2020/95: Wicked by Design -- Katy Moran

Kitto surged towards him, held back by the guards, King George’s granddaughter scowled, and Napoleon looked on. ‘My word,’ Crow said to his brother in Cornish, ‘you do seem to find yourself in some compromising situations, don’t you?’ [loc. 4029]

Sequel to False Lights, by K J Whittaker, though you wouldn't know it since that is now only available as Hester and Crow by Katy Moran. This novel is tagged as 'sexy, thrilling, swashbuckling Regency romance with a twist', which is misleading on so many levels: the 'sex scenes' are almost all abusive and non-sexy; there is no Regency, and the English throne is empty; the 'romance' really took place in the previous book, and the 'twist' is on the very first page of the novel, where the author describes 'a period of history that never happened'. ("Several years after Napoleon defeated the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, the French Occupation has at last been expelled from Britain. The country is on the brink of revolution – and the English throne is still empty.") 

I will grant them 'thrilling' and 'swashbuckling', though. Jack Crowlas, Lord Lamorna, is the archetypal dark, passionate hero, resisting the treasonous enthusiasms of his fellow Cornishmen; his Black wife, Hester, hides fury behind her smiles, and is every bit as capable as her husband of manipulation, intrigue and violence. Crow and Hester are united in their desire to protect their daughter Morwenna: meanwhile, Crow's younger brother Kitto, still only sixteen, has been mentioned in despatches and is on a delicate mission to St Petersburg, to locate a missing heiress and bring her home to England to assume the throne. Unfortunately, the young lady in question is less than enthusiastic about the prospect.

Moran's prose is lively and readable without seeming anachronistic, and her characters -- even the minor ones glimpsed only in passing -- are credible individuals. There are plenty of emotional peaks and troughs for all three protagonists, some pleasant (and some less pleasing) surprises, and some nice historical detail. (In the Afterword, the author mentions Captain Nadezhda Durova, author of The Cavalry Maiden; she also acknowledges a debt to Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase).

In the earlier novel (False Lights) I was struck by the relative lack of racist prejudice encountered by Hester: sadly, there's a lot more of it in this novel, as she mingles with the aristocracy ('you’re hot for it, with all that African blood'; Sally, Lady Jersey, touching Hester's hair without permission; Wellington's outrage that Crow married her). Hester counters these abuses with grace and good humour (and, occasionally, laudanum and scorn): she is one of the most thoroughly competent 'Regency' heroines I've read in the last few years, and I would happily read more about her and her family. (Kitto in particular: he will go far, if he doesn't hang first.)

2020/94: The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man -- Dave Hutchinson

The thing that struck him most, as the weeks and months went by, was how matter-of-fact everyone was about the whole thing. It was as if generations of comic books and movies had made them view superpowers as something to be taken for granted. [loc. 5073]

The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man's protagonist, Alex Dolan, has a certain laid-back cynicism that reminds me of various characters from the 'Fractured Europe' series: however, this is, at least for the first two-thirds of the book, a more traditional technothriller. 

Alex is a Scottish journalist living in New York, watching the bills pile up but unable or unwilling to tackle the job market afresh after being made redundant from his high-flying print-media employment. One day he wakes up to find out that all his bills have been paid, an overture from the world's fifth richest man -- Stan Clayton, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist who's built his own supercollider and incidentally rejuvenated the small town of Sioux Crossing. Clayton wants someone to bring a sensawunda to the project, and he thinks Dolan can do the job. 

 Things are ... not quite normal in Sioux Crossing. The previous inhabitants of Alex's new house seem to have departed in quite a hurry; there are rumours of mysterious figures being sighted around town; there is surprisingly little hostility from the townsfolk towards the project which has effectively bought up their town and its economy; and a British intelligence agent is keen that Dolan report back his findings. Assuming he ever makes any. 

 It's a low-key, small-town thriller for most of the way: Clayton's supercollider doesn't actually work, Alex struggles to get his book together, there's a budding relationship that's so coyly described I really wasn't sure whether it was happening or not. Shades of Stephenson in Alex's reluctant relish of the weirdness and friendliness of his neighbours. Then ... then everything changes: and in the last few chapters it becomes quite a different sort of book, at once filled with 'sensawunda' and decidedly bleak and downbeat. And reminiscent of Watchmen (original graphic novel rather than TV). 

 It was a good read but didn't wow me in the way that much of Hutchinson's other work has done.

2020/93: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- T. Kingfisher

It seemed like once you agreed that the government could put you on a list because of something you were born with, you were asking for trouble. [loc. 1581]

Described by the author in her afterword as 'a weird little anti-establishment book with carnivorous sourdough and armies of dead horses', which is wholly accurate. It is a delight.

Mona is fourteen years old, and lives with her aunt and uncle, who run a bakery. Mona is already a successful baker herself, a wizard of bread-dough and cookies: she knows how to persuade dough. Unfortunately, at the beginning of this novel, she discovers a dead body in the bakery, and that sets off a chain of events that endangers Mona's life and the lives of everyone in the city. Inquisitor Oberon is cracking down on magic-users, requiring them to register with the Loyalty Board 'for their own safety'. Mona's friend Knackering Molly (whose companion is a dead horse, and who is not wholly sane) warns her that magickers from the poorer parts of town are disappearing. The police have become a force to be feared. And the Golden General, the city's hero, has led the army off to confront a threat that may not be real.

This is a novel about the downside of being the teenager who saves the day. Mona, with the dead girl's brother Spindle (who's about ten) keeps asking why none of the grown-ups have stopped things before they got this bad. She does not feel qualified to be a hero: "It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job." And she is not especially brave: it's just that circumstances conspire to put her in terrifying situations.

Being a T Kingfisher novel, though, it's funny as well as dark. Mona's gingerbread-man familiar is cute, and Bob (the rat-eating sourdough starter) is a truly unique character. There's a Diana Wynne Jones feeling to some of the characters, and an irreverent note to Mona's thoughts as she hides, and runs, and breaks in, and fights. I also liked the way that everything wasn't all right at the end of the book.

Great fun, quite dark, very timely. Also made me want a sourdough starter of my very own.

2020/92: Powers -- Ursula Le Guin

I was able to see, in part at least, why the Mother and Father had betrayed my trust. The master lives in the same trap as the slave, and may find it even harder to see beyond it. [p. 456]

Gavir and his sister Sallo are from the Marshes, but they don't remember their early years: they were enslaved as children, and now serve a wealthy patrician family in the city of Etra. Gavir has an eidetic memory, and the gift of 'remembering things that are going to happen'. The former grants him good treatment and education, since he will grow up to be a teacher, but the latter (according to Sallo) is something he should never mention.

Life is, on the whole, pleasant for Gavir. He is encouraged to read, his duties are light, he likes the Family and most of his fellow slaves. He has enough to eat and a comfortable place to sleep, and he is not beaten. When the Family go to their summer residence, he goes with them, and the children all play together. But he is a slave, and so is Sallo: and when tragedy strikes, Gavir walks away.

And keeps walking. He finds a hermit in the forest, and then a city of outlaws; he finds his way back to the Marshes, but no place for him to remain; he resolves to set out for the distant city of Mesun, to the University where the poet Caspro -- author of Cosmologies, a book that has been Gavir's solace in his wanderings -- lives and works.

The depiction of slavery in this novel reminded me of fictional depictions of slavery in the classical world (think Rosemary Sutcliff, Mary Renault, Lindsay Davies et cetera): caste-based, generally humane, almost just another way of working for a living. Powers showed the underside of that system, and how difficult it is to understand and define individual freedom when one has grown up enslaved. It also contains a harrowing description of what can befall a woman who is merely a possession. (And this is not the only harrowing passage in the novel.)

I found Gavir's wanderings somewhat long-winded and rambling: there was a long stretch in the middle of the book where I wondered if he was ever going to settle, if anything was ever going to resolve. But it does.

Like the previous two novels in the 'Annals of the Western Shore' trilogy (Gifts and Voices) this is a story about the power of stories: Powers balances prophecy and remembrance, and shows how freedom is rooted in an understanding of possibilities: other worlds, other lives.

2020/91: Voices -- Ursula Le Guin

A generation learns that knowledge is punished and safety lies in ignorance. The next generation doesn’t know they’re ignorant, because they don’t know what knowledge was. [p. 80]

Memer is a child of rape in Ansul, a city occupied by the Alds, who fear and destroy books. In the house where Memer lives, there is a secret library: the head of the household, the Waylord, can enter it, and so can Memer. She is devoted to the Waylord, who's crippled by the torture he endured as a prisoner of the Alds: he teaches her to read, and together they take joy in the stories and histories they share.

When Memer is seventeen, a famous storyteller from the Uplands comes to Ansul, with his wife and her companion half-lion. (These are Orrec and Gry from Gifts, the preceding book in the 'Annals of the Western Shore' trilogy.) The Waylord welcomes them as guests, and even while rebellion is fomenting in the city, their tales spur him to reclaim his family's heritage, the ancient Oracle whose words might yet bring freedom. And Memer discovers that words have power, whether or not they are written down; and that stories, retold and amended, can change the world.

Another beautifully-written and reflective book, about the power of story and the ways in which secret stories, the legacy of an oppressed people, can change the world. I very much liked the relationship between the Waylord and Memer, and it was good to see Orrec and Gry free of the stifling traditions of the Domains. Also, half-lion!

2020/90: Gifts -- Ursula Le Guin

...treasuring the written words not only for the story they told but for what I saw hidden in them: all the other stories. The stories my mother told. And the stories no one had ever told. [loc. 640]

First read in 2007 (review here): I remembered some aspects of the story, but not its ending.

Orrec is the heir to Caspromant, a windswept and mountainous domain. His mother Melle comes from the Lowlands, with a wealth of stories: his father Canoc is Brantor of Caspromant, bearing the Gift of his lineage -- the gift of undoing. With a glance and a gesture, he can break a bowl, wither a willow wand, kill a rat. The Gift is their protection, but Orrec worries that he hasn't inherited it. His nightmares are of accidental destruction, or of failing his father. His friend Gry sympathises, but can't truly understand: her Gift, of calling animals (but not to the hunt), comes easily to her.

As tensions rise between the families of the Uplands, Canoc is increasingly insistent that Orrec use and nurture his Gift: and, to protect (and perhaps to warn) others, he has Orrec wear a blindfold so that he doesn't inadvertently turn his destructive power on an unintended target.

The novel opens with a visitor, a thief from the Lowlands who delights in the stories told by Orrec and by Gry: indeed, various stories are woven through the whole of the book. Melle brings literacy to Caspromant, but there is a strong oral tradition too. Orrec learns to become himself through the stories he hears, and reads, and retells: he begins to realise that he would rather make than unmake, that he would rather invent and imagine than destroy. But the blindfold, the implicit threat, is another kind of story, and one that Orrec -- perhaps prompted by the thief Emmon's questions -- eventually rejects. Why must the Gifts be harmful and destructive? Why must he play a role he doesn't want?

One aspect of this story that I didn't recall, but that resonated powerfully with me this time around, was the final argument between Orrec and his father. Orrec accuses Canoc of making him a threat, a weapon: and Canoc never has the chance to respond. Does he truly believe that Orrec's Gift is so dangerous? I found that lack of closure tragic.

Beautifully written, a story about the power of stories: I read this for lockdown bookclub and was inspired to read the other two books in the 'Western Shore' trilogy, which I'd owned for years but never opened.

2020/89: Magpie Lane -- Lucy Atkins

I remember the day she spoke to me for the first time because that was the day I found her in the priest’s hole eating dead bees. [loc. 1544]

Magpie Lane opens with a police interview: a girl of 8, Felicity, has gone missing, and her nanny Dee is being questioned. Over the course of the novel, and the interview, she reflects on the events that have led to this point: her first encounter with the new Master of an Oxford college, Nick Law, and his desperate need for a nanny for his daughter; the high-flying lives of Nick and his pregnant second wife Mariah, a restorer of vintage wallpaper; the shadowy figure of Ana, the deceased first wife who was Felicity's mother; the historian Linklater who shows Dee a side of Oxford that she had never realised existed; and at the heart of it all, Felicity, who likes to collect bones and relics, who is terrified of the cupboard in her room, and who does not speak to anyone except her father.

It's Felicity who is the focus of Dee's narrative: a lonely, frightened child, with a great deal of trauma in her past and -- perhaps -- a sensitivity to the supernatural. Nick and Mariah metamorphose from genial, grateful (if occasionally dictatorial) parents, neglecting Felicity but trusting Dee to care for her, to vengeful opponents recasting Dee's time in their employment as a time of deceit and betrayal.

It's true that Dee has secrets, a past she hasn't revealed to anyone. Once she was a promising mathematician: she still works on a mathematical proof, and she teaches Felicity about Penrose tiles. Something catastrophic happened to her twenty-six years before the events of this novel: only gradually is that catastrophe revealed, and Dee's background sketched out. That background, it turns out, informs her relationship with Felicity, and perhaps also with Linklater.

I'm in two minds about this novel. I found almost all of it immensely compelling, thoroughly readable, well-paced and without unnecessary twistiness: however, I was unconvinced by the Epilogue, when the truth of the matter becomes apparent. That truth makes perfect sense but there are aspects of the situation that seem rather too easy.

Still, an accomplished Gothic novel with a supernatural element that's subtle enough to be dismissed as a product of the characters' imaginations. Dee is an excellent narrator and protagonist, and my heart ached for Felicity (and thoroughly approved of her upsetting Mariah with bones and circles of salt). I really liked Dee's plain, raw voice, and the atmospheric descriptions of Oxford. I'll read more by this writer.

2020/88: Bone River -- Megan Chance

'...I must conclude the brain itself so lacking that any attempt at civilization must go awry. But as to whether the experiment itself is so, it remains too early to predict.’ Daniel looked up. “The experiment? What experiment is he talking about?”
I frowned. “When was that written?”
A glance down again. “June 16, 1851.”
I would have been thirteen, and working with Papa almost daily, and yet this was the first I’d heard of any experiment. [loc. 2989]

I hadn't consciously decided, when I finished The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, to read another novel about a scientist's daughter discovering that she's an experiment ... I purchased Bone River in 2013 (there are older purchases in my Unread folder, but not many): suddenly the time felt right to read about Leonie, orphaned at seventeen and married to her ethnographer father's much older assistant, Junius.

The setting is the Pacific Northwest, in the mid-nineteenth century. Junius and Leonie make a living from their oyster beds: it's hard physical labour, but they live well, and Leonie is happy enough -- though mourns the lack of children. Then Leonie discovers a mummified body, a woman's body, in the mud at the edge of the river, and everything changes.

Daniel, Junius' son from a previous marriage, arrives without warning, drawn by news of the incredible find. Junius is determined to ship the relic to the Smithsonian for a major ethnology exhibition -- it'll make his name, and bring in money. Lord Tom, one of the few remaining Chinook (and something of a father-figure to Leonie) is uncomfortable with the idea of the dead being treated without reverence: so is Leonie, who's visited by vivid dreams of the dead woman.

I felt I was constantly one step ahead of Leonie here: she's puzzled by the discovery of her father's necklace in the woman's basket-work covering; confounded by the existence of this never-mentioned son; confused by her husband's sexual habits and his insistence that she not drink or dance when they go into town. Yet, even predicting what was to come, I found Leonie a fascinating character, and her decisions wholly reasonable -- though she berates herself for having too much imagination, for her sense of the land being haunted.

A vivid evocation of life at the edge of the colonised world, where the greatest danger is the weather (fierce storms, torrential rain, floods) but a different kind of danger comes from 'civilisation' and the cities.

2020/87: The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter -- Theodora Goss

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I can’t tell you how much I regret allowing Mary and the rest of them to see this manuscript while I was writing it. First they started commenting on what I had written, and then they insisted I make changes in response to their comments. Well, I’m not going to. I’m going to leave their comments in the narrative itself. ... It will be a new way of writing a novel, and why not? This is the ’90s, as Mary pointed out. It’s time we developed new ways of writing for the new century. We are no longer in the age of Charles Dickens or George Eliot, after all. We are modern. And, of course, monstrous . . .[p. 20]

Mary Jekyll's father died fourteen years ago (it was rumoured to be a suicide) and her mother has just passed away after years of madness. Mary is destitute, and quite alone in the world save for her redoubtable housekeeper Mrs Poole: but, investigating her mother's affairs, she finds a regular payment for the upkeep of one Diana Hyde, who turns out to be all that Mary is not -- emotional, savage and unconcerned with Victorian morality.

Together the two young women discover a disturbing network of scientists -- all male, of course -- known as the Société des Alchimistes. And they also encounter the daughters (by blood or otherwise) of some of these men: the beautiful scientific researcher Beatrice Rappacini, the lithe and dangerous Catherine Moreau, and the tragically youthful-looking Justine Frankenstein. ('That book is a pack of lies. If Mrs. Shelley were here, I would slap her for all the trouble she caused,' says Mary crossly on page 4.)

With the help of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, the women investigate the Whitechapel murders, and their own diverse natures. Each bears -- each is -- the legacy of her father's experimentation: each is dealing with her own monstrousness in different ways.

This is an entertaining and cleverly-constructed work of what I like to term literary fanfiction: a transformative work exploring and experimenting with canon texts. In her afterword, Goss describes the genesis of the novel: "This novel began as a question I asked myself while writing my doctoral dissertation: Why did so many of the mad scientists in nineteenth-century narratives create, or start creating but then destroy, female monsters?" [p. 401] In The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter these experimental monsters are given dimension and personality. Catherine, presented as the author of the work we are reading, is vexed by (but includes) the interjections of her companions, each of whom has a distinctive voice and a unique agenda: this gives the narrative a nicely post-modern flavour. All the women are young (mentally if not physically) and, though they have led very different lives, are united by their sense of being outsiders. They are not always sensible, but they are determined. And though their experiences have not been typical of the lives of young Victorian gentlewomen, they are perfectly capable of playing that role.

I could have done with slightly less Holmes (though he does facilitate their adventures and enquiries) and slightly more Mrs Poole (though she seems confused as to whether she's ever been married). But I am looking forward to reading the next in the series.

"With pockets, women could conquer the world!" [p. 191]

2020/86: Cottingley -- Alison Littlewood

‘They don’t really like us. They don’t want to play. They don’t really know how to dance. They only wish to make us want to be where they are.’ ‘And where is that, child?’ I asked, but she would not say... [loc. 462]

Another NewCon Press novella, this is a dark and unsettling epistolary tale, framed as the letters written by country gentleman Lawrence H. Fairclough in the 1920s, initially to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and later to his associate Edward Gardner. Fairclough, a resident of Cottingley whose granddaughter Harriet has shown him the fairies (and has complained to him of being 'stung' by one) wishes to contribute to Conan Doyle's work. The fairies encountered by Harriet, her mother Charlotte and Fairclough himself are not like those photographed by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith -- they are 'minuscule, but very bright', and (Harriet informs him) they do not like to be looked at.

Fairclough's letters provide a one-sided narrative of increasing unease: it's easy to understand the tone and content of the unseen letters he receives in return. Clearly the fairies encountered by his family are rather less benign, and Littlewood does an excellent job of building suspense and a creeping sense of horror.

Very atmospheric, with a thoroughly credible narrative voice and just enough explication that the ending is really quite dark.

2020/85: Down -- Ally Blue

A vision of vast black seas exploded behind Armin’s eyes — oceans spanning entire worlds, deep and crushing, cold as space. In that endless void swam things whose shape and substance defied description, whose thoughts cut like razor wire and left his psyche slashed and bleeding. [loc. 4671]

A science fiction novel with horror elements, set seven kilometres beneath the ocean's surface, and featuring a romance between two male characters. Mo Rees is a deep-sea miner, part of the team on the BathyTech 3 facility which sits at the edge of Richards Deep, off the coast of Chile. Their rover has picked up images of a strange spherical object on the ocean floor: a team of scientists, led by Dr Armin Savage-Hall who has seen something similar in Antarctica, arrives to examine it.

Mo and Armin hook up almost immediately, but that's not the focus of the novel. The thing they bring back from the deep begins to affect the crew of the BathyTech 3, and the visiting scientists: hallucinations, mood swings, and worse. And the strange mermaid-fish -- which most still believe are just stories -- seem to be gathering in the darkness beyond the module.

Down is extremely atmospheric and generally well-paced, though I was not entirely convinced by Mo and Armin's instant connection. Still, they both have something to bring to the story. Less convincing was the future setting: it's some time in the 22nd century, but the technology (apart from, importantly, the actual deep-sea mining module) doesn't seem especially advanced. And apart from Mo's backstory, which involves a long blackout in Dubai during his childhood -- it's made him tough and resourceful -- there's little sense of the outside world.

The ending is unsettling, and I felt Mo and Armin's responses to its implications were a little out of character, a little too blase: but then, they've been changed by their experiences in the deep.

Would make an excellent film!

2020/84: False Value -- Ben Aaronovitch

...a tingle of vestigium. Nothing professionally worrying, just a whiff of glitter and stardust. A middle-aged woman a couple of armpits down the carriage from me said, ‘It’s a godawful small affair,’ and burst into tears. As the train pulled out I thought I heard a man’s voice say, ‘To the girl with the mousy hair,’ but the noise of the train drowned it out. By the time we got to Colliers Wood, nobody was singing but I’d picked up enough of a nearby conversation to learn that David Bowie was dead. [loc. 118]

After the story arc that culminated in Lies Sleeping, I was interested to see where Aaronovitch was going next with Peter Grant, the Folly, Beverley &co. The answer? Old Street roundabout, which is where I used to work BC (Before Covid). Or in another sense, 42. (The answer, that is. This book features a plethora of Hitch-Hiker's Guide references, which became rather wearing ...)

Set in winter, 2015/2016, before the world changed. Peter is undercover as security at the Serious Cybernetics Corporation, trying to work out what's in the secret room with all its safeguards. Also interested in that room and its contents is Stephen, who is a person of interest from a previous case: cue back-and-forth timeline. There's some connection to an artifact known as the Mary Engine, which may have been constructed by Ada Lovelace. And there's a missing music book for a 137-key fairground organ.

False Value didn't really satisfy me, because it felt almost like the beginning of a new series -- effectively a new cast, and new locations: Peter now lives with Beverley -- and at this point that's not what I want. I was hoping for more Nightingale, more foxen, more Varvara (whatever happened to Varvara?), more Abigail and Guleed and Jaget ... Which is not to say that Peter's new colleagues are uninteresting, but they are not magical (though one is trans, which is well-handled).

I enjoyed the Old Street references (ah, drinks at the Magic Roundabout!) and the scenes with Peter and Bev, and I suspect that a reread would help me appreciate the plot more than on first reading. (It might also help me make sense of the title.) But this is probably my least favourite of the series to date.

2020/83: Prophecies, Libels and Dreams -- Ysabeau Wilce

Her hair is ruffled black feathers, it is slickery green snakes, it is as fluffy and lofty as frosting. Her eyes—one, two, three, four, maybe five—are as round and polished as green apples, are long tapered crimson slits, they are as flat white as sugar. She’s as narrow as nightfall, She’s as round as winter, She’s as tall as moonrise, She’s shorter than love. [loc. 1859]

I bought this a while back but don't think I ever read all the way through. Having indulged in a reread of the Flora trilogy, I wanted more Califa, so this was the obvious next read. It's definitely written for an adult audience rather than YA, and some of the stories feature younger versions of the 'parental' generation in the Flora books. (Though sadly not Hotspur, who is my crush.)

The collection contains seven stories ranging in length from 'short' to 'novella'. My favourites were 'The Lineaments of Gratified Desire' and 'Metal More Attractive', whose protagonist is Hardhands -- teenaged, Machiavellian, a powerful magician and a beautiful bisexual. There are a couple of asides here (a drowned sister?) that don't quite mesh with Hardhands' backstory in the Flora novels, but nothing significant. Hardhands is an absolute, exuberant delight, and I would happily read whole novels about him.

I wish there was more Califa. Wilce's writing is luscious and surprising, and her cities feel like places I've visited: I'd like to return.

2020/80-82: Flora Segunda, Flora's Dare, Flora's Fury -- Ysabeau Wilce

I don't want my heart to be hard, and even if I end up like Poppy, trying to drink my heart to death, or like Mamma, trying to work my heart to death, at least I will know that I have a heart and I used it honestly. [Flora Segunda, p. 39]

Reread Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog for Lockdown Book Club: I also reread Flora's Dare and Flora's Fury, all in paper format. I am sad that these novels -- which are immense fun and have a distinctive voice and a fascinating setting -- never made it into Kindle format ... and I'm sad that there were no further novels after Flora's Fury, which ended on something of a cliffhanger.

Thoughts from this reread: it's a society in which women are at least as likely as men to get the 'top' jobs; Flora is quite mature for her age (but there is little or no sexual threat); never trust something that just wants a little taste of your spiritual energy...

My original reviews:
Flora Segunda (15MAR09)
Flora's Dare (23MAR09)
Flora's Fury (15JUN12)

2020/79: LOTE --Shola von Reinhold

The classic counterpart traits of the Arcadian, like a fondness for old objects and buildings, and an inclination towards historicised figments, were, as far as I was concerned, much easier to inhabit for white people, who continued to cast and curate all the readymade, ready-to-hand visions. Being born in a body that’s apparently historically impermissible, however, only meant I was not as prone to those traps that lie in wait for Arcadians — the various and insidious forms of history-worship and past-lust. [loc. 178]

Lote, by (non-binary?) debut author Shola von Reinhold, is one of Jacaranda's #Twentyin2020 initiative -- publishing twenty books by black British writers this year. It's a stunning novel that sets a high bar: aesthetics, queerness, Blackness, alchemy, Modernism ...

Narrator Mathilde Adamarola is Black, working-class and gay. Devoted to Transfixions (sensual, almost hallucinatory obsessions with aesthetic icons such as Stephen Tennant, Josephine Baker, Jeanne Duval, the Marchesa Casati) and prone to Escapes (self-reinventions, rejections of one self's name, friends, social context), Mathilde discovers and is Transfixed by the queer Black Modernist Scottish poet Hermia Druitt (or Drumm), first seen in an old photograph where she is dressed as an angel, her hair 'an excruciation of coil and kink', not treated or straightened or tamed.

Determined to learn more about Hermia, Mathilde blags a place on an artistic residency in a small European town. The Residency is focussed on the work of Garreaux, and a branch of performance art known as Thought Art. It is wholly impenetrable, and antithetical to Mathilde's passionate interests. But Mathilde's encounter with Erskine-Lily, a local eccentric whose walls are adorned with images of Mathilde's Transfixions. Erskine-Lily introduces Mathilde to the Book of the Luxuries, a mystical Renaissance tract revived and reimagined by an interwar 'modernist cult' known as LOTE. (Think 'lotus eaters'.) LOTE, whose members include all of Mathilde's Transfixions, focussed on pleasure, adornment and luxury -- notions rejected by the heterosexual, white, Eurocentric establishment. But is there a connection between Garreaux and Hermia? And what will the irridescent tincture, brewed from an ancient recipe in true alchemical fashion by Erskine-Lily and Mathilde, reveal to them?

This is a lush, queer, exuberant novel, playfully interrogating decadence and modernism but also exploring the ways in which Black culture and Black art are suppressed and dismissed. Von Reinhold's prose is elaborate and amusing: Mathilde's narrative sometimes arch, often defiant. There are interesting undercurrents of genderqueerness, though here sexuality and queerness are wholly separable. And the historical (and ahistorical) interludes, Hermia's story and the stories of various Transfixions, are pitch-perfect.

I think I admired, rather than liked, Mathilde -- who is on one level a fraud and a con-artist, because that is the only register in which she can achieve her goals -- but I found myself seduced by, and pleasuraby drowned in, the prose and the plot of Lote: also angered at the erasure depicted therein, and vastly entertained by the impenetrable doublespeak of the Residency. Highly recommended, and full of joy and hope.