2018/85: The Marquess of Gorsewall Manor -- Adella J. Harris

“Very pleased to meet you properly, Mr. Brook. His lordship found you out on the moors. He said he thinks you were waylaid by highwaymen.” She gave me a look that told me she thought no such thing, nor did his lordship, in her opinion, but she wouldn’t argue with him. [loc. 360]

A lightweight M/M Regency romance with Gothic overtones, and rather too many anachronisms ('sussed') and typos 'coal shoot').

Thomas Brook is caught up in a raid on a London molly-house, but escapes the pillory and heads north out of the city, living hand to mouth. Somehow he makes it all the way to Yorkshire, where he passes out on the moors and is rescued by the handsome and mysterious Lord Elmsby. As Thomas begins to recover -- and to notice some oddities about Gorsewall Manor, such as the noises in the walls and the sense of being watched -- Lord Elmsby offers him work cataloguing the library.

Thomas finds Lord Elmsby attractive, and eventually realises that this is reciprocated. But then the remains of a young woman are found on the moors: rumour has it that the body belongs to Lord Elmsby's former fiancee, believed to have fled with a mystery lover on the eve of her wedding. Could Lord Elmsby be to blame? And can Thomas continue their relationship, under the circumstances? Perhaps he should investigate the murder himself.

I didn't find either of the protagonists especially likeable or well-characterised. Thomas in particular seemed rather emotionless about having possibly slept with a murderer. I'm happy to say there's a happy ending, but I never doubted there would be -- suspense was definitely lacking.

2018/84: A Skinful of Shadows -- Frances Hardinge

When a country is torn in two, it splits in surprising zigzags, and it is hard to guess who will find themselves on one side and who on the other. There were stories of families divided, friends taking up arms against each other, towns where neighbour warred against neighbour. [loc. 1246]

Makepeace never knew her aristocratic father. She lives with her mother, and her aunt and uncle, in Poplar, near London. Times are unsettled, and Makepeace's childhood is not a happy one. Her mother forces her to spend nights in the graveyard, fighting off ghosts: but Makepeace doesn't understand why, until her mother dies and Makepeace, ridden by guilt, goes out to the marshes to search for her mother's ghost ...

Then her father's family, the Fellmottes, seeks her out, and Makepeace is sent to the chilly old mansion of Grizehayes. Far from being welcomed with open arms, she's set to work in the kitchen, where she encounters James, a half-brother she never knew existed. The two of them plot to escape -- though James is convinced that escape is impossible -- and start to understand the fate that awaits them. For the Fellmotte family has an ancient gift, or curse: the ability to house the ghosts of the recently-dead. And such receptacles are valuable.

Makepeace, who is the sort of girl who attacks people who are cruel to animals, is already making unexpected use of her gift, but does not care to be a vessel for the family's forebears. James, on the other hand, is horribly tempted by the power that the Fellmotte elders promise. And as though this conflict weren't sufficient, the country itself is at war, King versus Parliament. Makepeace doesn't care who wins: she just wants to live. But with a Royal Charter gone missing, a cunning spymistress with a secret agenda, and James' disappearance in battle, Makepeace finds herself embroiled in politics.

It's hard to read this novel and not think of Brexit and the schism it's created in British society: but the civil war is not the focus of the story, except inasmuch as it's a metaphor for different belief systems forced to share space. Makepeace is aptly named: with common sense and stubbornness she encourages acceptance, if not actual harmony, between opposite factions. And she is determined to maintain her sense of self -- a laudable aim in anyone, but especially a teenage girl without resources. She's not afraid to stand up for herself and her rights -- and the rights of those under her protection.

Hardinge makes the Fellmottes monstrous, but not without cause. Their ascendancy is based on retaining key memories and skills over generations, and they believe that their gift is God-given. That gift does confer real power, though seldom upon anybody who is not a white male. (I did like Lady Morgan, and found her particular brand of villainy wholly reasonable.)

Some delightful passages, too, concerning the war: here is Helen, a Royalist agent (likely based on Jane Whorwood), smuggling gold to the king via the laundry service.
"‘They gave you special pass as a laundress?’
‘Of course. He is the King.’ Helen gave a lopsided smile. ‘God’s appointed. They cannot help but revere him, even as they fight him. Rebelling against him is only treason. Leaving him to wallow in common filth would be sacrilege.’
‘They want His Majesty defeated and brought to heel,’ Peg explained. ‘But they do not want him smelly.’" [loc. 2430]

2018/82: Midwinter -- Fiona Melrose

I’d struck my boy and now we were all in this great sucking bog. Tom was in it with us. There was nowhere to go with all that. Nowhere at all. All the years of work to make things right, to save the farm, to get us back to where we were, before it all, come to nought. For so long I’d kept Kabwe apart from Vale and me. No need to have any of that coming back here with us and start to unsettle things and yet here it was sitting in the car with us, squatting in the road half dead and needing to be run down. [loc. 1427]

Noticing the title in the 'New' folder on my Kindle, I thought this might be a suitable novel to read just after the winter solstice. It was, but not for the obvious reason: Midwinter refers to father and son Landyn and Vale Midwinter, Suffolk farmers, who are struggling to keep their farm running and are haunted (perhaps literally) by Cessie, Vale's mother and Landyn's wife, who died in Zambia a decade before the events of the novel.

The action of the book takes place in winter, true. It opens with a drunken prank that goes wrong: Vale and his friend Tom steal a boat, and there's an accident. Midwinter unravels the causes and effects of that accident -- the morass of guilt, blame and grief that divides father and son, Vale's formless rage at the opportunities he's lost and the ones he's wrecked, Tom's almost swashbuckling hunger for adventure -- and ranges both backward and forward from that night on the river.

Melrose's writing is superb: the two men's voices are utterly distinct, yet clearly both rooted in the same rural setting. I could almost hear them, especially the rhythm and roll of Landyn's narrative. He's determined to farm traditionally, despite the encroachment of multinationals and new agricultural methods. Landyn's connection with the land is profound without being mystical -- though he does feel haunted, hunted, by a fox who seems attuned to his dreams. Vale, meanwhile, for all his incoherent anger, never seems to seriously consider abandoning the farm for a different line of work. And perhaps, near the end of the novel, there's a hint as to why.

Not a cheerful book, but very powerful: and spring does come, and closure, and clarity for the reader if not the characters.

2018/83: Transcription -- Kate Atkinson

Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (‘The clowns are the dangerous ones,’ Perry said.) [loc. 1234]

Transcription opens in 1981: Juliet Armstrong, sixty years old, has just been hit by a car on her way home from a Shostakovich concert at the Wigmore Hall. She remembers hearing the Leningrad symphony at the Proms in 1942: and that seems to open the floodgates, for almost at once we are back in 1950, when Juliet works for the BBC (a producer in Schools), and receives a warning: 'you will pay for what you did'. And thence back to 1940, when Juliet works for MI5 transcribing the treasonous utterings of Nazi sympathisers in the flat next door.

Wartime Juliet is a capable spy, going undercover as a vacuous socialite, assuming and discarding other identities with ease and aplomb. Her colleagues, both male and female, are equally mutable. Despite her competence, though, Juliet is possessed of a certain naivete: she fails to spot that her boss, Perry, is gay; and more importantly, is oblivious to the double-agent dealings happening around her. (To be fair, the spy genre was in its infancy at this point: the tropes we regard as cliched -- for instance a newspaper left by one man and swiftly collected by another -- were probably cutting-edge tradecraft in 1940. On the other hand ... "It was rather exciting, as if she were in a Buchan novel or something by Erskine Childers.")

Post-war Juliet is rather less in her element. She is unmarried; she encounters people from her past, but they pretend not to know her; she's haunted by something terrible that happened when she worked for MI5; she is brittle, aimless, and bored.

I would probably have enjoyed this novel more if I'd liked Juliet, but I think that's part of the point: to be drawn into her life, to see things as she does, to share her fears and her exasperation -- Juliet is frequently exasperated, by sexism, by stupidity, by the inconveniences of post-war life. Perhaps she does feel superior to those around her. Perhaps she's right.

When I finished the novel I noted that I felt the climactic revelations (or some of them) had come out of nowhere: that the ending felt rushed. On reflection, I think those revelations were signalled throughout -- indeed, from the brief 1981 introduction, the accident after the Shostakovich concert. A masterful construction, with (as is usual in Atkinson's novels) recurring themes and motifs -- small dogs, dead mothers ...

Incidentally, this novel contains a line which I found depressing: Juliet is musing on why she doesn't play the piano any more, though she does own a gramophone.

Listening, not playing – in the same way that reading was the opposite of writing. [loc 2761]

I think I disagree. Or perhaps I think that consuming and producing are two sides of the same activity.

2018/81: Vesuvius by Night -- Lindsay Davis

Save the rich and sod the poor. What changes? [loc. 838]

A novella covering the night of August 24th, AD 79, and the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Nonius, a petty thief, shares a room with a painter named Larius. Larius is, on the whole, a good man: Nonius, who would like to steal Larius' earnings (but can't find them because the money is spirited away by Larius' young daughter) is not.

So the two of them are going about their daily business (mixing paints; murdering a lover's husband) when the eruption begins. Both try to flee. One escapes the catastrophe: one does not.

Davis' authorial voice is strong here. When Larius wishes he could capture the scene in paint, Davis adds 'Generations of painters would strike awe in viewers with their Vesuvius by Night'. Damningly, she highlights the lack of any evacuation effort. And some of the victims, whose remains are still being excavated, are depicted here, compassionately and as individuals: "'When can we go home?' pleaded a sad, scared child. 'Not yet,' said Ollia. She did not know that they might as well have done." [loc 792]

I'm not sure it works either as fiction (too much commentary) or as dramatised non-fiction, but reading it so soon after Black Opera -- which also features an eruption of Vesuvius, but doesn't focus on the victims -- was poignant as well as pertinent.

Note: a quick google indicates that Larius is in fact a nephew of the better-known Marcus Didius Falco.

2018/80: Dogs of War -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

Master says we must kill all of them. Honey says this is because we are on a covert operation. Bees concurs. Dragon doesn't care now he has neutralised his target. I don't care because I am doing what Master wants and Master will be happy with me. I am Rex. I am a Good Dog.

Rex is a Good Dog, who is happy when he does what his Master tells him to do. He is also a Bioform: a genetically and biologically enhanced supersoldier based on canine stock, leading a multiform pack consisting of Bees, Honey and Dragon, each of whom has a different skillset. Bioforms, says the Pope, have no souls, but Rex and his pack have distinct personalities, quite aside from their engineered behaviours. Rex in particular relies on the programmed hierarchy to understand his world: without it, he finds himself (and other members of the pack) beginning to question the rectitude of his Master's comnmands.

At first unexpectedly free, and then obliged to interact with humans who are not defined as enemy nor as friend, Rex -- who is only one of the viewpoint characters in Dogs of War -- struggles with ethical and practical dilemmas. The humans, and post-humans, in the story have different issues to deal with. Is Rex an individual or a weapon? Should he and his pack be imprisoned, or decommissioned, or something else?

Dogs of War, recommended by New Scientist as 'a gripping dive into bioethics and artificial intelligence', is unashamedly manipulative. (By which I mean I cried.) It's a quick and fascinating read, with distinct narrative voices and vivid descriptions, and it explores a number of themes: slavery and freedom, culpability, sacrifice, intelligence, dirty wars ('The human he was talking to named some places that might need a war, and Master said that we should just make one if we couldn't find one...' [loc 3031]) and notions of post-humanism. It's often humorous, and there is a warmth to the interactions -- not just the ones involving humans, either -- that makes the book emotionally powerful as well as philosophically interesting. Plenty of strong female characters, too: again, not all human. I really enjoyed this.

2018/77: Black Opera -- Mary Gentle

"...I don't deny that, by the singing of Mass, the sick are healed, daily, and ghosts are laid to rest, and the walking dead appeased. I've seen this... I do deny that this has anything to do with a Deity! Nothing about it demands a god in explanation." [p. 41]

Black Opera might as well have been written for me: alternate history, bel canto opera, atheists amid miracles, strong female characters (some of them passing as men), complex emotional and sexual relationships, heretics, friendships between members of different social classes ... Yet it has taken me five years to finish reading this book. I read half of it on a rather unhappy holiday, then set it aside. Before I restarted it, I thought this was because I had simply been distracted, or had wanted to forget the context in which I'd read it. Now I've finally finished it, I think it's in part a problem with the space between my hopes and reality.

The novel's set in the 1830s, in Naples, though there is a prequel set in Indonesia in 1815. Conrad Scalese is a librettist whose latest opera, Il Terrore di Parigi, ossia la morte di Dio, has been a rousing success. Unfortunately it has also attracted the wrong kind of attention, in that the theatre in which it premiered was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. Since this is a world where miracles are commonplace, the destruction of the theatre is regarded as confirmation of Conrad's heresy, and he's arrested -- objecting vociferously that he is an atheist, and that science and philosophy can explain everything.

Explain this, says Ferdinand, King of the Two Sicilies, and tells Conrad about a group of Manichean heretics who are producing an opera with the intention of freeing 'the Prince of this world' -- Satan. Conrad suddenly has a new commission, the creation of a counter-opera: and then discovers that the composer with whom he'll be working is Roberto, Comte d'Argente and the husband of Conrad's lost love, Leonora. Who turns out to be in an interesting condition.

Add an opera plot about conquistadors, Aztecs and Amazons; an opera company replete with colourful individuals; a subversive sub-plot concerning Napoleon Bonaparte (who had a narrow victory at Waterloo); at least one cross-dressing character; at least one trans characters; two types of ghost; vulcanism ...

And yet, and yet. The first half of the novel takes place over six weeks or so, and spends a lot of time discussing the minutae of opera composition: changes to the plot, the characterisation, the music. (There is much more happening but Conrad's focus is on his commission. Otherwise he might notice how repetitive his thoughts were becoming.) The second half of the novel, by contrast, takes place on a single apocalyptic afternoon. The change of pace is jarring, and it took me a while to adjust: and then, as the story winds down, everything after felt a bit rushed.

On one level Black Opera is absolutely fascinating and very enjoyable, and I would probably have adored it if I had liked Conrad more. On another level, it feels like a Baroque opera rather than bel canto: too much filler, not enough dramatic passion.

2018/78: Lies Sleeping -- Ben Aaronovitch

"You can do magic, Peter ... you can shoot fireballs out of your fingers and your girlfriend is a river. That kind of shit. Like possessed BMWs and just all of it. All of that shit."
"That's different," I said. "That shit is real." [loc. 1955]

In which the origins of the entity known as 'Punch' are revealed, Martin Chorley messes up, Molly is reunited with an old friend, and Peter gets several surprises (not all of them nasty). Also, foxes.

Martin Chorley, far from being all but defeated, has a long-term plan that's rooted in London's bloody history and designed to harness the power of gods old and new. There's a great deal here about Roman and Saxon London, which I enjoyed immensely: there's also a plethora of pop-culture references (Lord of the Rings 'films, not books'; The Buried Giant, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Back to the Future ...) and some splendid action sequences set in the less-touristy parts of London (Shoreditch, High Holborn etc).

Things have certainly changed by the end of the novel, and I look forward to reading the next in the sequence. But I also felt that the charm of earlier books was diminished. Oh, there's plenty of magic (spectacular and otherwise) and action and humour; but there is less of Peter's, or the other apprentices', education, and (boo) less Nightingale. There are also errors and typos that should have been caught by an editor (was it the fourth or seventh Earl of Bedford who built St Paul's, Covent Garden?), and rather more loose ends than usual. (Some of these, I think, are references to or are picked up in the graphic novels, which I haven't yet read.) On the whole, a very enjoyable read, but not in my top three novels of the series.

2018/79: The Silent Companions - Laura Purcell

All those toys, the memorabilia of childhood. Perhaps it was different if you grew up happy, with memories of your father dandling you on his knee and your mother kissing your tears away. But for Elsie there was nothing but fear. Fear for the baby. Fear of the baby. [p. 58]

Elsie, pregnant and recently widowed, makes her first visit to her late husband Rupert's ancestral home, The Bridge. She is accompanied by Rupert's cousin, the mousy-locked Sarah, who provides a shred of human contact in an inexplicably hostile household. The servants are resentful and uncooperative, whilst the villagers are actively unpleasant. Something about a skeleton in the garden, and a lady of the manor who was a witch ... Elsie, pragmatic and tough, has little time for their superstitions. But then a locked door is briefly left open, and she discovers the journal of Anne Bainbridge, who lived in the house two centuries before Elsie's time. She also discovers a Silent Companion -- a painted, two-dimensional wooden figure that Elsie finds strangely captivating.

The framing narrative is set some years later, when Elsie is in an asylum and has come under the care of a new doctor: we know from the first page that she survives, and that something terrible happens to her. The frisson of terror comes from the gradual unfolding of events: this is a very atmospheric read, a novel of Gothic sensibilities and familiar tropes. (The shop that sells something dangerous and cannot be found again; the moving eyes of a painted figure; the erratic behaviour of the cat, Jasper, who I am happy to say survives the climax of the novel.) And the story revealed in Anne Bainbridge's diary -- what a shame they only have the first volume! -- felt oddly familiar...

I did not especially like Elsie, who seemed bitter and cold, though I very much admired her survival instinct. She's an orphan, her only family being her brother Jolyon, who's twelve years younger than her. (Like a secret compartment or a locked room, that detail opens up a subtly-hinted plot element.) She could, she thinks, have come to love her husband, but they were married only for a month. The men in the story are mostly absent: although the local vicar seems a pleasant chap, we barely meet him. Elsie's brother has no time for her increasing anxiety; her husband is, of course, dead (in somewhat suspicious circumstances); and Elsie's father met a gruesome end in the family's match factory. Elsie is very much alone, except for Sarah: except for the Silent Companions, and the story they can't speak.

Well-paced and creepy, with an excellent twist and that secret compartment of a plot complication: I didn't find the backstory wholly convincing, but I greatly appreciated the structure.

2018/76: The Wych Elm -- Tana French

... every time I thought of [what they found] my mind ran aground on the flat, stunning, unbudging reality of it; there didn’t seem to be any way to think beyond or around it. It reminded me, with a deep sickening lurch in my stomach, of my few memories from right after the attack: disconnected images stripped of any context or meaning, only and vastly and unthinkably themselves... [loc. 3021]

Toby Hennessy thinks he's a lucky man. He's grown up in a comfortable middle-class family: he's handsome, charming, et cetera: nothing bad has ever happened to him. At the outset of The Wych Elm, he's handling publicity for an art gallery. They're about to put on a new show featuring art by what might politely be termed 'disadvantaged youth': Toby discovers that Tiernan, his colleague, is 'improving' the art, and keeps quiet until the boss finds out. Toby's luck holds, of course, and it's Tiernan who loses his job.

But then something bad does happen: Toby surprises burglars in his flat, and ends up in hospital with a head injury and bad PTSD. He can't cope by himself ... but then his Uncle Hugo, who is terminally ill, invites him to stay at the Ivy House. The place brings back fond memories of long-ago summers for Toby, and he agrees. He even ends up helping Hugo with his genealogical work ('They’re afraid that they’re not who they always thought they were, and they want me to find them reassurance,' says Hugo when Toby asks him why people want to know about their ancestry).

And then Toby's nephew discovers something horrible in the garden, and Toby starts to wonder if he is actually who he always thought he was.

That's the first third of the book. The remainder charts the disintegration of Toby's sense of self. It's a stunning tour de force of PTSD, gaslighting, unforeseen consequences and morally dodgy police work. (Yes, there are detectives here, though not characters we've met in French's 'Dublin Murder Squad' novels). The final chapters, in particular, are a masterclass in tension and resolution: because everything is connected, and small actions that should mean nothing can matter immensely.

I found Toby's narrative, his struggle to make sense of everything, compulsively readable: I also very much liked his cousins Susannah and Leon. Susannah in particular is sharp as a knife in a linen drawer, and perhaps the most articulate individual in the novel: her speech about people who treat you as though you're not a person (something that Toby, of course, is only just starting to experience, with his slurred words and confusion) is very powerful.

For many readers (myself among them) this novel's title will evoke Bella in the Wych Elm: I'd also, fairly recently, read a novel based on that case, Cathi Unsworth's That Old Black Magic. Aside from the site of the remains, there are no similarities: but I wonder if French was making a deliberate reference. (She does talk about it a bit, in this spoilery interview.)

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My honest review is: so good I may actually buy a copy as well as having the review copy!