2019/139: Busman's Honeymoon -- Dorothy Sayers [reread]

"Gawdstrewth!" cried Bunter. The mask came off him all in one piece, and nature, red in tooth and claw, leapt like a tiger from ambush. "Gawdstrewth! Would you believe it? All his lordship's vintage port!" He lifted shaking hands to heaven. "You lousy old nosy-parking bitch! You ignorant, interfering old bizzom! Who told you to go poking your long nose into my pantry?" [p. 311]

Having reread and re-enjoyed Gaudy Night -- and discovered that a number of Sayers' novels are available in the public domain, i.e. for free -- I decided to reread the final book in the Wimsey sequence. Here, Lord Peter marries Harriet Vane and they honeymoon at Talboys, the glorious country house that Peter has bought for Harriet. Unfortunately, the house has not been made ready for their arrival, and there is a corpse in the cellar. But how? and why?

The scenes between Peter and Harriet are delightful: they are still establishing and negotiating the terms of their relationship. However, the rest of the book felt incredibly snobbish to me. Most of the local people are portrayed as ignorant and stupid, and their dialogue is transcribed phonetically: ""'Ere, Polly, don't you know better 'a to go about with a chap wot speckilates?" [p. 223] There are several scenes where a working-class individual needs to be reminded of their place: ""Bunter—you've got some beer in the kitchen for Puffett."...Mr. Puffett, reminded that he was, in a manner of speaking, in the wrong place ..." [p. 380]. And working men don't deserve courtesy: when a suspect tries to thank Lord Peter for clearing his name, he's told to "Buzz off now like a good chap." [p. 423].

(On the bright side, we get to see what it takes for Bunter, Lord Peter's valet, to lose his temper and his upper-crust veneer ...)

Incidentally, I came across George Orwell's review of Gaudy Night, in which he says "By being, on the surface, a little ironical about Lord Peter Wimsey and his noble ancestors, she is enabled to lay on the snobbishness ('his lordship' etc.) much thicker than any overt snob would dare to do". [via Wikipedia]. Perhaps there's not enough irony here: or, in this decadent age, I am unable to detect it.

The murder mystery itself is sordid and cruel, with blackmail, a middle-aged woman being led astray and a character experiencing suicidal despair. Of course, the shadow of the gallows looms large in any murder case of the period: the stakes are rather higher than in the present day.

Despite the growing accord -- and deep philosophical interrogations -- between Peter and Harriet, I came away from this novel in a sour and cynical mood. I don't remember this snobbishness in earlier novels in the sequence, so perhaps I'll return to one of those.

2019/138: The Ballad of Black Tom -- Victor LaValle

“The seas will rise and our cities will be swallowed by the oceans... The air will grow so hot we won’t be able to breathe. The world will be remade for Him, and His kind. That white man was afraid of indifference; well, now he’s going to find out what it’s like." [p. 146]

New York, 1924: Charles Thomas Tester -- known on the street as Tommy -- is a mediocre jazzman, a devoted son, and an expert in the art of showing the world what it expects to see.

He's an accomplished hustler who knows enough to remove a single page from the arcane volume he's delivering to an old woman in Queens. He's convincing enough a musician to attract the eye of a wealthy white man who wants music at a party he's throwing. But he is a Negro in a white man's world, and given the choice between two evils, he chooses an eldritch vengeance.

This novella is a response to H P Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hook, which is full of racism, xenophobia and 'the polyglot abyss of New York's underworld'. Lovecraft's protagonist, a police detective named Malone, also appears in The Ballad of Black Tom (in which his character is somewhat more rounded and likeable) but he's more witness than actor.

Tommy Tester's New York is as diverse and multicultural as Lovecraft's 'polyglot abyss', but Tommy's at home in it. He knows the rules, knows which aspect of himself to present on any occasion. He isn't going to let white folk grind him down as they did his father. But the police, the companies, and the institutions of 1920s New York are ready to quash anyone who doesn't know their place.

Police brutality, men murdered for the colour of their skin, the Sleeping King, and a grieving young man with a straight razor that used to be his daddy's: The Ballad of Black Tom feels horribly relevant. As well as the overt racism that confronts Tommy at every turn, I found echoes of climate change (see the quotation above) and a dialogue with Frankenstein: Tommy is only a monster because society made him so.

Powerful, fascinating and grim. This was the fourth of Tor's 'Reimagining Lovecraft' novellas that I read, after Hammers on Bone, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, and Agents of Dreamland. All four are now available in a single volume, Reimagining Lovecraft: Four Tor.com Novellas.

2019/137: Passing Strange -- Ellen Klages

“They make it look so easy, like they were an actual married couple.” She frowned.“At Mona’s, the regulars seem to think they have to pick--who’s the boy, who’s the girl. Babs and Franny aren’t like that. They’re just two women sharing a life together.”
“I know. If I’m in pants, I must be butch. If I wear my hair down, or have lipstick on, I’m a femme.”
“One customer told me that I had to choose, or I wasn’t really --" [p. 133]

Set in San Francisco in 1940, with a framing narrative in a contemporary setting, this is the love story of a comic-cover artist and a cross-dressing nightclub singer. Haskel and Emily are introduced by mutual friends, all habituees of Mona's club, a piano bar where women can be themselves: that is, where lesbians can be 'out'. It's not legal, of course, and Emily learns the tricks of the game, such as wearing three items of women's clothing if you're dressing as a man. (“The law says women can’t dress like men. If the cops check, and you’re wearing three bits of ladies’ duds, you’re in the clear.” [p. 81]) The law is not the only thing the women have to be cautious of: there are bigoted tourists, repressive parents, an ex-husband who doesn't think it's fair that a woman earns more than he does.

But there is also magic. One of the women, Franny, can create small localised wormholes that will take the bearer to another location -- no more than a mile or so, and always within the city, but it's enough. And it's one of the small deceptions that inform each character. They are all 'passing strange', all pretending to be something, or hiding a part of what they are. Helen has Japanese ancestry, considers herself American, but is employed as a dancer in a China-themed club; Haskel works under her surname and is assumed to be male, Emily dresses as a man ...

The women of the Circle feel relatable, and the city of San Francisco is vividly drawn: the World's Fair, the bars and dives of Chinatown, the quiet shady streets and vertiginous hills. (And a cameo by Diego Rivera!) It's Haskel and Emily on whom the story pivots: their grand romance, an unfortunate encounter, their daring escape. A sweet love story with just a hint of magic and a great deal of period detail.

2019/136: A Conspiracy of Truths -- Alexandra Rowland

We were trying to come up with things that were true, but garden-variety truth is so dull. It just doesn't catch the heart and mind the way Truth does, and to tell the Truth, oftentimes you must lie. [p. 324]

An elderly, itinerant storyteller is arrested in the cold northern backwater of Nuryevet, on charges of witchcraft and brazen impertinence. He manages to persuade the judge he's not a witch -- and is then imprisoned on suspicion of spying. His court-appointed advocate, Consanza, is initially suspicious of a pro bono client who won't even tell her his name (it's a 'religious matter': he's a Chant, a member of an ancient order of storyteller-priests, and 'Chant' is the only name he has), but unthaws slightly as she comes to know him. And Chant, though he has no magical abilities, does have the power of story on his side, and a knack for finding the story to suit the circumstance. As he plays the games of Nuryevet's political factions, and plays those factions (and fictions) against one another, he creates his own story about Nuryevet, and whether it's worth saving, and what might take its place.

This is a timely tale: fake news, a climate of fear, good people letting bad things happen, bureaucracy run amok ... Nuryevet has a rather Slavic feel, at least from the inside of Chant's various, poorly-heated prison cells. In some ways it's remarkably liberal to a contemporary eye: there's no evidence of homophobia, sexism or racism. (Chant is dark-skinned, his apprentice Ylfing somewhat lighter-skinned, a distant tribe is described as having skin the colour of shelf mushrooms.) Polyamorous marriages, for love or business or to avoid tax burdens, is the norm. But one person in five is a lawyer, because everyone is trying to protect what they have -- assuming they have anything. Nuryevet, Chant recognises, is a story, a consensus: and one of its underpinnings is 'the idea that they could feed their poor to the story like cattle to a sea monster so the wealthy could eat its leavings'. [p. 200]

I was reminded, in a good way, of the work of K J Parker -- with its focus on economics, bureaucracy, corruption and geography, rather than on the fantastical elements and chosen ones of a magical realm. Rowland's female characters are rather more likeable than Parker's, and the novel features real magic. Not that Chant is at all magical: but he is a showman, and his knowledge of chemistry proves as effective as a spell.

It's worth noting that despite the narrator being held prisoner for almost all of the novel, there's little or no sense of claustrophobia. By telling, and hearing, stories, Chant both creates and inhabits the world beyond the prison walls. And by narrating the story that is A Conspiracy of Truths to an individual who is not identified until late in the novel, he sustains an air of mystery quite separate to the already-answered question of his survival.

A lot of the buzz about this novel centred on Ylfing, Chant's seventeen-year-old, 'boy-crazy' apprentice. He is indeed a delight, and the affection and loyalty between him and his elderly, cynical, grumpy master is evident despite Chant's disclaimers of watering eyes et cetera: but Ylfing's loyalty is poorly rewarded, and that's one of the novel's most poignant aspects. Luckily the sequel (A Choir of Lies) focusses on Ylfing ...

I had to buy an American paperback edition of this book, because it's not available on Kindle in the UK. (Benefits include beautiful cover, soft spine and general niceness.) Buying the physical edition meant that I had to time the reading to when I'd be at home for an extended period (good lighting, easy to take notes, no need to carry book anywhere). So this was my Christmas present to myself: it is good to give and to receive!

2019/135: The Secret Countess -- Eva Ibbotson [reread]

"Rupert, none of your servants are socialists, I hope?"
"Good heavens no, I shouldn’t think so. I mean, I haven’t asked. Surely you don’t have to be a socialist to want to have a bath?"
"It often goes together," said Muriel sagely. [p. 122]

A reread of an old favourite: Ibbotson's romances are now published as YA, but when I originally read them they were marketed as general romance. They are all delightful, but I think this -- initially published as A Countess Below Stairs -- is one of my favourites. It's the story of Anna Grazinsky, a countess who has fled the Russian Revolution with her impoverished mother and younger brother, and finds work as a housemaid at Mersham, the stately home of Rupert, Earl of Westerholme.

Rupert is soon to be married to Muriel, an heiress who nursed him back to health after wounds sustained in combat: Muriel's wealth may be the salvation of the crumbling manor house, but she does have some unsettling ideas. Anna, who radiates kindness and is determined to work extremely hard, quickly wins over the other servants at Mersham. If she develops feelings for Rupert, that is nobody's business but her own. Until her little brother shows up at the neighbours' grand ball.

The Secret Countess is well-written, sometimes lyrical, often very funny, and always acutely observed: and even the minor characters are convincingly complex, while the protagonists have considerable depth. Muriel's passionate interest in eugenics, and her association with Dr Lightfoot, is unsettling even before it begins to affect the inhabitants of Mersham and the surrounding countryside: then it becomes quite chilling. Yet (in a way that I seem to remember as being typical Ibbotson) she sows the seeds of her own downfall. The slow-burn attraction between Rupert and Anna -- and their one, doomed dance at the ball -- is as much a trial as a delight. A Russian refugee and an Earl? It's a thoroughly unsuitable match, and even those who secretly hope it will work out can't see how.

Perhaps, in some ways, it's a simplistic and rosy-tinted vision, with a shading of fairy-tale morality: a world in which a good heart prevails over the most Machiavellian schemes, a world where love matters more than money. Where love germinates luck, and felicitous coincidence, and happy endings for the deserving. Perhaps it's unbelievable. But sometimes it is cheering to read a fairytale romance.

2019/133: Agents of Dreamland -- Caitlin R Kiernan

I am left here alone with myself and the others and with the sizzle of my brains in this woman’s skull, a resonant frequency that perfectly matches white noise, the random signal possessed of a perpetual power supply, and in discrete time, a procession of serially uncorrelated random variables (finite variance, zero mean). [p. 26]

Another of Tor's transformative Lovecraftian novellas. (Previously reviewed: Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson.)

This is an unsettling tale of fungal infestation, apocalyptic cults and alien invasion, with a distinctly noir feel and an interesting choice of viewpoint characters. There's the Signalman, the actual agent of Dreamland (a subterranean government agency which handles weird shit); Immacolata Sexton, representative of an organisation known only as 'Y', who seems to slip back and forward through time; and Chloe, the latest recruit to Drew Standish's 'Children of the Next Level', bearing witness to the events at a ranch on the Salton Sea.

Also features a quotation from 'Here Comes the Flood', a space probe heading out past Pluto, the switchover from analogue to digital TV, and 'The Star Princess', a lost classic of early science fiction film.

Agents of Dreamland required a second reading, because on the first pass I didn't pay sufficient attention to timelines and references. But I think the creeping disquiet would have had its effect anyway: the images and the ideas had already entered my consciousness and begun to fruit.

2019/134: The Duchess War -- Courtney Milan

“My dear,” he said. “I give you my word that you’ll have an offer of marriage before I leave. Even if I have to do the job myself.”
She jumped to her feet, pushing away from him. “That’s not funny,” she said, not even bothering to moderate her tone. “It’s not a joke, no matter what you might think, and I’ll thank you to stop treating it as one.” [p. 36]

This novel's been on my Kindle for some time: I was prompted to read it by the recent RWA implosion, and found it enjoyable enough that I intend to read the rest of the 'Brothers Sinister' series.

The setting is Leicester in the 1860s: a hotbed of sedition and workers' movements. The novel opens with Wilhelmina Pursling -- Minnie for short -- and the hero, Robert (Duke of Clermont) hiding behind the same sofa: he for a quiet smoke, she to avoid her unpromising fiance Mr Gardley. Minnie just wants a quiet life, but George Stevens (engaged to Minnie's friend Lydia) has been investigating the provenance of some 'seditious' handbills, and believes that Minnie is the author. Minnie has secrets that she can't afford to have revealed to the world -- secrets that Stevens will uncover sooner or later.

Enter the Duke of Clermont, who has secrets of his own and sufficient privilege that they can't damage him. He is intrigued by Minnie's intelligence and reserve, and rashly promises to ensure that someone better than Gardley will offer for her hand. Minnie can't afford romance: but could the Duke's position protect her? And will his mother, the current Duchess, manage to dissuade this young upstart from associating with her son?

Some interesting radical politics and period-typical sexism in here, as well as Minnie's scandalous past, and the effects of her secrets on those who discover them. I am happy to say that communication issues drive only a very small part of the plot, and that the antagonistic older female has sound reasons for being embittered. Courtney Milan's British English rings true (no 'gotten' or 'in back of' here) and her dialogue is often sparkling -- though I confess to finding some of the supporting cast more interesting than Robert himself. Still, that's what the rest of the series is for!

2019/132: Lord of the Silent -- Elizabeth Peters

... long years of experience with Ramses, and to some extent, Emerson, had taught me how to turn a conversation into a monologue. [p. 674]

I didn't really get into the rhythm of this, the thirteenth in the Amelia Peabody series: this might simply be because I read it in short bursts at a busy time of year. Or it might be because the focus switches so much -- from Amelia, to her son Ramses, to Ramses' wife.

The novel is set in 1915 and early 1916: the First World War is impeding shipping, but not the Emerson family, who set off for their annual Egyptological excavations. Cairo is much-changed, though, with enemy agents and military forces in evidence: the War Office are keen to employ Ramses on another secret mission, but his mother is (understandably) not keen on the idea. Nor is Nefret, who feels she has quite enough to contend with even before the latest wave of corpses, sudden deaths, brazen robbery and corruption crashes over her.

There is some very unarchaeological behaviour involving burying evidence at an archaeological site: this threw me a bit, and seemed out of character.

Many friends and foes from previous books -- Miss Minton, the Vandergelts, et cetera -- make appearances in this volume, and there is perhaps more emphasis on interpersonal relationships than on international affairs (or archaeology). The Emerson family spend a lot of time insisting that they won't keep secrets from one another, though of course one person's 'secret' is another person's 'distraction'.

Not one of the best in the series, for me, but it was a pleasant read with some wholly unexpected surprises. And Ramses does make an intriguing narrator: I'll definitely read the next volume at some stage.

2019/131: The Maker of Swans -- Padraig O'Donnell

Words, in their minds, were not fixed to things as a tendon is to a muscle. Every particle of creation, to them, was submerged in a flux of words. Everything was contiguous with everything else, the touching of one word or object setting up currents and mutations that seemed never to stop. They described the world by ceaselessly unsettling it... [p. 26]

The Maker of Swans is a beautifully-written but overly obscure gothic novel with strong fantastical elements. There are three protagonists. Mr Crowe was once the darling of the arts world, but is now sinking into a decadent and enjoyable decline: his narrative is told in the past tense. Clara, a mute girl who may be Mr Crowe's ward, lives in the same house, and leads a more or less independent life: her narrative is in the present tense. And Eustace, Mr Crowe's loyal retainer, may be more devoted to Clara than he is to his mysterious employer.

The novel opens with Mr Crowe's precipitous arrival, in the company of a glamorous young singer named Arabella and hotly pursued by Arabella's lover, who soon lies dead on the grass. A gun was fired, but he did not die from a gunshot wound.

Eustace is apparently accustomed to such occurrences. He tidies up, reproves Mr Crowe, and arranges the disposal of the evidence. But the night's events have drawn the attention of Dr Chastern, representative of a secretive organisation to which Mr Crowe may once have belonged. Crowe refuses Chastern's requests: Chastern abducts Clara, who until now has been wandering the house, leaving elaborate fantasies scribbled on hotel notepaper for Eustace's delectation, and tending a pair of abandoned cygnets by the lake.

There was too much that was unexplained (or, perhaps, that I did not recognise or understand). Clara's mirror-self, Eustace's longevity, Crowe's gift, the Order's purpose. The Maker of Swans is a meandering novel, looping back on itself, providing backstory well after the events which that backstory has shaped. It is a beautiful work but oddly shallow, like a pre-Raphaelite painting where all the figures have identically vague expressions. Eustace was the only character who truly came to life: Clara had glimmers of personality but seemed too distant, too inexplicable, to be truly engaging.

I will certainly read other work by this author, who writes so lusciously: but I will adjust my expectations regarding plot.

2019/130: The Fortune Hunters -- Joan Aiken

“It isn’t only that sometimes I can’t remember what I’ve been doing. Now I’m beginning to be afraid—afraid that I might find out.” [loc. 2218]

Annette has recently moved to a small town near the coast. She's experienced three major life events in recent months: the death of her father, a substantial windfall, and an unpleasant bout of 'pneumonia complicated by jaundice', which has left her prone to fits of amnesia.

Her job as a magazine editor is being looked after by her colleague Joanna, who also suggested that she move house, and has introduced her to a family connection, famous artist Crispin James. Annette leaps at the opportunity to study with James, though her new friend Noel -- an archaeologist from New Zealand who's excavating a nearby Roman villa -- has reservations about the man.

And then there's the mysterious neighbour, and the children's toys that keep appearing in the garden, and Annette's sense that she has forgotten something very important.

Not the best of Aiken's romantic thrillers, but an enjoyable read. The romance is slight, and very much in second place to the mystery plot. Annette's amnesia is depicted with unsettling authenticity, and her vulnerability on that front contrasts nicely with her determination to retain her independence. An old-school Gothic feel, an adorable dog, and an outre plot that could have done with slightly more foreshadowing.

2019/129: Gaudy Night -- Dorothy Sayers [reread]

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realise the deadliness of principles. To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltiness of those dead sea apples. [loc. 6327]

I think this might have been the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel I read, and it's still my favourite, perhaps because it's told wholly from the viewpoint of Harriet Vane. She's fragile in quite a different way to shell-shocked, upper-class Lord Peter. Harriet, who first appeared on trial in Strong Poison, is labouring under the knowledge that she owes her life to a man who's in love with her. For a weaker woman, or a more Gothic heroine, this would mean a glad surrender to marriage, but Harriet is proud and fiercely independent, and can't countenance an(other) unequal relationship.

Part of Gaudy Night is about how she and Peter come to be on a more level footing. Part of it is 'the reconciliation of heart and mind' [phrase borrowed from this splendid blog post about the novel], of Harriet's work as an author of detective fiction and her own passionate nature. And part of it is the almost claustrophobic locked-room mystery which Harriet and Peter attempt to unravel: a series of vile and well-aimed poison-pen letters and acts of vandalism, perpetrated upon the scholars and staff of the fictional Shrewsbury College.

This novel makes me nostalgic for a life I never had: my own university career was, by choice, in a more modern and less rarefied institution, and I wish now that it had been closer to what's described here. (Though 'here' is the inter-war years: and there's a heck of a lot of class-based prejudice, as well as period-typical sexism: Harriet deals admirably with the latter but is unconcerned with the former.) And, like all the best romances, it has that bittersweet air of unattainable harmony. But I still think it's delightful, and witty, and it was the novel that sprang to mind when I identified an urgent need for 'all-female college life' atmosphere.

Incidentally, several of Sayers' novels are available at Faded Page, which follows Canadian law regarding public-domain works.

2019/128: Wayward Son -- Rainbow Rowell

The therapist said I needed to work through the past to keep it from undermining the present. And I said— Well, I didn’t say anything. I skipped my next appointment and didn’t make any more. [loc. 442]

I very much enjoyed Carry On, and was looking forward to this sequel (which turns out to be the middle volume of a trilogy): I was disappointed, though, because all the characters seem to have been hit by a stupidity spell which prevents them from communicating with one another, planning ahead or having a clue about the world outside Watford School of Magicks.

The Insidious Humdrum is gone, as is the Mage: Simon Snow, still bewinged and betailed, is sharing a flat with his best friend Penelope Bunce, and Baz is a frequent visitor. But all is not well: Simon is, quite reasonably, in the throes of PTSD, and his magic is gone. He's in therapy, but his budding relationship with Baz has failed to blossom, and he's more or less dropped out of his university course (whatever it is: I'm not sure that any of the trio's degree choices are mentioned).

So naturally Penny suggests that the three of them go on a road trip across America.

It'll be fun! They can visit her American boyfriend Micah in Chicago! And drop in on Agatha, who isn't answering Penny's texts! (Agatha has moved to California without her wand, discovered that she doesn't know how to tie shoelaces, and fallen in with a group called the NowNext who want to change the world.) And Penny already has the tickets!

It is, obviously, not that simple. Penny would be disowned if her mother knew what she was doing; Baz's favourite spells are all British idiom, which won't work in the USA, and also he is a vampire; Simon is ... well, Simon is not doing so well. And none of them has looked at a map, or read up on American magick. Their failure to communicate or plan, individually and collectively, lands them in all kinds of trouble. Even Baz's new-found hyperviolence can't solve everything. (I found this development deeply unpleasant, as well as out of character. Vampires are people too.)

And the book ends, not with any sort of closure or character progression, but on a massive cliffhanger.

The high point of this novel, for me, was discovering that Beatrix Potter single-handedly wiped out all the vampires in Lancashire. There are other positives: some excellent new characters; insights into how the magickal and non-magickal worlds intersect in America (the Renaissance Faire incident is especially amusing); and a number of laugh-out-loud one-liners. And yes, I will almost certainly read the trilogy's conclusion. But non-communication as a plot driver is one of my least favourite tropes.

2019/127: Carry On -- Rainbow Rowell [reread]

(Just when you think you’re having a scene without Simon, he drops in to remind you that everyone else is a supporting character in his catastrophe.) [p. 196]

Reread in preparation for Wayward Son (review coming up!): my original review from 2016 is here. I think I enjoyed it more this time around, not least because I was very much in the mood for something witty and frivolous and romantic -- and it is all those things, as well as being a sharp interrogation of the Harry Potter canon, and an interesting riff on some of J K Rowling's ideas and themes.

2019/126: The Namesake -- Jhumpa Lahiri

At times he feels as if he’s cast himself in a play, acting the part of twins, indistinguishable to the naked eye yet fundamentally different. At times he still feels his old name, painfully and without warning, the way his front tooth had unbearably throbbed in recent weeks after a filling ... [p. 105]

Ashima is a young bride whose new husband, the rather older Ashoke Ganguli, has brought her to America where he has an academic post. She's pregnant, and terrified of raising a child in a country where she knows nobody and nothing. At least she still has her family back in Calcutta, including her beloved grandmother who'll be choosing the baby's 'good' or official name. Sadly, however, the letter bearing the name goes astray in the post: and then comes the news that the grandmother has died. Unable to leave the hospital without bestowing a name upon the child, Ashoke suggests the name of the writer who changed his life: Nikolai Gogol.

Young Gogol grows up more American than his parents could ever be, though even his mother is adapting, slowly and subtly, to American life. Although Gogol and his sister Sonia are taken on long holidays to India, speak Bengali, and socialise with other Bengali families, they're also completely at home with beefburgers, popular novels and rock music.

Gogol isn't comfortable with his 'weird' name, though, and when Ashoke tries to explain its origin (he narrowly survived a horrific train crash, signalling to rescuers with a page from a book by Gogol) Gogol is uninterested. He officially changes his name to Nikhil, and becomes more and more American, dating white women and turning away from his heritage.

I found this an odd novel: a series of accidents and coincidences that echo and resonate with one another, all the little tragedies of ordinary lives (marriage, divorce, infidelity, death) knitting together to bring Gogol-Nikhil finally to the point where he's ready to accept the gift his father gave him, his original name. The Namesake is a touching depiction of the relationships between Gogol and his parents, and the sense of foreignness that each feels in different ways.

Read for the bonus 'Jhumpa Lahiri' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2019 on Goodreads.

2019/125: Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence -- Michael Marshall Smith

One of the perilous things about being an adult is there comes a point where the doors of your mind open far wider than required by your own concerns. There’s no ceremony when this occurs, and no warning. It simply happens one day and suddenly you find there are seventy things going on at once and you’re flinching amidst a maelstrom of love and lost opportunities and hard choices and the tenacious grasping hands of the past, not to mention tidying the garage. Adults are not distracted for the sake of it, so cut them a little slack. [p. 276]

A cheerful, uplifting and delightful book about things that are not intrinsically cheerful: parents separating, the nature of evil, and people behaving badly.

Hannah Green is eleven and life is horribly unfair and bleak and mundane. Her parents have separated, and Hannah lives in Santa Cruz with her dad, who is not adjusting well to single parenthood. He suggests that she might like to go and stay with her grandfather in Washington State. So off Hannah goes -- only to discover that her grandfather has a number of secrets, among which is that he heard Johann Sebastian Bach playing the organ, and that his longevity is due to him having built an awesomely complex device for the Devil.

Yes, that Devil. Who, despite this being (possibly?) targetted at a young adult or teenage audience, is not at all nice. It's in the job description, of course, but modern audiences are accustomed to transformative works where the Devil is misunderstood, or reformed, or subject to a case of mistaken identity. Not here. This Devil is prone to bestowing cancer on airport security staff, making petty criminals explode, and arranging unpleasant accidents for insufficiently polite waiters.

Someone or something has been interfering with the natural balance of things. The Devil, and Hannah's grandfather, and Hannah herself need to restore balance. Along the way, Hannah learns a great deal about the power of Story and the drawbacks of adulthood. There is also an accident imp named Vaneclaw (who resembles a four-foot-high mushroom), a petty criminal named Nash, and a potentially evil rollercoaster.

Which last might be a metaphor for this novel: fun but scary, with some nauseating bits, utterly compelling while it's running, and over too soon. (The novel, however, is well-crafted and not in the least creaky.)

It's also worth noting that there is a strong authorial presence here: a sardonic, straight-talking, oddly reassuring narrative voice that constantly demolishes the fourth wall and subtly draws attention to the subtext of apparently straightforward scenes. (Is it the author? Or is it another layer of fiction? Who knows? Does it matter?)

I liked this novel a lot, though would hesitate to recommend it to anyone under about 16 on the grounds of the Devil being really quite likeable, despite his cruelty.

2019/124: A Perfect Spy -- John Le Carré

Never able to resist an opportunity to portray himself on a fresh page, Pym went to work. And though, as was his wont, he took care to improve upon the reality, rearranging the facts to fit his prevailing image of himself, an instinctive caution nevertheless counselled him restraint. [p. 289]

I've given this book a low rating because of my emotional reaction to it -- it's splendidly written, but the sheer, empty inevitability of the ending left me feeling hollow myself.

Magnus Pym, diplomat and secret agent, goes missing after the funeral of his charismatic con-man father Rick. The reader knows that he's checked in, as Mr Canterbury, at a bed-and-breakfast in a seaside town in Devon: he's well-known to his landlady there, and it's a safe bolthole for him to write the story of his life, or lives.

Meanwhile his mentor, Jack Brotherhood, is leading the hunt for Magnus, and beginning to uncover traces of Magnus' double life: his long friendship with Czech agent Axel, his multiple affairs and his relationship with his wife Mary and son Tom, and above all his defining relationship with his father. It's a series of betrayals, a house of cards held together by a son who's inherited his father's gift of masks. Does the son have a heart, a soul? Hard to say.

The narrative is often very entertaining (high points include Rick's attempt to become an MP) and meticulously observed: a glance between two guests at a dinner party; a woman walking as though she hates her skirts; Tom (Pym's son) reading a fantasy novel, 'a book in which everything came right', over and over again.

A Perfect Spy is a long read, and I found myself drawn into some scenes at the expense of the overall arc and its inexorable march towards an unhappy ending. Apparently this is Le Carré's most autobiographical novel, and I applaud him for being capable of laughing at some aspects which -- if not heavily gilded for the purposes of fiction -- must have been appalling to experience.

Beautifully written, a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts: but it left me low.

2019/123: The Wayward Girls -- Amanda Mason

A couple of nights in a haunted house. A bit of a laugh, really. Only now he can’t sleep and the vague, queasy feeling that he’d had when he’d first arrived in the house hasn’t let up. He has the sense of being … infected with something. [loc. 1777]

There are two timelines to this novel. 'Then', in the mid-Seventies, Cathy is living with her five home-schooled children (Lucy, Bee, Dan, Florian and Anto) on an isolated farm. The childrens' father Joe, an artist, is away 'for work', and odd things have begun to happen in the house. Light-bulbs don't last; marbles appear from nowhere; and Lucy (known as Loo) speaks in a voice that isn't her own. Paranormal investigators from the local university show up, disrupting the situation and forcing a crisis.

'Now', in the present day, Cathy is living in a care home, Lucy is grown up and the other children live abroad. A woman named Nina is keen to discuss the phenomena experienced at the farmhouse, and the investigation that went so tragically wrong. Lucy, not wanting her mother disturbed, agrees to help with Nina's new investigation, but she's uneasy about raking over the past. And rightly so.

At the heart of this novel is the relationship between the two sisters, Bee and Loo: Bee is unsettling, and possibly unhinged, and Loo is almost wholly caught up by her sister's influence. I was reminded to some extent of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, though that novel's compelling quality is partly due to its use of the first-person narrative. The Wayward Girls is told in third person, focussing on Loo / Lucy: it's still not a very reliable narrative, though.

Bee's absence in the 'Now' timeline feels like a missing tooth, and could have done with being explained sooner. I was not altogether surprised by the initial twist: the subsequent reversal felt somewhat rushed, and not wholly coherent. It's an intriguing scenario, and the Seventies chapters are claustrophobically atmospheric: but it didn't quite come together for me, perhaps because many of the characters seemed shallow in contrast to the two sisters at the heart of the story.

2019/122: All Among the Barley -- Melissa Harrison

I thought about the photograph of me in Connie's magazine ... my own image pressed into the service of something I hadn't consented to and didn't understand. That this could happen was further proof that I was not a real person, I realised; not real in the way that other people were real: Frank and John and Connie, for example. None of this would ever have happened to them. Perhaps I had made myself up entirely, and kept doing so every day. [loc. 3659]

Set in rural Suffolk in 1933, this is the story of Edie Mather, who is thirteen and somewhat isolated. The Mathers live and work at Wych Farm, and Edie knows and loves every inch of the land: the oaks which have grown around an old hitching-post, the barley-birds in the eaves, the horse-pond in the woods. When Constance FitzAllen, who wears trousers and writes for a magazine, comes to the village to preserve its ancient traditions, she befriends Edie, who knows all about the old customs and traditions.

Over it all hangs the distant shadow of the Great War, and perhaps the first stirrings of the next one. Some of the farm workers fought in Flanders: others never returned from soldiering. Edie, though, is more concerned with Alf Rose, and with the mysterious marks on the beams, and with her big brother's insistence that their grandmother is a witch.

This is a slow novel, but I didn't mind the slowness because of the immediacy of the world Harrisson describes. It's rural, but far from idyllic: as Constance says, "not one of these elegies for a lost world". [loc. 467] Edie's magical thinking feels organic: the beliefs and habits of a child who is aware that she has no agency in the world. There are tensions that Edie is only beginning to perceive (though the reader may be older and wiser), and Constance brings her own kind of trouble.

The framing narrative, hinted from the first page and shadowed throughout, is rather sad, and wholly convincing. I'm glad the book stopped when it does. "It will only appear strange for a moment, I'm sure of it ..."

2019/121: Idaho -- Emily Ruskovich

He has lost his daughters, but he has also lost the memory of losing them. But he has not lost the loss. [loc. 2867]

An odd, unsettling and (for me) unsatisfying novel. It's set in Idaho, mostly in an isolated house, high on a mountainside, that's cut off by snow every winter.

Ann is married to Wade. She is his second wife: his first wife is in prison, having murdered one of their daughters. The other daughter fled the murder scene and was never found.

But Wade cannot remember this. He has dementia -- as did his father -- and is losing his memories and his internal logic. He cuts cat-doors all over the house so that a stray cat can come and go (or perhaps as a metaphor for the gaps in his own memory). When Ann innocently mentions something from his past, he punishes her as he would punish a dog: but he cannot tell her why.

In some ways Ann is the central character: she longs to piece together what happened that long-ago summer day. But she wasn't there, and the only person who can remember it is Jenny, who barely speaks, and has never explained her actions.

It's hard to be sure, here, whether the flashback narratives of the two little girls (May and June) are 'true', or whether they are Ann's imaginings. And there is no way for the characters or the reader to know whether Ann's fears of her own, unwitting involvement are imaginary or real.

Ruskovich writes beautifully, with an ear for a poetic line and a startling way with imagery. There is a sense of closure at the novel's end, but it was insufficient for me: still, I will read Ruskovich again for the beauty of her prose.

Outside, the coyotes' howls bore tunnels through the frozen silence. The ravens in the trees anticipate the spring, when they will nudge their weakest from their nests, this act already in their hearts, as if already committed. The garter snakes, deep in the ground, hibernate alert. Bodies cold, unmoving; minds twitching, hot. So many secret, coiled wills, a million centers spiraling out, colliding into a clap of silence that is this very moment in the house, this beautiful oblivion in which they love each other. [loc. 1759]

2019/120: Time Song: Searching for Doggerland -- Julia Blackburn

I was going to go to [Mesolithic site] Star Carr and then I decided not to because I was told there is no longer anything there to see, although I suppose I could have gone anyway since trying to see through the fact of absence is what this book is mostly about. [loc. 1821]

A marvellous, engaging, idiosyncratic book about finding traces of Doggerland -- the region that joined southern Britain to Europe, until it flooded around 6500BC. Fishing boats have been bringing up mammoth bones, prehistoric tools and Neanderthal remains since the nineteenth century, and in the 1990s Bryony Coles produced speculative maps of the area.

Julia Blackburn is, like me, a person who likes to pick up old things -- fossils, stones, bones -- and think about them. Her approach to Doggerland is as much poetic as scientific. Her speculations are rooted in solid evidence, and in conversations with those who are familiar, professionally or personally, with some aspect of Doggerland. (An archaeologist, studying 'past disaster science', tells her it's very likely that there will be a catastrophic, climate-altering volcanic eruption in Europe: 'such disasters are the natural consequences of lifting the weight of ice from the land' [loc. 1501]. A fossil hunter gifts her a mammoth bone. An artist friend, Enrique Brinkmann, provides illustrations.)

The high points of this book, for me, were the moments where the past came alive for the author in a way that could be shared. Next to some small, blurry human footprints she sees "... the constellation of little pockmarks imprinted on the flesh-like softness of the clay and made by the rain that was falling on one particular day between 5500 and 5200 BC. As I look I can hear the pattering sound and I can feel the wetness of it soaking into my hair and skin. The crane has flown away, the children have gone, but the rain goes on falling." [loc. 2567]. Such moments recur throughout Time Song, sometimes in the 'songs' or poems that divide the book, sometimes in the author's descriptions of exploration, sometimes in the memories that are triggered by thinking about the past. (She's mourning her husband, and in a way searching for his absence as well as the vanished land beneath the sea.)

A beautiful book: sadly, it did not work well on Kindle. The illustrations were unclear, the maps were fuzzy, and worst of all the publishers lazily included the index from the print edition: "The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader." Regenerating an index is not difficult. Nor is returning a Kindle book in favour of eventually acquiring a paper version.

2019/119: First Grave On The Right -- Darynda Jones

"You have only two homicides from last night? There were three."
Garrett went still, probably wondering what I was up to, how I could know any such thing since I couldn't possibly see dead people, so dead people couldn't possibly tell me they were dead. It just wasn't possible. [loc. 382]

First in a series of thirteen, but definitely stands alone. Charley Davidson is a private investigator with a unique gift: she's a -- in fact, the -- grim reaper, helping souls to cross to the 'other side'. The ability to see, and speak with, ghosts is immensely useful in her line of work. But she's not the only supernatural entity around: there's something stalking her, something that's known her since the day she was born. Charley refers to it as 'Bad', and it's capable of killing anyone who threatens her.

This was great fun: competently written (if occasionally a little repetitive), with good characterisation not only of Charley but of the supporting cast, especially her friend Cookie, her Uncle Bob (a homicide detective), and Angel, a teenage criminal who happens to be dead. Charley does seem to be more than humanly resilient -- this is highlighted when she sprains an ankle due to unsuitable footwear, having survived a fall from a roof, an attempted murder and being beaten up by a hacked-off, drunken bloke who objects to Charley helping his wife leave him. Charley is also relentlessly sarcastic, which makes the occasional moments of softness and emotion all the more effective.

Very enjoyable, I shall likely read more in the series.

2019/118: Under the Hill: The Full Story -- Alex Beecroft

"You are supposed to free her." Liadain shook her head with a sound like the sea. "Then you would have been comrades in arms, bound by a shared adventure. It is powerful, here, to have gone through a story together, and the sleeping princess brought back to life by her swain? That is a powerful story." [p. 119]

Combined edition including Bomber's Moon and Dogfighters: I don't think I noticed the transition between one volume and the next, but that might be because the narrative is fragmented in both books -- multiple viewpoints, multiple timelines.

Ben Chaudhry lives in Bakewell and works in a bank. He's suffering some PTSD, having survived the 7/7 London bombings: he is not the kind of person who believes in the supernatural. Except that a faerie rade has just passed through his house, and he's seen things he can't believe. Out of his depth, he calls the local paranormal society, and is promptly visited by the handsome Wing-Commander Chris Gattrell.

Chris is a man out of time, having somehow been propelled from WWII to the 1990s. He's lost everything, and he knows that the elves exist: they're the reason he was invalided out of the RAF.

Meanwhile, a very long way away, Flynn is caught up in Elven politics, also completely out of his depth, and with no sense of when or where or even who he is.

It's such an interesting set-up: but there is perhaps just too much happening, to too many characters. Dragons! Aliens! Stone circles! Feuding queens! Shapechangers! Identity porn! Ecology! WWII Bomber Shot Down by Elves!

Some minor nitpicks, too: why does a two-week, primarily sexual liaison assume such significance to the parties involved, after so long? Why are so many individuals so ready to assume homophobia? (I know it is horribly prevalent, but still: seems somewhat out of character in at least two instances.) And I wasn't wholly convinced by the story arc and conclusion for one of the characters: it didn't feel finished, somehow.

A very enjoyable read but I struggled to remember what had happened to whom even while reading, and am now hard-pressed to explain or summarise the plot.

2019/117: The Reddening -- Adam Nevill

Something hunted there, in that cave, always. The paintings on the wall were only understood by the terrified when inside such a darkness. [loc. 4690]

The small town of Brickburgh, on the Devon coast, is superficially idyllic. Many visitors are intrigued by the archaeological finds in the area. Katrine, a lifestyle journalist, has fled an abusive relationship and is enjoying a relatively quiet life: she's not impressed with her current assignment, reporting on a press conference about evidence of ancient cannibalism. Helene, whose brother disappeared in the area after recording weird sounds from the caves, is hoping to discover what happened to him. Gradually both women realise that there have been multiple disappearances in the area, and that nobody can be trusted.

There are some intriguing ideas in here, but the impression it left on me was one of gore, violence and all-round nastiness. Kudos for having two female leads (who actually behave like real people) and for blending ancient horror with modern criminality. No subtlety, though, and no joy.

2019/116: Devil's Day -- Andrew Michael Hurley

The Devil has been here since before anyone came, passing endlessly from one thing to another. He's in the rain and the gales and the wild river. He's in the trees of the Wood. [loc. 4913]

John Pentecost returns, with his pregnant wife Kat, to the Edgelands -- the isolated, self-sufficient rural community where he grew up. His grandfather the Gaffer has died, and as John mourns he remembers the rituals, the traditions, and the secrets that the old man imparted to him. John, like many rural teenagers, was desperate to leave his birthplace, and the superstitions that ruled it: chief among them is Devil's Day, when the locals lure the Devil with stewed lamb and fiddle music and blackberry wine.

John looks forward to Devil's Day 'more than Christmas'. Kat is not so keen. She's horribly out of place amongst the hearty, plain women of the Endlands; she's a vegetarian ("How long have you been like that, love?"); she's eager for the funeral and the mourning to be over, so that they can leave. But John has realised that he belongs here, and that this is where their child should grow up.

Hurley's prose draws me in -- "The afternoon came to a close in ribs of reddened cloud over the fells. Blackbirds chuttered in the beech trees and the river was loud." [loc 3538] -- and the gradual exposition of John's childhood, in half-glimpsed fragments, is intriguing. There are more recent tales, too: young Grace's missing father, the ruined Lodge, the figure on the moors. The horror here is implicit, not explicit, and more unnerving because never stated outright. In one sense, not much happens between the beginning and the end of the novel: in another sense, it's all already happened, and there's an inevitability about John's choices.

In some ways Devil's Day feels like a practice run for The Loney, and especially for Starve Acre: the rural locations, the bleakness, the sense that there is something mysterious, magical but not especially wholesome happening just out of sight. John's immersion in the Endlands, his deep sense of belonging and the history of his family, differentiates this from Hurley's other two novels.

Incredibly atmospheric, quietly horrific, and closely observed: an ideal read for Halloween. Made me want to wander in the woods on an autumn afternoon (though if I had followed through on this urge I'd have startled at every shadow.)

2019/115: The Bedlam Stacks -- Natasha Pulley

Since we had left the Navy, Clem had meandered about on archaeology expeditions while I'd been forged into a machine on the anvil of the East India Company. I was the stronger of us by far but I'd forgotten, because I was too used to feeling broken. Then I'd lashed out ... [loc. 4098]

Merrick Tremayne is living in a delapidated manor house in Cornwall, with no prospect of employment due to injuries sustained in the course of duty. (Or were they?) Then his former East India Company handler sends him on an expedition to darkest Peru, in search of a new source of quinine to combat the malaria epidemic that is impacting the Company's revenue. The leader of the expedition is Merrick's old friend (and captain) Clem, Lord Markham: also accompanying them is Clem's wife Minna. Merrick, keen to escape his hostile brother and his own delusions, accepts, albeit reluctantly because of his disability.

The journey to Peru is skimmed: the story only really picks up when Clem and Merrick set off into the mountains, heading for the settlement of New Bethlehem -- which Merrick's father and grandfather visited -- in the company of a moody Peruvian named Raphael. Their new companion is not especially informative, either about quinine or about the lifelike statues that the Indians [sic] revere. But he's an adequate guide when it comes to the perils of the Andes, and he brings them safely to the surreal settlement of Bedlam: a town built on three six-hundred-foot stacks which are part-obsidian, and through which the refracted sun heats parts of the river to boiling point.

That's not the only unique feature of the place. It is, says Raphael a hospital colony: this is where the damaged and infirm come. And it is on the border, divided only by a line of salt and bones from the whitewood forest where indescribable dangers -- or perhaps just marauding tribes -- roam free.

As in The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Pulley's writing is rich with detail: she's especially good on body language and the unspoken. "He caught me looking and flared his eyes at me to ask why. I opened my hand gently away from myself like an orator, to say he spoke well. He frowned, but his shoulders tacked shyly." [loc. 1888] And it's true, Raphael is eloquent, in English and Spanish as well as Quechua, when he wants to be. His English is curiously old-fashioned, though.

I wasn't wholly convinced by the historical setting of the previous novel -- one of whose characters appears in The Bedlam Stacks -- but here the setting feels wholly integral to the plot. The quinine monopolies, the East India Company's opium trade, the casual racism and antisemitism, the great exploratory expeditions ("more and more it mattered that not every stupid endeavour ended frozen to a glacier with the Illustrated London News reporting what it had in its pockets" [loc 1105]). I suppose the early separation of Minna from the main plot counts as period-typical sexism. (It is a consensual separation with an excellent rationale: and the story would have been very different with Minna along.)

But at the heart of the novel is Merrick, straining towards rationality and refusing to see what is in front of him, literally or figuratively. His growing respect and liking for Raphael, and his changing relationship with Clem, is sometimes painful to read, but all of it rings true. I wonder if Merrick is asexual: there's no indication of sexual interest, though he claims to have been 'tritely and pointlessly in love twice with other people's wives' [loc. 4785].

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and ended up rereading it when checking things for this review. I love the dream-logic of Bedlam, the flashbacks to Merrick's time in the EIC and Raphael's past, Clem's anthropological theories, Raphael's snappishness, and Merrick's narrative voice, witty and bitter and ... not exactly unreliable, but somewhat blinkered. A splendid read, an adventure story packed with philosophy and spiced with historical fact and creative worldbuilding.

2019/114: Little Eve -- Catriona Ward

'He keeps you starved, half-dead with exhaustion, always vying for his attention. That place is the very edge of the world, Evelyn, and you have been taken to the edge of what a person can stand, or be.' [loc. 1461]

The novel begins in 1921, when Jamie MacRaith, delivering a side of beef to the reclusive inhabitants of the Scottish isle of Altnaharra, discovers a horrific scene of mass murder among the standing stones. The only survivor, horribly mutilated, is Dinah.

Or perhaps it begins four years earlier, when Jamie MacRaith's schoolmaster father is murdered. That is certainly when Chief Inspector Christopher Black becomes aware of, and obsessed by, Altnaharra.

Life in Altnaharra revolves around Uncle -- the self-styled Adder -- who founded the community and to whom was revealed the great snake who dwells in the ocean, ready to rise up and consume the Impure. Uncle brought two women, Alice and Nora, to the isle, and there are four children, foundlings given a home: Dinah, Evelyn, Abel and Elizabeth. All share in the mystic benison which Uncle bestows: but only Evelyn is able, as Uncle is, to see through the eyes of birds and beasts, and perceive hidden truths about the people she meets.

The story switches between 1917 and 1921, Evelyn and Dinah, with some later scenes from Dinah's viewpoint. Evelyn, when not training the snake Hercules to accept her blood, is fond of sneaking away to read Kingdom Animalia: Dinah is more interested in sneaking away to meet Jamie MacRaith. It's obvious early on that the girls' accounts don't mesh, but who is to be believed?

This is an eerie and beautiful novel that reminds me, in tone if not theme, of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The stormy Scottish coast and its perils; the absence of the young men who've 'gone to be eaten by War'; the hallucinatory rituals and customs of Altnaharra, and the incongruity of the travelling circus. The differing stories, the lies and truths, the whispered secrets all fell into place like gruesome clockwork at the climax of the story, and the conclusion was remarkably satisfactory and not in the least sugar-coated. I also learnt some interesting things about botany, and about how snakebites sound.

2019/113: The Secret Commonwealth -- Philip Pullman

"If rationality can't see things like the secret commonwealth, it's because rationality's vision is limited. The secret commonwealth is there. We can't see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it's the wrong sort of instrument. We need to imagine as well as measure …" [loc. 6612]

If La Belle Sauvage had the feeling of a Boys Own adventure, The Secret Commonwealth is, in part, a thriller in the classic Le Carre tradition. Which is not to say that there's no room for philosophy, for emotion, for the eponymous Commonwealth -- though that is not as immediate as one might expect.

The novel opens not with Lyra, now an undergraduate, but with her dæmon Pantalaimon having an adventure of his own, on his own. There is a queasy tension between the two, which Pan blames on Lyra's reading matter: a novel called The Hyperchorasmians, set in a world where nobody has dæmons, and a philosophical tract, The Constant Deceiver, which claims that dæmons don't really exist. Lyra is in the grip of a steely rationality, and Pan mourns her imagination.

But he also witnesses a very corporeal murder, which is first indication of a new regime in the Magisterium. Attempting to unravel the conflicting tales -- many of which mention a city in the desert, where roses grow -- leads Lyra, Pantalaimon and Malcolm Polstead far from home.

SPOILERS below in white.

---

I found Pan's abandonment of Lyra powerfully affecting, and ached with pity for them both. (I don't care if the author dislikes the word 'depression': it is how I would describe Lyra's mental state. And Pan's courage is painful.) I spent much of the book feeling queasy at the bitterness and sorrow of their separation, waiting and hoping for their reunion: now I am worried that Pullman -- who does not, haha, pull his fictional punches -- will do something terrible in the final book to Lyra, or Pan, or both of them.

Malcolm's growing romantic attraction to Lyra made me queasy in quite a different way. He used to be her teacher! He changed her nappy! And he's been finding her sexually attractive since she was in her early teens. I very much like Malcolm, who is thoroughly competent and ruthless in this volume: but I don't like the relationship that seems to be developing between the two.

And speaking of things I don't like: was it really necessary to include a graphic depiction of a sexual assault? (Perhaps it was: many readers assumed that, in the final chapters of The Amber Spyglass, Lyra and Will went further than just kissing, but Lyra assures us it isn't so.) Still, this was a vividly unpleasant scene -- powerful, well-written, immediate, but did it add to the plot?

While I'm being critical, I would have liked at least one of the homosexual characters to be positively depicted. Olivier's constantly described as needing the admiration of older men; Mercurius is an opportunist coxcomb.

---

SPOILERS end.

The Secret Commonwealth shows us a wider world which parallels, but differs from, our own. There are second-hand water cannons, shipwrecked refugees, a post-truth movement: there is also a Church without a Pope (blame Calvin), a different history of colonialism (New Denmark?) and, of course, dæmons. Dæmons -- 'part of a human being' -- acted and being acted upon like, well, human beings: unfaithful, enslaved, commodified; paralysed, masquerading, treacherous.

Or perhaps imaginary, as Simon Talbot's The Constant Deceiver would have it. But that way lies a rationalist desert, a mechanical universe without meaning or beauty: and that reductive view, immediately after (though not before) reading this novel, seems a tragedy.

2019/112: La Belle Sauvage -- Philip Pullman

'It's really clever for her dæmon to be a mole. How'd they know about moles?'
... 'When I was frightened I used to be a mole.'
'But how did you know about moles?' said Malcolm.
'You just feel moleish,' said Asta. [loc 3272]

Malcolm is eleven, and lives in the Trout pub near Oxford, which his parents run. He's a decent chap, bright and inquisitive: and his curiosity leads him into strange company, including a rebellious group of intellectuals who oppose the Magisterium. He's also a welcome visitor in the priory across the river from the Trout, which is how he comes to meet the baby Lyra, rumoured to be the love child of none other than Lord Asriel. But Malcolm doesn't expect the river to rise, or to be forced to flee in his prized canoe (the eponymous Belle Sauvage) with only Lyra and Alice -- the sullen teenager who washes dishes at the Trout -- for company.

They are fleeing the secret police of the Magisterium, the CCD. There's been a rise in oppressive policies, and some of Malcolm's schoolmates have joined the League of St Alexander, which encourages children to inform on their parents. (Malcolm is not a member.) But hot on their heels, and more viscerally threatening, is the compelling villain Bonneville (whose villainy is signalled early on by his cruelty to his dæmon). Indeed, Alice may have already attracted his interest ...

Pullman's writing draws the reader in: his powers of description, and his knack for characterisation, are better than ever. I wasn't initially enthralled by what seemed to be a small-scale adventure tale, and I took a while to warm to Malcolm. Alice, too, was offputtingly bitter and sullen to start with. But as they became friends, they also seemed to become more likeable and more interesting.

La Belle Sauvage is packed with intriguing hints about the alternate history of this 'Brytain' -- the Swiss War, Oakley Street, Agatha Christie! -- and about the natural history of dæmons. I'm fascinated to learn that dæmons, before they 'settle' at adolescence, can assume the shapes of creatures that don't really exist; that a dæmon can remember things its human has forgotten, and vice versa; that a baby's dæmon will chatter to her in a private language.

I didn't find the introduction of old gods and fae spirits wholly convincing, though perhaps that's obtuse of me, given a world with dæmons and witches and armoured bears. But those all seem natural, rather than supernatural: Malcolm and Alice's sojourn with 'the first inhabitants of Albion' seems somehow out of place, a dream within the wider, more mythic 'dream' of the great flood that wipes away bridges and villages.

It's notable that Malcolm is the one with agency, and perhaps with some channel to the supernatural, while Alice is the one who things happen to. (And after a particular bad thing happens, she seems to lose all agency and be little more than a nursemaid. But that is late in the book.)

A thoroughly captivating read, despite my criticisms: as soon as I'd finished it, I bought and began to read The Secret Commonwealth ...

2019/111: In the Night Wood -- Dale Bailey

“Now that’s a book,” McGavick said, “that Night Wood thing. The way that little girl ... You think she’s going to find her way out. That’s the way these things are supposed to go.”
“She has to figure out what she’s lost before she can escape,” Charles said.
“But she never does, does she? Who among us is lucky enough to do that? The book is true to life that way. That’s what I like about it.” [p. 54]

Lissa, daughter of Charles and Erin, dies: her parents flee to England, where Erin has inherited a country estate. Hollow Hall is the former home of obscure nineteenth century fantasist Caedmon Hollow, whose only work was In the Night Wood. That book has fascinated Charles since childhood: it was also involved in his meeting Erin. Now, grieving and ridden with angry guilt, he determines to write a biography of Caedmon Hollow.

Erin, meanwhile, descends into a spiral of drink and prescription drugs, and begins to draw compulsively -- sometimes portraits of her dead daughter, sometimes darker things. She blames Charles for Erin's death [spoiler, highlight](because it is his fault) and also for the affair which he was pursuing before the accident.

Researching Caedmon Hollow and the roots of his novel, Charles meets a local historian, Silva North. (Coincidentally, her initials are the same as the woman with whom Charles had his ill-fated affair.) With her insight, experience and knowledge, Charles is able to untangle the story of how Caedmon Hollow came to write a book about a Horned King and a little girl ...

The prose is beautiful, and there are some fascinating ideas here: but I disliked Charles intensely. He turns away from Erin, discounting her grief, telling others 'she blames me for the accident'. There is a lot of gaslighting, and an ongoing refusal to take responsibility for his own actions. There is, indeed, something mythic in the wood, and an ancient secret waiting to be discovered, and an unearthly bargain: but there is also a sad and frustrating tale of a shattered marriage and a sense of futility in the face of fate.

Charles worries at one point that he's just a figure in a story: that he was somehow fated to discover Caedmon Hollow's novel, that everything that came after that was part of an ancient cycle. But Erin, I felt, actually was helpless: things happened to her, she had little agency. And unlike Charles, I can't imagine her thinking "the idea of submitting to a larger narrative was not without its comforts" [p. 162]. For Charles it's an excuse for bad behaviour: for Erin, just the chilly assurance that there was nothing she could have done.

2019/110: HEX -- Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Allowing an influx of new people is the lesser of two evils, they say. It’s a sacrifice, but life here in the boondocks really isn’t that bad. Okay, there are some small inconveniences, such as not being able to take long vacations, or having to register visiting hours (to avoid a Code Red, you see); and a few online restrictions, too; and, oh yes, you’d better settle down because you won’t be leaving here again … but life’s pretty good, if you stick to the rules. [p. 84]

The town of Black Spring has a very particular presence: that of the witch Katherine van Wyler, put to death in 1664, who wanders the streets (and the houses) of Black Spring. Her eyes and mouth are sewn shut, and the townsfolk believe that if her eyes and mouth are opened, her spells will destroy them all.

At first she doesn't seem especially scary. She follows the same paths every week, and if she appears in someone's house they're as likely to throw a dishtowel over her face as to flee.

But Black Spring is under an Emergency Decree: sightings of Katherine must be reported, either by phone or via the HEXapp (free iPhones for all residents!) and the witch's presence must never be disclosed to outsiders. There are cameras everywhere, and internet traffic is monitored. Visitors are discouraged, as are incomers. And residents of the town can't leave: after a few days away, they are tormented by suicidal impulses.

The young people of Black Spring are chafing under the Emergency Decree. At first their rebellion is innocuous: a website called 'Open Your Eyes', complaining about the restrictions of Black Spring life. Tensions rise and events escalate, though, until the Council has to punish the ringleaders. And that sets off an implacable descent, during which it becomes clear that the witch is not what she seems.

This is an odd novel: often darkly funny, sometimes truly horrific, generally very unsettling. The alternation of viewpoint narratives and excerpts from the Open Your Eyes website is an effective way of showing how a seventeenth-century witch's presence might be integrated into modern life. And the gradual slide into horror is very well paced.

That said, many of the characters seem two-dimensional. Teenage Bully! Nosy Neighbour! Sensitive gay adolescent! ... come to think of it, the (few) more-rounded characters were male. The male gaze is strong in this one, too: I was hoping that there would be at least one worthwhile female character who found in Katherine van Wyler a symbol of oppression and misogynistic silencing, but the only woman who believes she has a connection with the witch is portrayed as mean, stupid and vindictive.

2019/109: Black Oxen -- Elizabeth Knox

Before I went, before I blew out my lamp, I painted footprints leading up the beach from the water. I wanted to give my jailers a turn. I wanted them to imagine, if only for moment, that I'd walked away into the picture.

"Anyway—I put out my lamp and lay down to rest and keep watch. But I fell asleep. I thought I slept. For, without a change in the light, or atmosphere, a man walked down the faintly gleaming patches of my receding footprints—the paint was still wet—and stood before me. He was old and small and dark-skinned—and he had his shirt open and was applying traction to his ribcage with his own two hands in order to show me what was missing."

"What was missing?" said Juanita.

"His heart, of course." [p. 284]

After I'd finished my first read of The Absolute Book, I had an urge to reread Black Oxen, one of my favourite of Knox's novels. (The link there goes to my original review from 2015. There's no ebook but I found a copy via the Internet Library.) The two novels seem to be in the same key, and there are shared themes: sisters, amnesia, moving between worlds, a central character who doesn't understand his origins or his powers, and who makes choices which seem amoral.

Black Oxen is a more shadowy book, with a labyrinthine structure and a twistily non-linear timeline. The magic is dark, too: ritual sacrifice, cannibalism, sex, mimicry and contiguity... The scale, though it spans worlds, is smaller, and the resolution framed in terms of Abra's / Ido's identity, Carme and Fidela's heritage, and the limits of power and responsibility. The characters do want to change the world, or worlds: to bring worlds together. However, here it's a process rather than an accomplishment.

I enjoyed working out the puzzle of Ido's timeline the first time around: this time, I noticed much more about healing and its opposite. I suspect there are layers of this novel I haven't yet uncovered, and I look forward to my next reread.

2019/108: The Absolute Book -- Elizabeth Knox

She felt as if she’d dropped something and, were she to stoop to retrieve it, things would pass over her head. Things like Edgar Allan Poe’s pendulum, the planes that flew into the Twin Towers, the howling Chelyabinsk meteor, and the angel of death. Stop and tie your shoe, Taryn, said a voice in her head. You have work to do, Taryn. Walk away. Taryn’s shoes were closed-toe, open-waisted sandals with buckles, not laces. [loc. 465]

It starts in a library, with two sisters witnessing attempted arson. Or perhaps it starts by a river in 4th-century Britain, with two sisters raising children. Or perhaps with Noah's raven, 'that loneliest of birds', eating Odin's eye and splitting into two, Knowledge and Memory. ("Everyone supposes they’re brothers, but any wise male god will have female advisors.")

But perhaps where it starts is with Taryn Cornick, author of The Feverish Library, a bestselling book about the things that threaten libraries. (Each section of The Absolute Book is titled after a section of Taryn's book, for instance Insects; Fire; Carelessness; Uncaring.) She makes an ill-advised arrangement in the wake of her sister's murder, and discovers that she has a soul.

It would be futile to recount the twists and turns of this marvellous novel, which takes Taryn from Norfolk to the Land of the Pact, to Purgatory, to the Isle of Apples and to a book festival in Auckland. Early in her adventures she encounters the mysterious Shift, who can move between worlds: Taryn, and Jacob Berger (a detective who is very keen to speak to Taryn) are drawn after Shift, who doesn't seem to belong anywhere, whose nature and heritage are opaque, it seems, even to himself. And the three are drawn into a quest for an ancient relic: for this is, among other things, a fast-paced thriller featuring an ancient prophecy, a cosmic conspiracy and some fearsome adversaries.

But there is more to it than that: there is so much more in it, from the Brexit referendum to the Matter of Britain, from a new work by Franz Schubert to a New Zealander named Peter who directs fantasy epics, from the Voynich Manuscript to Moominmamma's painted garden, from the wrong sort of worshipper to a shapeshifter's unsettling wardrobe ...

I absolutely adored this long-awaited novel (hard to acquire in the UK, but you can buy physical or ebook from Victoria University Press), and have now read it twice. (I liked Taryn more the second time around, and noticed many more significant details: Knox is a fearsomely precise writer, and nothing is there without reason.)

And the ending is a delight: more than mere resolution, it heralds deliberate, thoughtful changes that affect many worlds. A joyful and exuberant novel, replete with optimism and meticulously observed.

‘We British. We can’t offer straightforward compliments on anything of substance. We operate on the meanest band of enthusiasm and—if we’re of your class—remind people that too much fervour is vulgar. While my class just josh people out of their enthusiasms, make mock, burst the bubble of anybody giving themselves airs—anyone who has made a bubble just to be able to breathe.’ [loc. 7448]

This is me offering a straightforward heartfelt fervent compliment, and profound thanks, for this breathing-space.

2019/107: The Ratcatcher's Daughter -- KJ Charles

"You're the most beautiful woman in the world, and I've never met anyone like you. But I don't need to, you know, stick bits in other bits to prove that." [loc. 542]

A delightful romance between a small-time criminal and a music-hall singer, set two years before Any Old Diamonds, and featuring cameos by characters from Charles' 'Sins of the Cities' trilogy. (I'm pretty sure Miss Christiana lives in Clem's lodging-house; her boss is definitely Pen Starling.)

Miss Christiana is in trouble with Kammy Grizzard, a sleazy and unpleasant fellow who intimidates, extorts and pimps. Kammy is disappointed in Miss Christiana, and bad things are about to happen when 'a pair of very badly cast fairy godmothers' (the Lilywhite Boys) turn up and make a deal. This, they explain to Christiana, is because their friend Stan has a crush on her, and they're doing him a favour.

Stan, unlike the Lilywhite Boys, is not given to violence: he would rather make and mend clocks. ("I know where I am with clocks.") He fences stolen goods for his friends, and sends most of his ill-gotten gains back to a large family in Poland, about whom I would love to learn more. Stan's never been romantically interested in anyone before, but he was drawn to Miss Christiana as soon as he saw her perform, and has been a regular at her shows ever since.

He's not quite sure how to handle the spiky young man he encounters in Christiana's dressing room.

The way the two negotiate around one another, questioning their own and each other's assumptions, is tender and touching. (Not that there is very much touching, because neither is interested in sex and both are capable of communicating this. Hurrah!) I especially liked the way that Stan adjusted his internal monologue when confronted by 'Mr Chris Morrow', in his grey suit and linen shirt, rather than Miss Christiana -- and how he instantly readjusted when Christiana explained that it was all her, all the time.

There is violence, threatened and actual (though bad things mostly happen to bad people, courtesy of the Lilywhite Boys: see under 'defenestration') and some deliberately offensive misgendering. But there is also a sweet and honest love story, with a happy ending, and a comfortable sense that Miss Christiana is unremarkable, unquestionable, to her colleagues and Stan's friends.

2019/106: The Stone Circle -- Elly Griffiths

... her overwhelming need for someone to hold, someone to make her forget Nelson going back to his newborn baby, someone to make her forget that she is nearly fifty and, in the Bronze Age, would probably have already been dead for twenty-odd years. [loc. 1535]

Harry Nelson receives some letters that bring to mind the events of The Crossing Place, when he first met Ruth Galloway. The letters might almost have been written by Erik Andersen -- but Erik is dead. Isn't he?

Ruth is involved with another dig on the salt marsh -- this one a circle of stones -- and discovers not only ancient remains, but bones that are rather more recent: the skeleton of a little girl who disappeared without trace thirty years ago. Can there be justice for Margaret Lacey after so long?

Harry and Ruth are both, for different reasons, anxious about Harry's wife Michelle's pregnancy. (Michelle is anxious too, and terribly lonely, because she can't talk to anyone about the events at the end of The Dark Angel. ) And Harry is wondering whether it's time, at last, to tell his daughters Laura and Rebecca that they have a half-sister.

This felt like a return to form after The Dark Angel. It's deliberately reminiscent of The Crossing Places, but the core characters have grown and changed over the last eight years and eleven books. Griffiths handles the murder of a child sensitively but unflinchingly, describing how the victim was sexualised in the popular press. Society's moved on since then -- since '1981, the days when Jimmy Savile was considered a lovably eccentric entertainer' -- and Margaret's murderer gets short shrift for his comments about 'twelve going on thirty ...she knew what she was doing'.

This series does read more like soap-opera saga than cutting-edge crime, but I always learn something new about archaeology, and I like the characters (however exasperatingly they behave). The Stone Circle ends on a rising note, a potential fresh start for Ruth. I'll be interested to see how that turns out.

2019/105: The Dark Angel -- Elly Griffiths

Cathbad had thought it very interesting, ‘people living in the same place for generations’, but Ruth wonders if it is actually rather dangerous. Angelo’s grandfather was a resistance hero, Valenti’s father was a fascist and Marta’s great-grandfather lies dead in the churchyard. [loc. 3180]

Ruth is contacted by Italian archaeologist Angelo Morelli, who requests her input on a puzzling burial in his home town. All expenses paid ... Ruth hasn't had a holiday for years, and is finding it hard to deal with Michelle's pregnancy: she jumps at the chance to head for the sun, with her daughter, her friend Shona and Shona's son Louis in tow.

But the little town of Castello degli Angeli is not as calm and untroubled as it initially appears. Ruth encounters hostile graffiti, finds a wolf skull outside her door, and becomes aware of tensions dating back to the Second World War ... and perhaps even further into the past.

There is a murder, an earthquake, and the sudden appearance of Harry Nelson, who really should not be abandoning his family in Norfolk just when Mickey Webb, a murderer who vowed vengeance on Nelson but has since apparently reformed, is released from prison.

I didn't find this novel especially satisfactory, though it does resolve one plot arc in a truly surprising way. The murder plot is a tangled one, and the resolution is rather hasty. There is a nice sub-plot about a refugee, and the culture and ambience of Italy is evocatively described. A pleasant enough read, but not one of the best in this series.