2018/85: The Marquess of Gorsewall Manor -- Adella J. Harris

“Very pleased to meet you properly, Mr. Brook. His lordship found you out on the moors. He said he thinks you were waylaid by highwaymen.” She gave me a look that told me she thought no such thing, nor did his lordship, in her opinion, but she wouldn’t argue with him. [loc. 360]

A lightweight M/M Regency romance with Gothic overtones, and rather too many anachronisms ('sussed') and typos 'coal shoot').

Thomas Brook is caught up in a raid on a London molly-house, but escapes the pillory and heads north out of the city, living hand to mouth. Somehow he makes it all the way to Yorkshire, where he passes out on the moors and is rescued by the handsome and mysterious Lord Elmsby. As Thomas begins to recover -- and to notice some oddities about Gorsewall Manor, such as the noises in the walls and the sense of being watched -- Lord Elmsby offers him work cataloguing the library.

Thomas finds Lord Elmsby attractive, and eventually realises that this is reciprocated. But then the remains of a young woman are found on the moors: rumour has it that the body belongs to Lord Elmsby's former fiancee, believed to have fled with a mystery lover on the eve of her wedding. Could Lord Elmsby be to blame? And can Thomas continue their relationship, under the circumstances? Perhaps he should investigate the murder himself.

I didn't find either of the protagonists especially likeable or well-characterised. Thomas in particular seemed rather emotionless about having possibly slept with a murderer. I'm happy to say there's a happy ending, but I never doubted there would be -- suspense was definitely lacking.

2018/84: A Skinful of Shadows -- Frances Hardinge

When a country is torn in two, it splits in surprising zigzags, and it is hard to guess who will find themselves on one side and who on the other. There were stories of families divided, friends taking up arms against each other, towns where neighbour warred against neighbour. [loc. 1246]

Makepeace never knew her aristocratic father. She lives with her mother, and her aunt and uncle, in Poplar, near London. Times are unsettled, and Makepeace's childhood is not a happy one. Her mother forces her to spend nights in the graveyard, fighting off ghosts: but Makepeace doesn't understand why, until her mother dies and Makepeace, ridden by guilt, goes out to the marshes to search for her mother's ghost ...

Then her father's family, the Fellmottes, seeks her out, and Makepeace is sent to the chilly old mansion of Grizehayes. Far from being welcomed with open arms, she's set to work in the kitchen, where she encounters James, a half-brother she never knew existed. The two of them plot to escape -- though James is convinced that escape is impossible -- and start to understand the fate that awaits them. For the Fellmotte family has an ancient gift, or curse: the ability to house the ghosts of the recently-dead. And such receptacles are valuable.

Makepeace, who is the sort of girl who attacks people who are cruel to animals, is already making unexpected use of her gift, but does not care to be a vessel for the family's forebears. James, on the other hand, is horribly tempted by the power that the Fellmotte elders promise. And as though this conflict weren't sufficient, the country itself is at war, King versus Parliament. Makepeace doesn't care who wins: she just wants to live. But with a Royal Charter gone missing, a cunning spymistress with a secret agenda, and James' disappearance in battle, Makepeace finds herself embroiled in politics.

It's hard to read this novel and not think of Brexit and the schism it's created in British society: but the civil war is not the focus of the story, except inasmuch as it's a metaphor for different belief systems forced to share space. Makepeace is aptly named: with common sense and stubbornness she encourages acceptance, if not actual harmony, between opposite factions. And she is determined to maintain her sense of self -- a laudable aim in anyone, but especially a teenage girl without resources. She's not afraid to stand up for herself and her rights -- and the rights of those under her protection.

Hardinge makes the Fellmottes monstrous, but not without cause. Their ascendancy is based on retaining key memories and skills over generations, and they believe that their gift is God-given. That gift does confer real power, though seldom upon anybody who is not a white male. (I did like Lady Morgan, and found her particular brand of villainy wholly reasonable.)

Some delightful passages, too, concerning the war: here is Helen, a Royalist agent (likely based on Jane Whorwood), smuggling gold to the king via the laundry service.
"‘They gave you special pass as a laundress?’
‘Of course. He is the King.’ Helen gave a lopsided smile. ‘God’s appointed. They cannot help but revere him, even as they fight him. Rebelling against him is only treason. Leaving him to wallow in common filth would be sacrilege.’
‘They want His Majesty defeated and brought to heel,’ Peg explained. ‘But they do not want him smelly.’" [loc. 2430]

2018/82: Midwinter -- Fiona Melrose

I’d struck my boy and now we were all in this great sucking bog. Tom was in it with us. There was nowhere to go with all that. Nowhere at all. All the years of work to make things right, to save the farm, to get us back to where we were, before it all, come to nought. For so long I’d kept Kabwe apart from Vale and me. No need to have any of that coming back here with us and start to unsettle things and yet here it was sitting in the car with us, squatting in the road half dead and needing to be run down. [loc. 1427]

Noticing the title in the 'New' folder on my Kindle, I thought this might be a suitable novel to read just after the winter solstice. It was, but not for the obvious reason: Midwinter refers to father and son Landyn and Vale Midwinter, Suffolk farmers, who are struggling to keep their farm running and are haunted (perhaps literally) by Cessie, Vale's mother and Landyn's wife, who died in Zambia a decade before the events of the novel.

The action of the book takes place in winter, true. It opens with a drunken prank that goes wrong: Vale and his friend Tom steal a boat, and there's an accident. Midwinter unravels the causes and effects of that accident -- the morass of guilt, blame and grief that divides father and son, Vale's formless rage at the opportunities he's lost and the ones he's wrecked, Tom's almost swashbuckling hunger for adventure -- and ranges both backward and forward from that night on the river.

Melrose's writing is superb: the two men's voices are utterly distinct, yet clearly both rooted in the same rural setting. I could almost hear them, especially the rhythm and roll of Landyn's narrative. He's determined to farm traditionally, despite the encroachment of multinationals and new agricultural methods. Landyn's connection with the land is profound without being mystical -- though he does feel haunted, hunted, by a fox who seems attuned to his dreams. Vale, meanwhile, for all his incoherent anger, never seems to seriously consider abandoning the farm for a different line of work. And perhaps, near the end of the novel, there's a hint as to why.

Not a cheerful book, but very powerful: and spring does come, and closure, and clarity for the reader if not the characters.

2018/83: Transcription -- Kate Atkinson

Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (‘The clowns are the dangerous ones,’ Perry said.) [loc. 1234]

Transcription opens in 1981: Juliet Armstrong, sixty years old, has just been hit by a car on her way home from a Shostakovich concert at the Wigmore Hall. She remembers hearing the Leningrad symphony at the Proms in 1942: and that seems to open the floodgates, for almost at once we are back in 1950, when Juliet works for the BBC (a producer in Schools), and receives a warning: 'you will pay for what you did'. And thence back to 1940, when Juliet works for MI5 transcribing the treasonous utterings of Nazi sympathisers in the flat next door.

Wartime Juliet is a capable spy, going undercover as a vacuous socialite, assuming and discarding other identities with ease and aplomb. Her colleagues, both male and female, are equally mutable. Despite her competence, though, Juliet is possessed of a certain naivete: she fails to spot that her boss, Perry, is gay; and more importantly, is oblivious to the double-agent dealings happening around her. (To be fair, the spy genre was in its infancy at this point: the tropes we regard as cliched -- for instance a newspaper left by one man and swiftly collected by another -- were probably cutting-edge tradecraft in 1940. On the other hand ... "It was rather exciting, as if she were in a Buchan novel or something by Erskine Childers.")

Post-war Juliet is rather less in her element. She is unmarried; she encounters people from her past, but they pretend not to know her; she's haunted by something terrible that happened when she worked for MI5; she is brittle, aimless, and bored.

I would probably have enjoyed this novel more if I'd liked Juliet, but I think that's part of the point: to be drawn into her life, to see things as she does, to share her fears and her exasperation -- Juliet is frequently exasperated, by sexism, by stupidity, by the inconveniences of post-war life. Perhaps she does feel superior to those around her. Perhaps she's right.

When I finished the novel I noted that I felt the climactic revelations (or some of them) had come out of nowhere: that the ending felt rushed. On reflection, I think those revelations were signalled throughout -- indeed, from the brief 1981 introduction, the accident after the Shostakovich concert. A masterful construction, with (as is usual in Atkinson's novels) recurring themes and motifs -- small dogs, dead mothers ...

Incidentally, this novel contains a line which I found depressing: Juliet is musing on why she doesn't play the piano any more, though she does own a gramophone.

Listening, not playing – in the same way that reading was the opposite of writing. [loc 2761]

I think I disagree. Or perhaps I think that consuming and producing are two sides of the same activity.

2018/81: Vesuvius by Night -- Lindsay Davis

Save the rich and sod the poor. What changes? [loc. 838]

A novella covering the night of August 24th, AD 79, and the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Nonius, a petty thief, shares a room with a painter named Larius. Larius is, on the whole, a good man: Nonius, who would like to steal Larius' earnings (but can't find them because the money is spirited away by Larius' young daughter) is not.

So the two of them are going about their daily business (mixing paints; murdering a lover's husband) when the eruption begins. Both try to flee. One escapes the catastrophe: one does not.

Davis' authorial voice is strong here. When Larius wishes he could capture the scene in paint, Davis adds 'Generations of painters would strike awe in viewers with their Vesuvius by Night'. Damningly, she highlights the lack of any evacuation effort. And some of the victims, whose remains are still being excavated, are depicted here, compassionately and as individuals: "'When can we go home?' pleaded a sad, scared child. 'Not yet,' said Ollia. She did not know that they might as well have done." [loc 792]

I'm not sure it works either as fiction (too much commentary) or as dramatised non-fiction, but reading it so soon after Black Opera -- which also features an eruption of Vesuvius, but doesn't focus on the victims -- was poignant as well as pertinent.

Note: a quick google indicates that Larius is in fact a nephew of the better-known Marcus Didius Falco.

2018/80: Dogs of War -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

Master says we must kill all of them. Honey says this is because we are on a covert operation. Bees concurs. Dragon doesn't care now he has neutralised his target. I don't care because I am doing what Master wants and Master will be happy with me. I am Rex. I am a Good Dog.

Rex is a Good Dog, who is happy when he does what his Master tells him to do. He is also a Bioform: a genetically and biologically enhanced supersoldier based on canine stock, leading a multiform pack consisting of Bees, Honey and Dragon, each of whom has a different skillset. Bioforms, says the Pope, have no souls, but Rex and his pack have distinct personalities, quite aside from their engineered behaviours. Rex in particular relies on the programmed hierarchy to understand his world: without it, he finds himself (and other members of the pack) beginning to question the rectitude of his Master's comnmands.

At first unexpectedly free, and then obliged to interact with humans who are not defined as enemy nor as friend, Rex -- who is only one of the viewpoint characters in Dogs of War -- struggles with ethical and practical dilemmas. The humans, and post-humans, in the story have different issues to deal with. Is Rex an individual or a weapon? Should he and his pack be imprisoned, or decommissioned, or something else?

Dogs of War, recommended by New Scientist as 'a gripping dive into bioethics and artificial intelligence', is unashamedly manipulative. (By which I mean I cried.) It's a quick and fascinating read, with distinct narrative voices and vivid descriptions, and it explores a number of themes: slavery and freedom, culpability, sacrifice, intelligence, dirty wars ('The human he was talking to named some places that might need a war, and Master said that we should just make one if we couldn't find one...' [loc 3031]) and notions of post-humanism. It's often humorous, and there is a warmth to the interactions -- not just the ones involving humans, either -- that makes the book emotionally powerful as well as philosophically interesting. Plenty of strong female characters, too: again, not all human. I really enjoyed this.

2018/77: Black Opera -- Mary Gentle

"...I don't deny that, by the singing of Mass, the sick are healed, daily, and ghosts are laid to rest, and the walking dead appeased. I've seen this... I do deny that this has anything to do with a Deity! Nothing about it demands a god in explanation." [p. 41]

Black Opera might as well have been written for me: alternate history, bel canto opera, atheists amid miracles, strong female characters (some of them passing as men), complex emotional and sexual relationships, heretics, friendships between members of different social classes ... Yet it has taken me five years to finish reading this book. I read half of it on a rather unhappy holiday, then set it aside. Before I restarted it, I thought this was because I had simply been distracted, or had wanted to forget the context in which I'd read it. Now I've finally finished it, I think it's in part a problem with the space between my hopes and reality.

The novel's set in the 1830s, in Naples, though there is a prequel set in Indonesia in 1815. Conrad Scalese is a librettist whose latest opera, Il Terrore di Parigi, ossia la morte di Dio, has been a rousing success. Unfortunately it has also attracted the wrong kind of attention, in that the theatre in which it premiered was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. Since this is a world where miracles are commonplace, the destruction of the theatre is regarded as confirmation of Conrad's heresy, and he's arrested -- objecting vociferously that he is an atheist, and that science and philosophy can explain everything.

Explain this, says Ferdinand, King of the Two Sicilies, and tells Conrad about a group of Manichean heretics who are producing an opera with the intention of freeing 'the Prince of this world' -- Satan. Conrad suddenly has a new commission, the creation of a counter-opera: and then discovers that the composer with whom he'll be working is Roberto, Comte d'Argente and the husband of Conrad's lost love, Leonora. Who turns out to be in an interesting condition.

Add an opera plot about conquistadors, Aztecs and Amazons; an opera company replete with colourful individuals; a subversive sub-plot concerning Napoleon Bonaparte (who had a narrow victory at Waterloo); at least one cross-dressing character; at least one trans characters; two types of ghost; vulcanism ...

And yet, and yet. The first half of the novel takes place over six weeks or so, and spends a lot of time discussing the minutae of opera composition: changes to the plot, the characterisation, the music. (There is much more happening but Conrad's focus is on his commission. Otherwise he might notice how repetitive his thoughts were becoming.) The second half of the novel, by contrast, takes place on a single apocalyptic afternoon. The change of pace is jarring, and it took me a while to adjust: and then, as the story winds down, everything after felt a bit rushed.

On one level Black Opera is absolutely fascinating and very enjoyable, and I would probably have adored it if I had liked Conrad more. On another level, it feels like a Baroque opera rather than bel canto: too much filler, not enough dramatic passion.

2018/78: Lies Sleeping -- Ben Aaronovitch

"You can do magic, Peter ... you can shoot fireballs out of your fingers and your girlfriend is a river. That kind of shit. Like possessed BMWs and just all of it. All of that shit."
"That's different," I said. "That shit is real." [loc. 1955]

In which the origins of the entity known as 'Punch' are revealed, Martin Chorley messes up, Molly is reunited with an old friend, and Peter gets several surprises (not all of them nasty). Also, foxes.

Martin Chorley, far from being all but defeated, has a long-term plan that's rooted in London's bloody history and designed to harness the power of gods old and new. There's a great deal here about Roman and Saxon London, which I enjoyed immensely: there's also a plethora of pop-culture references (Lord of the Rings 'films, not books'; The Buried Giant, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Back to the Future ...) and some splendid action sequences set in the less-touristy parts of London (Shoreditch, High Holborn etc).

Things have certainly changed by the end of the novel, and I look forward to reading the next in the sequence. But I also felt that the charm of earlier books was diminished. Oh, there's plenty of magic (spectacular and otherwise) and action and humour; but there is less of Peter's, or the other apprentices', education, and (boo) less Nightingale. There are also errors and typos that should have been caught by an editor (was it the fourth or seventh Earl of Bedford who built St Paul's, Covent Garden?), and rather more loose ends than usual. (Some of these, I think, are references to or are picked up in the graphic novels, which I haven't yet read.) On the whole, a very enjoyable read, but not in my top three novels of the series.

2018/79: The Silent Companions - Laura Purcell

All those toys, the memorabilia of childhood. Perhaps it was different if you grew up happy, with memories of your father dandling you on his knee and your mother kissing your tears away. But for Elsie there was nothing but fear. Fear for the baby. Fear of the baby. [p. 58]

Elsie, pregnant and recently widowed, makes her first visit to her late husband Rupert's ancestral home, The Bridge. She is accompanied by Rupert's cousin, the mousy-locked Sarah, who provides a shred of human contact in an inexplicably hostile household. The servants are resentful and uncooperative, whilst the villagers are actively unpleasant. Something about a skeleton in the garden, and a lady of the manor who was a witch ... Elsie, pragmatic and tough, has little time for their superstitions. But then a locked door is briefly left open, and she discovers the journal of Anne Bainbridge, who lived in the house two centuries before Elsie's time. She also discovers a Silent Companion -- a painted, two-dimensional wooden figure that Elsie finds strangely captivating.

The framing narrative is set some years later, when Elsie is in an asylum and has come under the care of a new doctor: we know from the first page that she survives, and that something terrible happens to her. The frisson of terror comes from the gradual unfolding of events: this is a very atmospheric read, a novel of Gothic sensibilities and familiar tropes. (The shop that sells something dangerous and cannot be found again; the moving eyes of a painted figure; the erratic behaviour of the cat, Jasper, who I am happy to say survives the climax of the novel.) And the story revealed in Anne Bainbridge's diary -- what a shame they only have the first volume! -- felt oddly familiar...

I did not especially like Elsie, who seemed bitter and cold, though I very much admired her survival instinct. She's an orphan, her only family being her brother Jolyon, who's twelve years younger than her. (Like a secret compartment or a locked room, that detail opens up a subtly-hinted plot element.) She could, she thinks, have come to love her husband, but they were married only for a month. The men in the story are mostly absent: although the local vicar seems a pleasant chap, we barely meet him. Elsie's brother has no time for her increasing anxiety; her husband is, of course, dead (in somewhat suspicious circumstances); and Elsie's father met a gruesome end in the family's match factory. Elsie is very much alone, except for Sarah: except for the Silent Companions, and the story they can't speak.

Well-paced and creepy, with an excellent twist and that secret compartment of a plot complication: I didn't find the backstory wholly convincing, but I greatly appreciated the structure.

2018/76: The Wych Elm -- Tana French

... every time I thought of [what they found] my mind ran aground on the flat, stunning, unbudging reality of it; there didn’t seem to be any way to think beyond or around it. It reminded me, with a deep sickening lurch in my stomach, of my few memories from right after the attack: disconnected images stripped of any context or meaning, only and vastly and unthinkably themselves... [loc. 3021]

Toby Hennessy thinks he's a lucky man. He's grown up in a comfortable middle-class family: he's handsome, charming, et cetera: nothing bad has ever happened to him. At the outset of The Wych Elm, he's handling publicity for an art gallery. They're about to put on a new show featuring art by what might politely be termed 'disadvantaged youth': Toby discovers that Tiernan, his colleague, is 'improving' the art, and keeps quiet until the boss finds out. Toby's luck holds, of course, and it's Tiernan who loses his job.

But then something bad does happen: Toby surprises burglars in his flat, and ends up in hospital with a head injury and bad PTSD. He can't cope by himself ... but then his Uncle Hugo, who is terminally ill, invites him to stay at the Ivy House. The place brings back fond memories of long-ago summers for Toby, and he agrees. He even ends up helping Hugo with his genealogical work ('They’re afraid that they’re not who they always thought they were, and they want me to find them reassurance,' says Hugo when Toby asks him why people want to know about their ancestry).

And then Toby's nephew discovers something horrible in the garden, and Toby starts to wonder if he is actually who he always thought he was.

That's the first third of the book. The remainder charts the disintegration of Toby's sense of self. It's a stunning tour de force of PTSD, gaslighting, unforeseen consequences and morally dodgy police work. (Yes, there are detectives here, though not characters we've met in French's 'Dublin Murder Squad' novels). The final chapters, in particular, are a masterclass in tension and resolution: because everything is connected, and small actions that should mean nothing can matter immensely.

I found Toby's narrative, his struggle to make sense of everything, compulsively readable: I also very much liked his cousins Susannah and Leon. Susannah in particular is sharp as a knife in a linen drawer, and perhaps the most articulate individual in the novel: her speech about people who treat you as though you're not a person (something that Toby, of course, is only just starting to experience, with his slurred words and confusion) is very powerful.

For many readers (myself among them) this novel's title will evoke Bella in the Wych Elm: I'd also, fairly recently, read a novel based on that case, Cathi Unsworth's That Old Black Magic. Aside from the site of the remains, there are no similarities: but I wonder if French was making a deliberate reference. (She does talk about it a bit, in this spoilery interview.)

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My honest review is: so good I may actually buy a copy as well as having the review copy!

2018/75: Freedom and Necessity -- Steven Brust and Emma Bull

Beside your letter, as empirical and sensible as any Rationalist might pen, mine seems full of "a host of furious fancies." Well, I am resolved to let our mystery spin itself out as a philosopher's experiment. [loc. 146]

Reread on the occasion of its becoming available in ebook format. Apparently I first read this in 1997: original review here.

Freedom and Necessity is set in 1849. James Cobham is presumed dead after a boating accident, until his cousin Richard receives a letter from him: he's working as a groom at an inn near Portsmouth, and recalls nothing of the last few months. The two enter into correspondence, trying to deduce what might have befallen James, and why, and at whose hand. Cue dastardly plots, railway journeys, cross-dressing, plenty of swashbuckling, and scenes of domesticity featuring Friedrich Engels.

Given the authors and the publisher (Tor), it's tempting to approach this as a fantasy novel: however, it's more of a historical novel with fantastical undertones. It's an epistolary novel, and the four letter-writers have different perspectives on the supernatural. Kitty takes opium and is prone to mysticism; her lover Richard regards cold iron and mistletoe as sensible precautions; their cousin Susan is enormously pragmatic and clear-sighted; and James believes in revolution, the freedom of the workers, and dialectical necessity.

On rereading, I wondered whether the two authors had initially intended to write a novel of the fantastic and then been drawn in by the complex history of the class struggle in the mid-nineteenth century. There's a great deal of discussion of Chartism, workers' rights, social mores (and how they may be sidestepped or subverted), et cetera. But I don't think it's accidental that the hints of the supernatural never coalesce into anything definite. There are magical rites, in the background of the novel: but whether these have any effect on reality (except for the realities of those, innocent or otherwise, who are victims of those rites) is open to discussion. There are characters who believe that they are performing magic. There are scenes where even the most level-headed observer (Susan!) are not quite sure of what they are observing. (And there are a couple of descriptions which seemed fantastical to me -- a very ugly gnomish coachman, a man who seems to cast a fatal spell on a young woman -- though are not treated as such by the text.) But everything's deniable.

Freedom and Necessity is a long novel, and a complex one: some events are only ever alluded to, never described, while others are told and retold as James, Susan, Kitty and Richard write to one another, and write (privately, and with different motives) in their journals. Plenty of unreliable narration here! But once I'd fallen into the rhythm of the book and the company of the characters, it was, again, a delight to read. As well as the political and philosophical elements, there's an exciting adventure story here, and an epic romance between two strong individuals. And though the occasional Americanism jars, the overall tone is reminiscent of the more exciting parts of Victorian literature.

2018/74: The Stranger Diaries -- Elly Griffiths

‘Diaries don’t tell you what people think. Just what they think they think.' [loc. 2556]

I've been reading and enjoying Griffiths' Ruth Galloway books (most recently The Chalk Pit) for years, so was keen to read this standalone novel, set in West Sussex rather than North Norfolk: thanks to NetGalley for the review copy of The Stranger Diaries, in exchange for this honest review!

The Stranger Diaries is a Gothic thriller with three first-person narrators: schoolteacher Clare, whose friend Ella has been found dead; Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, who (together with her partner DS Neil Winston) is investigating Ella's death; and Georgia, Clare's teenage daughter, who has quite a few secrets of her own, and doesn't share them all on social media.

Clare Cassidy is a divorcee who's moved to Sussex to start a new life with her daughter Georgia. Clare teaches English and creative writing at Talgarth High, formerly the home of Victorian ghost-story writer R. M. Holland, a figure who has fascinated Clare since she read his short story 'The Stranger' in her teens. She's working on a book about Holland, and wondering whether the school is really haunted by the ghost of his wife -- or his daughter, if she even existed -- when her comfortable life is interrupted by the death of her friend and colleague Ella. Someone (the killer?) had left a note by Ella's body: 'Hell is empty': not just a quotation from The Tempest, but also a line from Holland's 'The Stranger'. And then Clare begins to find notes in her private diary, in a handwriting she doesn't recognise...

This is a well-paced and twisty murder mystery with a feast of red herrings. The male characters are, on the whole, unsympathetic: Clare's ex-husband Simon is brusque and unreliable, Georgia's friend Patrick prone to dramatics, DS Winston ineffectual, Clare's head of department Rick an unscrupulous adulterer. In contrast, the female narrators have distinctive voices and intriguingly varied perspectives on the situation.

And there are diaries throughout: R. M. Holland's diary, much studied by Clare; the diaries that Clare keeps ('like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel', says Harbinder disparagingly); Georgia's carefully-polished entries on the site MySecretDiary. ('I can’t imagine how it must feel to write your diary by hand, knowing that you only have one chance to express yourself, that the ink is on the paper for ever,' she muses.) The thing with diaries, of course, is that you can never be entirely sure that nobody else is reading them. Or that you've told the truth to yourself.

There were a couple of points, especially regarding standard police practice, where my sense of disbelief fell flat: but on the whole The Stranger Diaries is an excellent read, full of autumnal atmosphere and hints of the supernatural, and threading the text of R. M. Holland's (imaginary) story 'The Stranger' through the gathering menace of the contemporary plot.

2018/73: Bone Rider -- J. Fally

... 'They’ll never believe you’re not under my control. They’ll think I contaminated you. Maybe they’ll think I laid eggs in you. Or that I’ll burst out of your chest. Or other gross things. They’ll— '
“Shut up,” Riley ordered, chilled by the utter belief and gnawing horror in McClane’s voice. No surrender. [loc 4558]

The romantic, steamy and bloodthirsty story of a Russian hitman, a Texas slacker, and the smartass sentient alien armour that ... complicates their lives.

Bone Rider opens onboard an alien spaceship, which subsequently crash-lands in Texas. This is because System Six, a self-aware symbiotic armour system, does not want to be scrapped. It's not his [sic] fault that his bond with his host is imperfect. Fleeing the US military, System Six encounters Riley Cooper, also on the run after discovering that his boyfriend is actually a hit-man for the Russian mob.

System Six is nothing if not adaptable. Riley makes ... well, not an excellent host, but an interesting one, and he exposes his new friend to Earth culture, including a Die Hard marathon: System Six adopts the name McClane, and the two (in one body) flee the growing number of parties interested in capturing or killing one or both of them.

Meanwhile, Misha will stop at nothing to get Riley back. And the US Government will stop at nothing to retrieve the alien technology that Riley's hosting. Riley, on the other hand, is becoming quite enamoured of his armour, which turns out to have some surprising talents.

This was immense fun, though there are some significant flaws: far too many viewpoint characters; canon-typical violence where 'canon' is the Die Hard school of Hollywood thriller, i.e. really bloodthirsty; an ending that seems somewhat facile; some unresolved tensions and issues. On the other hand, it's surprisingly strong on female characters for a gay romance -- I especially liked Misha's sister -- and the protagonists are credible, rounded individuals. It's also a very funny novel, and I really wish I'd read it before I saw Venom ...

2018/72: Fire and Hemlock -- Diana Wynne Jones

"if I were to tell you what they were in That House, you’d laugh and not believe me. Nowadays they lay it on the men not to tell, you know.” [p. 306]

Reread: I hadn't read this for a long time, but remembered a surprising amount of detail, from Polly's doubled memories to her removal of the opal necklace that's supposed to protect her from malefic forces.

Polly is about to return to university when a stray thought unravels the realisation that she's forgotten a very important part of her life. For several years, as an adolescent, she had an intense relationship with the cellist Thomas Lynn. Strange things happened while they were together, almost as though the stories they told one another were somehow coming true. Then, Polly seems to remember, she did something awful ...

Fire and Hemlock is Diana Wynne Jones' treatment of the stories of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer -- pretty young men stolen away by the Queen of Faerie. It's also a story about the making of a female hero, Polly: and it has uncomfortable undertones of grooming. Thomas Lynn, the young musician who's doomed to be the next tithe to hell, moulds Polly into the kind of person who might be able to rescue him: he does this by telling her stories, sending her books, and generally encouraging her to be self-reliant and courageous.

Without Mr Lynn, Polly's life might be very bleak. Her parents are separated: her father is feckless, her mother paranoid. Only Granny -- her father's mother -- provides any kind of stability ... especially after Polly's memories are amended by Laurel, who, if not the actual Queen of Elfland, is certainly a powerful supernatural force. Polly forgets Tom, and Laurel: but Laurel does not forget Polly.

This time around I found myself rather more sympathetic towards Laurel. She does merely what is in her nature. And to a greater or lesser extent she is as trapped by her story as Thomas is. It's hard to be sure what she is keeping at bay: Jones never makes clear the fate that awaits Tom, or the origin of the powers that Laurel wields. But, despite her power, she is not omnipotent: and her 'chilly logic' binds her as much as it binds her victims.

After reading this I watched the 1970 film The Devil's Widow, also a reworking of the Tam Lin story: this one is set in the late 1960s and features Ava Gardner as the older woman, and Ian McShane as her latest prey. It's an odd film (as you can tell just by looking at the poster) and not wholly successful, but very atmospheric: I do wonder whether Diana Wynne Jones ever saw it.

There are so many layers to this book: I wonder what I'll notice next time around? (And will it be in nine years' time?)

2018/71: King Hereafter -- Dorothy Dunnett

"What else were you born for?"
"Why not happiness, like other men?" Thorfinn said.
"You have that," said his foster-father. "But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right."
"I resist because it is no use resisting," Thorfinn said. "Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me." [loc. 5055]

Dunnett's epic standalone novel, dealing with the life and death of the historical Macbeth, and theorising -- based on years of original research -- that Macbeth and Earl Thorfinn were the same person.

This isn't my favourite of her works: rereading, I'd forgotten just how much discussion of history and religion she packs in. (Much more religion than usual, because part of the story -- though not the focus -- is the tension between the pagan faith of Thorfinn-Macbeth's youth and the Christianity which promises a more practical and peaceful future.) But, rereading for some salient details about Vikings in the Isle of Man (spoiler: did not find any) I was beguiled all over again by the prophecies of Thorfinn's stepson Lulach the holy fool; by the forces that pull Thorfinn in different directions, embodied in hearty Norse foster-father Thorkel, gentle priest Sulien and stoic wife / political pawn Groa.

There is a great deal of beautiful prose here: Dunnett perhaps pays more attention to landscape and seascape, because less happens in urban contexts than in the Niccolo or Lymond series. King Hereafter, with Thorfinn's love of the sea and a host of vivid descriptions of seafaring, makes me suspect that Lady Dunnett loved to sail (see also the Johnson Johnson books. And, I suppose, Mr Crawford's galley-years?)

As in her other books, King Hereafter has a multitude of viewpoint narrators, all looking inward to Thorfinn, whose narrative voice is seldom present. He is, after all, the hero: the man who tries to create from feuding islands and little kingdoms something called 'Scotland' (well, Scotia) centuries before it's ready. There's an interesting insight into early medieval 'Scotland': it had no towns. "But the desert offers no protection to the young and the old and the sick …" [loc 9839]

A hint of homophobia (in regard to Rognvald, the golden-haired cousin who hates Thorfinn) and period-typical violence, rapine, and brutality: but these flesh out the bones of the history, rather than being used to elicit anachronistic responses from the characters, and are not included simply to shock. King Hereafter is a thoroughly immersive novel, and its final third a masterclass in the inevitable crumbling of a nascent nation, and the slow spiral downwards of its king.

2018/70: Band Sinister -- KJ Charles

"I know it's not Latin because obscenity was the sole aspect of my classical studies to which I paid attention. I believe the word there is irrumare," Philip added, somewhat smugly.
"Fellare," Guy corrected without thinking.
"I'm sure Catullus has irrumare."
"He does, but it doesn’t mean quite the same thing."
Philip's grin was an evil joy. "You really will have to explain the distinction." [loc. 2691]

A splendidly Heyeresque romp, in which nobody dies horribly (though Amanda's riding injury, unlike those in Heyer novels, is graphic and frightful) and all receive their just, and most beneficent, desserts.

Guy Frisby and his sister live quietly in the countryside, their lives blighted by a dreadful scandal (or two) and their finances controlled by disapproving Aunt Beatrice. Guy whiles away his time reading unexpurgated Latin poetry and trying not to think too hard about why he prefers it unexpurgated: Amanda, meanwhile, has been writing a Gothic novel, The Secret of Darkdown, whose characters are based on their disreputable neighbour, Sir Philip Rookwood, and his coterie of wickedness, a.k.a. the Murder. ('if you go around belonging to a hellfire club called ‘the Murder’ and having orgies, you can’t complain if people wonder about you'.)

Guy is horrified. Amanda is blithe, and has been paid ten pounds for her novel.

Then Amanda breaks a leg, badly, while riding on Sir Philip's land, and Guy hastens to her rescue only to discover that Sir Philip's doctor (who is Foreign) insists that Amanda's life is at risk if she is moved. So Guy and Amanda must remain at Rookwood Hall for days if not weeks, constantly on guard for signs of debauchery.

These signs are not immediately apparent. Sir Philip's house-party seems to consist wholly of well-mannered young(ish) men, though two are black, one's a Jew, and at least one is an atheist. Poor Guy! The company he's forced to keep is quite unlike anything he has previously encountered -- even before he accidentally witnesses something thoroughly ... illegal. Yes. Legality is the only possible issue that Guy could have with Sir Philip's behaviour towards the rakish Lord Corvin.

This novel is a thorough delight: not one but two charming love stories, and some thoroughly transgressive (i.e. 'modern') elements including polyamory, a trans character, enthusiastic consent, fossils, the possibilities of sugar-beet, Latin vocabulary, and a passionate scene in which the two protagonists never actually touch. There is even, touchingly, an element of compassion and redemption for repressive Aunt Beatrice: I really admired that, because it would have been so easy and so credible for her to remain unchanged.

A cheering and positive read, with some characters I wouldn't mind seeing again, some very funny lines (Amanda is especially witty) and a sense that everything has worked out for the best.

2018/69: Excession -- Iain M. Banks

call me highway call me conduit call me lightning rod scout catalyst observer call me what you will i was there when i was required through me passed the overarch bedeckants in their great sequential migration across the universes of [no translation] the marriage parties of the universe groupings of [no translation] and the emissaries of the lone bearing the laws of the new from the pulsing core the absolute center of our nested home [loc 7866]

The Excession, a black-body sphere that seems to be older than the universe and which resists all investigation, appears on the edge of Culture space. A group of Minds (artificial intelligences, embodied in various spacecraft) are extremely interested in the Excession. So are the Affront, a thoroughly nasty species ('hearty but horrible') who attempt to gain control of the Excession and thus put themselves on a more level playing-field vis-a-vis the Culture.

One of the Minds, the Sleeper Service, is sent towards the Excession by its fellow Minds. The Sleeper Service has been home for over forty years to Dajeil Gelian, who has prolonged her pregnancy for decades due to betrayal by her lover, Byr Genar-Hofoen (who was also a woman at the time but is now a man, and likes hanging out with the Affront). The price of the Sleeper Service's cooperation is an engineered reunion between the two.

I remember greatly enjoying Excession when I first read it, back in the last millennium. This time around, I found Genar-Hofoen thoroughly toxic, noted a sour tang of misogyny, and was much more interested in the Minds and the Excession -- and the dastardly plot which has been hatched with the Excession as an excuse.

Splendid big-screen space-opera, some fascinating ideas (like the Sleeper Service's tableaux of people in suspended animation, recreating famous historical battles et cetera, and the Grey Area's habit of non-consensually reading the minds of genocidal leaders), and an interesting critique of the Culture's -- well, the Minds' -- pragmatism and sense of honour. Never mind Banks' enjoyment of the grotesque or his often-unpleasant characters, his creations are magnificent.

2018/68: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender -- Leslye Walton

I’ve been told things happen as they should: My grandmother fell in love three times before her nineteenth birthday. My mother found love with the neighbor boy when she was six. And I, I was born with wings, a misfit who didn’t dare to expect something as grandiose as love. [p. 56]

Ava Lavender is born with wings, and followed by a mute twin (Henry). Her family, French immigrants living in Seattle, are variously strange: there's a great-aunt who transforms into a canary to win the affection of an ornithologist, and another great-aunt who cuts out her own heart, and their brother René who has an affair with a married man and is murdered. Grandmother Emilienne ignores their ghosts, marries, produces Ava's mother Viviane -- who is as 'foolish' (and unlucky) in love as the previous generation. Her childhood sweetheart impregnates her, then marries someone else, leaving Viviane to raise their children -- Ava and Henry -- in an overprotective bubble.

Of course Ava sneaks out to hang out with other teenagers, who are curiously accepting of her difference. Of course she has admirers -- in particular Rowe (her friend's brother) and Nathaniel (a devout Christian who thinks Ava is an angel). Of course things go terribly wrong, and then -- maybe, finally, in the third generation -- blissfully right.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender has elements of magic realism: it felt somewhat like an Alice Hoffman novel, though perhaps with a shallower cast. (The men are, typically, driven by lust or violence: the women are, typically, crippled by their hearts.) There is a brutal, and vividly-described, sexual assault which did not seem to fit the tone of the rest of the novel: its shockingness was effective, but it's a cheap effect. (I'd add that this is not only a sexual assault, but a physical mutilation that made me think of an enraged child destroying something beautiful.)

Some beautiful prose, and an epic family migration -- rural France to 1920s New York to Seattle in the Second World War and beyond, all vividly evoked. The magical elements (ghosts, mood-changing baked goods, women who crumble into heaps of blue ash) are fascinating, and the ending surprisingly hopeful. This novel -- aimed, I discovered after reading, at a young adult audience -- seems to have two themes: one is 'love makes us such fools' (where 'us' is primarily 'women'), but the other, depressingly, is 'most men are dangerous'. Too much realism, not enough magic.

2018/67: Killing Gravity -- Corey White

"MEPHISTO,” I say. “Stands for Military Experimental Post-Human Specialist Training Organization, and I only found that out after years of sniffing around.”
“And they’re the ones that ... made you?” [loc. 540]

Space-opera novella that reminded me strongly of Andre Norton, right down to the presence of a feline companion. Mars Xi is a living weapon with mystical, highly-destructive powers. She's on the run, from bounty hunters as well as the dastardly corporation that created her: rescued by the space tug Nova, she finds it hard to trust her new companions with the truth about herself -- or her fears about someone who was once her friend and might now be an implacable enemy.

The violence (and, to be honest, quite a bit of the characterisation) has a comic-book feel, and there are considerable holes into which the plot would stumble if it weren't moving so quickly. Good fun, with some nice ideas (and a space-kitty!), but somewhat two-dimensional.

2018/66: Consider Phlebas -- Iain M. Banks

I don't care how self-righteous the Culture feels, or how many people the Idirans kill. [The Idirans are] on the side of life—boring, old-fashioned, biological life; smelly, fallible and short-sighted, God knows, but real life. You're ruled by your machines. You're an evolutionary dead end. [p. 26]

This was likely the first of Banks' SF novels that I read, back in the last millennium, and I don't think I've ever reread it. What did I remember? The finger scene: ugh.

The protagonist of Consider Phlebas is Bora Horza Gobuchul, a Changer (i.e. a shapeshifter, though taking on another's appearance is slow and effortful) who has been recruited by the effectively-immortal Idirans in their war against the Culture. Horza is sent by the Idirans to retrieve a Culture 'Mind', which he persists in thinking of as a machine although it's actually a sentient entity with free will. Cue an interstellar chase, with space pirates. weird cults, ancient temples, treachery, swashbuckling, comedy aliens (along with many that are not at all comic), romantic complications, and an enemy agent -- the magnificent Balveda -- who is more than a match for Horza.

I like Horza, though suspect I should not, as he is not actually a very nice person. His singlemindedness and courage, and his competence, make up for a lack of interpersonal warmth and a certain hollowness. (And it is not his fault that his girlfriend is fridged.)

I do vaguely recall reading the novel, being shocked by the abrupt ending, and shocked all over again that, according to the appendices, the events of the novel happen centuries in our past. So, a bit like Star Wars, I suppose: long ago, in a galaxy far away ... I've been thinking about why this was a shock, and I suspect it's because I unconsciously expected this to be our future, the future of Earth-origin humans -- not of human-type aliens who have nothing to do with me, us, Earth.

I note that I don't tend to reread Banks' novels (not sure why, though it may simply be bad timing on my part: I didn't enjoy The Algebraist as a holiday read) and I'd somehow forgotten just how entertaining, witty and inventive a writer he was. Reading Consider Phlebas felt like a headlong rush through a plethora of big-screen space-opera settings, but there was also plenty of character interaction, philosophy (Horza is highly critical of the Culture, though I think his views are founded at least partly on misconceptions) and conflict. I think it could make great TV, and a series is in production: I might even get around to watching it.

2018/64: Nine Coaches Waiting -- Mary Stewart

The castle in the air, the Cinderella-dream – nonsense for a night. Banquets abroad by torchlight, music, sports, nine coaches waiting! Not for you, Linda my girl. You get yourself back to Camden Town. [p. 325]

Orphan Linda Martin, aged 23, quits her 'dogsbody' job at a boys' school to travel to France (where she lived as a child) and become governess to Philippe, Comte de Valmy, who is nine years old. The boy's Aunt Héloïse, who meets Linda in Paris and accompanies her to Chateau Valmy in the Savoy region, is keen that the job goes to someone with little or no French: so Linda, of course, lies about her fluency.

Philippe's Uncle Leon is confined to a wheelchair, but that doesn't impact his charisma, or his temper. Philippe is afraid of his uncle, and Linda learns to respect him. She's befriended by the housekeeper, Mrs Seddon, who tells Linda about Leon and Héloïse's wild and adventurous son Raoul -- who Linda first encounters when he almost runs her over one dark night.

Then the 'accidents' begin. Someone shoots at Philippe in the woods; a balcony almost collapses ... If Philippe dies, his aunt and uncle will inherit the Valmy fortune. Can they -- and perhaps even the seductive Raoul -- be plotting a murder?

Linda sees herself in a Cinderella role -- the poor, isolated girl who wins the heart of the prince -- but she's realistic: if Philippe is under threat, her priority is to protect him, no matter that she's falling in love with a man who might be the villain of the story.

This is an emotional and suspenseful novel, with some glorious writing -- I was especially taken by Stewart's descriptions of Paris on a rainy night -- and a satisfying romantic arc that complements, but doesn't overshadow, the rather Gothic thriller that constitutes the central plot. It is also set in, and strongly evocative of, spring, to the extent that it felt jarring to read it on a hot sunny beach.

I didn't really warm to Linda, but she did not irritate me (except by her dismissal of loyal and helpful English botanist William Blake, without whom all might have been lost). And the growing affection between Linda and her charge Philippe is rather sweet.

Raoul has considerable charm, though his values are those of his time (probably the 1950s) and his class. He's an excellent Gothic hero, reminiscent of Rochester (to Linda's Jane Eyre, of course: they even meet in a similar way!) and remains a mystery right up to the climax of the novel. An engaging read.

2018/65: The Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief -- Lisa Tuttle

...something sparked between us. It was not that romantic passion that poets and sentimental novelists consider the only connection worth writing about between a man and a woman. But there was curiosity in that look, on both sides, and a tentative recognition – or at least the hope – that here there might be a congeniality of mind and spirit. [loc. 121]

1893: Miss Lane has been involved with the Society of Psychical Research for years, but flees her latest assignment after discovering that her 'closest companion', friend and employer Gabrielle Fox, has been using the same fraudulent tricks as the false mediums they've investigated.

Arriving in London with little luggage and less money, Miss Lane notices an advertisement in a shop window for a 'literate, brave and congenial' assistant to a consulting detective. Not Holmes, though one could be forgiven for confusing the two at first: Jasper Jesperson is brilliant but naive, a crack shot and a master of the deductive method who is oblivious to the financial hardships afflicting the household.

This is a world in which both our protagonists are familiar with the works of Arthur Conan Doyle -- indeed, this short novel could be read as a fond critique of some of the Holmes stories -- but it is a world in which some aspects of the supernatural, at least, are real. The duo's first two cases involve a wife worried about her husband's somnambulism, and the disappearance of a number of noted psychics. (For added frisson, the latter case is brought to the attention of Jesperson and Lane by the perfidious Miss Fox herself.) Further investigations, combining Miss Lane's rationalism and Mr Jesperson's immense self-confidence, reveal connections between the two cases -- and a previously-unsuspected talent of Miss Lane.

I liked the relationship between the two protagonists, and the profound good sense and stoicism of Miss Lane. I was also pleased that Tuttle didn't feel it necessary to explore or explain Miss Lane's relationship with Gabrielle Fox: in fact, neither protagonist has any romantic or sexual relationship, which suits the social restraint of the period and with the rationality so valued by the pair. And how refreshing to read a book about a partnership between a man and a woman where neither sexual attraction or romantic wishes are an issue! Instead, they bring out the best in one another: Miss Lane becomes less mistrustful, Mr Jesperson less swashbuckling. I look forward to further cases.

2018/63: The General Theory of Haunting -- Richard Easter

... once a door is opened, guests may arrive, invited or not. [p. 20]

Six people converge on isolated, little-known Marryman Hall for a New Year's party. Along with the butler, Boulder, they are snowed in. Strange things start to happen as they uncover the history of the Hall, a great white round edifice designed and built by Francis Marryman in the early nineteenth century. Why do all the visits recorded in the Visitors' Book happen in winter? Was that a face at the upstairs window? Why is there a portrait of Francis Marryman's dead wife Patience, but no portrait of the man himself?

Meanwhile, the guests' party spirit (not strong even at the beginning of the book) wears thin, and secrets seep through. Anne and Dan are mourning the death of their infant son, and barely speak; Paula refuses to acknowledge that her husband Ian has been changed by events earlier in the year; publisher and host Greg finds new ways of laughing off his sister Lucy's increasingly problematic alcoholism. As for Boulder ... well, Boulder has his own problems, but he doesn't feel the need to share them with the paying guests.

Another Kindle Unlimited whim, and a very readable novel, despite some proof-reading issues ('pouring over the plans'; 'Verve Clicquot'; the use of 'the Lord' throughout, rather than 'his Lordship' or 'Lord Marryman'). This is a character-driven story, and I'd have liked more dimension to all of the main characters, especially Greg. I very much liked the nineteenth-century parts of A General Theory of Haunting: Francis Marryman, in my opinion, has more personality and courage than any of the modern-day protagonists. And Francis, at least, is not affected by the wrecking-ball events of the novel's conclusion.

This is the first in a loose trilogy: I'll keep an eye out for the others, because I like the author's inventiveness.

2018/62: The Space Between -- Dete Meserve

With each passing day, I’d become invisible to him. Like the Trojan asteroid, I was dancing in his orbit day after day, but was completely unnoticed by him. [loc. 416]

Astronomer Sarah Mayfield is devoted to her work: she's just given a presentation on the discovery of a Trojan asteroid, 'hiding undetected in Earth's orbit for thousands [sic] of years'. But when she returns to the family home, her husband Ben is missing, there's a Glock in the bedside table, and her account has just been credited with a million dollars. Their son Zack has been behaving badly, hence the installation of a video home-security system (which has been wiped clean), but he doesn't seem to know anything about his father's absence.

It's beginning to look as though Ben had a secret life. But Sarah is not wholly above-board either: with each new clue about Ben, she reveals one of her own secrets, such as the attraction she feels for co-worker Aaron, or the ultimatum she gave Ben before departing for the presentation. And when the clues seem to indicate that Ben's secrets are dangerous ones, Sarah lies to everyone in order to ensure that, whatever the truth, she'll be the first to know. Has she been wrong about Ben all these years?

This was a Kindle Unlimited book that I picked on a whim, because of the astronomical angle. Pleasingly, Sarah's career does play a part in the plot, and is also an excellent source of metaphors: "some things hide in plain sight ... We often can’t see or observe them because we’re blinded by the light of other objects." [loc. 1263] Searching for the truth in 'the space in between', Sarah ends up piecing together an unexpected and suspenseful story. There's a mention of A Wrinkle in Time (I think), considerable resistance to hackneyed assumptions about career women, and some splendid scenery. A well-paced novel, though I didn't engage with the characters.

2018/61: Untouchable -- Thalia Hibbert

... self-doubt, pale and pink and private like the inside of a stranger’s mouth. You shouldn’t have said anything. There’s a difference between refusing to feel shame and setting yourself up for a fall. She was used to ignoring self-doubt. It was rather prejudiced, and a bit of a bore. If she held an emotional tea party, self-doubt would eat all the scones and call Hannah fat if she complained. [loc. 674]

Nate Davis was one of the bad kids, growing up: full of rage that expressed itself in violence. Now he's back in the small town of Ravenswood, mourning his dead wife and rearing their two 'adorable' children, Josh and Beth. It'd be hard work even if his mother wasn't battling cancer: as it is, he needs help.

Enter Hannah Kabbah, a girl he went to school with. Hannah has just lost her job (or possibly been sacked: hard to tell, as her boss was suffering a marshmallow-related speech impediment when she last saw him). She'd love to work with children, but unfortunately is no longer allowed to do so due to a conviction for criminal damage.

Nate thinks she's the perfect person to look after the children. And possibly to look after him -- though of course he would never abuse his position of power, as her employer, in such a way.

The course of true love never does run smooth: Hannah is prone to depression, and outbursts of rage, has a history of self-harm, and eyes up women as well as men. (Though she's had a crush on Nate since her teens.) And Nate is finding it difficult to adjust to a new life in which he is materially comfortable, but losing everything that matters.

The ways in which they open up to one another -- and the honesty of both lead characters -- is charming. How nice to see a romantic couple discussing their various sexual problems! And there's plenty about the tangles of family -- Hannah and her sense of obligation to her sister Ruth and her mother Patience; Nate over-protective of his children because they're the only ones he can protect, and terrified that his mother is dying. Kudos to Talia Hibbert for unfolding a happy ending for all. (It turns out that communication is the key: who knew?)

But the winner, for me, was the depiction of Hannah's depression, anger and self-doubt: how she's constantly trying to second-guess the voice that tells her that her hopes and wishes are unreasonable; how she (usually) squashes down the urge to say exactly what she thinks. An utterly realistic portrayal of mental health issues, without being doom-laden or over-serious.

2018/60: A Girl Like Her -- Thalia Hibbert

“Fanfic is good for my heart. Running is a disaster waiting to happen, and you know it.” [loc. 1744]

Everyone in Ravenswood warns new arrival Evan Miller to steer clear of his neighbour Ruth Kabbah -- especially Evan's boss, Daniel Burne. Evan can't work out why Ruth is so unpopular: as far as he can tell, she keeps herself to herself.

When Evan does finally meet Ruth, he finds a forthright black woman, who tells him about her autism and the webcomic she writes, and lets him cook for her. She does not tell him about her abusive ex, or that wearing a bra makes her feel sick, or about what her sister Hannah did to Ruth's ex, or about her fanfic habit .(Ruth wears Steve / Bucky pyjamas: apparently Evan is actually based on Chris Evans, who plays Captain America. I wish Ruth had remarked on this!) But Evan is fascinated by Ruth, and likes learning new things about her, and so we end up discovering these traits as the story progresses.

This is a cheerful and warm romance, with a really likeable heroine and a hero who is simply Nice, and doesn't make a fuss about it or try to hide his flaws. Body positivity, enthusiastic consent, family tensions and obligation ... all handled credibly and with sensitivity.

Incidentally, one thing that -- thankfully -- doesn't make an appearance is small-town racism. (Or so it seems to me.) People ostracise the Kabbah sisters because of who they are and what they've done, not because of the colour of their skin. This may seem a disingenuous distinction, but it felt more honest, more legitimate.

First of my 'free reads' with an unexpected 3-month trial of Kindle Unlimited!

2018/59: The Chalk Pit -- Elly Griffiths

The homeless are like the remnants of a long-forgotten army, still dressed in their ragged uniforms, reminding their more fortunate neighbours that there is a battlefield out there, a place of violence and fear and dread. [loc. 1067]

Ninth in the Dr Ruth Galloway series, following The Woman in Blue. As before, this is as much an episode in the wider arc about Ruth, Harry Nelson, and their friends and families, as it's a standalone crime novel: I would not recommend anyone to start here.

During excavations for an exciting new subterranean restaurant in Norwich, human bones -- bearing possible indications of cannibalism -- have been found in the tunnels below the city. Ruth Galloway is called in to help identify them, and discovers that they are not medieval but recent. Could this be linked with several disappearances over recent years, especially amongst the homeless of Norwich? Naturally, police investigations intensify when an upstanding middle-class mother of four disappears ...

I do like Ruth in this. She manages to carry on doing the job (and solving the case) despite some truly horrific life events, while Harry Nelson is lying by omission, being typically paranoid, and dealing with a frightful new (female) boss. Harry is starting to annoy me a lot.

A good read, a twisty mystery, and a novel that makes me want to revisit Norwich. (Hmm, given another recent Norfolk read, maybe my subconscious has been waiting for me to get the hint?)

2018/58: Bottled Goods -- Sophie van Llewyn

The other teachers slip by her into the break room. They sip their cold coffees in silence, their faces like cassettes with their tape pulled out, unwinding every bit of conversation they had with her in the past few years. [loc. 727]

A short, unnnerving book (novella-length) set in Communist Romania during Ceaușescu's regime. Alina is a schoolteacher who has, according to her mother, married beneath herself. Worse, her husband Liviu's brother went 'on holiday' and never came back. Already under suspicion, Alina stacks the odds against herself by failing to report a pupil's possession of a contraband magazine. All might yet be well (despite the menacing Tuesday-afternoon visits of 'the man from the Secret Service'): but Alina's mother is a good Communist, and thoroughly disapproves of her daughter's choices. So Alina, in desperation, turns to her aunt Theresa, the wife of a powerful politician and a practitioner of the old ways.

Themes of escape and imprisonment thread through Bottled Goods. At the heart of the story are the three women, each trying to gain and keep control or power, each trying to make meaningful choices. The totalitarian regime, and the ways in which it stifles Alina and Lviu's marriage, is depicted in scenes that are both mundane and nightmarish (there are some unpleasant chapters dealing with assault and abuse), and the magical-realist elements are told in an equally matter-of-fact way.

Bottled Goods is composed of many short chapters (some of which have been published independently, as flash fiction), alternating between Alina's first-person viewpoint and a third-person voice. There are chapters in the form of lists ('How to Attract (Unwanted) Attention from the Communist Authorities'; 'A Comprehensive, but Not Exhaustive List of Reasons for Asking for an Italian Visa') and letters ('Dear Father Frost'; 'Postcards to my Mother'). An unnerving depiction of a repressive regime and the weight it brings to bear on every aspect of life: a story about hope, and plans, and lies well-meant and otherwise.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book in return for an honest review!

2018/57: Weirdo -- Cathi Unsworth

"I was there ... I saw everything ... But unlike everyone else you're chasing after, nobody saw me." [p. 153]

Weirdo switches between 2003, when private detective Sean Ward visits an infamous murderer at a secure facility in East Anglia, and 1984, when the youth of a (fictional) Norfolk seaside town run wild one summer. New forensic evidence indicates that the 'Wicked Witch of the East', the teenaged murderess Corinne, may not have acted alone. Ward would like to clear her name, if he can: but discovering the truth about the events of that distant summer is not an easy task.

Bad things start to happen when glamorous Samantha arrives from London. Corinne draws away from her old friend Debbie as she's dragged into Sam's lies and deceptions. She's not the only one affected, but various parents and grandparents are (mostly) convinced by Sam's charm, and her influence goes unchecked and unnoticed -- until Corinne and her friend Noj resort to desperate measures in an attempt to banish Sam.

The town of Ernemouth is far from idyllic. There's corruption everywhere in Ernemouth. Though Corinne may be innocent in some ways she is tarnished in others, helpless in the face of her mother's greed and amorality, growing up fatherless (though when the identity of her absent father is revealed, being fatherless might be the better option). Corinne's contemporaries, as teenagers or as adults, maintain a consensus of secrets and distractions -- as does the author. (I can't think, offhand, of another novel where the identity of the murder victim is as much, or more, of a mystery than the identity of the murderer.)

(Come to think of it, many characters in this novel have secret identities, or secret connections: ties of blood, of marriage, of loyalty. There's a lot of hiding in plain sight.)

Ernemouth in 1984 is horrifically credible. I remember Norfolk in the mid-eighties, though happily not from a small-town perspective: Corinne and Debbie's trips to Norwich ('bought a load of records in Backs and seen a really cool pair of boots in the shop at the bottom of Elm Hill that Debbie was determined to save up for. Had chips on the Haymarket and half a cider in The Murderers' [p. 80]) might as well be lifted from my diary. The sheer claustrophobia of the town and its people is as horrific as the events that lead to Corinne's conviction -- and the events of the same summer that go unpunished. This is a bleak and compelling novel, dealing with toxic friendships and with a touch of what might be real magic, and the 1984 narrative in particular is tremendously evocative.

2018/56: Hagseed -- Margaret Atwood

The island is many things, but among them is something he hasn't mentioned: the island is a theatre. Prospero is a director. He's putting on a play, within which there's another play. If his magic holds and his play is successful, he'll get his heart's desire. [p. 116]

The Hogarth Shakespeare was launched in 2012, its goal to publish 'Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today'. I wasn't that impressed by Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl, a halfhearted reimagining of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew: but a friend recommended Hagseed, Margaret Atwood's take on The Tempest, and it is truly glorious.

Felix Philips is Artistic Director of a small but acclaimed Canadian theatre festival, working on his masterpiece production of The Tempest and oblivious to the machinations of his factotum, Tony, who (with the help of friends in high places) ousts Felix from his role, and from his career. Felix sulks off into exile, mourning his Tempest, but also mourning (and in a sense haunted by) his dead daughter Miranda, for whom the production was to have been a kind of memorial.

One cannot sulk forever in a pioneer shack in the wilderness, though: and eventually Felix takes up a position as a drama teacher at the Fletcher Correctional Institute. He gets to stage a Shakespeare play annually, with a cast of felons. And this year it's to be The Tempest: and the treacherous Tony, and his politician friend Sal, will be guests of honour. The stage is set for Felix's long-delayed revenge.

I especially liked the cast of inmates, who are prohibited from swearing except if they use profanities from the play, which means they read it very closely. ("You're such a poxy communist," says SnakeEye. "Shove it, freckled whelp," says Red Coyote. "No whoreson dissin', we're a team," says Leggs. [p. 127]). There's a hacker-Ariel, a drug dealer who provides Felix with some chemical aids for the production, and a veteran with PTSD who plays Caliban. (None of the inmates want to play a Girl, so Felix brings in a real live actress, Anne-Marie, who has some pertinent things to say about the play itself.)

It's part literary critique -- 'how many prisons can you count in this play?'; Caliban as a victim of colonialism; how far vengeance should go -- and part revenge tragedy. Felix, though the most rounded character in the novel, is actually very cruel to his victims, and he never quite loses his arrogance. On the other hand, he does seem to learn something from the inmates, and from Anne-Marie, and from Estelle, the 'twinkling' professor who's a major supporter and facilitator of the theatre scheme. He is substantially changed by the end of Hagseed: he is freed from his self-imprisonment -- and he is not the only one who's freed.

This is a novel of many layers. It's thought-provoking, well-structured and wry. And it is great fun, especially when Atwood has the prisoners rewrite Shakespeare's text:

SIGN: A SUDDEN TEMPEST

ANNOUNCER: What you’re gonna see, is a storm at sea: Winds are howlin’, sailors yowlin’, Passengers cursin’ ’em, ’cause it gettin’ worse: Gonna hear screams, just like a ba-a-d dream, But not all here is what it seem, Just sayin’. [Grins].Now we gonna start the playin’.

(No, it is not all like that. But that's the opening of the novel, and it hooked me comprehensively.)

2018/55: The Mystery of Nevermore -- C. S. Poe

there are 101 things in life I simply don't have the patience for, and finding someone else's rotting heart in the floorboards of my shop just about topped the list. [loc. 84]

Sebastian Snow, owner of the Antique Emporium, has plenty on his mind: cashflow issues, his collapsing relationship with closeted NYPD detective Neil Millett, and srock control. Arriving at the shop one morning to find that there's been a break-in, and that there is a rotting heart under the floorboards, does not help his equilibrium.

The lead detective on the case is, luckily, not the loathsome Neil, but one Calvin Winter, who is kind and good-looking and I think we can see where this is going. Or can we? Cal has problems of his own, and is certainly not out and / or proud. It doesn't help that Sebastian, under suspicion of murder (and on the hunt for an incredibly rare Edgar Allan Poe chapbook), ends up revealing his relationship with Neil to Neil's colleagues.

The relationships in this novel didn't ring true for me. I couldn't see why Sebastian had stayed with Neil for four weeks, let alone four years (though he does say that the rot only started when they moved in together) or why Cal, so prone to cute endearments (ugh), effectively makes a play for Sebastian and then backs off. The murder mystery is not especially mysterious (there is something dodgy about the villain the very first time we encounter them) and while Sebastian's visual impairment (he has monochrome vision) is intriguing, it has very little impact on the plot. When one's favourite character in a novel is the narrator's father, it doesn't bode well.

2018/54: The Rules of Magic -- Alice Hoffman

...the rules of magic. Do as you will, but harm no one. What you give will be returned to you threefold. Fall in love whenever you can.
The last rule stopped Franny cold. "How is this possible?" she asked. "We're cursed."
"Anything whole can be broken," Isabelle told her. "And anything broken can be put back together again. That is the meaning of Abracadabra. I create what I speak." [loc. 695]

A prequel to Practical Magic (which I am now keen to reread, not having read it since the last millennium), this novel deals with the aunts -- Franny and Jet -- and their brother Vincent. Growing up in New York and New England in the 1950s and 1960s, the siblings are aware from an early age that they're cursed to ruin anyone who falls in love with them.

Or something like that. There are loopholes, technicalities, get-out clauses. Being in love is not the same as loving somebody; 'when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together'; anything broken can be mended. These truisms are not much use to the young men who, besotted by the Owens sisters, meet tragic fates. Vincent, meanwhile -- the first male Owens child in centuries -- finds the family curse expressing itself in different ways.

Meanwhile, the world is changing around the Owens siblings: they are coming of age in the era of Monterey (where Vincent charms the audience with a song), of the Vietnam war and the draft, of Stonewall and LSD and free love. Despite their mother's efforts to keep them away from magic and romance, all three fall in love, and all three are both blessed and cursed by their heritage.

Beautifully written, full of metaphors that unpack into life lessons -- for instance, a cousin who becomes a rabbit: the moral of the story being that if you deny who you are, it's 'easy to become something else entirely': this is a theme that underpins the novel -- this is classic Hoffman. It felt slightly stale to me, but I think that's because my previous Hoffman read (Nightbird) shared many of the same themes, such as the ancestor who was a witch and her relationship with a witchhunter; the ancient curse visited upon a new generation; the brother-sister relationship. That's a much lighter novel, though, intended for quite a different audience: I think Rules of Magic is likely a better book, and one that I'll return to.

2018/53: The Magick of Master Lilly -- Toshba Learner

... alas the interpretation he did choose to believe was from a French Catholic Priest (of the Queen’s staff) who did convince him the Angel was in fact a Demon sent by evil Protestant forces to sway him from his true path. And thus the King decided to ignore the warning. [loc. 2462]

A promising premise -- the career of William Lilly, astrologer to King Charles I -- but this novel is badly in need of an editor. I received an advance copy from NetGalley (in exchange for this honest review) and hoped that the issues I noted would be corrected before publication, but a quick check of the sample chapters on Amazon, and the e-text on Google Books, dashed my hopes.

I can forgive the archaisms ('I did love it' instead of 'I loved it', 'it were' rather than 'it was'). The plethora of words used wrongly, whether typos or something else, really bothered me. Ships have 'tall masks'; Charles I is 'short of statue'; Lilly wishes to introduce some 'brevity', but his mistress does not smile ... Sometimes turns of phrase become nonsensical; for 'has not gone amiss' read 'has not been missed' ...

I could go on. And I feel mean and curmudgeonly for picking apart the words and ignoring the story: but it's hard to judge a novel when the act of reading it is fraught with constant small annoyances. (Do not start me on anachronisms. Tattoo! Silhouette! Dachshund!)

Lilly's gift is not only to read the future in the stars (he did, in fact, predict the Great Fire with remarkable accuracy) but 'to manipulate outcomes, not just predict them'. He is engaged to read the King's horoscope, and to exorcise a young girl possessed by a demon -- I admire his handling of the latter case. He's certainly adept at politicking -- both in the mundane world, and in the rarified company of the Grand Council of Theurgy.

But his attitude to his wife (they do not love one another) is despicable, and his treatment of his mistress towards the end of the novel infuriating. I would have liked to warm towards Master Lilly, but despite the very real physical and psychic dangers he endures, I didn't really have a sense of him as a vulnerable, troubled human being.

2018/52: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free -- Andrew Miller

the thought that had touched him several times since coming back from Spain, that we are not private beings and cannot hide things inside ourselves. Everything is present, everything in view for those who know how to look. [loc 3776]

1809: a soldier, near death, is brought to a house in Somerset by a postilion, and nursed slowly back to health by the housekeeper. The soldier's name is John Lacroix, and he has survived the retreat to Corunna. In body, at least: he has become deaf, and his feet are raw, but he is otherwise largely undamaged physically. His mind is another matter, and it's clear that something terrible happened to him during his last days in Spain. When a fellow officer visits to recall him to his regiment, he flees -- first to Bristol, then north to the Hebrides.

On his trail are two hunters: an English corporal, Calley, who has testified against Lacroix, and a Spanish officer, Medina, who represents the victims of an atrocity perpetrated by English soldiers in the small Spanish village of Morales. The two have been enjoined to 'do what your country requires of you'. Calley, it transpires, is not the kind of fellow you would wish to encounter on such an errand: but perhaps the violence which he applies to every obstacle is justified, or at least explicable. Perhaps.

Somewhere in the Hebrides (the particular island is never named) Lacroix meets the Fender siblings, who are members of a community of free thinkers. Emily, the least eccentric of the three, is losing her sight: Lacroix finds in her a kindred spirit, and begins to understand his own freedom in contrast to her 'small independence'. But will love, given or received, help him to confront the terrible things in his past?

Miller's narrative is slow, and seldom straightforward. We see Lacroix and Calley through the eyes of many observers: their perceptions don't always equate with our own. The clues about what happened at Morales are scattered throughout the novel: I'm not sure they're ever stitched into a comprehensive account, except in the reader's mind. Instead, we see how thoroughly the experience has permeated Lacroix: seeing gas-lamps lit, he imagines "if there had been lights like these that night in Spain ..."

This is a novel full of resonant images: 'lyrical and full of light', I have written, though perhaps that's only the ending. Complex philosophies are presented simply, as when a Somerset farmer says 'the man standing still knows just as much and will have his boots less worn. The world will pass through him'. Or Lacroix, reflecting that 'everything in view for those who know how to look'. Which could be a metaphor for Now We Shall Be Entirely Free: it's all there if you look.

I'd recently read False Lights, which also features an officer tormented by memories of war. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free takes a different approach, both with the original horror and the man's reaction to it. Miller's novel feels more vivid as an exploration of PTSD (perhaps because the sufferer is the central character here, and the theme is escape rather than redemption), but this is not to disparage False Lights. These are two very different novels which happen to be set in the same period. They are maps of different territories.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free ARC in exchange for this honest review!

2018/51: Exit Strategy -- Martha Wells

'Mensah said I could learn to do anything I wanted. I learned to leave.' [p. 64]

The fourth and final Murderbot novella, which pulls together threads from All Systems Red, Articial Condition and -- especially -- Rogue Protocol.

Murderbot's personhood is, for me, the theme of Exit Strategy. It debates free will, dips further into bothood than before, and strenuously resists being defined as, or passing as, human. When Doctor Mensah suggests that "we tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human," Murderbot responds "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." [p. 152]

Ewwww, humans.

Right from the outset, Exit Strategy is about Murderbot acknowledging and accepting itself as cyborg -- neither bot nor human, but a melding of organic and inorganic parts, each with benefits and drawbacks. Human neural tissue, for instance, retains memories when data storage is wiped: it's Murderbot's organic parts that resist Company-mandated memory purges, and that hold the memories of its past. After disaster, the connections forged and reforged by the human parts of Murderbot (especially when it remembers soap opera Sanctuary Moon) are vital to the recovery, or reintegration, of its sense of self. Murderbot's love of trashy soap opera is not only a cheering example of the curative powers of lowbrow entertainment: it becomes clear that Sanctuary Moon has had an immense influence on the development of Murderbot's personality.

"It made me feel like a person." ... It gave me context for the emotions I was feeling, I managed not to say. "It kept me company without ..."
"Without making you interact?" she suggested. [p. 114]

It's good to see Murderbot interacting with its original team -- the clients from All Systems Red -- again, and being accepted by them, not as a weapon, but as a person. ('An angry person,' adds Pin-Lee.) And there is a great deal of plot wrapped around the core theme of self-actualisation: which is good, because one of the other things I like about Murderbot is its sheer competence. (You can be competent without confidence.)

This volume mentions, in passing, the history of cyborgs in this universe: I'd like to read more about that, and about the gradual redefinition of cyborgs from Augmented Reality people to ... well, machines. Murderbot has more personality than a lot of humans. I'm really looking forward to Wells' forthcoming Murderbot novel.