2020/154: Sulwe -- Lupita Nyong'o (illustrated by Vashti Harrison)

The story, written by actor Lupita Nyong'o, is about a little girl named Sulwe, whose skin is darker than anyone else's in her family, and who is teased and called names -- Blackie, Darky -- at school. She longs to be paler, and tries a number of methods to lighten her skin, such as eating pale-coloured food and using makeup. Then a star comes into her room one night and takes her on a journey exploring the origins of Night and Day, cosmic sisters who are beautiful in their different ways. As her mother has told her, the beauty within is as important as external beauty, and darkness has its own beauty. Sulwe accepts her dark skin and her own beauty.

Beautifully illustrated: Sulwe is shown with very expressive eyes, and the different skin tones are rich and varied. The mythic tale of Day and Night has a distinctly African flavour, and the whole book has deep, vivid purple and blue tones. In an afterword, Lupita Nyong'o tells of the teasing she endured because of her own dark skin, and reinforced the message that 'it's important to feel good about yourself when you look in the mirror, but what is more important is working to be beautiful inside'. While I, a white woman, have not experienced prejudice based on my skin colour, I am thoroughly in accord with the message of 'beauty inside' and feeling good about your appearance.

Read for the 'Picture Book by a BIPOC Author' rubric of the Reading Women 2020 Challenge, concluding the challenge with a whole day to spare!

2020/153: Strange Weather in Tokyo -- Hiromi Kawakami (translated by Allison Markin Powell)

‘Tsukiko, do you know what that means, a “karmic connection”?’ Sensei asked in return. Something to do with chance? I ventured, after thinking for a moment. Sensei shook his head with a furrowed brow. ‘Not chance, but rather, destiny. Transmigration of the soul.’ [loc. 895]

Tsukiko is in her late thirties: she has a career, though we're never given any details about it, and lives alone. She likes to drink alone, too: one night, in her local bar, she encounters one of her teachers from high school. Forgetting his name, she refers to him as 'Sensei',

Slowly and without fanfare, the two become friends. They eat and drink together (there is a lot of eating in this novel, and it made me crave good Japanese food) and discuss their individual eccentricities. Sensei had a wife, but she left him: Tsukiko doesn't seem particularly interested in romantic or sexual relationships. Sensei likes to collect railway teapots: Tsukiko has an irrational loathing of a particular baseball team. Despite the difference in their age, despite the imbalance of their relationship, they are comfortable together. Tsukiko finally identifies the emotion she feels for Sensei as love, but seems content for that love to be platonic. She reflects that she's never really grown up: perhaps it's the love of a student for a teacher.

Strange Weather in Tokyo is a very slow novel. Objectively, nothing much happens. There is, though, a sense of hidden depth, and perhaps of changes occurring which Tsukiko cannot perceive. I found the relationship between the two protagonists somewhat unsettling, mostly because of the age gap and the sense that Sensei holds all the power. Because we seldom get any insight into Sensei's true thoughts and emotions, it was all too easy to overthink some of his apparently-random observations: about karma, about souls, about emotion affecting the weather.

The translation flowed smoothly, though I was confused by the way that some lines of dialogue were within quotation marks and others weren't. The final chapter was jarring: it seemed considerably weirder and more fantastical than the rest of the novel. Eventually I realised (from the copyright notices) that it was a wholly separate short story, 'Parade'. This could have been made clearer in the body of the text.

Overall, a gentle and often poetic novel that didn't quite work for me.

Read for the 'Translated from an Asian language' rubric of the Reading Women 2020 challenge.

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2020/152: Hexbreaker -- Jordan L Hawk

...magic was an art and shouldn’t be degraded by capitalism, and definitely shouldn’t be used in service of the police. Easy for him to say, when he didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped off the street and forced to bond. [p. 24]

Set in New York in the 1890s, just before the consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City, Hexbreaker is the story of New York cop Tom Halloran (who has been concealing his witchy heritage, and his true identity, since tragedy struck nine years before) and cat-shifter Cicero (who, as a familiar, should -- in society's eyes -- be bonded to a witch). It can be read as a variation on the 'soulmate' theme: Cicero is still desperately hoping that he'll meet and be welcomed by his witch, the one he'll instinctively recognise, the one who'll magnify Cicero's own magic. He's aware, though, that not all witches are kind to the familiars they bond with. Tom, on the other hand, is keen to conceal his witch potential, lest his criminal past be brought to the attention of his superiors.

The romantic conclusion is a given, but it's how they get there -- and how they each make sacrifices for the other -- that makes this an interesting read. I liked the worldbuilding: the implicit history of familiars and witches (parallels with slavery?), the ways in which the magical and non-magical communities of New York intersect, the trade in licit and illicit hexes which drives the 'whodunnit' element of the plot. Also very enjoyable was the friction between Tom and Cicero: the former a tough no-nonsense patrolman who, in Cicero's assessment, is "rough. Uncultured. Says ‘ain’t’... doesn't even know who Oscar Wilde was", the latter a smooth sophisticated Italian-American, or sometimes a sleek and subtle black cat, who enjoys art and poetry and is at home in the queer community.

I confess I'm more interested in the worldbuilding than the characters, but that might simply be because the 'odd couple' trope (sophisticated/rough, openly queer/repressed, et cetera) is something I've read a lot of lately. This novel was just what I needed on a bleak day between Christmas and New Year, and I'll likely read more of the series when I need a similarly cheerful, engaging romance.

2020/151: The Mere Wife -- Maria Dahvana Headley

It’s everyone, all the people of Herot Hall, the police and the babies, the men with their names all the same, the women with their perfect faces, all cracking and showing what’s underneath, what’s always been there, coarse fur and gaping maws, whipping tails, scales, claws and hunger, and teeth, and teeth, and teeth. [loc. 3616]

Dana Mills, a US Marine deployed in a desert country, is captured by enemy forces. Her 'execution' is televised: but, months later, she staggers out of the desert, amnesiac and pregnant. (Rape or consensual? She doesn't know.) The military are keen on discovering what really happened, but Dana escapes hospital/prison and makes her way back to the town where she was born. Which turns out to have been levelled, and replaced by the pristine gated community of Herot Hall. Dana holes up in an abandoned train station underneath the mountain that overlooks Herot Hall, and bears her son -- Gren -- and guards him as he grows.

Meanwhile down in Herot Hall, Willa, the wife of Roger Herot, circulates through the routine of meal plans, cocktail hours (the toast is 'to us, and people like us') and diets approved by her mother. Her son, Dylan, grows up with every luxury: yet it's the strange 'wild' boy from the mountain whom he befriends.

If some of those names resonate, it may be because The Mere Wife is a feminist reimagining of Beowulf, that Old English poem about monsters. Headley opens her novel with translations of terms used in the original: "AGLÆCA (Old English, noun, masculine): fighter, warrior, hero: AGLÆC-WIF (Old English, noun, feminine): wretch, monster, hell-bride, hag". Though these definitions are contentious, they highlight how the same qualities can be heroic in a man in monstrous in a woman. And the focal characters in this novel are the women. You can read the title two ways: Dana is the merewif, 'woman of the mere', living beside the underground lake; Willa is, to all appearances, merely a trophy wife -- until her son is threatened. Then she enlists the help of another former Marine, Ben Woolf, who can't help casting himself as the hero.

But who are the heroes and who are the monsters?

Lots to consider here: racism (Dana thinks her son will be othered, monstered, by the folk down the mountain because of his brown skin), social class, sexism, Willa hiding her ferocity beneath designer clothes and glossy cosmetics, Dana hiding her whole self in the darkness ...

The language of this novel is rich and bloody. There are some unpleasant and unsettling scenes, and there are moments of great beauty. I loved the contrast between Dana's first-person narrative, Willa's third-person chapters (external, because she is always, always under observation -- by her mother and her mother's coterie, by CCTV, by her internalised prejudices), and especially the first-person-plural narratives of a dog pack, a group of older women and (possibly?) the assembled spirits who live underneath the mountain.

Headley's translation of Beowulf has recently been published, and I'm very much looking forward to reading it and then rereading this novel. Which, if it's not clear, I enjoyed and admired: was moved by: has taken up residence in the dark recesses of my mind.

2020/150: The October Man -- Ben Aaronovitch

‘This is all forbidden knowledge that was not supposed to be kept,’ I said. ‘Too much risk that other countries will know we kept it.’ [loc. 572]

In which the 'Rivers of London' milieu expands to include Germany, where Tobias Winter is working for the Abteilung KDA, the “Complex and Diffuse Matters” department of the federal police. Unlike Peter Grant in the London novels, Tobi is already an established practitioner, and his liaison (Detective Vanessa Sommer) is the wide-eyed innocent with the Harry Potter jokes.

I didn't find the plot or cast of this novella as immediately engaging as Rivers of London: Tobi is more reserved than Peter Grant, his Director is a shadowy figure, and Detective Sommer, while suitably wowed by the revelation that magic is real, didn't get to do much other than provide information about the wine-growing industry. (The crime under investigation is very definitely wine-related, though the plot became more convoluted as the story progressed.)

More interesting to me was the Research Department, which has 'several tonnes' of pre-war documentation in filing cabinets: it's deemed too dangerous to transfer to microfiche, let alone a proper database. That means that the German 'magic police' have greater resources than their counterparts in other countries: and it is also clear that Tobi's boss has been keeping an eye on Nightingale, the Rivers, and Peter Grant.

Not a bad read, but not as enjoyable for me as the main canon. And of course there was added piquancy, and sadness, at reading about European policing -- European lives -- on the eve of Brexit.

2020/149: Blackthorn Winter -- Liz Williams

"Old country types used to call them the People, which is a bit ironic, really, because they aren’t."
"What, you mean they aren’t human?"
"No, I mean they aren’t people. Not like you and me. Well, not like me, anyway. ... They’re all scraps and patches, bits of greed and lust and envy and spite. And some good things too, sometimes. But not often." [loc. 5736]

Blackthorn Winter, the second in the series (quartet?) that began with Comet Weather (one of my most enjoyable reads this year), is a very wintry novel: I'm glad I read it during the liminal days at year's end.

Again, the four Fallow sisters are brought together (for Christmas) and taken elsewhere -- and elsewhen -- by resonance and ritual, by their own loyalties and friendships, and by the requirements of those who have, in one character's words, 'stayed around to help'. It's a quartet of journeys that encompasses the Wild Hunt, the Green Children of Woolpit, the Maunsell Forts, the Mithraeum, and a number of London pubs. (Williams' descriptions of these made me tremendously nostalgic for the time before Covid when pubs were somewhere you could go at Christmas.) Oh, and I believe there's a nod to the Bridge Theatre's role-swapping Midsummer Night's Dream, which made me happy.

A plethora of the arcane, with new characters introduced and existing characters reimagined. I did feel that this volume wasn't quite as tightly plotted, or written, as Comet Weather: in particular, there was a lot of dialogue that could have been trimmed without damage to the plot. Much of Blackthorn Winter is set in London, and there were moments where the geography felt unclear, or perhaps dreamlike. (Also, there is no tube station in Peckham).

Despite those minor criticisms, I enjoyed this a great deal, and learnt a lot (Lincrusta, Austin Osman Spare, the temple of Nodens). And there was a lovely warm sense of familiarity, as though the author had visited places that I knew, and had the same responses to those places.

I am very much looking forward to the next volume(s) in the sequence, and to the resolution of some tantalising sub-plots.

2020/148: Strange Practice -- Vivian Shaw

... treating the differently alive was not only more interesting than catering to the ordinary human population, it was in many ways a great deal more rewarding. [loc. 90]

Dr Greta Helsing (her family dropped the 'van' when they relocated from the Netherlands to London in the 1930s) in the is a GP catering primarily to the supernatural community. Her friends, acquaintances and assistants include vampires (foremost among whom is Edward, Lord Ruthven, who insists that Polidori's novel is mostly libel); ghouls, witches, mummies ... and when another vampire, the self-tormenting Sir Francis Varney, is attacked by a group of men dressed as monks, Greta is called in to help. It quickly becomes apparent that the attack on Varney is connected with a series of gruesome murders that also have a religious aspect: the 'Rosary Ripper' is roaming London and nobody is safe.

This was a fun read, though I was vexed by the frequent Americanisms. (No, we do not refer to Dennis Nilsen as 'the British Jeffrey Dahmer', nor do we have blood drives or attorneys.) What Shaw does really well here is sketching an evolving social group, with new characters introduced into a comfortable community of friends and acquaintances -- all of whom are idiosyncratic individuals displaying a realistic spectrum of physiological and psychological issues, from Ruthven's deadly boredom to Varney's self-loathing to Fastitocalon's disregard for his own wellbeing.

This felt very much a character-driven novel to me. That's not to say that the plot is dull: there were moments where everything seemed hopeless for one or more of the characters, and moments when the villain (embedded in truly scary technology) seemed invincible. But these moments mattered because of their effect on Shaw's cast. The characters, and characterisation, kept me reading and incline me to seek out more in the series.

2020/147: The Echo Wife -- Sarah Gailey

It was one of the things that made my work legal and ethical: each duplicative clone was an island, incapable of reproduction, isolated and, ultimately, disposable. It was bedrock. Clones don't have families. [loc. 468]

Excellent, dark and thought-provoking novel from the author of River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow. The first-person narrator of The Echo Wife -- a scientific genius and a woman who has put her career before everything -- is a compelling creation, and the story unfolds as weightily as a Greek tragedy.

Evelyn Caldwell has devoted her life to perfecting the process of human cloning. She's happiest in the laboratory, though her dedication has cost her her marriage. Nathan, her former husband, was also involved in Evelyn's research, but his work was slapdash and he didn't seem to appreciate how much science meant to his wife. Now he's left her for another woman ... or, rather, for another version of Evelyn herself. Martine, the clone, has been created by Nathan in secret, using Evelyn's research: he's taken shortcuts, and he's made one major variation to the template.

The cloning technology developed by Evelyn, and especially the mechanisms by which a clone's personality is written into their neurological framework, is described in vague terms: 'how' is not the focus of the story. The description of conditioning, the process of inflicting wounds on a clone to mimic the original's scars and fractures, is more germane, because The Echo Wife is, in part, a novel about the nature/nurture debate. Are humans simply the sum of their genetics and physiology, or are they changed by their environment and their history? The whole cloning industry implies the former, but the clones Evelyn creates are never intended to last for long, or to procreate. They're certainly not supposed to change.

Evelyn herself is the product of her experiences: a cold, emotionally (and physically?) abusive father, a self-effacing mother, and the tension between them; her marriage to Nathan, and her decision to abort a pregnancy; the long-healed fracture in her wrist. None of those factors should be able to affect Martine -- who didn't get the 'conditioning' that a standard, body-double clone would get -- and Martine should not be able to deviate from the way she's been programmed. Evelyn notes, with distaste, that Nathan designed Martine to need him, and to give him what the original Evelyn couldn't. Does that make Martine a different person? Is she a person at all?

One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is that it's a first-person narrative told by a complex, and not necessarily sympathetic, character. Evelyn keeps telling us (or herself) that she's not a monster, that she is rational and justified and objective: but she is the sum of her experiences, and the child of her parents. She can't help comparing herself to Martine, but she doesn't want to accept their similarities -- or their differences, which should not exist.

The relationship between Evelyn and her clone is claustrophobic, mother/daughter, scientist/subject, abusive and loving. I'm not sure, even after rereading, which of them is the monster, which of them is human; which is the voice and which the echo; which of them has broken free of her conditioning. But I am certain that there are real monsters here.

Thanks to Netgalley for this advance review copy.

2020/146: Voyage of Innocence -- Elizabeth Edmondson

'...I can see that when everything grinds to a halt, as it will have to, and the sources of supply are taken over but aren’t working properly, and the rich are holed up in their castles, then no duck nor cat nor even dogs will have a hope.’
‘I don’t think anything would induce an English person to eat his dog.’
‘No, most Englishmen would probably rather devour their children.’ [p. 266]

I've enjoyed almost everything I've read by Elizabeth Edmondson (who also wrote as Elizabeth Pewsey), and this -- after a slow start -- was no exception.

The novel opens in 1938, on board the SS Gloriana, bound from Tilbury to India. Verity -- known as Vee -- is fleeing undisclosed dangers; Lally, her American friend who happens to be on the same ship, is going out to join her husband; and Claudia, Vee's cousin who joins the ship at Lisbon, needs to be out of Europe now that she's 'come to her senses'. All three women were students together at Oxford six years before, and the choices and friendships they made in their undergraduate days have led them down very different paths.

Vee's early starry-eyed communism is considerably dulled by the things she's done for her nameless controllers; Claudia, so enamoured of Mosley and National Socialism, has met up with another university friend whose Jewish husband has been murdered; and Lally, always the most sensible of the three, is on unsteady footing with her husband -- though she is travelling with her step-son, Peter, who has been ill.

Verity is determined to record the events of her life so that if any 'accident' befalls her, there is a testimony of the crimes (legal and moral) which she's committed for the cause. Her account forms the bulk of the novel, and it's Vee's depiction of her time at Oxford which charmed me. She's a true innocent, shocked to learn that men (apart from Oscar Wilde) might indulge in intimacy with other men; appalled by the poverty and degradation she witnesses on leafletting trips to the East End of London; inexplicably drawn to the charismatic John Petrus; rejecting the Christian faith in which she was raised.

Claudia, though she has less of a voice in the novel, is also a fascinating character: not only is she comfortable in her aristocracy, she's also prone to 'flashes' of prescience about the future, all of them accurate. She does, however, sincerely believe that Hitler can save the world ... Of the three female protagonists, it's Lally who is least present in the story, least characterful. Her function seems to be more of balance and calm than of any political action.

Voyage of Innocence starts with someone going overboard off Alexandria, and ends with a sequence of newspaper clippings, society anecdotes and the like which detail the post-war fates of most of the characters. I was reminded, inevitably, of the Mitford sisters; of the Cambridge Spies; of Brideshead Revisited, and the heroic lies that led so many young British men to fight in the Spanish Civil War. This is a powerful novel, but seldom solemn: in the Oxford chapters, Vee, Claudia and Lally are young women enjoying liberty and intellectual stimulation in the heyday of their class, and despite their various crises they're a light-hearted set.

This is also a very feminist take on the trope of idealistic youth getting involved in the weighty political manouevres of the older generation. And for most, though not all, of the characters, there are happy endings, albeit with a bittersweet aftertaste: what Vee has done cannot be undone.

Some minor quibbles regarding copy-editing, such as mention of May Balls being on 'the thirty-first of April'. Also worth noting that this novel features cameos by a couple of characters from The Frozen Lake, set in 1936.

Phrase that snagged my attention: 'walking straight into the trap of her time'.

2020/145: Tales from the Folly -- Ben Aaronovich

Hail Dominic and Victor, the foxes had hailed us, soon to be blessed above all other minor landowners in Herefordshire and the wider border regions. The little bastards could have given us more of a warning.
‘He seems like a good little chap,’ said Victor.
‘Victor,’ I said slowly. ‘He’s the god of the River Lugg.’ [p. 205]

An assortment of short stories and vignettes set in the world of the Rivers of London series. The first six stories are told from Peter Grant's viewpoint: the others by more-or-less minor characters, or characters who don't appear in the novels.

To be honest I don't think short fiction is Aaronovitch's forte: perhaps it's because I read the entire book in a single sitting, but none of the stories really stood out, and some seemed very slight. Probably the two I enjoyed best were 'Three Rivers, Two Husbands and a Baby' (which picks up the story of Victor and Dominic, previously encountered in Foxglove Summer) and 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion', a tale of the Swinging Sixties, South London, drug dealers and thugs and the Wandle. This barely intersected at all with the Rivers novels, and may well have been better for it: plus, there are some truly luscious descriptions of fabric.

Far from awful, but could have done with more Nightingale (my perennial complaint) and also more foxes.

2020/144: Squeeze Me -- Carl Hiaasen

He claimed that Angie had sought out the reptile, into whose gaping maw she’d inserted Pruitt’s left fist, the one that had been holding his knife. Angie eventually resigned, pleading guilty to one felony count of aggravated assault and one misdemeanor charge of illegally feeding wildlife. [loc. 72]

This is a fascinating dystopia, set after the Covid pandemic but during the second term of a US President (referred to only by his Secret Service codename, Mastodon) who plays a lot of golf, likes junk food, hates immigrants, and refuses to believe in climate change. Obviously this character is wholly fictitious, as is his wife, the fragrant First Lady, whose codename is Mockingbird.

The mansions and hotels of Palm Beach are engaged in a cutthroat competition for the honour of hosting charity galas and political events. One venue, Lipid House, loses a lot of points when a wealthy socialite (and supporter of the President) goes missing. The searchers don't find her -- but they do find an enormous python lurking in the grounds. Wildlife wrangler Angie Armstrong is called in to deal with the reptile, and cannot fail to notice a huge bulge in its midriff. Cue shenanigans, inept criminals, mislaid corpses human and otherwise, a torrid affair between Mockingbird and her Secret Service minder, and the intervention of the eco-activist Skink, familiar to Hiaasen fans from a number of other works.

There is far too much plot for me to summarise here: enough to say that Squeeze Me is one of the better Hiaasen novels, with an excellent heroine (Angie does not play nice with climate-change deniers) and some dark satire. The President exhibits an irrational hatred of 'foreigners', and blames a hapless migrant for the socialite's death, condemning the man to imprisonment and abuse. (One Secret Service minion wonders if the President might have been mistaken. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t fucking matter whether he’s right or not. That’s the scary part.” [loc. 2148]). While this felt a little too close to the bone for Hiaasen's usual breezy humour, I was vastly amused by the depiction of POTUS-supporting ladies who lunch, and by the various hapless petty criminals and low-lifes who feature herein. Great fun, though it made me nostalgic for Floridian beach bars, long drives, nature, and ... ah yes, life without lockdowns.

2020/143: The Remaking of Corbin Wale -- Roan Parrish

This was what he’d been struggling to understand since the beginning. If they were cursed, why would the signs lead him to the person who might activate it? The only explanation was that the universe, instead of being indifferent, or kind, wished for him to suffer. And Corbin couldn’t believe that. It wasn’t what he’d ever known. The sky and the trees and the grass and the seasons—no, the universe wasn’t vengeful. And Corbin was so small. [loc. 2243]

Alex Barrow, a successful New York pastry chef, suddenly finds himself without job or boyfriend: at a loose end, he returns to his hometown, Ann Arbor, where he takes over his mother's coffee shop and transforms it into an artisan bakery.

Corbin Wale is one of his first customers. He's aloof, unsociable and strangely familiar, and Alex thinks he's the most beautiful man he's ever seen. Some days Corbin will sit in the coffee shop for hours, drawing as though his life depends on it: other days he's nowhere to be found. Alex gradually pieces together Corbin's story: an outcast at high school, openly gay (or at least not denying it), speaking only to animals and not to his classmates. What Alex doesn't know is that Corbin -- brought up by two elderly aunts, now deceased -- is, like all the Wales, under a curse. Anyone he loves will die. And yet he can't help the attraction he feels for Alex...

This is a sweet M/M holiday romance, very wintry -- though note that the major holiday herein is neither Thanksgiving (boyotted and critiqued by one of the protagonists) nor Christmas, but Chanukah. Corbin feels truly strange -- almost fey but wholly explicable as human -- and there are intriguing hints of the supernatural that never overwhelm the real-world romance. The secondary characters were likeable and well-rounded, and the small-town setting (with its prejudices as well as its sense of community) made me think of old Christmas movies. The love story between Alex and Corbin worked especially well because Alex accepted Corbin, with all his oddness and his imagination: this is something I appreciate a great deal in a romance.

And there was a resonance that nagged at me all the time I was reading this: aha! The author notes that this is her M/M take on Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, aunts and all. Plenty of originality here, though, which is probably why I didn't identify the homage.

2020/142: Beloved -- Toni Morrison

This here Sethe was new. The ghost in her house didn’t bother her for the very same reason a room-and-board witch with new shoes was welcome...This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn’t know where the world stopped and she began. [loc. 2898]

Set in Cincinatti in 1873, Beloved is the story of former slave Sethe, and how the arrival of Paul D, a fellow slave from the Sweet Home plantation, is the catalyst for both oppression and liberation. Sethe, who lives with her teenaged daughter Denver, is mourning her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and is haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed to prevent her being returned to the plantation. After Paul D and Sethe begin a relationship, the ghost seems to be banished; but then a young woman, soaking wet, appears on Sethe's doorstep.

Beloved is an extremely emotional novel that deals with the psychological and physiological traumas of slavery. Though Sethe and Paul D are no longer enslaved, they can't forget or get past the appalling abuses they suffered at Sweet Home and afterwards. Denver, who was born during Sethe's escape, can't understand the sheer horror of what Sethe endured, though she sees the scars on Sethe's back.

One aspect of this story that really struck me was the depiction of the ways in which slavery in the American South destroyed families, destroyed any hope of family: mothers and children separated, marriage barely recognised, no way of tracing relatives. Sethe would do anything for her children, yet her two sons fled the haunted house and the murderous mother, and their fate remains unknown.

I found this a harrowing read, but Morrison's prose (and her ear for dialogue, for a Black voice) is marvellous, and I especially liked the non-linear narrative, the way that the story is built up in anecdotes and 'rememories'. I understand now why this is a modern classic, why it's a set text in schools (though banned in some US institutions), why Morrison is such an important writer -- the fact that she portrays beauty amid the horror, sometimes as part of the horror, makes the story incredibly powerful. I don't think I liked it, but it moved me and educated me.

Read for the 'Toni Morrison' bonus of the Reading Women 2020 Challenge.

2020/141: Cage of Souls -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

“The sun may be a million years in dying, but we will not live to see its end. We are the last remains of a once-great people and we do not look into the sky because we have no wish, now, to see what the future holds. We study the past, instead, and make up stories about how things used to be. [loc. 988]

This is the narrative of Stefan Advani, convicted of inciting revolution in humanity's last city, Shadrapur. He is imprisoned downriver, in the notorious Island -- a penal colony in the heart of the jungle, beset on all sides by dangerous wildlife and harbouring the worst criminals of the age. There is violence, corruption and tyranny: the Marshal is prone to random acts of retribution, and there are factions amongst the prisoners. Stefan, a self-declared coward, makes alliances and keeps his head (literally and figuratively) above water while he tries to find an escape route. 

Interspersed with his time in the Island are reminiscences of his life before imprisonment: expeditions into the desert, rabble-rousing in the shadow of the Weapon that stands like a monument at the heart of Shadrapur. 

Sounds fascinating, yes? But somehow it is not. I disliked Stefan and most of the characters he encounters; the constant violence and arrogance wore me down; the 'dying Earth' tropes felt two-dimensional and unexamined. And worst of all, a plethora of intriguing notions -- accelerated evolution, unlicensed medical experiments, a cosmonaut from 1972, the Weapon itself -- are introduced and then cast aside. I did not find this an enjoyable read, though it's well-written: I am tempted to return to Gene Wolfe's 'Book of the New Sun'. 

It's not going to put me off Tchaikovsky's work, because I have enjoyed several of his novels: but this one was not a winner for me.

2020/140: Seaworthy -- K L Noone

Colby ran a hand through his own hair and offered Jason an encouraging head-tip, and then did—
Something. No good word for it. Suddenly he was William Crawford, Viscount Easterly: brittle and breakable and lonely and longing, good with maps and ciphers, never having been allowed further than the family estate on his own. Even his shoulders carried that weight, thin and distressed. [loc. 189]

Jason Mirelli is an actor noted for his action-movie roles, notably the John Kill series: 'my name's John Kill. That's what I do.' He's had less work since he came out as bi, but now there's a project that's highly relevant to his interests: a movie of a 1940s novel about the homosexual relationship between a nineteenth-century naval captain and a consumptive, aristocratic cryptographer. (Why yes, the Aubrey/Maturin books are acknowledged as an influence in the Afterword.)

Unfortunately Jason's first encounter with the film's producer and star, openly-gay Colby Kent, does not go as well as might be expected. But they're both professionals, right? And that frisson between them in the audition, that was just the characters. Right?

Seaworthy is the first volume of the 'Character Bleed' series: 'character bleed' is a term used to describe the blurring of actor and character, and it is an apt description for the experiences of both Jason and Colby. Their characters are in love, and they are becoming increasingly drawn to one another. This is immensely convenient for the film, as both have complex anxieties rooted in real-life experiences: Jason is afraid of water, Colby is still recovering from an abusive relationship. As the fiction they're filming and the reality they're experiencing overlap (and perhaps converge), Jason draws strength not only from Colby but also from the fictional Captain Stephen Lanyon, and Colby is similarly buoyed by Will Crawford as well as by his co-star.

What I loved about this novel (and recognised from the author's other work) was the lyrical prose and the almost animist descriptions: Jason and Colby both think of the objects around them as having emotions, and this is not nearly as irritating or irrational as it might sound. An elevator provides 'friendly' support, a towel 'collected the sound for him'.

Seaworthy is moving, romantic and often extremely funny: it dropped a star because it felt more like the first part of a two-part novel than the first volume in a series, but I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series over the winter holiday. (Actually, I'm going to reinstate that star in honour of Colby being a fan of 'Heartbreak Beat' by the Psychedelic Furs: one among many cultural allusions that made me warm to the character!)

2020/139: The Kingdoms -- Natasha Pulley

"Londres Gare du Roi..." Joe wondered why the hell the train company was giving London station names in French, and then wondered helplessly why he'd wondered. All the London station names were in French. Everyone knew that. [loc. 27]

I was so very happy to get an advance review copy from NetGalley, having loved Pulley's previous novels (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow). I am happy to report that The Kingdoms (UK publication date 27 MAY 2021) is an absolute delight, the kind of book that I race through, immediately read again, and mourn for days because it's over.

🗹 identity porn
🗹 diversity
🗹 ambiguous moral choices
🗹 spectacular weather
🗹 historical conundrums
🗹 true love
🗹 london
☒ explaining everything

... I have now read this for the third time, to refresh my memory for this review, and it's still very. very good. I think, too, that it's probably Pulley's most accessible novel to date.

1898: Joe Tournier arrives in London Londres with no luggage and no memory. Nothing about the life that he apparently fits into -- a slave, with a much younger wife and a kind master -- feels at all familiar. He has a vague memory of a woman named Madeline, small and dark and wearing green: wife? sister? When he receives a postcard of a lighthouse, with the message "Dearest Joe, come home if you remember. --M", he's sure that it was sent by Madeline. But the lighthouse on the postcard has only recently been built, and the postcard was sent 93 years ago ...

Joe's quest to recover his identity takes him from Londres to Pont du Cam to the Outer Hebrides to beseiged Edinburgh; from 1898 to 1807 to 1797; from ballrooms and wardrooms to an abandoned lighthouse, and to Newgate. And, though the narrative focusses on Joe, other characters' voices recur: a Spanish naval officer turned pirate captain, his sister the ship's surgeon, and the elusive Madeline.

This is, in part, an alternate history. It's the perennial time-travel conundrum: can history be changed? In this case, yes, and that part of the plot hinges on a sketched map of the London Underground and a telegraph machine created too early. (There's also an experiment involving tortoises.) But what makes The Kingdoms so compelling is the shifting relationships between Joe, Kite and Agatha. Agatha is monstrous, and has crafted a monster: Kite is a study in a warped kind of toxic masculinity, both fragile and brutal. They both know more about Joe than they're prepared to tell, and they will go to atrocious lengths to preserve his ignorance. But he can't stay ignorant for ever, and even though he may not be able to remember anything about his life before arriving at the Gare du Roi, his subconscious, or his heart, or history itself still resonates.

I'm intrigued, and still a little perplexed, about what does and doesn't feel familiar to Joe: what he remembers, and what he recognises with hindsight. He's lost so much -- lost so many people who mattered -- and some of those memories are weightier than others. And he is inexorably drawn to Kite, despite the threats of violence, despite Kite's obvious insanity.

So much rawness and vulnerability in the dialogue of this novel, and so many harrowing scenes. (Pulley's description of sweeping the deck after a battle: 'Sailors were going over the deck with wide brooms, pushing all the pieces of people overboard and leaving red comb patterns behind -- it was the brooms that hissed.'[2798]. At least as vivid as anything in Patrick O'Brian.) And there is a lot of sudden, casual violence: because much of the novel is set during wartime, and pragmatism is the order of the day.

I would love to read a novel by Natasha Pulley in which there is a likeable, sympathetic female protagonist. There are plenty of excellent women in The Kingdoms, but: Agatha. And yet, when her backstory was revealed, her motives were thoroughly comprehensible, and I pitied her.

And now I have a book hangover again -- that feeling where you don't want to read anything else, but only to fall back into what you've just read ...

Natasha Pulley talks about and reads from The Kingdoms.