2025/162: Magic Lessons — Alice Hoffman

A streak of independence and a curious mind meant trouble. In Martha’s opinion, a woman who spent her time reading was no better than a witch. [loc. 3165]

Prequel to Practical Magic (which I haven't read since the last millennium), The Rules of Magic and The Book of Magic (which I don't think I've read at all), this novel explores the roots of the curse on the Owens women.

The novel begins in Essex, England ('Essex County', hmm) in 1664. Maria is found as a baby, abandoned in the snow, with a crow keeping her company. She's taken in by spinster and wisewoman Hannah Owens, who teaches her the 'Unnamed Arts' -- herbalism, midwifery, and the importance of loving someone who will love you back. These are troubled times, though, and solitary women are suspect: Hannah is labelled 'witch' and killed. Maria, grieving, finally meets her birth father, who promptly sells her as an indentured servant. Maria (and her faithful crow Cadin) are off to Dutch Curaçao, there to work for five years before she can gain her freedom. 

Sadly, she forgets the important lesson about love and -- despite Cadin's best efforts -- falls in love with, and pregnant by, a man who hastily sets sail for New England. Maria journeys from Curacao to New York, and then to Salem: she's imprisoned, her daughter lost, and she lays the family curse: 'To any man who ever loves an Owens... let your fate lead to disaster, let you be broken in body and soul, and may it be that you never recover.' 

The meat of the novel explores Maria's pain and grief, her growing powers, the hard lessons she has to learn, and how she finds her way to a happy ending. Another thread of the story concerns Maria's daughter Grace, denied her heritage and discovering it for herself in ways that disturb those around her.

I found this a rather slow read. Maria is not always a likeable protagonist -- though those she helps adore her, even naming their daughters after her -- and I didn't engage with Faith. I mourned a bird more than a human character. The recipes and notes about magic were fascinating, though: and the underlying philosophy, of love and openmindedness and honesty, appeals to me.

These are the lessons to be learned. Drink chamomile tea to calm the spirit. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Read as many books as you can. Always choose courage. Never watch another woman burn. Know that love is the only answer. [loc. 5059]

2025/161: Bliss and Blunder — Victoria Gosling

Sometimes he’ll be mopping the floor and listening to a couple of the regulars, and he knows it’s not from now. It’s from before. What’s more, time is supposed to be sequential, right? One thing happening after another. Things further back receding, more recent things feeling, well, more recent. Not for Wayne. [loc. 1637]

The Matter of Britain meets Jilly Cooper! The setting is the medieval town of Abury, in Wiltshire: the characters drink at the Green Knight, where Vern the landlord has an odd agreement -- 'anything you gain you give to me' -- with Wayne the barman. Arthur is a tech billionaire, Lance is a veteran with PTSD, Gwen is an influencer, Mo was adopted from a Bangalore roadside, Morgan is ... vengeful. 

The novel opens with the celebration of Arthur's fortieth birthday, a grand gala where several old friends appear unexpectedly. Gwen can't concentrate on the festivities: she's being blackmailed. Could it be the Invisible Knight again? There are flashbacks to when they were all teenagers together in the 1990s: alliances forged and broken, grudges taking root, Arthur already making his mark as a tech genius, Morgan the target of the bullies on the school bus. And then forward again, to 'Right Here, Right Now', and an attempt on Arthur's life, the reconsideration of an old murder, the risk of a computer virus that'd wipe out civilisation.

I loved this: the resonances with Arthurian myth, the surprising but thoroughly credible identity of old John who props up the bar, the way the characters' opinions and perceptions evolve as they mature. The focus was on the women as much as the men: Morgan bemoans the fact that there are 'no epic poems, no legends, no bardic songs, no Romeo and Juliet, that exist to explain it to her. The record is nigh empty, as though women never adored each other, never went into battle, never fought the monster, never wept and bled, killed and died for each other, who separated, didn’t feel the other’s absence like a missing limb.' [loc. 1037] For me, her relationship with Gwen felt like the core of the novel. And it is a novel about how women -- whores or saints, quest objects or evil sorceresses -- behave, are expected to behave, are punished for not conforming.

I liked the love poem (or is it a confession?) hidden in the comments of a piece of code ('/* Until I found, beneath her fairness/Putrefaction. [she] died choking on roses/Embracing the lover she earned, Death*/' [loc. 2367]) and the nomenclature of the viruses and worms Arthur creates/defeats: Wasteland, the Black Prince...True, there were a couple of false notes: 'pay a ten-pound bill with a hundred-pound note' (sorry, not in this universe); 'the comet goes over a little after ten' (comets don't visibly move). But they are forgiveable in the wit and flow of the whole.

Appreciating this novel definitely requires more than a passing acquaintance with Arthurian mythology, but it's thoroughly rewarding to spot all the little references and hints. Bliss and Blunder interrogates the original stories, highlighting misogyny and re-examining canonical relationships. And it's fun: a cracking read which I galloped through.

2025/160: Olive and the Dragon — Victoria Goddard

Olive had dreamed of the next days a hundred times, for all it was no necessary tragedy for any of them, seeing fragments play out of a hundred different choices.
No necessary tragedy, if she chose aright.[loc. 61]

A novella set well before the beginning of the 'Greenwing and Dart' series, Olive and the Dragon focuses on Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive (deceased before the series proper) and her gift of seeing possibilities and probabilities. She is the heiress to the Woods Noirell, too, and she has not taken up her inheritance. There are some hard choices to make, and her son's futures have so many perils. And she has been summoned by a dragon...

I loved this, and it made me want to reread the entire series (in preparation for a new novel at the end of the year). I also found myself fixing on tiny details: Olive knows that bad times (the Fall) are coming; there is a visible companion to the Morning Star; the fairytale logic of who was and was not invited to a child's naming-day. And I think we see this same dragon again, elsewhere. 

I love the Nine Worlds, and especially Alinor, and the Woods. And, my love rekindled, I do need to reread at least some chapters of Bee Sting Cake.

2025/159: They Called Us Enemy — Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, George Takei

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, over a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans (the majority US citizens) were relocated to internment camps. George Takei's family was among those affected, and this is his account of what it was like, as a small boy, to be taken away from everything he knew. At the time it was a great and often joyous adventure, but as a teenager he raged against his father for not standing up to the authorities. Only in later life did he come to understand how his parents did whatever they could to protect their three children. 

There's a lot here about memory, and about how differently children understand the world -- especially when they are being protected from the worst of its injustices. The Takei family lost almost everything (George Takei's mother, much to her children's disgust, managed to smuggle a sewing machine to the internment camp) and had to rebuild their lives from scratch when they were finally released. It's to Takei's credit that he pokes gentle fun at his younger self, and refrains from judgment on the war games. (All the little boys wanted to be the American soldiers, not the Japanese.)

Takei also shows us the appalling decisions that the interned Japanese had to make: whether to serve in the US military, which Japanese-Americans had been prohibited from doing earlier in the war; whether to 'renounce' loyalty to the Emperor of Japan, which most of them had never had in the first place. And he shows us just how long it took the United States Government to make amends for any of it. In 1988, 'restitution payments' were announced to survivors of the internment camps: Takei received his cheque, and letter of apology, in 1991. In 2000, surviving members of the all-nisei 442nd Regiment had their medals upgraded to the Congressional Medal of Honour.

I found this very moving, and it made me wonder anew about my own family history. (My father, another 'enemy alien', was interned in France during the Second World War due to his dual Franco-British nationality. He was thirteen, and his mother died in the camp. He never talked much about it.) And, as Takei emphasises, 'old outrages have begun to resurface'. This is an important and educational book, beautifully drawn by Harmony Becker: Takei is using his voice and his popularity to draw attention not only to old horrors but to new ones.

2025/158: The Summer I Ate the Rich — Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

...what I am doing is only leveling the playing field. I have claimed my power for myself just as these wealthy people have done time and time again. And I will not feel bad about it, even if I am bending the rules to my will. [p. 319]

Brielle Petitfour is seventeen, Haitian-American, a gifted cook who's planning to start up a supper club in order to pay the bills. Her mother Valentine is in constant pain, and her health insurance won't pay out for the medication she needs. Brielle's father is out of the picture, and isn't the father of her half-sisters in Haiti, who form a Greek chorus (they're named after the Muses) to contextualise Brielle's family history. Brielle's best friend Marcello, also a chef and helping with Brielle's supper club, is expected to go into the family business: his grandmother runs a funeral parlour, which for complicated reasons is popular with the wealthy of Miami.

All of these factors -- plus a second-hand phone, a road accident and a teenage romance -- come together when Brielle's mother loses her job, and Brielle's supper club (with recipes including ingredients purloined from Marcello's family's business) becomes a sensation.

Brielle makes no bones (haha) about being a zonbi: she's not the lumbering brain-craving monster of American horror (though the opening scene is a detailed description of preparing cow brains for dinner) but an individual with an acute sense of taste, a gift for butchery, and a certain amount of innate magic. Her 'intention' not only makes her cooking delicious, but it can influence those who eat her meals. And she's extremely attuned to the chasm between her life and the lives of the rich families who employ her mother, compete to host her supper clubs, and hoard their wealth rather than helping others.

I liked this a lot. Brielle is a charismatic and relatable character whose morality, while different from the norm, is well-defined. She's loyal to friends and family, resilient, and capable of standing up to a hell-boss. I wasn't wholly convinced by the romantic element of the novel, but I really enjoyed Brielle's progress from powerless teenager to agent of change. "I know that I’ll be able to help out more than just my family. Because no matter what anyone says, there’s always more than enough to go around." [p. 382]

In an afterword, the authors (who are sisters) describe the genesis of the novel in their own experience: their mother, like Brielle's, had a pain pump that beeped every few minutes when it was empty -- which is auditory torture for anyone already experiencing chronic pain. They also write about the origins of the zombie myth and how it's been appropriated by American culture. As Brielle says in the novel, "It stems from the fear of slavery. That your existence of forced labor will continue far into the afterlife, white masters lording over you even in the next plane." [p. 28].

2025/157: Saltwash — Andrew Michael Hurley

English delapidation was... the blistered formica on the tables of a seafront cafe. Derelict gift shops and thrift shops with whitewashed windows. A pub with steel plates over its doors. Cracked, pebble-dashed sheters along the promenade, roosted by gulls. [loc. 168]

I've enjoyed Hurley's previous novels (The Loney, Starve Acre, Devil's Day -- I note that I read all those in the space of two months!) but found Saltwash thoroughly depressing: bleak, nihilistic and devoid of joy. The setting (the eponymous Northern seaside town in November, delapidated and down on its luck) is dispiriting, and the protagonist is dying of cancer and raddled by guilt. Unreasonable guilt, in my opinion.

Tom Shift has gone to the Castle Hotel in Saltwash to meet his pen-pal Oliver, whose erudite and theatrical letters have been one of Tom's few recent pleasures. He's perturbed to find that there is some sort of annual get-together happening at the hotel: none of the other guests (all elderly and/or ill) will 'spoil the surprise' but everyone is excited about the prize draw. Apparently it offers some form of deliverance from remorse, tying in with the novel's tagline: 'ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN, IF ALL CAN BE FORGOTTEN.'

Hurley's exploration of character is exceptional: there's little straightforward description, but Tom really comes to life on the page, with a difficult childhood and a long life behind him. Oliver, too, is a vivid character, who is not at all as Tom expected. However, I simply didn't accept that Tom's burden of guilt was rational: and if there was supposed to be something literally marvellous happening at the climax of the novel, it wasn't obvious enough.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 23rd October 2025.

2025/156: Dreamhunter Duet — Elizabeth Knox

'I was finished. I wanted time to stop, and to let me stop with it. And I wanted revenge.
I ... said to the land, 'Bury me, and rise up. Rise up and crush them all.' [loc. 5131]

Rereads, after reading Kings of This World -- which is set in the same alt-Aotearoa-New Zealand, rather later than the Dreamhunter duet, which begins in 1906. My original reviews from (OMG) 2005 and 2007 are here: The Rainbow Opera and The Dream Quake.

The link points to the first of two volumes: the second has only just become available on Amazon.

I remembered much more of the first book than of the second. I was struck this time round by the powerful narrative of Lazarus Hame, a convict, as recited to Laura the dreamhunter: the alternate history that he describes is quite chilling. I also noted the lack of an indigenous population in Southland: this is a version of New Zealand (South Island only) that was not inhabited by the Maori, though there are indications of a relatively amicable entente between the European colonists and the Shackle Islanders. 

There is a Place where dreamhunters can go to experience location-specific dreams, and bring them back to be shared at Dream Palaces. In the first novel the origins of the Place are a mystery: in the second, the genesis of the Place is explained -- though it is distinctly non-linear. There is something (several somethings) that might be a golem. There is tragedy, teenage romance, and government corruption; despair and redemption; joy, and the Biblical story of Lazarus and the song he heard in the tomb.

I am still thinking about these books, aided by this spoilery blogpost from the author. (And I am now tempted to reread everything else that Elizabeth Knox has ever written.)

I love the emotional precision and clarity of Knox's writing, and the sense of time being flexible and traversible: and I love the importance of love in many forms and expressions. And I love the complexity of these books.