, too, especially Lord John's mother Benedicta -- who could be the subject of a whole novel herself -- and his fond, exasperated and thoroughly competent brother Hal.

And kudos to Gabaldon for writing battlefield scenes that are brutally realistic and devoid of the dashing, bloodless heroism that can pass as shorthand for 'war' in popular novels. Lord John's bravery has a headlong, reckless feel to it: he, and his soldiers, are frail flesh and blood, driven by duty and fear.

Gabaldon's prose is eminently readable, often witty, and doesn't attempt to emulate the style of the eighteenth century. I am currently reading a novel bogged down in pseudo-archaism, and appreciate its lack even more in hindsight.

2018/42: Fail Seven Times -- Kris Ripper

Old friends. Such a fucking nuisance. I should surround myself exclusively with new people who find my wit biting and my sarcasm mean. Strangely, it’s difficult to find people who stick around for that, but of course that’s not really a barrier; once they get used to you, it’s time to find new people anyway. [loc 2247]

Justin Simos' life used to be simple, for quietly desperate values of simple. He's an unrepentant self-saboteur, a self-identified gay man who prefers his sex transactional (and somewhat abusive) and his friendships predictable. Unfortunately, his friends -- especially Alex, who he's known since they were seven, and Alex's girlfriend Jamie -- have other ideas. They have a non-monogamous relationship, and would like very much for Justin to be part of it. He's not the person they think he is ('I hate myself. Why don't you hate me?'): he's reluctant, spelt s-c-a-r-e-d. It's not, he tells himself, that he doesn't love them: he loves them too much to expose them to, well, him.

Justin's fortunate, because he has a number of friends -- not just Alex and Jamie, but people he's met through a 'BDSM and Dating' workshop -- who support him with tough love. He becomes engrossed, too, in researching the life of a (fictional) gay artist, Enrico Hazeltine, who's been a major influence since Justin's teens. Understanding how Hazeltine opened up his own life, even when he was dying of AIDS, helps Justin, too, open himself to authentic, reciprocal relationships.

Fail Seven Times is a poly, bi-positive BDSM romance which is funny, frustrating and raw. Ripper does some interesting things with the sex scenes -- notably opening the novel when the three are in bed, though of course it is not quite that simple -- and every scene, sex-related or otherwise, works hard for the plot. A good read, and a romantic scenario that isn't often explored in the romance genre.

2018/41: Salt Magic, Skin Magic -- Lee Welch

John knew where he was with iron, or salt, or a sulky furnace. He knew where he was with his sigils and herbs. But he was trained for industry, for the painstaking preparations and day-to-day drudgery of factory magic. And now he was caught in a morass of mystery and magic and lust, and he was out of his depth. [loc. 1972]

Soren Dezombrey, Lord Thornby, is a prisoner in his own home -- or, to be accurate, in his family's ancestral seat, a remote hall on the Yorkshire moors, which his father has forbidden him to leave. Thornby is greatly inclined to ignore his father's wishes and run back to London, where he had been leading a pleasant and vaguely scandalous existence. But something intangible prevents him from crossing the boundary of his father's land. And, adding insult to injury, there's a new visitor at the Hall: magician John Blake, sent to investigate rumours that Thornby's exerting a malign influence on his young stepmother.

This kind of thing really isn't Blake's domain. He's a materials man: son of an ironmonger, most recently employed on the construction and protection of the Crystal Palace, he is an accomplished practitioner who's painstakingly trained himself to conceal his working-class origins. Lord Dalton, Thornby's father, accepts Blake's presence without question: but his spells don't seem to work on Thornby at all. It makes no sense.

This novel kept surprising me. The fantastical elements are interestingly combined -- I would love to know more about the scientific system of magic, and about Blake's relationship with his materials -- and the romance reassuringly credible. (There were only a couple of points where I felt a plot obstacle could have been resolved if the characters actually, y'know, talked to one another.) But most interesting to me was the theme of social class. Blake's lowly origins would usually set him beneath Thornby's notice: but Thornby is smart enough to recognise an expert, and relaxed enough to tease Blake about their different social standing.

Good dialogue, a surprise hedgehog, and female characters who have distinct personalities (though could have done with a bit more rounding: what was Aunt Amelia doing in Cairo and why did she come back?) I'd love to read more novels set in this world, and I'll look out for more by this author.

I received a free ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Lee Welch!

2018/40: Strong Poison -- Dorothy L. Sayers

The inherited inhibitions of twenty civilised centuries tied one hand and foot in bonds of ridicule. What if he did smash the mirror? Nothing would happen. Bunter would come in, unmoved and unsurprised, would sweep up the débris in a dust-pan, would prescribe a hot bath and massage. And next day a new mirror would be ordered, because people would come in and ask questions, and civilly regret the accidental damage to the old one. And Harriet Vane would still be hanged, just the same. [p. 176]

In which Lord Peter Wimsey meets the woman he is determined to marry, who -- inconveniently -- happens to be on trial for the murder of her lover.

Reread as conclusion to a stint of jury service at the Old Bailey: I am happy to say that the rules for jury deliberations have relaxed somewhat since Lord Peter's day. We were allowed to leave our deliberations overnight, and were plied with food and drink ...

I'd remembered the jury foreman wearily stating that he thought it very unlikely they would ever all agree on a verdict in re Harriet Vane: I'd forgotten Miss Climpson's adventures with spiritualism, and the places where Lord Peter's aristocratic bufoonery begins to wear thin under the pressure of having found something, someone, that matters immensely to him. The grace and style remains, but he is peculiarly vulnerable and more human than in earlier novels in the sequence.

Can't help feeling that standards of evidence, and rules regarding its provision, are rather stricter these days. But where's the fun, the romance, the white-knightery, in that?

2018/39: Unfit to Print -- K J Charles

The Strand was a wide thoroughfare with imposing tall frontages, fit for the capital of empire; Holywell Street was its disreputable, drink-sodden uncle with his trouser buttons undone. [loc. 479]

Vikram Pandey and Gil Lawes were best friends (with benefits) at school: then, halfway through term, Gil was taken out of school, and Vikram never saw or heard from him again.

Unfit to Print picks up the story thirteen years later, when Vikram, now a crusading Indian lawyer, encounters one Gil Lawless -- what better surname for the disinherited bastard son of the Lawes family? -- running a bookshop in Holywell Street. Vikram is in search of a missing Indian youth who'd been photographed by a professional before his disappearance: Gil has recently come into possession of a family legacy of pornography.

It's a second chance for both of them. Vikram hasn't really bothered with relationships, focussing his energies on his work as a defender of the poor and non-white who find themselves on the receiving end of Victorian inequality. Gil has vowed never to trust anyone again (except possibly his cat, Satan) after being disinherited and lied to by his family. Vikram is overly serious: Gil, overly detached.

As usual in Charles' novels (though this is more of a novella), the historical detail is rich and fascinating, and the 'public' side of the plot, the mystery of the missing Sunil Gupta, not too grim. There's also plenty of humour ('Vik. Mate. When you look at dirty pictures, you’re not meant to be thinking about the curtains.") and some sly references to Charles' other novels (Mrs Swann; the enquiry agent in Robin Hood Yard ...). This was an enjoyable read, though the romance was less blazingly romantic than in, say, the 'Sins of the Cities' books.

2018/38: House of Orphans -- Helen Dunmore

When you’re forty-seven, he thought, spring is difficult. All that uprush of sap and melting water and fresh growth. Maybe the joy of it would come back to him when he was truly old. [loc. 1032]

The setting is Finland, in 1901 when it was still part of the Russian Empire. Dr Thomas Eklund lives alone at the forest's edge. He is still haunted by an old love affair, a betrayal of his wife and daughter: he is also, after the death of his wife, very lonely. Anna-Liisa, the despotic matron of the local orphanage, sends one of the orphans on placement to cook and clean and look after the doctor. Anna-Liisa is wary of this particular girl, Eeva Koskinen, who came to the rural orphanage from Helsinki after her father's death. 'They bring the city wherever they go.' And it's true that Eeva is somewhat more outspoken and independently-minded than the other girls.

Of course Thomas falls in love with Eeva.

But that is not the story, or at least not the end of it. Like an Ibsen play, there are layers of obligation and respectability, spoken and unspoken: there is Thomas' daughter Minna, who (like Thomas' friends and neighbours) has decided Views on Eeva's continued presence in her father's house. And there is Laurie, the childhood friend that Eeva left behind in Helsinki, who is becoming involved with a more extreme group of revolutionaries.

The contrast between the rural setting of the novel's first half and the fervid urban rush of the second half worked very well for me, as did the contrast -- and the similarities -- between Thomas Eklund and Eeva's dead Marxist father. I didn't feel that Helsinki was as vividly described as the countryside, but that might have been a reflection of Eeva's bemusement with the city's changes since her departure, and with the bustle of her life there. (Or it might be my own preference for the quietness of the forest, though Dunmore makes clear that there is plenty of noise and friction between the various people who live there.)

I'd have enjoyed this novel more if I'd liked any of the characters. Eeva was resilient and intelligent, but I didn't warm to her: Thomas felt more fallibly human, but weak. It was, though, an interesting window on a historical time and place I knew very little about. And Helen Dunmore's prose is always worth reading twice, just to see how she produces her almost painterly effects -- though I could have done without the frequent POV switches, sometimes paragraph by paragraph, which were sometimes confusing and added to a sense of detachment.

2018/37: The Last Days of New Paris -- China Mieville

... the demons winced through their sneers. They rubbed their skins gingerly when they thought they weren’t observed. When they killed and tormented it was in faintly needy fashion. They seemed anxious. They stank not only of sulfur but infection. Sometimes they wept with pain. [p. 28]

This is more novella than novel, but Mieville packs in enough high-culture weirdness, alternate history and arcane travelogue for a much longer book. I'm not sure I'd have had the stamina, though: the prose veers wildly from lyrical and immediate to borderline pretentiousness.

The primary viewpoint character is Thibault, a resistance fighter in a 1950s Paris which is occupied by the Nazis and populated by manifs, Surrealist imagery made concrete: sharks with canoe-seat backs, an Eiffel Tower that's half gone (and not the top half as one might expect), a cycle-centaur, wolf-tables, huge sunflowers and lampposts that shed darkness rather than light. Thibault's comrades are all dead: his blue pyjamas protect him. He encounters a photographer who says her name is Sam, and tells him all about the Nazi attempts to raise demons from Hell to fight the Surrealist manifs. (The demons are miserable.)

Winding around Thibault's and Sam's stories are the adventures of Jack Parsons, an American in Marseilles a decade earlier, who hangs out with Breton and Crowley. Breton is busily reinventing the card deck to reflect troubled times, replacing King-Queen-Jack with Genius-Siren-Magus, the suits with stars, flames, wheels and locks. (This, by the way, is true and I found it fascinating: see this blog post for more about the Jeu de Marseilles.) Parsons, though, thinks he knows how to make a more significant contribution to the war effort.

The Last Days of New Paris has a kind of exuberant joy to its inventiveness. I'm more intrigued by some of the manifs, and by the demons, than by any of the human (or 'human') characters, who felt rather flat. Perhaps at novel length they'd have been fleshed out a little more. Still, as an allegory for the role of art in wartime, and a manifest(ation) of the importance of artistic freedom in a fascist regime, the novella works pretty well.

Reading this on Kindle wasn't ideal: I would have liked illustrations (unable to determine whether there are any in the print version). Here is a useful article of graphic annotations, by Nicky Martin.

2018/36: Vinegar Girl (The Taming of the Shrew, Retold) -- Anne Tyler

“We are supposed to be the center of his life,” Bunny said. “What is it with him? The man forgets for months at a stretch that we even exist, but at the same time he thinks he has the right to tell us who we can ride in cars with and who we should marry.”
“Whom,” Kate said automatically.
“Wake up and smell the coffee, sis. He’s making a human sacrifice of you, don’t you get it?” [p. 115]

This is a very loose retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. Kate, the unmarried daughter of eccentric scientist Louis Battista, is not especially shrewish: she's just not particularly interested in social niceties. And Pyotr, her father's lab assistant (in need of a 'green card' marriage so he won't have to leave the country when his student visa expires) doesn't have the cruelty of Petruchio. As for Bianca -- here renamed Bunny -- her suitors are reduced to a single swain, Eddie, who lives next door and is a vegan. (He does end up tutoring Bunny.)

As a romantic comedy it works rather better. Kate and Pyotr quickly settle into mutual respect; both are surprisingly stubborn about things that matter to them. Pyotr being Foreign, he has a wealth of unusual proverbs, and a way of looking at the world that is quite new to Kate. Kate's forthright nature, though it has done her few favours in life (she didn't finish her degree, due to informing her professor that his explanation of photosynthesis was 'half-assed': now she's a pre-school assistant), appeals to Pyotr, who struggles with culture clash.

There's some examination of the wedding juggernaut by which Kate finds herself propelled towards marriage: and near the end of the novel more characters appear, some of them providing a more critical perspective on Dr Battista's parenting skills. ("I've always had a very good relationship with my mice," he tells Aunt Thelma, who responds "Well, better with them than with no one".) One can see where Kate gets her lack of interpersonal skills.

I'm interested in transformative works, but this specimen didn't bear much resemblance to the original, and didn't seem to open it up in any meaningful way, other than setting it in present-day America. Or perhaps, given several 'transformative' stagings of Shakespeare's rather nasty play, I've already seen the story transformed more effectively.

2018/35: Lord John and the Private Matter -- Diana Gabaldon

In defense of King, country, and family, he would unhesitatingly have sacrificed his virtue to Nessie, had that been required. If it was a question of Olivia marrying a man with syphilis and half the British army being exterminated in battle, versus himself experiencing a ‘personal interview’ with Richard Caswell, though, he rather thought Olivia and the King had best look to their own devices. [loc. 2036]

I have a vague notion that I've read this before, in the pre-blogging days. Nothing seemed familiar, though ...

The setting is the 1750s, mostly in London. Lord John Grey is the younger son of an aristocratic family, and an officer in King George's army. He is also homosexual, which is incidental to the plot but a lynchpin of his character. For instance, when noticing a pox-chancre on his cousin's fiance's penis, his first thought is that he might be considered to have been looking with intent, rather than glancing over as the man relieved himself.

Grey's efforts to avoid having his cousin exposed to scandal, or pox, would be sufficient plot: but there is also a murder to be solved, a possible traitor in the ranks, and a brothel which provides more than the usual range of services.

This was a fun read, though not as captivating as I'd hoped. There are plenty of interesting characters, both male and female, and some piquant social observation, especially when Grey is conducting his investigations in the brothels and mollyhouses of Georgian London.

I didn't, to be truthful, form much of an attachment to Grey himself, though he has many commendable qualities. He's honourable, intelligent, cynical, kind, competent ... but somehow hollow. That said, I do find myself wanting to read more about him. His lightly-sketched back-story is intriguing, and the basic premise -- spy-soldier solves crimes, keeps his feelings to himself -- appeals. I note there are several other novels in the sequence, which connects to Gabaldon's better-known Outlander blockbusters.

2018/34: Tin Man -- Sarah Winman

She told me that she'd once asked Ellis if we'd ever kissed. She said he looked at her, trying to fathom out what she wanted him to say. After a while, he said, We might have once, but we were young. [p. 164]

Ellis works in a car plant near Oxford, smoothing out dents in the metal. He's a solitary soul, mourning the deaths of his best friend Michael and his wife Annie. As a teenager he wanted to be an artist, but his father forbade it after his art-loving mother's death. Since then he's been hanging on in quiet desperation. Though his co-workers occasionally reach out to him, he doesn't want to get involved with anyone at all. He barely even engages with his own memories, his own experiences: he is not a man given to introspection. His dead wife is a constant presence in the house he shares.

Then Ellis acquires and reads Michael's journal, which recounts the years of Michael's disappearance from Ellis and Annie's lives. Until the death of Michael's grandmother, the three had been close friends: after that, Michael abandoned them, first for London and then for the South of France. It becomes clear from Michael's narrative just how much Ellis has refused to acknowledge about their relationship: he and Michael had been lovers, briefly, before Annie came along.

From one angle this is a love story set before and during the AIDS crisis. Michael is dying when he returns to Oxford, and has already watched one lover die. (I couldn't help wondering whether the car crash was an accident.) But from another angle I read it as a novel about fathers. Ellis' father has shaped his son's life, by ruthlessly quashing any 'artistic' or 'soft' impulses in Ellis. Michael's father, too, was a strong influence: finding his son dressing up in his departed mother's clothes, he behaves as though Michael has made some irrevocable choice and should henceforth be excluded from masculine activities such as football. (Notably, both men's mothers are absent. Michael's grandmother Mabel is a kind of mother to both: later, perhaps, so is Annie, who doesn't get a narrative of her own.)

I found the ending depressing. It seemed to me that Ellis was turning his back not only on the possibilities of his everyday life, but on the memories of Annie, choosing instead to revisit the place where Michael was happiest: choosing, instead, the relationship he spent so long denying.

This novel was greatly acclaimed, but it felt to me like a sentimental tragedy. Winman's writing is gorgeous and I was impressed by the contrast between Ellis' narrative and Michael's, and the recurring themes and images throughout. I will look out for her other novels, which I hope will be in happier modes.