2024/183: How the Light Gets In — Louise Penny

"...He’s spending most of his time in some small village in the Townships, and when he’s not there he’s distracted by Beauvoir. It’s too late. He can’t stop it now. Besides, he doesn’t even know what’s happening.” [p. 190]

Culmination of the arc that began in Bury Your Dead, or perhaps earlier: perhaps all the way back to Still Life, the first of the Gamache novels. Luckily, it is not the last of the series: but I feel I can relax and take a breath now.

This novel is set some months after the events of The Beautiful Mystery. Beauvoir has gone to work for Francoeur, Gamache's nemesis, and is once more addicted to painkillers: his relationship has broken down, though he still parks his car outside his ex's flat to mourn. Gamache's Murder team is fragmented, with many agents reassigned or quitting. And there are at least three crimes under investigation here: the apparent suicide of a woman, the death of another woman who was the last survivor of a set of quintuplets, and a wicked conspiracy that dates back more than a decade, to one of Gamache's few failures. Gamache knows that he's being marginalised, and he knows, more or less, who he can still trust. He's not sure about Agent Yvette Nichol, but he and his allies need her help to hack into police and government records. Luckily, they can't easily be traced to Three Pines, where there's little internet and no mobile signal...

I will probably need to reread this (quelle domage) because I raced through the final third, barely pausing to marvel at the cinematographic brilliance of Penny's scene-cuts and structuring. Everything does come together in a shocking conclusion -- which, luckily, takes place in the penultimate chapter. The final chapter ties up quite a few loose threads, but is very definitely a new beginning for several of the characters. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series ... but not quite yet.

2024/182: The Balancing Stone — Victoria Goddard

"I've heard that if you whisper a question into their ears, you'll be sure to find out the answer. Though it probably won't be an answer you want to hear."
"Is that what the stories say?"
"That's what all stories teach us. [p. 49]

A brief, calm and uplifting interlude on the edges of the Greenwing and Dart series. Hope Stornoway, who's in love with Jemis Greenwing's friend Hal (who happens to be the Duke of Fillering Pool) is staying in Ragnor Bella over the Winterturn festival. In order to claim her inheritance, she needs to discover her true name ... 

Luckily Ragnor Bella's reputation for dullness is wholly undeserved, and when Hope goes for a walk she encounters interesting rocks, a two-tailed fox and a bookseller who offers oddly specific philosophical arguments in answer to Hope's dilemma. Short and sweet: I'm really looking forward to the next full-length novel in this series!

2024/181: The Beautiful Mystery — Louise Penny

I’ll find him eventually, you know. It’s what I do. But it’s a terrible, terrible process. You have no idea what’s about to be unleashed. And once it starts, it won’t stop until the murderer is found. [loc. 1604]

I stocked up on Louise Penny books when there was a deal on them a few months ago, and the days between Christmas and New Year seemed a good time to read a couple more. The Beautiful Mystery takes Gamache and Beauvoir away from Three Pines, to the isolated monastery of Saint Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, where a monk has been murdered. The Gilbertine monks recently made a CD of Gregorian chant which has been wildly popular: Frère Mathieu, prior and choirmaster, was keen to make another CD and use the proceeds to repair the crumbling monastery. The Abbot, Dom Philippe, would prefer not to -- but the monks of Saint Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups have been selected for their voices, and some believe their chants are the literal voice of God.

Meanwhile, Beauvoir is still suffering the after-effects of the 'factory job' (Bury Your Dead): he's in a relationship with Gamache's daughter Annie (which he thinks Gamache doesn't know about), but is becoming increasingly unstable. And when Gamache's nemesis, Chief Superintendent Sylvain Françoeur, shows up unexpectedly, Beauvoir's loyalties will be tested.

I didn't enjoy this as much as most of the other Gamache novels I've read so far: I missed the Three Pines characters, the all-male community felt claustrophoic, and the murder mystery was less interesting than the background of Gregorian chant and musical notation. But the final scenes were wrenching, and I was very glad I didn't have to wait long to read the next in the series.

2024/180: A Christmas Ghost Story — Kim Newman

‘When I was little, I wanted people to listen... Some did, but they were no help. I told a story. Not one I made up, though everyone said I did. I convinced myself I had made it up. A thing couldn’t have happened, so I decided it hadn’t. I tried to figure out how it got into my head, then gave up. I thought it was done with.' [loc. 790]

Seasonal novella: Angie and her teenage son Russell ('it's Rust, Mum') live in an isolated cottage. Angie is a best-selling author of self-published thrillers: Rust has a podcast about strange phenomena. They share a fascinating array of Christmas customs: Christmas cruels (like carols but nastier: 'Away in a Mangler', 'The Worst Noel'); putting down rotten biscuits for Santa's reindeer so he won't visit Angie's childhood frenemy; mince pies are too-much-mince pies... 

Come December 1st, the chocolate in the advent calendar tastes mouldy, and Rust receives a card with an ominous-looking robin and an unseasonal 'pinch, punch, first day of the month'. He thinks it's weird: Angie thinks it's a nightmare. She remembers a TV series called 'The Cards', which started in much the same way and became thoroughly horrific -- but there's no evidence that such a show was ever broadcast.

Snappy prose peppered with real and made-up pop culture references, an excellent depiction of a mother-son relationship, and the ghost of a mysterious pet: I was hoping for a chilling-yet-cosy read, but A Christmas Ghost Story lost me in the final third, and I'm not sure it ever lived up to the promise of the premise.

2024/179: Long Live Evil — Sarah Rees Brennan

“It’s hard for me to think of the characters around us as real people. Do you understand? Are you like me?”
[his] grey eyes went eagerly bright, silver as a magic blade. “I think so.”
Rae grasped his arm. “You walked into the book too?”
“Sorry...What book?” His face was blank as a page with no story on it yet.
Rae sagged. “Ah. You’re a sociopath. My bad.” [p. 170]

Rae and her younger sister Alice are massive fans of the 'Time of Iron' fantasy book series, described as 'grim and also dark. The series title might as well be Holy Shit, Basically Everybody Dies'. Rae, who's twenty, is dying of cancer: Alice sits and reads to her from the books, and Rae doesn't want to admit how much of the detail she's forgotten. Which becomes considerably more of a problem when, following a late-night visit from a mysterious woman, she's inserted into the story -- in the body of the villainous-yet-beautiful Rahela Domitia, the 'Beauty Dipped in Blood', who's due to be gruesomely executed the next day.

Rae embraces her new life with glee; 'foresees' some plot developments (''you will be powerful A.F.' The king’s brow wrinkled. 'A.F.?' 'As foretold,' Rae intoned hastily'); encounters some of the vivid characters of this world (I especially liked the Golden Cobra, who's extravagantly rakish and has a most intriguing backstory), and revels in villainy. Is she changing the story, or is it changing her? And has she forgotten something important about the plot?

Rae is sometimes annoying, and I found her cavalier dismissal of other characters as 'not people' rather disturbing: but I loved how the plot deepened (and possibly also thickened) around her, and the other characters' perceptions of her. (This is not a single-narrator work.) Rees Brennan grounds the story in popular culture: Rae is 'burdened with glorious purpose'; the Cobra's 'so vain, he probably thinks the troubadours' songs are about him'; Rae is 'misled by ambiguities in the text' when she discovers that the Cobra and Marius aren't a couple, despite all the fanfic and fanart. There are some interesting observations on art and life, on stories and reality, on what makes a story -- or a character -- satisfying or otherwise.

And, despite seeing it coming well before Rae did, I found the ending a real shock. Next book in the series is due in September...

2024/178: Zelensky: A Biography of Ukraine's War Leader — Stephen Derix

While other Ukrainian stars played an express part in the protests, Zelensky remained non-partisan...‘I am keen to demonstrate, but my support is for the people, not for promises by the Government or the opposition.’ [loc. 726]

I suspect there are better biographies of Zelensky, but this fleshed out the 'comedian turned politician' story that's been doing the rounds since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. It provides an overview of the situation in Ukraine -- corruption, poverty, a history of war and genocide, the fact that it was the third largest nuclear power after Russia and the USA -- and the economics of the Ukrainian entertainment industry, with a focus on the comedy shows that made Zelensky a household name. 

Derix examines Zelensky's offshore businesses and his sensitivity to criticism, but the focus is very much on his loyalty to the people of Ukraine and his desire to root out corruption and make Ukraine into 'a modern country with a digital economy and high standard of living'. I was left with the impression that he does a lot of his work via Facebook, speaking directly to the people, and that he's determined to live up to the 'sacred aspect to the office... the president needs to be more than just a cool guy'.

After all his negative experiences with politicians, he had come to like people less, and his dogs more. [loc. 1608]

2024/177: The Book of Phoenix — Nnedi Okorafor

Each tower had … specializations. In Tower 7, it was advanced and aggressive genetic manipulation and cloning. In Tower 7, people and creatures were invented, altered, or both. Some were deformed, some were mentally ill, some were just plain dangerous, and none were flawless. Yes, some of us were dangerous. I was dangerous. [loc. 158]

After a lightning storm in the desert and a glimpse of a winged figure, an old man named Sunuteel explores a cave and discovers an ancient text. The ambience is Biblical, but the setting is centuries from now, and that text tells of genetic manipulation, science indistinguishable from magic, a winged man who cannot die and the eponymous Phoenix, who dies to rise again.

Phoenix's book tells us that she was created only a couple of years ago in Tower 7, by a company called LifeGen, but has the appearance of a woman in her forties. She reads immensely fast, though most of the books she's given don't reflect her self-image. 'I’d wondered if I was made from inferior DNA. Then I started mixing books written by Africans about Africans into the ones I was reading. These stories were different...' When the man she's starting to love, Saeed (who can't metabolise human food, and thrives on a diet of rust and stone), dies, Phoenix's grief and rage becomes destructive, and Tower 7 is destroyed. She flees to Africa, where her ancestors came from, but is hunted down again. And she encounters a woman named HeLa, whose blood confers immortality -- for those who can pay.

There is a lot in this novel, and I probably didn't register all of it. (For one thing, it's the prequel to Who Fears Death, which won the World Fantasy Award but which I haven't read.) But the racism, misogyny and colonialism of Phoenix's future is all too familiar, and her fury and vengefulness ring true. For much of the novel, even she can't decide whether she's heroine or villain. But she creates this record of apocalypse -- and when it is found by Sunuteel many years later he 'declared the authors dead and did with the information what he would'.

I found that element of the framing narrative disturbing, and there were points where the novel felt as though it had been assembled from shorter pieces: but it was a compelling read, with mythic imagery and some fascinating characters. Also: 'artificially intelligent Nigerian robots ... travelled across the Atlantic to the land of the co-financiers of their creation. They were explorers. In their brains of wire, electricity, and metal they were probably colonizers'. Perhaps more frightening a concept now than when this novel was published in 2015...

I bought this in June 2016, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2024/176: Féonie and the Islander Regalia — Victoria Goddard

Féonie was from a very, very poor part of inland Mgunai. Her family had nothing: she was the only one who had ever been more than ten miles from home, bar two cousins who had gone to the city and never been heard from again. [10%]

Short story about Féonie, a minor character in The Hands of the Emperor and its sequel At the Feet of the Sun, and very much a major character in her own life. The plot is simple (Féonie, custumier to Cliopher Mdang, is grateful for the universal stipend and determined that the Lord Chancellor will be perfectly costumed for a forthcoming ceremony) but Féonie's history -- growing up in poverty, sacked due to her employer's husband's unwanted advances, helped by Lord Conju and Ser Rhodin, making friends amongst the Palace guards -- is woven through the story without ever feeling intrusive. Being in the audience for Kip's fire dance makes her determined to research his culture and his family, and gives her the courage to approach the Emperor Himself for help.

Lots of delicious detail here, including the guards' romantic book club and the general consensus that His Radiancy and the Lord Chancellor are very much in love: and Féonie, aged nineteen, negotiating with a living god. (Or two.) I bought this on a whim and now want to reread everything that Goddard has written: her work is such a delight to me, and so much of it is about kindness and positivity.

2024/175: Wrapped Up in You — Talia Hibbert

Will was an expert in the theory of wooing, having attended the premieres of many period dramas. [18%]

Soft and fluffy holiday romance novella. Will is a film star who's decided to stop being Captain X (aliens; spandex) and fly home to Britain to woo childhood friend and longtime secret crush Abbie, who's spending Christmas with her grandmother and a horde of felines in snowy Scotland. (There is also a dog, but it's presumably hiding from the cats for most of the story.) Abbie is just beginning to open up to friends and family again after a bad marriage and a painful divorce: she's very aware that her emotions are Too Much for anyone. Abbie's twin Jason is also Will's friend, and provides useful commentary and encouragement.

Most of this novella takes place in the heads of the protagonists: Will fretting about whether Abbie likes him at all, Abbie fretting that Will just wants something light, which is something she can't do. Luckily they do eventually manage to communicate, albeit in a blizzard while hunting for Gravy (a pregnant cat, not a condiment). And all live happily ever after, except Will's agent.

This was a sweet read, though often frustrating: I really appreciate the way Hibbert can sketch past abuse, mental health issues and unhelpful thought patterns without drama or emotional overwhelm, but I am frequently vexed by romances where the 'antagonist' is the protagonists' inability to communicate. A nicely seasonal read, though, cheerful and gentle, with plentiful kitties.

2024/174: The Winter Ghosts — Kate Mosse

...it made perfect sense to me how I, a man who for so many years had walked the line between the quick and the dead, might be able to hear their voices in the silence when others could not... [loc. 1833]

The bulk of this short novel is Freddie Watson's first-person account of an evening in the small village of Nulle, in south-west France: it's framed by events in 1933 (five years after that evening at the fête de Saint-Étienne), when Freddie is recounting his story to an antiquarian bookseller, explaining the provenance of a document written in medieval Occitan.

Freddie has spent a decade mourning his brother George's death in the First World War. After a nervous breakdown, he decides to take a motoring holiday in the Pyrenees: a blizzard sets in, his car crashes, and he finds his way through the forest to Nulle. He's welcomed by the proprietors of the guesthouse, Monsieur and Madame Galy, and invited to join the festival that night. At the festival, he's made welcome, and spends much of the evening talking to a young woman named Fabrissa about grief and loss. Some of the villagers (many of whom are in costume) have crude yellow crosses stitched to their clothes; there's a sense of tension; men from outside burst into the hall, wielding swords...

The Winter Ghosts is an understated, melancholy narrative about loss, about grief, about loneliness. I suspect that I wasn't really in the right frame of mind for it, and though the prose was lovely the plot felt lightweight and predictable. The ancient letter is more poignant than Freddie and Fabrissa's conversation -- and it's based on real events seven hundred years in the past. (Mosse's afterword provides thorough references and an overview of the persecution of the Cathars.) I'd have liked more about Freddie's healing than a few sentences about George's death and the need to remember. And I'd have liked to know more about what had happened in the time between the visit to Nulle and the visit to the antiquarian... 

 This, I suspect, was a case of 'right book, wrong time': maybe I'll come back to it next winter.

2024/173: Deck the Halls in Secret Agents — Aster Glenn Gray

Christmas crashed over George again like an ocean wave: the brass quartet, the bright swags of holly along the mantelpiece, the smell of wood smoke from the fireplace. Somewhere behind him, a glass broke, and people shrieked with laughter. [loc. 111]

M/M romantic novella. It's Christmas 1991, and American spy George Douglass is somewhere in the wilds of France, searching for an abandoned chateau whose attics supposedly harbour compromising letters which can be used against a Soviet general. Vital to get to the blackmail material before the Russians do... but when George finds the chateau, it's ablaze with lights, overflowing with Christmas revellers, and harbouring his nemesis and counterpart Nikolai Meleshenko.

George and Nikolai have history: two decades of professional enmity, with a side order of fantastic sex and real, if unspoken, affection. The last time they met, Nikolai was bleeding out in a warehouse: now he seems wholly recovered -- and, like George, he's searching for the mysterious letters, hidden in the chateau's well-appointed attic. But do the letters really exist, or is this a setup? Has Gorbachev really just announced the end of the USSR? And, if so, can George and Nikolai salvage anything from twenty years of spy vs spy?

Delightful, lightweight but heartfelt seasonal romance, with two likeable characters striking sparks off one another. I liked the setting, and the appalling but cheery English host, and the ambience of the chateau. A nice end-of-an-era mood, too -- and new beginnings. Recommended!

2024/172: The Book of Chameleons — Jose Eduardo Agualusa (translated by Daniel Hahn)

The train gave a long whistle, then a bewildered, long drawn-out howl, like a red ribbon stretched across the seafront. [p. 122]

Félix Ventura, an albino, lives in a crumbling mansion in Luanda with his best friend, Eulálio, who happens to be a gecko. Félix is in the business of creating well-documented family histories for those who need them: "businessmen, ministers, landowners, diamond smugglers, generals". The novel (originally published in Portuguese with the title O vendedor de passados, 'The Seller of Pasts') opens with a photojournalist seeking an authentic new identity. Félix names him José Buchmann, and Buchmann goes off to explore his invented past -- finding elements that seem to be real.

Meanwhile, Félix begins a romance with the glamorous Ângela Luciá, who in turn introduces him to Edmundo Barata dos Reis, a homeless derelict who she says is an 'ex-agent of the Ministry of State Security'. No, howls Edmundo: "‘Not ex-agent, say rather ‘ex-gent’! Ex-exemplary citizen. Exponent of the excluded, existential excrement, an exiguous and explosive excrescence. In a word, a professional layabout." And (of course) Ângela, Edmundo and Buchmann turn out to have history together. 

This is a novel about real and invented stories, about people's pasts and how they shadow the present. Eulálio, who shares dreams with Félix, believes that he was once a man: "It’s been nearly fifteen years that my soul has been trapped in this body, and I’m still not used to it. I lived for almost a century in the skin of a man, and I never managed to feel altogether human either." (There is a subtle hint that he might have been a particular man, a famous author. There are also hints that Félix has created a history for his reptilian friend.) The prose is gorgeous, the underlying story -- rooted in the Angolan civil war -- brutal and violent. I loved Agualusa's prose and will read more by him: and I look forward to rereading this novel to better appreciate how the final conflict(s) are foreshadowed.

Fulfils the ‘A Book By A Central African Author’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/171: The Truths We Hold — Kamala Harris

... something ugly and alarming was infecting the presidential election. The Republican primary was turning into a race to the bottom—a race to anger, a race to blame, a race to fan the flames of xenophobic nativism. And the man who prevailed crossed every boundary of decency and integrity—bragging about sexually assaulting women; mocking people with disabilities; race baiting; demonizing immigrants; attacking war heroes and Gold Star families; and fomenting hostility, even hatred, toward the press. [loc. 2164]

I started reading this just before the US election, confident that it would give me an insight into the next President. ... It's taken me a while to finish it: a glimpse of a lost future. Harris is passionate about equality, about unity, about justice. I was shocked by some of the statistics she quoted ('Black babies are twice as likely as white babies to die in infancy, a stunning disparity that is wider than in 1850, when slavery was still legal') and inspired by some of the work she's done, as Attorney General of California, on reforming criminal justice. She comes across, in this 2019 book, as driven, energetic and determined: as somebody I'd enjoy knowing personally. The quotation at the top of this review is from her account of the 2016 election -- and her discussion of Russian interference in that election was chilling.

I wish she had won in 2024.

2024/170: Minor Detail — Adiana Sibli (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

... there was nothing really unusual about the main details, especially when compared with what happens daily in a place dominated by the roar of occupation and ceaseless killing. [loc. 748]

A short, powerful, harrowing novel, in two halves, that examines helplessness, brutality and occupation. The first half of the novel is set in 1949 and follows a squad of Israeli soldiers, focussing on their commander, who's suffering from a festering insect bite. In pain and hallucinating, he perpetrates horror: the slaughter of a group of Bedouin and the gang-rape and murder of a young woman. The commander is never named: nor is the girl. Her dog follows her, howling, as she's driven to her death.

The second half of the novel shifts in tone. A young Palestinian woman, never named, is determined to investigate the murder, which happened exactly 25 years before she was born. Her life is described in minute detail. (I suspect she's neurodivergent). She borrows a colleague's papers so that she can circumvent the travel restrictions and visit the IDF Museum, and the site of the Bedouin girl's death. It's a military zone. A dog is howling. She is shot.

The matter-of-fact, emotionless tone of the first half of the novel is deeply unsettling: we are told nothing about the emotions of those involved, or what happened afterwards. The young woman's narrative, which forms the second part of the book, is full of her fears of crossing borders, especially borders that she doesn't recognise. Perhaps this lack of confidence in her response to social cues is what makes me think that she might be neurodivergent. Or perhaps it is the only way she can stay sane in an occupied country, in a place where her culture has been destroyed like the villages that pepper an old map she uses, but have left no trace in the land through which she travels.

The detachment and restraint of this novel, and the clarity of the translation, made it a superficially easy read: but like blood into sand, or petrol into clothes, Minor Detail has sunk into me and affected my world view.

The story is based on a documented incident: the commander in question stood trial.

Fulfils the ‘A Book Set In A Place That Has Experienced Genocide’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge. Palestine is still experiencing genocide: I don't think it has ever stopped, and since the Hamas-led attack on Israel it has become catastrophic. In 2023, Shibli won the German LiBeraturpreis, an annual award for women authors from the Global South, for this novel: the award ceremony was cancelled due to the October 7th attacks.

2024/169: Hadriana in All My Dreams — René Depestre (translated by Kaiama L Glover)

One thing he said was very true: even in my coffin I was far closer to a carnival drum than to the tolling of church bells. [loc. 1580]

Set mostly in 1938, in the Haitian seaside town of Jacmel, this is the story of Hadriana Siloé, a white French girl who dies at the altar on her wedding day -- but has actually been zombified. The story's told, mostly, by her friend Patrick Altamont: they shared the same godmother, Madame Villaret-Joyeuse, who's reputed to have seven loins (there's a note in the afterword about the translator's difficulty in 'figuring out how to translate Depestre’s twenty or so terms for human genitalia') and whose final lover was a 'diabolical deflowerer' who'd been transformed into a butterfly. Patrick remains infatuated with Hadriana, whose death came after she said 'yes' to her wedding vows, and who's therefore the widow of Hector Danoze; whose death is celebrated not with a solemn mass but with a bacchanalian carnival; whose body mysteriously vanishes from her grave.

I liked the different modes of the narrative, from Patrick's breathless account of Hadriana's death to Hadriana's own account of ... well, of what happened next. (And what happened before the wedding: despite her family's wealth and whiteness, she was far from the helpless virginal heroine of other zombie stories, and clearly relished her sexual adventures and her 'sinfulness'.) The novel is erotic, fantastical, phantasmagorial and often very funny. I also found some scenes harrowing, in particular when Hadriana, escaping her captors, sought help in the town. The townsfolk loved their 'Creole fairy' and had just spent an evening celebrating her life and mourning her death -- but nobody would respond to her frantic banging on doors.

The Introduction by Edwidge Danticat contextualises the story as a deconstruction of the zombie trope, a negation of the typical Hollywood offering of brainless monsters. While the political context is only lightly sketched, the romanticism that echoes through this novel written in exile is lush and poignant. Danticat's introduction also mentioned 'lodyans', a term with which I wasn't familiar: it's a Haitian literary tradition, 'a tongue-in-cheek narrative genre meant to provoke laughter'.

Fulfils the ‘Inspired By Caribbean Mythology, Legend, or Folklore’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/168: The Gathering Night — Margaret Elphinstone

If young men didn’t die there’d be too many... Young men must die, just as young Animals must die when we hunt them. If there weren’t so much death we’d all perish, and not be able to come back. I’d always known that young men must die. But not my son! [loc. 258]

Set in Mesolithic Scotland, around the time of the Storegga slide, this is the story of Nekané and her family, who are of the Auk People: her daughters Haizea and Alaia, Alaia's partner Amets, Nekané's dead son Bakar, and Kemen of the Lynx People who joins them after his home and clan are swept away by a monstrous wave. Kemen also forms an attachment to Osané, a woman from another camp who's been badly beaten and does not speak. It soon becomes clear that something is wrong, perhaps in the world of the spirits: the hunters come home with less meat, and the winters are harsh. Nekané, who becomes a Go-Between -- a shamanic figure -- after her son's disappearance, slowly comes to recognise the root of the wrongness.

There's a solid belief in reincarnation, and a baby is not named until its soul is recognised: when someone dies, their name is not spoken again until they've returned. There's a strong spiritual element, but it's firmly rooted in the mundane business of survival, the constant busyness of finding food, rearing children and gathering fuel. Though Nekané and the other Go-Betweens talk of spirits and guides, there is nothing supernatural in this slow, thoughtful novel: just the accounts of the various characters, each with their own voice and concerns and bias, and the gradual revelation of crimes committed and the punishments that must be imposed.

In an Afterword, Elphinstone discusses her use of Basque names (which did feel slightly odd, but 'Basque is thought to be the only extant language of pre-Indo-European – which is to say, pre-agricultural – origin on the western seaboard of Europe.') There's more about the writing of The Gathering Night here.

I've owned a paperback of this novel for many years, and never managed to get past the first few chapters, which I find slow and melancholy. (I note that I also found Voyageurs difficult at first, though I don't recall having this problem with pre-blog Hy Brasil, or with Light or The Sea Road.) I finally read the Kindle version, and think it counts as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2024/167: Confounding Oaths — Alexis Hall

Gentlemen with fairer fortunes, fairer skin, and more interest in the fairer sex might have been able to get away with cocking a snook at a world that at once despised and admired them. [loc. 1387]

Standalone sequel to Mortal Follies, which I enjoyed very much: again, the narrator is Puck, unaccountably exiled from the court of Oberon and forced to live in modern London and pay rent. 'This is the second of those stories I have chosen to share. If you have not read the first, why not? Do you personally dislike me? Are you determined to see me suffer, interminably and without even the comforts of a scribbler’s income to lighten my exile?' 

We are reunited with Miss Bickle, who's writing a story entitled 'The Heir and the Wastrel', which is about Mr Wickham and Mr Darcy: 'carefully constructed, enthusiastically delivered, and contained a number of details that the anonymous lady author of Sense and Sensibility had necessarily elided for fear of the censors'; with Miss Maelys Mitchelmore, protagonist of Mortal Follies, and her lover Lady Georgiana; and with John Caesar, son of a Senegalese freedman and an earl's daughter. Confounding Oaths is the story of John and his relationship with Captain Orestes James, 'Wellington's favourite', a Black soldier whose squad of Irregulars includes a vitki (a Norse-flavoured seer) and Sal, who's 'a woman in a dress, a man in uniform and a devil in battle'. When the elder and plainer of John's sisters, Mary, asks a helpful fairy for 'Beauty Incomparable', Captain James and the Irregulars come to the aid of the Caesars.

This, like Mortal Follies, is great fun, witty and frothy, and full of pointed observations from our cynical narrator. The Norse influence is strong, and we pay a visit to the temple of Isis-Fortuna. Titania plays a major role, and there's an attempted sacrifice to Artemis at the climax of the novel. Confounding Oaths is much more about the fae than about the old gods, and it's set more solidly in the demimonde of London. It's a bigger world in some ways, with references to the war with Napoleon and the unsavoury occult habits of Europeans. Captain James is pleased to be 'on the side of monarchy, serfdom, and the sceptred isle, rather than the side of liberty, equality, and subjugating Europe'. 

Also features a trip to the opera (Fidelio), a visit to the Tower, and a cult named after Iphigenia. Never mind the cultists, the racists, or the misogynists: this is an excellent remedy for bad weather and low mood.