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.