2020/114: The Midnight Library -- Matt Haig

Maybe in some lives you just float around and expect nothing else and don’t even try to change. Maybe that was most lives. [p. 80]

Nora's life is falling apart -- the death of her cat, the loss of her job, estrangement from her brother -- and she decides to commit suicide. Instead of ending up dead, though, she finds herself in a mysterious library where all the books are stories of her alternate selves, starting at the moment -- midnight -- when she's hanging between life and death. There is also a warm wise librarian, Mrs Elm, whose kindness Nora recalls from the day at school when she learnt of her father's death. Mrs Elm tells Nora the rules: "'Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’" 

 So Nora embarks on a liminal game of What If. And yes, the grass is always greener until you see it up close. The country pub she might be running with her ex? The decision to keep her cat indoors that night? The career as an Olympic swimmer? The life in the limelight as part of a successful rock band? A glaciologist? A happily-married academic? 

 There is another book in the Midnight Library, the Book of Regrets. And with each life that Nora samples, she sees a regret or two fading out of existence as she realises that all lives have good and bad elements, aspects of compromise, things one wishes one had done differently. Eh, the human condition. She also realises that many of her regrets are tangled up in other people's ideas about her: her father wanted her to be a champion swimmer, her brother wanted the two of them to be in a band, her ex Dan wanted to run a pub. 

 There has been a lot of very positive commentary about this novel, and I am happy that it's making it easier to discuss mental health issues. Yet Nora sometimes feels like a case study rather than a person. Her depression, at the beginning of the book, is at least partly situational: bad things are happening to her. As I read, I could identify the various cognitive distortions Nora was experiencing: catastrophising, believing one knows what others are thinking, personalisation, dismissing the positive ... There's also a fascinating thread left dangling, when Nora encounters another self-described 'slider' who's moving from life to life in the same way as Nora. He explains their shared state in terms of quantum possibilities and universal wave functions. Nora doesn't show much interest in this, though -- which is fair enough since it's irrelevant to the aim of the novel -- and doesn't seem inclined to attempt to contact this individual in her subsequent lives. I'd have liked to encounter him again, and for him and Nora to discuss the differences in their experiences. 

 This review is making it sound as though I didn't enjoy The Midnight Library, which is not the case. It was highly readable and there were scenes that brought tears to my eyes (and scenes that made me smile). The plethora of possible lives made me think about my own divergence points -- and the reminder, throughout, that small things can make as much of a difference as bigger things, was a timely one. I believe this novel will help a lot of people to think about their own mental health or that of those close to them: and that is a very positive thing.

2020/113: Werecockroach -- Polenth Blake

... battles were always involving me that I couldn’t control. Once I’d got over the whole spaceship thing, the aliens hadn’t turned out to be that different in the end. Most humans didn’t ask me if I wanted to be involved either. [loc. 576]

Rin, who's lost everything in a fire, is about to move into a shared flat in London. Unfortunately, moving day is also the day the alien spaceship appears over London, causing widespread panic and disruption. Rin, however, is pragmatic: their new flatmates, Sanjay and Pete, seem to respect this, and accept Rin's stated identity (non-binary, asexual, aromantic) and disabilities (partial deafness, dyslexia). Turns out this is because both Sanjay and Pete have divergencies of their own. 

 This is a short sweet novella, in which aliens abduct almost everyone in London except for Rin, Sanjay and Pete. Rin is surprised and pleased to be so quickly accepted by their companions, and together -- with the help of Rin's old friend Addie -- they manage to successfully achieve First Contact, though the aliens' translation machine is based on the Internet. ("With this one weird trick, communication with any human is possible. We hope it gives you all the feels." [loc. 1069]) Misunderstandings cleared up, a new era dawns. 

 I loved Rin and their perpetual snark, which contrasted nicely with Pete's conspiracy theories and Sanjay's solid good sense. Rin does seem to have another set of secrets, to which Addie refers: "I had a policy of waiting at least six months before I’d share with someone I’d met," thinks Rin. I am intrigued. 

 Queer, neurodivergent, and cheerful: I enjoyed this, and am pleased to discover that the author is working on a sequel.

2020/112: The Stone Sky -- N K Jemisin

...some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place. [loc. 218]

This is the culmination of the trilogy that began with The Fifth Season and continued with The Obelisk Gate. All three volumes have won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. I should probably have reread the first two volumes before starting The Stone Sky: there's no gradual easing-in, and it took me a while to remember who was who (especially as some characters go by multiple names). 

 Essun wakes from a coma to discover that, as a result of wielding the silvery power that isn't orogeny, she has begun to turn to stone. She doesn't waver from her goal: she's determined to catch the Moon, which is approaching fast on its irregular orbit, and thus end the devastating Fifth Seasons that threaten the survival of the human race. (Though: define 'human'.) Meanwhile her daughter, Nassun -- a precocious ten-year-old -- has had enough of the iniquities and abuses of the world, and would rather burn it all down. 

 Woven through the stories of mother and daughter is the history of how this world, with its Seasons and orogenes and Guardians and obelisks, came to be. This is the story of the global city Syl Anagist, and the hubris that created the orogenes' ancestors in order to harness 'geoarcanity', the magical power of the Earth. Recounting the catastrophe that led to the Shattering, the narrator's identity becomes clear, and the second-person voice of Essun's narrative is explained. 

 The timespan covered by this novel is epic, the cosmic events equally vast. Yet it's made immediate by the human stories within it, and especially by the examination of oppression, inequality, slavery. “Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.” [loc. 2221] Everything can be traced back to a refusal to treat a particular class of person as non-human, and therefore property, and therefore tools to be used. That mindset has persisted in the form of Guardians and orogenes -- the latter essential to the survival of the human race, the former ensuring that orogenes are tools (and, worse, batteries). One can hardly blame Nassun for not wanting to fix it. 

 I didn't engage with the characters as much as in The Fifth Season, but I found their stories compelling and horrific. Jemisin's writing is so powerful, full of rage and compassion and pain, and rich with concepts and images that will stay with me for a long time. This is not necessarily a happy conclusion to the trilogy, but it is right and real and hopeful.

2020/111: A Long Petal of the Sea -- Isabelle Allende

[she] had said on more than one occasion that if she died in Chile she wished to be buried in Spain, where her husband and son were laid to rest, but if she died in Spain she wanted to be buried in Chile, to be near the rest of her family. Why? Well just to cause trouble, she would say with a laugh. And yet it wasn’t simply a joke, it was the anguish of divided love, separation, of living and dying far from one’s loved ones. [loc. 3547]

In 1938, in Valencia, Victor Dalmau saves the life of a young soldier by reaching into his ribcage and palpating his heart. In 1994 Victor is living alone in the hills above Santiago in Chile, celebrating his eightieth birthday with only the memory of his dead wife for company, when a stranger arrives at his door. 

  A Long Petal of the Sea is the story of Victor and those he loves: Roser, who would have married Victor's brother if he'd survived the Civil War, and instead marries Victor to give her child a name; Carme, Victor's mother; Marcel, Roser's son; Ofelia, the Chilean aristocrat with whom he falls briefly and tragically in love. It's also the story of the Spaniards who emigrated to Chile, arriving on 3rd September 1939 -- the day war broke out in Europe -- on the Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda. 

 The initial chapters paint an uncompromising picture of the Spanish Civil War: defeat, betrayal, the rise of fascism and the desperate march across the mountains to France, where those who survived the journey were interned. Victor is fortunate to find a place on the Winnipeg, and he takes Roser with him. Their welcome in Chile is not without reservations: the usual fears of immigrants, of refugees. And within a quarter of a century, nudged by American intervention, a right-wing dictatorship takes power, and Victor is once more imprisoned. 

 This may sound far from cheerful, but the resilience and determination of the characters -- as well as their love for one another -- makes it more than simply a grim account of Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. It brought to life, for me, the difficulties faced after the war (any war) has ended, where those who've survived try to trace their families and friends. A memory of a Red Cross nurse's name, an unusual Basque surname ... any scrap of information might make the difference. (I felt that it would have been very satisfying if 'Lazaro' had contacted his saviour. He, after all, had a name to trace ...) 

 I found this a curiously compelling read. On one level it's about the horrors of war and the tensions between class, politics and friendship; on another, more comfortably, it's about how people make and preserve bonds of love and blood -- and about how those bonds persist. A good translation, in that I didn't notice any infelicities: a story of hope: and, according to the author's foreword and afterword, largely inspired by people she's known. 

 Read for the 'By Isabel Allende' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/110: Two Tribes -- Chris Beckett

...this helps to explain why the study of history is important and why it still continues, to a limited degree, even now when so many other aspects of intellectual life have become unaffordable luxuries. We need to cover up our nakedness, and the past is one of the places we go to find clothes. [loc. 1530]

Zoe is an historian, living 250 years from now in a London that has been transformed by civil war, the climate emergency and a Protectorate. She's researching the early twenty-first century, and discovers two diaries written by people whose lives intersected: Harry and Michelle. Harry is a left-wing middle-class Londoner, an architect who voted Remain: Michelle is a hairdresser in a provincial town who voted Leave. 

To Zoe, of course, this is all ancient history: 'pretty trivial stuff by comparison with what was to come'. It has no relevance any more, because neither the European Union nor the British State have survived. Instead, her London is rigidly stratified by class, surveilled by Chinese technology that can monitor conversations, and ruled by a Guiding Body of informed, scientifically-minded experts. Sometimes grey dust falls on the city: Zoe understands that this is the ash from distant wildfires. Much of the tropical zone is no longer habitable, and most of the remaining population live in poverty. 

So! Back to the cheering narrative of 2016, when Harry rents a room from Michelle and they drink wine and end up in bed. Both are single, though Harry's only just come to terms with his divorce; both have lost children. Their political views differ massively, but perhaps they can value one another enough to compromise. Michelle's views are sympathetically described, and Harry's snobbery and elitism made me wince: Michelle, at least, is less of a hypocrite. There are a few characters (mostly on the Remain side) given to lecturing, and Zoe's framing narrative gives some context. Leave voters aren't necessarily stupid; there are more important issues affecting us; however you vote, the long game will play out in the same way. 

Zoe also marvels at some aspects of 2016 life: private cars! Free healthcare! Twitter! (Apparently there are huge archives of social media from the period, available to those who work for the Cultural Institute.) The life she describes, with her crush on a colleague and their excursions into the Vauxhall Camp shanty-town, reminded me somewhat of Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden, except without the photosynthesis. And the seeds of that future are being sown in Harry and Michelle's time.  

I'd say Two Tribes was as much about social class as about politics. (Of course, one might also say that about Brexit.) Harry wants to change Michelle: he's embarrassed by her. Michelle is having none of it. Harry's London friends form a kind of echo chamber; Michelle's provincial friends have a wider, if not always well-informed, range of views. 

A surprisingly enjoyable read given the subject matter, though both stories (Harry and Michelle, Zoe writing her 'novel') fizzle out rather than ending. I don't want Zoe's future, but then I don't really want this present ...

2020/109: Madame Two Swords -- Tanith Lee

Up to that we went, to the – what had the sly carter told me those eight years in my past? – the musical boxes made of skulls, the tarot cards, death-masks. [loc. 479]

When the anonymous narrator was fourteen years old, browsing a second-hand bookshop in the French city of Troy, she discovered a small volume of the writings of revolutionary Lucien de Ceppays, two centuries after his execution. There's also a little watercolour of the author, tucked into the pages. The book and the painting become her talisman. 

 Eight years later, in abject poverty after the death of her mother, she finds herself in desperate straits and is rescued by the ancient Madame Two Swords, curator of a Museum of the Revolution. Somehow she knows about our narrator's secret treasure; and Madame, too, is obsessed with the life and death of Lucien de Ceppays. 

 Beautifully written, as one expects from Lee, and very atmospheric: there isn't much to the story, save the plain-but-principled narrator's despair and newfound hope, but the Parisian ambience of Troy and the brooding violence of la Canaille, the mob, is vividly evoked. And this may be a France where the Revolution failed and the English came in: the common 'language' is Frenish, a pidgin French-English; few characters speak pure French; there are mentions of British redcoats, and an Anglicised feeling to the city. Intriguing hints, which I expect are picked up elsewhere in Lee's vast legacy of fiction. 

 Read partly for the 'under 100 pages' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/108: Burn -- Patrick Ness

“Sometimes you just have to feel bad about a thing. Sometimes that’s the only thing that makes you human.” [loc. 1197]

Washington state, 1957: Sarah Dewhurst is fifteen years old, already accustomed to racism (her mother, now dead, was Black), and working hard on her father's farm in the hope that they can make it through another year. Her father, Gareth, has hired a dragon to clear a couple of fields, but warns Sarah not to think of the dragon as 'he', not to think of it as anything but an animal without a soul. 

Sarah thinks differently. The dragon, Kazimir, seems to like her: he protects her and her friend Jason Inigawa (born in the US of Japanese parents) from racist Deputy Kelby, and tells her that she is the subject of an ancient prophecy, and may be in danger. 

Meanwhile, over the border in Canada, FBI Agents Dernovich and Woolf -- well out of their jurisdiction -- are on the trail of a teenage assassin. Dernovich doesn't especially like Woolf, but he respects her knowledge of the Believer cult, which worships dragons, believing them to be embodied angels. (The dragons, who've withdrawn to remote regions since the last human/dragon war in the 1700s, mostly ignore the Believers.) The assassin, Malcolm, has been chosen to save the world by the Mitera Thea, the 'high priestess' of the Believers, and she's taught him the skills to ensure that nobody can stop him. Until he encounters Nelson, a queer teenager who's been kicked out by his parents and offers Malcolm a ride south.  

And any day now the Russians are going to launch a satellite, which may provoke a human war. 

I was immediately engaged by this novel, and it didn't disappoint. Ness is very good at portraying teenagers: Sarah and Malcolm are utterly credible and very relatable. I liked the older generation too: even Agent Dernovich turned out to be a decent fellow. Likeable characters (on the whole) with interesting moral dilemmas and the baggage of their own, sometimes inaccurate, beliefs. 

The worldbuilding is lightly sketched, with just enough detail to tantalise. There have been dragons in Sarah's world for millennia, though the geological record is curiously devoid of their remains. There's a dragon in the Wife of Bath's Tale; dragons are unhappy about the rise of commercial air travel. And of course there are differences that have nothing to do with dragons. Dollar bills feature Aaron Burr's portrait ... 

There's a lot to unpick in Burn: parenthood, revenge, indoctrination, homophobia and racism, the nature of prophecy, the redemptive power of love. Though there are dragons, there is also science, with Schrodinger's many-worlds hypothesis a key element of the plot. There is also quite a lot of often-explicit violence, on an individual and a mass level. (All hand-to-hand fights seem to involve someone losing a tooth.) Ness never loses control of the narrative or the multiple narrators, and the complex chains of causality seem clear and reasonable. And -- sign of a good novel -- I would like to read the characters' backstories. (How did Kazimir lose an eye?)

Published as 'young adult' (despite the body-count and the twisty plot) but very well-constructed and powerfully written.