2022/60: The Sea of Lost Girls -- Carol Goodman

“For all the town’s fascination with its dark history–the Indian massacres and early colony, the influenza epidemic and lost girls– those stores are meant to be part of the past, told on candlelit ghost tours or sold in glossy paperbacks to be read on rainy weekends the lost girls aren’t meant to come back.
But here I am. [p. 186]

Tess has secrets, but doesn't everyone? She teaches at an elite boarding school in Maine, and is married to a professor. Her teenaged son from an earlier relationship, Rudy, is troubled: but so many young people are troubled, these days. Tess just hopes his nightmares clear up and he doesn't remember the trauma in which they're rooted.

One night, Rudy phones in a state of distress, asking Tess to collect him. Four hours later, Tess learns that Rudy's girlfriend Lila has been found dead at the Point, near where Rudy was waiting for Tess. She knows Rudy didn't do it: but does she know Rudy at all?

The Sea of Lost Girls felt ... claustrophobic. Tess (whose first impulse is always to lie) seems to be trapped, her secrets about to be exposed. It gradually becomes clear that she's rotting with guilt, with shame, with self-loathing -- and that the past is never very far away.

I would probably have enjoyed this novel much more if I'd liked any of the characters. Tess vexed me: she is not to blame for what happened when she was very young, but she is certainly instrumental in the erosion of the life she's constructed in the aftermath. She's not the only character who has made poor moral choices: the pervasive sexism of modern America is mirrored in the school's production of The Crucible, and in various discussions of power and agency. There are historical elements, too: the school was originally a Refuge for Wayward Girls, and a certain kind of man gravitates to such places. (There is a positive depiction of a male character in this novel. Just the one, if you don't count poor troubled Rudy.)

I liked Goodman's prose a lot, and found her first-person depiction of a pathologically unreliable narrator not only credible, but meticulously constructed. I will probably read more by her, but the plot and characters here did not engage me as much as I'd hoped.

Read for Lockdown Bookclub.

2022/59: The Raven Tower -- Ann Leckie

“It would be a great deal easier,” the Myriad said to me, “if you would take a different body.”
“No doubt,” I agreed. “But I do not want a different body.”
“It wouldn’t need to be permanent... It would be far more convenient for the rest of us!" [p. 185]

A young man, Mawat, rides towards his home city of Vastai, accompanied by his aide Eolo. The Raven's Instrument -- an actual raven who symbolises the power of the god known as the Raven -- is expected to die soon, and the Raven's Lease, its human counterpart, must sacrifice himself thereafter. The Lease is Mawat's father, and Mawat has come home to claim his heritage. But when he reaches the Raven Tower, it is to find his uncle Hibal in the Lease's place, and his father accused of having fled rather than do his duty. Mother Zezume, votary of the God of the Silent, and Lord Radihaw, of the Council of Directions, both stand with Hibal, and counsel Mawat to accept the situation.

So far, so familiar. But it's not that simple. The narrator has not yet made themselves apparent, and they tell two distinct stories: their own history, in first person, and their observations of Mawat and Eolo, told in the second person -- not to Mawat himself, but to Eolo. It took me quite a while to work out what the narrator and Eolo have in common: it's a refusal to be shaped to others' convenience.

This is an alt-medieval world in which gods are real, and when they speak their words must be 'made true': if they speak an impossibility, or something beyond their power to make true, they will suffer and perhaps die. There are many gods in this novel, some of them more relatable than others: the Myriad, the Raven, the God of the Silent, the Mounder-Up of Skulls. These gods were taught language by humans, and they grant favours in return for worship and loyalty. If necessary, they will wage war on their worshippers' behalf. There are ways, for humans and deities alike, of tricking gods, of enslaving them, of misdirecting them: our narrator, who is known as 'Strength and Patience', recounts some of these along with their own story, which starts (more or less) with trilobites.

This is a fascinating novel, and I think the fascination for me hinges on two factors: the narrative voice of Strength and Patience, and the balance of the first- and second-person narratives. Told from another viewpoint, the story itself might not be as engaging, and the ending would seem more abrupt. The Raven Tower would be a very different, and much more conventional, novel if narrated by Eolo, much less Mawat. Leckie has taken a familiar plot (it took me a while to spot all the Hamlet consonances!) and transformed it into something quite new, many-layered and with a unique voice. I loved it, and would love to read more about this world, these gods, these mortals.

Fulfils (or half-fulfils) the 'second-person narrative' prompt for the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

2022/58: Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy -- Ben Macintyre

...he had long imagined himself as the central character in his own drama. He had played the part of a high-rolling gangster. Now, he recast himself in the glamorous role of spy. There was little thought, if any, given to whether such a course was right or wrong. That would come later. [p. 28]

A non-fiction book from the depths of my 'unread' folder, purchased in 2015 and forgotten until now. Eddie Chapman was a career criminal before World War 2: when the Germans invaded Jersey, Chapman was serving a prison sentence on the island. After his release, he went straight to the Germans' HQ and offered his services as a secret agent. After arduous training and team-bonding with his new, German colleagues, Chapman parachuted into Cambridgeshire one dark night, and promptly contacted the authorities, offering to become a double agent.

From Macintyre's account, Chapman was possessed of considerable charisma. He formed strong attachments to women (at one point he had 'two different women, under the protection of two different secret services, on opposing sides of the war' [p. 255]) and a real friendship with his German handler, Baron Stefan von Gröning -- known to Chapman as 'Doctor Graumann' -- who attended Chapman's daughter's wedding. Chapman, who died in the late 1990s, is the only British citizen to have been awarded the Iron Cross.

Macintyre writes with tremendous zest, and Agent Zigzag, while copiously footnoted with sources and commentary, reads more like a novel than a biography. I'm not sure I'd have liked Chapman, but I admire his courage and his odd loyalties: and I was genuinely touched by his enduring friendship with von Gröning.

Read for the 'Memoir | Biography | Autobiography' prompt of the Annual NonFiction Reading Challenge.

2022/57: Jews Don't Count -- David Baddiel

This – a handful of the total incidents – is why Jews don’t feel white, if by white you mean safe. [loc. 1231]

Baddiel's short book about a particular type of racism -- antisemitism -- is surprisingly cheerful for such a grim topic. As well as being funny, it's angry. Baddiel explores the intrinsic contradictions of antisemitism: Jews are 'somehow both sub-human and humanity's secret masters'. On 'yid' and 'nigger': 'the Y-word isn’t as bad as the N-word... because Jews are rich'.

This was an engaging read, because Baddiel is an accomplished and witty writer who writes from his own lived experience as well as giving an objective overview of how Jews are treated in contemporary Western culture. I learnt a lot, because (like many) while noticing specific instances of antisemitism, I hadn't been aware of the depth, the breadth and the strength of it. One key statistic that surprised and horrified me: 'in 2018, 60 per cent of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States were perpetrated against Jews (by contrast 18.6 per cent targeted Muslims).' [loc. 1218]

Read for the 'Short | 150 pages or less' rubric of the Annual NonFiction Reading Challenge: 111 pages in the print edition.

2022/56: Without the Moon -- Cathi Unsworth

Upon her first taste of gin, it had come to Lil with the force of revelation that only her looks stood between this tantalising taste of glamour and the lifetime of drudgery to which she had been assigned. She awoke in a hotel room in Paddington with a five-pound note on the pillow beside her ... [p. 81]

London, 1942: blackouts, the Blitz, servicemen from abroad, black marketeers, prostitutes, spiritualists ... Without the Moon (a line, like the chapter headings, from a popular song of the time) is a fictionalised account of the 'Blackout Ripper' murders -- four women killed in six days by a Canadian airman -- and another woman murdered on Waterloo Bridge days later. Unsworth gives us DCI Greenaway, former star of the Flying Squad (which focussed on organised crime), now with the Murder Squad: an old-school policeman with plenty of friends and contacts in the criminal underworld.

I enjoyed Unsworth's That Old Black Magic more than Without the Moon, though the two books share a setting and some characters, and a distinctly noirish ambience. I kept expecting supernatural elements, but though there (arguably) are some, they're very obliquely described. And I could have done without the grisly details of the murders. As in that previous book, Unsworth writes a lot of flashbacks: typically, Greenaway is standing somewhere, staring broodily out into the blackout night, and then reflecting on recent events.

I didn't dislike the novel, but I found it rather disappointing, without the energy and weirdness of That Old Black Magic (or, come to think of it, Weirdo). Some intriguing characters, and a powerful evocation of wartime London; plenty of cosmopolitan London slang, with its Yiddish / Polari / Cockney elements; the rough justice of the underworld.

Unsworth's ebooks seem to have been withdrawn: I'd had this wishlisted for ages before I went hunting and found it on Hive.co.uk.

2022/55: Magic for Liars -- Sarah Gailey

Fucking Tabitha. She still did that thing to her eyes, the thing that made them look bigger and more open, more alive. Not makeup, something else. Something fucking magic. I didn't like looking at myself, seeing my eyes, and knowing that she had them, the exact same ones, and had decided that they needed to be better. [p. 72]

Tabitha Gamble is a Professor of Theoretical Magic at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages. Her twin sister Ivy is a Private Investigator, who believes that her own lack of magic explains all her failings and failures. When a woman is found dead in the library at Osthorne, Ivy is recruited by the headmaster to investigate the case. She has not, until now, seen or spoken to her sister for many years, since their mother's death from cancer.

Ivy finds herself in a world she's always avoided -- and is struck by how mundane it all is. There's slut-shaming graffiti in the corridors, and the linoleum is scuffed. There's a young man, Dylan, who's convinced he's the Chosen One who will change the world. (It can't possibly be his half-sister Alexandria: 'all she cares about is eyeliner and who's friends with who and popularity' [p. 69], though Ivy is not alone in finding Alexandria unsettling, and she's certainly the queen of her clique.) There's a charming teacher, Rahul, head of the Physical Magic department, who flirts with Ivy until even she can't deny he's attracted to her. And of course there's her estranged sister, who knew the dead woman, and who Ivy still can't help wanting to be friends with.

And, to quote Doctor House, everyone lies. Ivy lies to herself as well as to others; Alexandria weaves masterful webs of deceit; Tabitha is economical with the truth ... Even the murder victim, Sylvia, may not be what she seems.

It felt to me as though this novel was more about the characters than the plot: I don't think that's a bad thing, but anyone reading for the murder mystery aspect may find it disappointing. I was not disappointed. The focus is very much on Ivy and the (mostly female) individuals with whom she interacts. There isn't a huge amount of worldbuilding (the standard 'nobody non-magical knows about the magical world' applies) and Ivy's first-person narrative means that much of the backstory is about the relationship between Tabitha and herself. There's not even a great deal of magic.

Sarah Gailey's writing is evocative and emotionally complex, and they give us an unreliable and not always likeable narrator (Ivy did remind me, at times, of Evelyn in The Echo Wife, though she has too little power rather than too much) and makes us care about her. And we care, too, about the young women at the school, and the subplot of medical magic (particularly as it applies to women); and we care about dead Sylvia, whose room Ivy stays in while she's investigating.

A downbeat but utterly credible ending: a book I'll want to return to, I think.

2022/54: River Kings: the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads -- Cat Jarman

Combined with the scientific evidence that women were part of the migration both into and out of Scandinavia, we really can’t exclude their agency from those worlds any longer. We have to carefully consider what roles they had; whether they were warriors, wives, traders, slaves (or slavers) or explorers. [loc. 1981]

The story starts with a single carnelian bead found 'within the detritus of a Viking terror attack' in Repton, Derbyshire. Jarman, investigating how it came to be there, reveals a network of trade, violence and exploration stretching from northern England to Byzantium and to Gujarat, the likely source of the bead.

I found this a fascinating account of Viking society. Jarman worked on the Repton excavations, as well as on several other important Viking sites: she explores the river-routes through what is now Russia, the origins of the Rus', the roles of women (from slave girls to powerful traders), and a myriad fascinating insights. For instance, I didn't know that much of the silver found in Viking hoards came from melted-down dirhams, or that Vikings may have buried those hoards due to a handy get-out clause that allowed a dead warrior, bound for Valhalla, to 'take not just what he had with him on his funeral pyre, but also what he had hidden in the ground'. [loc. 2038]. I learnt about double burials -- often two people of the same sex, like the two women of the Oseberg grave -- and the probability of human sacrifice as part of the funeral ritual.

Sometimes the account felt a little repetitive, as is to be expected when different aspects of the same situation are explored. There's a passage on sacrifices (slaves were asked to volunteer -- both male and female slaves) where I felt Jarman could have discussed homosexual behaviour. And at one point Jarman referred to a female scientist by her first name, which is (to say the least) impolite: I did not find any instances of male scientists being treated in this way.

Overall, though, a very readable, interesting and informative book. (It's also made me want to reread Rosemary Sutcliff's Blood Feud, about a Viking and an Englishman travelling to Byzantium.) I initially gave River Kings three stars but on reflection have amended this to four, as I found myself thinking and talking about it a lot.