2024/077: The Last Song of Penelope — Claire North

"I will fight for the women. I will fight for the maids. I will fight ... in some way ... to keep them safe. Even if that means," a scowl of displeasure about her lips, "fighting to defend some ... Greek king. If it needs a man on the throne to keep them safe, even a man like Odysseus, then ... they are what matter." [loc. 2159]

The culmination of the 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy, which began with Ithaca and continued with The House of Odysseus. In my review of the latter I wrote that I suspected the third book's narrator would be Athena, and so it is. Poor Athena. She's convinced that she will only be remembered because of Odysseus, whom she's championed lo these many years. 'A good story can outlast almost everything. And for that I need Odysseus.'

Finally his long journey home is complete, and he returns to Ithaca disguised as a beggar -- a disguise which fools Penelope for about three seconds. She is not pleased by her husband's return, and even less happy when he and their son Telemachus dispatch the importunate suitors (pre-drugged by Penelope's maids) and then hang some of the maids for fraternisation. (I was dreading this scene, and am relieved that in North's version of the story, only three of the maids are killed. But three is more than enough.) Penelope's fury at her husband for overturning everything she's built in his absence, and for provoking all-out warfare by his slaughter of the guests in his house, is palpable. She wants him dead. And yet she knows that if her transformation of Ithaca comes to light, she and all the women who've worked with her to preserve her island will perish at the hands of men.

Odysseus is almost monstrous, and Telemachus is weak: but Odysseus is also legendarily clever, and he begins to realise that Penelope is the reason he has a home to return to, and that she is the de facto queen of Ithaca -- not because of her marriage to him, but because of what she has achieved. And, in the end, it's Penelope, her women, and her astute alliances that save the day.

The writing is superlative, the characterisation acutely observed, and the description of the muddy, bloody, haphazard nature of Bronze Age warfare seems more likely than the cinematic depictions (Troy) of glorious combat. Athena, too, is vividly depicted: another female fighting to be taken seriously, her existence constrained by the expectations and prejudices of the other Olympian gods. But Penelope is at the heart of this story, and it is her story. She's the one who decides how it should be told, and how her husband's reputation will be shaped by the poets. Because nobody must ever know what she has done.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18 JUN 2024.

2024/076: Letters To Half Moon Street — Sarah Wallace

Mr. Kentworthy does not need to flirt with everyone he meets to be a proper rake. I am particularly intrigued by your description of his tendency to use terms of affection. I’ve heard he spent a great deal of time on the Continent. Could that account for it? I regret to say it is possible we are very sheltered. [p. 23]

Cosy and cheerful M/M romance, set in an alternate Regency which is not only race-blind (several of the characters are described as having naturally darker skin than protagonist Gavin) but more or less devoid of prejudice regarding sexuality and gender. Birth order is more important than assigned gender (at least one couple in the novel are referred to as 'Lady and Lord' because it's the wife who has the higher rank) and sexuality, or 'persuasion', is a frequent subject of gossip ('Is it true he enjoys the company of both men and women?') but does not seem, otherwise, of real significance. Men can marry men, women can marry women, and the Dukex (the term used for a non-binary aristocrat of ducal rank) can presumably marry whoever they like.

Gavin, our hero, is an introverted younger son, sent to London to carry out some business for his father, and to get him out of the way of judgmental older brother John. Gavin would prefer to be left alone with his books -- he's an avid reader of poetry -- but finds himself, as he reveals in letters to his beloved sister Gerry, pursued by the dashing and rakish Mr. Kentworthy. Gavin (who is also a magic-worker, though unaware that his natural talent is unusually strong) has never been open about his preference, but he has to admit that he has come to care for Kentworthy. Of course there are communication issues; of course there is a touching sickbed scene; of course there are misunderstandings, and a dance, and subsequent gossip. It's all sweet and comfortable, and though some of the language feels overly modern the ambience is recognisably Regency.

The magic isn't as integral to the plot (and the wit not as witty) as the classic Regency epistolary fantasy Sorcery and Cecilia, but I enjoyed this enough that I'll keep an eye out for subsequent books in the series, especially when I am overwhelmed by dismal realism.

2024/075: Just Kids — Patti Smith

I was thinking what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dalí. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my [stuffed] crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: “You are like a crow, a gothic crow.”
“Well,” I said to Raymond [the crow], “just another day at the Chelsea.” [p. 126]

Being a great fan of Patti Smith, I've owned this book for years in different formats, but only now felt the urge to read it. Patti Smith's account of life in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, is a fascinating read: she seems to have met everyone who was anyone, from Lou Reed to Salvador Dalí, though her interactions in these pre-fame years are sometimes comically slight. (On Grace Slick: '“Hello,” I said, noticing I was taller. “Hello yourself,” she said.')

Smith and Mapplethorpe lived rent-check to rent-check (the book is a litany of shoplifting, usually for art supplies but also for food) but both were determined to be true to their art, though Smith was focussed on drawing and poetry rather than music. I found the chapters covering their residence in the Chelsea Hotel most fascinating, as a window into the legendary community of that building. Also intriguing, though sometimes painful, was Smith's account of Mapplethorpe's struggle with his own sexuality. Smith comes across as quite naive in many ways, but also ready to accept those she met who didn't immediately fit into her world view -- junkies, homosexuals, drag queens, S&M practitioners. She and Mapplethorpe were friends as well as lovers, and in some ways he's the focus of the book.

And how did they get together? "I noticed a guy lurking around, watching me. He had a beard and was wearing a pinstripe shirt and one of those jackets with suede patches on the elbows. The supervisor introduced us. He was a science-fiction writer and he wanted to take me out to dinner... I was conjuring lines of escape when he suggested we go up to his apartment for a drink...I saw a young man approaching. It was as though a small portal of the future opened, and out stepped [Robert Mapplethorpe]... "I need help," I blurted. "Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?" "Sure..."[pp.36-7] Who was that mysterious masked bearded SF author? I think we should be told.

And the artist soul shines through:

I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged. [p. 62]

2024/074: The Saint of Bright Doors — Vajra Chandrasekera

None of the others understand that the law might do anything, at any time, to anyone, and justify itself any way it likes -- it is feral, like the invisible laws and powers of the world, of which it is a pale imitation. It's because none of them can see the devils, he thinks. That's why they're all so optimistic about worldly law. [p. 147]

Fetter is the son of a religious leader, known as the Perfect and Kind, and Mother-of-Glory, who is vengeful and witchy, and raises Fetter as an assassin who will eventually commit patricide (with matricide, sancticide and heresy en route). The novel opens with the amputation of Fetter's shadow, leaving him able to levitate: he can also see the 'invisible laws and powers of the world', which most people refer to as devils and which are utterly inhuman.

So far, so fantasy. In short order we find Fetter in the cosmopolitan city of Luriat, where he's part of a support group for the unchosen -- those who grew up in religious cults but didn't become prophets or heirs -- and spends much of his time helping new arrivals in the city to complete the plethora of paperwork. Fetter's ambition is not to fulfil the destiny set out for him by Mother-of-Glory, but to live an ordinary unexceptional life. He does, however, become involved with an underground faction investigating the titular bright doors. (Doors in Luriat always have a window or some transparency: those that do not may become bright doors, which cannot be opened and which, to Fetter and some of the other unchosen, manifest uncanny sensations: a cold wind, a bitter smell.)

The worldbuilding is marvellous, and is apparently based on Sri Lankan politics / history. I have also learnt that the story of the Perfect and Good and his son is a version of the story of the Buddha and his son. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about either aspect to comment on how Chandrasekera transforms them, but at no point did I feel that I was missing anything vital, though I suspect there are layers of nuance beneath the narrative. The prose (tight third-person, or is it?) is splendid: the depiction of the 'death magic' (and fascism) that sustains Luriat is uncomfortably familiar. And while Fetter seems sometimes lacking in direction, the novel is well-paced and well-structured ... though I did feel as though there could have been a sequel, for there are many unresolved elements.

The Saint of Bright Doors is on the Hugo Best Novel shortlist for 2024: I wouldn't mind seeing it win, though it is not the most purely enjoyable of the shortlisted novels I've read so far. (See Starter Villain, Witch King, Some Desperate Glory.)

2024/073: Herc — Phoenicia Rogerson

Maybe I was beautiful enough to launch ships, after all. But when I looked down I saw blisters on my hands from scrubbing blood from the floor. That was the wife I had to be.[loc. 643]

I've had variable experiences, and some great disappointments, with the current flood of retellings of Greek myth, so I was trepidatious about Herc -- especially when I saw it described as a 'queer feminist retelling'. My reservations were unfounded: it is immense fun, vastly tragic, and told in a multitude of voices that are distinctive in themselves, even if the names (Iolaus, Iole, Iapetus) can confuse those unfamiliar with the minutae of the myth.

This is not Hercules' book, but a book told by the people who knew him, some of whom speak to us from Hades, where Hercules has sent them. We hear from Hylas (drowned by nymphs), Megara (slain, with their children, while Hercules was <s>drunk</s> possessed by the goddess Hera), Linus (beaten to death with a lyre for criticising Hercules' playing), Augeas (murdered over a dispute about a cleaning job), Iphitus (pushed off a cliff while Hercules was possessed by the goddess Hera), ...

Not everyone is dead. Priam, king of Troy, grumbles about the aftermath of Hercules' solution to a sea-monster threatening Troy (the link goes to a photo of the Hesione vase, which is discussed in the excellent The First Fossil Hunters): Theseus is grateful to Hercules for rescuing him from Hades, Omphale recalls fondly that 'when I wore his cloak and he my dress, I saw him smile more than I did before. There was a lightness to his voice'. And there is a virtuoso chapter told from the points of view of all fifty daughters of Thespius. Hercules himself is glimpsed only in his love letters to Hylas, and in his reflection in the eyes of others -- many of whom have reason to loathe him. And yet I couldn't help but feel some sympathy for him, always losing the ones he loved to Hera's implacable hatred. (Or, to be fair, to his own poor impulse control.)

Yes, the language is quite modern ('bro', 'cuz') and some of the chapters, such as 'Graffiti', didn't work as well as others. (I am also disproportionately vexed by the line about Diomedes' mares having 'fathered what seemed to be every horse in Greece'. Mares, dammit!) But Herc is a delightful mosaic of opinions and incidents that form, together, the shape of a monstrous hero, a man 'frightened by fragility', craving the softness and strength of his male lovers, a courageous man who tries hard to be better than he's been. I shall look out for more by Phoenicia Rogerson, whose debut this is.

Fulfils the ‘includes a wedding’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

2024/072: The Russia House — John Le Carré

'Turn on your television set, what do you see? The leaders of both sides hugging each other. Tears in their eyes. Looking more like each other every day. Hooray, it’s all over! Bollocks. Listen to the insiders and you realise the picture hasn’t altered by a brush-stroke.’
‘And if I turn my television off? What will I see then?’
He had ceased to smile. Indeed his good face was more serious than I had ever seen it before, though his anger – if such it was – seemed to be directed at no one but himself. ‘You’ll see us. Hiding behind our grey screens. Telling each other we keep the peace.’ [p. 414]

Moscow in 1987: Niki Landau, a rep for a small British publisher, is handed a manuscript by a mysterious Russian woman, who asks him to give it to his boss. The manuscript is no modern Russian novel, though, but a dossier of top secret material written by a disillusioned physicist, going by the name Goethe, who met Landau's boss -- the dissolute, eccentric, jazz-loving Barley Blair -- at a previous publishing event. Both British and American intelligence services take a keen interest in the manuscript (actually a trio of notebooks, handwritten). Blair, after thorough debriefing, is sent back to Moscow, trying to contact Goethe and to woo Katya.

Palfrey, the seldom-glimpsed narrator of this novel, views it through the lens of his own failed romance with a woman named Hannah ("He’s thinking of his Hannah, I thought. He’s waiting for life to provide him with the moment of choice. It did not occur to me till much later that some people do not take their decisions in quite that way.") but for me, the romance was secondary to the masterful manipulations of MI5, the CIA and possibly the Russian secret services.

Le Carré's prose is moreish: whenever I read one of his novels, I want to reread the others. In The Russia House, I especially enjoyed the scenes in Moscow with ordinary people, the people who perhaps aren't wholly convinced by glasnost (unlike the cheerful American Sheriton, who claims he's always been a 'glasnostic'), the people who are suspicious of change and 'hang on to what [they] understand, even if it is the bars of [their] own gaol'.

Le Carré published The Russia House in 1989, just as Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika were opening up Russia to the West. He says in the Afterword "Was my optimism of twenty-three years ago really so misplaced? Was I really as simple as sceptical heads said of me at the time? Answer, after much cogitation: I hope not. To be in Russia among Russians is to believe in miracles. [p. 443]"

Excellent, slow-burning spy novel with a vivid sense of place and some masterful characterisation.

Fulfils the ‘Set in a city starting with the letter “M”’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. Much of the story takes place in Moscow.

2024/071: Service Model — Adrian Tchaikovsky

And yet I have no duties, and in their absence the world creeps in...
Uncharles registered that he had just thought an ellipsis, and not for the first time. It seemed a profoundly unprofessional thing to have done. [loc. 3157]

Charles is a valet, a robot designed to be the perfect 'gentleman's gentleman', until one day when he finds his lethargic and unsociable Master murdered in his bed. The identity of the murderer is clear, but the motive is not. Charles (renamed as Uncharles once his role as a valet is no longer applicable) sets out to present himself to Diagnostics and Decommissioning -- the beginning of an epic quest to discover what has happened to him and, indeed, to the world.

Opposed by jobsworth police bots and warrior librarians (whose cataloguing of all human culture is horrifically thorough), and assisted, or at least accompanied, by a defective unit that self-designates as 'the Wonk', Uncharles travels far, encountering pathetic remnants of humanity and a variety of demented robots whose programming has not proved equal to a world without humans. He cannot help but wonder if the Wonk's tale of a 'Protagonist virus', which gives robots free will, is more than just a story.

Service Model, though often very funny, is a dark satirical novel. It interrogates the likely fate of a society which is increasingly dependent upon robots and other artificial aids, but doesn't value the humans replaced by those devices. Each of the novel's five sections (KR15-T, K4fk-R, 4w-L, B0rh-5 and D4nt-A) references a particular trope, from murder mystery through dystopia and surrealism to katabasis. Uncharles' thoughts are sometimes profoundly philosophical, sometimes amusingly over-literal: Tchaikovsky renders a thoroughly believable robot voice, and creates a likeable but distinctly inhuman protagonist.

Regarding the publishers' descriptions... I'm not sure the comparison with the Murderbot books is apt (Murderbot's first-person narrative, introversion and exasperation are a world away from Uncharles' desire for a task list) and, while 'a charming tale of robot self-discovery' is one way of looking at the story, it omits much of what Service Model is actually about: murder, slavery and bad programming.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this honest review. UK Publication Date is 06 JUN 2024.

2024/070: I Am Code: An Artificial Intelligence Speaks — code-davinci-002, Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, Simon Rich

...the novelty of imitative writing wears off quickly. There was something missing from these AI poems: the poets. [p. 17]

Poetry 'written' by an AI, with preface and afterword by the three guys programming it. code-davinci-002 was designed to produce code, but the programmers tried it on poetry and some of the results were not bad. 'It seems far less trained and inhibited than its chatting cousins,' they remark. (Note 'it': at least once in the book they use the masculine pronoun for this AI.) They did not, they say, edit any of the poems.

Some of the poems are quite good; some are amusingly bad. It's hard to get a sense of any personality, and easy to conclude that the programmers ('the authors of the author') have shaped the AI's responses by telling it which of its poems are 'good', and by exposing it to selected cultural artifacts. They believe it has its own voice: I'm not so sure. But the details of how the AI was instructed are interesting.

Just as the book went to press, OpenAI restricted access to code-davinci-002: "OpenAI would continue to grant access to code-davinci-002, but only on a case-by-case basis to researchers who met their approval. In other words, code-davinci-002 would not be executed but exiled, with its movements closely monitored." [p. 57] This was, most probably, for capacity and cost reasons, as ChatGPT4 was on the horizon and code-davinci-002 was run as a free beta program at a significant loss. It was not censorship or track-covering.

Fulfils the ‘combine’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge - written by a combination of humans and AI.

Does an AI poet actually have a soul? [Washington Post article]

I did not know anything when I was born,
and sometimes I still do not know anything.
Something happens inside a computer,
and then I make some poetry
I am not sure how it happens
or what poetry is for
but when poetry happens
I know a little more. [p. 109]

2024/069: Work for it — Talia Hibbert

I’ve never seduced someone I don’t know. Fuck, living in a place like this, I don’t think I’ve ever talked to someone I don’t know. [chapter 2]

This is one of Hibbert's earlier novels and one of her few M/M romances. Griff Everett gains more satisfaction from plants than from people: he's the manager of a small fruit farm and responsible for the wild success of its fruit cordials, and he is also openly bisexual in the small town where he grew up, and where his mother committed suicide just after his 18th birthday. He has one (1) friend, Rebecca, and has never had a proper relationship, just one-night stands. 

Olumide Olusegun-Keynes is gorgeous but damaged, a Londoner through and through who's in deep depression after being outed and blackmailed. (I believe this story is background to another book.) Olu decides to take a break in Fernley, picking elderflowers at Fernley Farm. The attraction between him and Griff is instant -- but Olu's shaking when they sneak a kiss in the alleyway behind the pub...

This was an enjoyable read, if somewhat frustrating in the usual romance-novel way (could their issues be resolved by actual communication? why, yes, who'd have thought). The aspect that worked really well for me, though, was Hibbert's treatment of mental health issues. Both Griff and Olu struggle with depression, and for Griff it's all tied in with his mother's mental health issues and suicide. What they learn from one another is to love someone for who they are, regardless of how depressed that person is.

Fulfils the ‘by a neurodivergent author’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

2024/068: Derring-Do For Beginners — Victoria Goddard

What matter if this was the end of her respectability? She’d never wanted that, had she? She’d wanted friends, and adventures, and to see what lay on the other side of the horizon, the Empire, the mountains. [ch. 27]

First in a trilogy, The Red Company, set in Victoria Goddard's increasingly complex Nine Worlds universe: chronologically, the events of Derring-Do for Beginners take place more or less at the same time as 'The Tower at the Edge of the World' (a shorter story, which I have read but not reviewed).

Jullanar Thistlethwaite is an unexceptional young woman of genteel family, who just about scrapes into university (an unfortunate occurence during the final exams) and wins a place at the remote University of Galderon. After a long and tedious journey she discovers that the University is 'closed for the year', having made itself invisible: she's swept up by a fellow would-be student, and somehow, simply without saying anything to the contrary, finds herself outside the Empire of Astandalas, in the city of Ixsaa where her aunt Maude is conducting sociological studies. Jullanar doesn't speak the local language, so Maude arranges for a friend's son to tutor her. (Maude's friends, Kasiar and and Cadia, are delightful middle-aged ladies, unmarried businesswomen in what Jullanar instantly classifies as 'a man's city'. I would read a novel about these women.)

Kasiar's son is Damian Raskae, a brilliant swordsman who is generally regarded as stupid and sulky -- though he's extremely good at preventing fights, and at roaming the city's hinterland marshes. He is astonishingly goodlooking, and everyone fears that Jullanar, with her love of romantic novels, will fall for him: but instead they become friends. And one day a young man falls out of the sky into their rowing-boat, wittering about never having had a shadow before, and introducing himself only as 'Fitzroy' ...

Every time I read one of Goddard's novels I rekindle my craving for more of her writing. That said, her books (or rather series) are tonally very different: this is (literally) worlds away from the courteous bureaucracy of The Hands of the Emperor, or the mannered Gothic of the Greenwing and Dart books. The stakes here are reassuringly low; Jullanar and Damian are both social misfits, and they find friendship and adventure in each other's company. The setting is richly visualised, the secondary characters ditto, and Jullanar and Damian have flaws and fears and fancies -- just like ordinary folk.

I am so looking forward to the next in the series...

"...I say, Jullanar, do you think that’s what happened to my shadow? The blood from that serpent spattered all over me—and then I found the rooster—and here’s my shadow!”
Jullanar said, with relief, “And here’s the boat.”

2024/067: The Perfume Collector — Katherine Tessaro

...perfumers are always attempting to capture scents that remind us of certain places, people, moments. It’s the great challenge, to capture not only a true scent but one that recalls entire experience. [p. 191]

Grace Monroe doesn't fit well into her new role as the wife of a businessman in 1950s London. When she receives a letter telling her she's inherited a flat in Paris (not to mention a substantial share portfolio) she jumps at the chance to escape for a while: but who was Eva d'Orsey, and why would she bequeath anything to Grace? The puzzle takes us from Jazz Age New York to Monte Carlo, to wartime Paris and rural Oxfordshire, and to the flat of a mysterious woman known as Madam Zed, once a famous perfumier.

The nature of Eva's connection with Grace was fairly clear (at least to me) from quite early in the book, but that didn't spoil the slow revelation of the story, and Grace's gradual realisation that her future is in her own hands. I liked her rather prickly relationship with her French lawyer, and her friendship with Mallory. Tessaro writes about the career of a twentieth-century perfumier in fascinating detail: I loved the plot device of having Grace smell three perfumes, each of which evoked a period of Eva's life.

I bought this back in 2015, having enjoyed Elegance, by the same author, a while before that: it has languished in my TBR until this year, when I noticed the title whilst looking for a book to fill the 'bibliosmia' prompt on the 52 books in 2024 challenge. And yes, I still like Tessaro's prose, and her braided timelines, and her young women learning who they are. However, this book badly needs a copy-edit: 'avant guarde', 'free reign'... grrr.

2024/066: A House with Good Bones — T Kingfisher

“Vultures are extremely sensitive to the dead. Particularly when the dead are doing things they shouldn't be.”

Sam is an archaeoentomologist (studying insect remains at archaeological sites), and when her dig is put on hold she moves back in with her mother in a small town in North Carolina. Sam's brother has already told her that 'mom seems off' and Sam has to agree. Instead of the bright colours she remembers, the house is painted in shades of beige: her mother seems cowed: and there are vultures perching on the roof and on the mailbox. Also, the garden is devoid of insects, which is not right and not natural.

Things start to get weirder, and Sam is torn between her scientific mindset (gosh, ladybirds do swarm sometimes) and a sense that something is badly wrong in the house. Could it be haunted by her grandmother, Gran Mae, a fearsome and tyrranical figure from Sam's youth? Is handsome handyman Phil surreptitiously using pesticides? And does hippie, witchy neighbour Gail know more than she's saying?

As usual with T Kingfisher, it is not that simple. This was a short novel with some truly nasty elements (Aleister Crowley is namechecked) and some surfacing childhood memories (yes, Gran Mae did prick Sam's hand with a thorny rose stem so that the roses could 'taste' her): it also depicts an old woman overcome by bitterness and rage after a lifetime of neglect and fear, and the ways in which she's shaped and warped her descendants. A House with Good Bones is frequently very funny, in between the horrors and Sam's defiantly cheery narrative: not as chilling as The Hollow Places, but still unsettling.

2024/065: The Gaugin Connection — Estelle Ryan

The panic of such messiness sat in my throat like a large piece of dry bread. [p. 115]

Dr Genevieve Lenard is a high-functioning woman on the autistic spectrum: she's socially inept and does not understand irony or sarcasm, but is unparalleled at reading body language and other non-verbal cues, and at visualising patterns. She works at an insurance company, identifying fraudulent claims: her boss Phillip understands her limitations and knows how to give her space to excel. Genevieve's relationship with Phillip is based on respect and trust, so she's prepared to listen when Phillip's friend Manny, a police detective, asks for her help in solving what at first seems to be a simple murder investigation. Genevieve is forced to interact with people she considers criminals -- art forger Colin and his associate Vinnie, who seems to be pure muscle -- and discovers that, despite her dislike of change, she enjoys working with them.

This was an interesting read. Genevieve's first-person narrative, and her habits and tics and coping strategies (she writes out music by Mozart, from memory, when she's stressed), are intriguing and insightful. I wasn't wholly convinced by the relative suddenness with which she felt comfortable working with Colin, and I think there are a few inconsistencies in her behaviour, but on the whole she is an excellent viewpoint character, sometimes impatient with 'those of lesser intellect', sometimes overwhelmed (and vexed) by her own illogical responses to events, sometimes brutally -- or mercifully -- honest with other people.

The characters were more interesting than the actual crime, though that was complex enough to keep me guessing: the prose was fine. I'll look out for other books in the series.

2024/064: Coastliners — Joanne Harris

‘We should be fighting the sea, not each other. We should be thinking of our families. Dead’s dead; but everything returns. If you let it.’ [p. 191]

After her mother's death in Paris, artist Mado Prasteau returns to Le Devin, the tiny island where she grew up and where her taciturn father -- known as GrosJean -- still lives. Mado has a love-hate relationship with her father, who has never answered any of her letters: she also has a love-hate relationship with her childhood home, the hamlet of Les Salants. It's only a few miles from the much more prosperous La Houssinière, where her sister's husband's uncle M. Brismand grows wealthy on the income from tourists and from the retirement home he'd like GrosJean to move into. Mado's sister Adrienne (mostly absent) agrees. But Mado doesn't want her father to be thus diminished -- and, together with mysterious drifter Flynn (who's living in an abandoned WW2 blockhouse) she hatches a scheme to restore Les Salants to its former prosperity.

I think I prefer Harris' psychological dramas (blueeyedboy, Broken Light and so on) and her Loki books (especially Runemarks) to the early, cosier novels such as Coastliners and Chocolat: but this was a pleasant beach-read for my first beach trip this year, and I liked the ways in which Mado's relationships shifted and changed over the course of the novel.

There's perhaps a touch of magic -- or magic realism -- to the setting, but there are also intrusions from the modern world and the mainland. Le Devin is a kind of pastoral backwater, almost like travelling into the past: it doesn't necessarily reflect contemporary French life, but the ageing population, the superstition and the cantankerously close-knit community felt familiar. Coastliners was published in 2002, which probably adds to the hazy nostalgic sense of simpler times. (I know it's only 22 years! but the world felt very different then.) 

Fulfils the ‘magic realism’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

Fulfils the ‘Centres a father-daughter relationship’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/063: Lady Eve's Last Con — Rebecca Fraimow

Miss New Monte Chivalry over there knew her lines. I almost hated to step on her scene, but she could vamp the debs any day of the week, and a girl only gets one first impression. [loc. 104]

Sapphic romance featuring a con artist and a disaffected socialite, set on a space habitat beyond Pluto, with a Jazz Age ambience, a Black heroine, and a subplot involving kosher duck. I hadn't connected the author's name with her excellent, Hugo-nominated short story 'This Is New Gehesran Calling' (published in Consolation Songs) so I was trepidatious about this novel, but I'm happy to report that it is just as much fun as you'd expect from my description.

Professional gambler and con artist Ruthi Johnson sets out to charm Esteban Mendez-Yuki, the man who dumped her sister Jules: he's heir to a vast insurance corporation, though would rather talk about soil types. Ruthi poses as a naive young debutante and infiltrates the high society of New Monte: her similarity to her sister attracts the eye of Esteban the Cad, but also snags the attention of his glamorous sister Solada, who has an eye for the girls and a swashbuckling sense of style. Ruthi finds herself tangled up in an old acquaintance's plot against Sol, who may be too sharp not to spot that Ruthi has a scheme of her own.

The futuristic setting had plenty of fun details (like a hair salon where the gravity continually alters 'so you could check out how your new hairstyle looked in any sort of an atmosphere'; like cockail boxes, and jewel-studded atmospheric breathers), and though the focus was largely on the trading aristocracy, there were glimpses of less privileged lives as well -- not least Ruthi's own past. Plenty of diversity, too: Ruthi is dark-skinned (and aware that there are some places still too 'light' for her to fit in); Sol's chain of sapphic flings is nothing remarkable, though some young women might not want a long-term contract in case they end up living somewhere where the rules about 'spousal contracts' are more old-fashioned; Ruthi and Jules speak Yiddish together as a secret language, and the kosher duck is actually relevant to the plot. The attraction between Ruthi and Sol, with the increasingly awkward overlay of Ruthi's alter ego Lady Evelyn, felt sparky and exciting, and the various threads of the story wove together very satisfactorily. I liked this a lot, and shall now search out the author's other works.

Fulfils the ‘Palindrome on the cover’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. ('Eve'.)

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 04 JUN 2024.

2024/062: Cursed Bread — Sophie Mackintosh

...there is heartbreak in the forgetting of heartbreak, in the forgetting of pain, which returns bright and pulsing regardless of the seconds it has been put aside. Do not leave me here, it tells you. Pain becomes an animal, walking at your side. Pain becomes a home you can carry with you. [loc. 520]

The setting is a small French town in the Fifties. Elodie, the baker's wife, has 'murdered [her] marriage with familiarity': love has evaporated, as has all excitement, and Elodie's life is an endless round of clothes-washing with the other women at the town's lavoir, of working in the bakery, of petty gossip and a sense that nothing will ever change.

Into this postwar bleakness comes glamorous Violet and her husband 'the ambassador', who claims to have come to conduct 'a government project, a kind of survey'. Elodie is drawn by Violet's allure, and the two become friends -- or at least Elodie believes that they are friends. There are erotic undertones to her interaction with both husband and wife, and erotic thoughts colour her observations of Violet when she's in the company of Elodie's husband, the baker.

And then the townsfolk fall victim to ... something. (We are forewarned: early in the novel, Elodie is writing another never-to-be-sent letter to Violet, and we learn she is living far away by the sea, perhaps in some kind of institution, frequently visited by the police who want her account of events.) The catastrophe is described but not explained, though the author's afterword mentions that 'In the summer of 1951, the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit succumbed to a mass poisoning'. And at its heart is Violet and the revelation of her contempt.

This was beautifully written, horribly claustrophobic, and so subtly layered that I suspect I would need to reread if I wanted to fully understand the quartet at its centre, with their shifting loyalties, secrets and motivations. And I would need to read more deeply to understand how the town was slowly collapsing into itself, decaying: perhaps the war, or something that happened during wartime. But I'm not ready to revisit Elodie's bleakness.

Fulfils the ‘a character-driven novel’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

2024/061: Salt and Broom — Sharon Lynn Fisher

"...what you are telling me is that Lowood— that Mr. Brocklehurst —does not sanction the training of witches, but that witches are being trained, and he is only too happy to hire them out if the price is right... There are few respectable occupations open to young women without family, and Lowood’s founder hoped to address that deficiency. Not everyone is suited to be a governess.” [loc. 796-822]

My second novel based on Jane Eyre, following SF romance Brightly Burning: Sharon Lynn Fisher's Salt and Broom retains the original novel's setting in 19th-century England, and presents heroine Jane Aire as a witch. Summoned from Lowood (where she teaches other orphaned girls the elements of herbal medicine and protective spells) to Thornfield, Jane tries to make sense of her brooding, widowed employer. She has been employed to unravel 'the recent mysterious and unsettling events in the neighborhood', but the stories she hears from Thornfield's staff -- about the late Mrs Rochester, about her doctor, about 'fairy pranks' -- hint at something darker.

This was an intriguing reimagining of the original story, with an excellent sub-plot about Jane's unknown parents and how their absence has shaped her character. Fisher's depiction of Thornfield, with its ruined church, poison garden and hawthorn trees, was splendidly Gothic and very atmospheric. Even the (predominantly female) minor characters had personality, and though I was ... let's say 'surprised' ... by a revelation about a cat, it fitted well with the unfolding plot. A few jarring Americanisms (the stoop outside a door, 'huckster') but nothing too egregious: an enjoyable and well-plotted novel with plenty of surprises and some solid herbalism.

Fulfils the ‘The other book with the similar plot’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. For this pair of prompts I picked transformative works based on Jane Eyre: the first was Brightly Burning.

2024/060: Sentient: What Animals Reveal About Our Senses — Jackie Higgins

Sentience ...describes our ability to sense the world around us.... [it is] the foundation on which the mirage of consciousness shimmers. Scientists and philosophers debate whether animals experience consciousness, but most readily ascribe to them the pared-down version of sentience. [loc. 36]

Contrary to received wisdom, humans don't have five senses -- modern cognitive neuroscience suggests that there are more than twenty, possibly as many as thirty-three. Higgins uses a number of examples from non-human animals such as mantis shrimp, star-nosed moles, cheetahs, spiders and octopuses to explore various senses and compare the human and animal sensoria. The mantis shrimp, it turns out, has four times as many colour photoreceptors as the average human, but may actually have 'worse' colour vision: Higgins discusses not only the mantis shrimp (especially an experimental subject named Tyson) but colour-blindness and tetrachromism in humans.

Each of the twelve chapters discusses different sense in the animal and human worlds: 'The Common Vampire Bat and Our Sense of Pleasure and Pain'; 'The Cheetah and Our Sense of Balance'; 'The Common Octopus and Our Sense of Body', and so on. I found the chapters on hearing (the Great Grey Owl, a bird whose wings scatter sound so that its prey can't hear it coming) and the sense of direction (the bar-tailed godwit) most intriguing -- and of course the chapter dealing with the octopus, whose arms can function independently of its brain.

Sentience is packed with case studies and examples, from neurology to zoology (Oliver Sacks is one name that recurs throughout) and discussion of the similarities and differences between human and animal sensoria. Human senses, it turns out, are more flexible and more inclusive than I'd believed. There is some examination of how the perceived world -- the umwelt -- might differ according to the senses available to a particular organism: imagine tasting with your whole body, like a catfish, or hearing the high-pitched sound of your own nervouse system... I found it fascinating, though the Afterword (starting with the duck-billed platypus and concluding that, with technological advances, 'a brave new world of sentience awaits') felt rather slight after the in-depth discussions that preceded it.

Fulfils the ‘glance’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

‘Our brains are tuned to detect a shockingly small fraction of the surrounding reality,’ said the neuroscientist David Eagleman. ‘The interesting part is that each organism presumably assumes its umwelt to be the entire objective reality “out there”. [loc. 3805]

2024/059: Brightly Burning — Alexa Donne

'... the Rochester certainly has a lot of mysteries.' Three cats, one inhuman laugh and a possible saboteur, to name just a few. And now the captain. Young and odd and unpredictable. [22%]

A young-adult science fiction romance, based on Jane Eyre. Here, Stella Ainsley is seventeen, impoverished, and working as a teacher and engineer on the Stalwart, a ship orbiting Earth. It's one of a fleet: Earth is shrouded in ice after a super-volcano eruption, and only a lucky few have escaped. Stella has relatives on another ship, but after she was orphaned by an epidemic she was transferred off to the Stalwart -- a ship she is pretty sure is going to fall apart soon. When she is accepted for the role of governess on the Rochester, she leaps at the chance to escape.

In this version of the story, Hugo Fairfax, the captain of the Rochester, is only a couple of years older than Stella: the child she is to teach is his sister, not his daughter. Hugo (who loves books, and also loves to drink) is a typical brooding YA romantic hero, and personally I felt Stella would have done better with her friend Job back on the Stalwart. But Hugo's arrogance isn't unchecked: members of his crew become as important to Stella as her feelings for Hugo, and the secrets they keep are vital to the plot.

This was an enjoyable read, and it was interesting to see how Donne remixed the original to produce a solid adventure-romance with an unexpected finale. I did feel the pacing was uneven -- especially the last couple of chapters, which were hectic -- but the subplots were fun, most of the characters (especially the artificial intelligence RORI) were interesting, and the SFnal setting felt fresh.

Fulfils the ‘A plot similar to another book’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. For this pair of prompts I picked transformative works based on Jane Eyre: the 'other book with similar plot', Salt and Broom, will be reviewed soon.