2018/10: Behind the Scenes at the Museum -- Kate Atkinson

I had thought that when she died it would be like having a weight removed and I would rise up and be free of her, but now I realize that she'll always be here, inside me, and I suppose when I'm least expecting it I'll look in the mirror and see her expression or open my mouth and speak her words. [p. 327]

A rambling, discursive story of four generations of women: Alice, her daughter Nell, Nell's daughter Bunty (short for Berenice); and Bunty's daughter Ruby, the narrator. The novel begins with Ruby's conception in 1951, and progresses in thirteen chapters to 1992: but each chapter has a 'footnote', telling the story of another family member. Sometimes the footnotes mirror what's happening in Ruby's narrative, and sometimes they add context to a name, or an object (a pink glass button, a lucky rabbit's foot, a locket).

The women of the family are prone to flight (Alice, Lillian, Patricia), and tend to regret not running when they have the chance. (None of them really marries for love, at least not the first time around: all of them long for love, even if they don't recognise it.) Each of the four main characters, at some point, believes that she's living the wrong life: this epiphany sometimes arrives as a spiritual or supernatural event, sometimes in more mundane form.

Alice's story begins in 1888: Ruby's ends in 1992. The wider world is relentless: many of the family (especially the men) fall victim to one war or another. But growing up in York, a town where 'the past is so crowded that sometimes it feels as if there's no room for the living', gives Ruby, in particular, an air of disrespect for life and death. Or is this just children (or the children in this novel) in general? Ruby's pragmatic lack of empathy (wondering, for instance, how a dead sibling's Christmas presents will be divided between her and her remaining siblings) was horribly credible.

Bunty is not a good mother. She is unhappy and unloved, and bestows unhappiness and emotional abuse on her daughters. Learning about her past -- and her mother's history, too -- granted me compassion for her. (If only real life came with a crib sheet about one's parents' heartbreaks, disappointments, secret shames and grudges!)

There are so many secrets in Behind the Scenes at the Museum: and secrets, kept, turn toxic. Children are born out of wedlock; die (as do adults) in mysterious circumstances; remember minutiae, forget life-changing events. Atkinson is excellent at seeding the narrative with clues, hints, and coincidences: connections fray and are rewoven, lost children turn towards home, similes foreshadow (or echo) parallels in different lives.

I note that this review is also rambling and discursive. And I've forgotten to mention that this intricately-constructed novel is often very funny (though the humour can be pitch-black), as well as poetic, poignant, and sometimes farcical.

And it makes me want to write a version with the women of my own family. Plenty of gaps to fill: plenty of women running away in search of different selves. Plenty of women surviving.

2018/09: The Buried Giant -- Kazuo Ishiguro

Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest? [p. 323]

It's the Dark Ages: you can tell because there are Britons and Saxons, and the vague memory of King Arthur. But all memories are vague, or non-existent. Beatrice and Axl are an elderly couple who, though they can't remember much about their lives together, suddenly remember that they had a son, and decide to visit him.

Their journey is eventful. After a single day's walking they reach a village which has been attacked by ogres, and meet a Saxon warrior (Wistan) and Edwin, the 'ogre-bitten' boy he saves from the wrath of the villagers. Travelling with Wistan and Edwin, Axl begins to remember fragments of his past. As does Beatrice. There are also monks, pixies, a mysterious Charon-like boatman, an ill-tempered goat, assorted monsters, soldiers both Saxon and Briton, and Sir Gawain.

There's a sense of timelessness about this novel that I found at once captivating and irritating. Who is the narrator, who thinks that 'you, or perhaps your parents' were brought up in roundhouses, and who occasionally waxes philosophical about the mist of forgetfulness that's fallen over everyone?

I liked the dreaminess of the post-Roman landscape, the ruined villas and the desolate passes. Ishiguro's portrayal of Axl and Beatrice, and their faith in and love for one another, is touching. Even for them, though, the return of memory carries risks.

I think I like this book more in hindsight than I did while reading it. The authorial voice annoyed me, and the fantastical elements felt heavy-handed. Some beautiful prose, though.

2018/08: Wolf Brother -- Michelle Paver

For the first time in his life he was truly alone. He didn't feel part of the Forest any more. He felt as if his world-soul had snapped its link to all other living things: tree and bird, hunter and prey, river and rock. Nothing in the whole world knew how he felt. Nothing wanted to know. [loc. 181]

Ooops, another unintentional reread: though it's been twelve years ... ...

Torak is eleven when his father is slain by a gigantic bear that seems to be possessed by a demon. Torak's last instruction from his father is to seek the Mountain of the World Spirit, and to stay away from men. But even in the New Stone Age (around 4000 BCE) this isn't easy, and Torak makes both friends and foes as he encounters other tribes, and becomes more confident in his quest to defeat the demon-bear. Perhaps his most faithful companion is Wolf, a wolf-cub who Torak rescues and who he finds he can understand.

This doesn't have the sheer horror of Paver's ghost stories (Thin Air and Dark Matter) -- probably just as well, since it's aimed at a younger audience. There is plenty of tension, though, and a plot that evolves satisfactorily: and as Torak discovers his world, so does the reader. An interesting and credible take on prehistoric religion, and on the social structures of early humans.

2018/07: Hekla's Children -- James Brogden

"... how do you go back to mucking around in your garden with your, your petunias and your water features and whatever, when you know that two hundred and fifty thousand years of darkness is right under your feet, waiting to swallow you up?" [loc 1205]

Nathan Brookes's career as a teacher is ruined when, during an orienteering event in Sutton Park, four teenagers disappear into thin air. Nathan, who'd abandoned them briefly to talk to the colleague he was having an affair with, is blamed -- even when one of the four, Olivia, reappears. But she remembers nothing.

Ten years later Nathan is working as an outdoor pursuits instructor. He's haunted by visions of the three lost teenagers; he's lonely, directionless, messed up. When a body is found in Sutton Park he hopes that it will bring closure: but it's a Bronze Age 'bog body', not one of the missing pupils. Further investigation reveals something strange about the corpse. It seems to have been made up of parts from different people. It may have been a kind of ritual guardian. And one limb shows evidence of something unaccountable.

Like the corpse, this is a novel of different parts. The first half reminded me strongly of Tana French's In The Woods, one of my favourite novels. Then, after a brief, unpleasant discursion into gory Stephen King territory, it becomes more like Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss (another favourite). The author acknowledges a debt to Alan Garner; there are elements, too, of Mark Twain.

I found this a gripping read. It's not poetic or meditative, but it has a twisty plot and a lot of prehistory, anthropology and mythology. The second half of the novel feels rather rushed, as the focus (and the narrative's sympathy) turns away from Nathan and towards another character. But I didn't especially like or empathise with Nathan (though his fate is disproportionate to his actions). Brogden's female characters are interesting and distinct -- especially osteoarchaeologist Tara Doumani, daughter of Lebanese refugees, and Liv the survivor -- and in general more likeable than most of the males.

Note: the Hekla reference in the title refers, not to Mt Hekla's reputation as a gateway to Hell, but to the Hekla 3 eruption, circa 1000 BCE, which may have caused the Bronze Age collapse.

2018/06: Taste of Marrow -- Sarah Gailey

"You feel bored by the murders. And you wonder who you are, that you can say that about yourself—that you're bored by the murders." [p. 114]

A direct sequel to River of Teeth, this picks up a couple of weeks later -- but is dramatically different in tone and structure. Where the previous novella was a heist caper, Taste of Marrow is about the emotional (and legal) fallout of that caper: about the survivors, and how each of them is affected by their acts during River of Teeth. This is a darker novella, and it focusses on two pairs of fugitives: Archie and Houndstooth, and Hero and Adelia. All four are looking for something that has been taken from, or has eluded, them: all four handle their situation very differently: all four are scarred by what happened when the dam came down. And they have all changed, though the changes are wholly in character. The person you'd expect to fall apart doesn't, because their goal is clear and their mind made up. The person who does fall apart is dangerously obsessed with what they've lost. A couple of new characters are introduced: another, from very early in River of Teeth, turns up unexpectedly.

If that all sounds confused, it's because I don't think I've fully processed Taste of Marrow. It is a different sort of story to River of Teeth: more thoughtful, more about emotion than action (though in fact there's a fair bit of action), and considerably darker.

2018/05: River of Teeth -- Sarah Gailey

Hovering in the doorway was a sleek little stoat of a man, his pencil moustache slicked across the top of his lip like a drunk draped across a chaise longue. [p. 59]

An alternate history set in a late nineteenth-century Louisiana, where the Mississippi has been dammed to form the Harriet -- an area of swampy bayou which is home to many ranchers and many feral hippopotami. For this is an America where the government imported hippos as an alternate meat source, and where, instead of cowboys, there are hippo-wranglers, or hoppers. One such is Winslow Houndstooth, who gathers a team of mavericks for the job of a lifetime -- ridding the Harriet of ferals -- and, incidentally, for revenge on the man who destroyed his ranch and his livelihood.

In other hands this might have been a straightforward, unexceptional historical thriller: but Houndstooth and his associates are a diverse band (a pregnant Latina assassin, a female con artist, a non-binary demolition expert, a British-Korean bisexual, and a Token White Man) and there are enough internecine conflicts to fuel many, many heists. There's also humour, romance, violence and a surprising amount of information (or an amount of surprising information) about hippos. Great fun, fast-paced: it's a novella, and as soon as I'd finished it I bought the sequel, Taste of Marrow. Because yes, cliffhanger ending.

2018/04: Summer in Orcus -- T. Kingfisher

She took a step back, knowing that if they came for her, there was no point in running. Her throat and her heart and the nerves along the backs of her arms said we will try to run anyway, and Summer, still in the grip of her strange new emotion, said I know. She found that she loved her heart and her nerves for their willingness to try to save her, even in the face of futility. [loc. 4043]

Summer is eleven years old and lives with her mother, who loves her very very much: so much that Summer, offered her heart's desire by the witch Baba Yaga, finds herself wondering if that desire is to be an orphan. She loves her mother, of course, but she isn't allowed to do anything even mildly risky (riding a horse, going on the Ferris wheel, going to a sleepover) because she's all her mother has.

Baba Yaga does grant Summer's heart's desire, but she doesn't tell Summer what it actually is. Instead, Summer finds herself in a mysterious forest, which turns out to be in Orcus. Summer, who has grown up reading a great deal of fantasy (her mother, amusingly, thinks that books are safe) is disappointed not to be met by fauns and presented with a quest. All she has is a nameless, talking weasel.

Summer's adventures in Orcus are highly entertaining. There are three princesses (Boarskin, Bearskin and Donkeyskin); Glorious the wolf, who is a were-creature of an unusual kind; Reginald, who is an aristocrat straight out of a Regency romance (including a flock of valets) but with one major difference; and the fearsome Queen-in-Chains and her seneschal Zultan Houndbreaker, who may know something about 'the cancer at the heart of the world'.

Summer may only be eleven, but her mother's mental health issues have forced her to learn some hard lessons: they turn out to be very useful in Orcus. As do the words in the stained-glass window, in a book that was held by a saint wearing purple sneakers: "Don’t worry about things that you cannot fix. Antelope women are not to be trusted. You cannot change essential nature with magic." Summer also learns that you should be careful what you wish for, and that it's important to be true to your nature (even if your nature is not especially nice).

So many little details in this book! Kingfisher teases with phoenix hedgehogs, real-estate hunters, mouse-trees, the sun's shadow ... and an open ending that is at once satisfactory and leaves the door ajar for more story. I do hope there's more: I'm sure it would be a delight. Though I would be entirely happy to read a novel about this version of Baba Yaga, who snacks on salesmen, who 'sees all the way through time and chews off the bits she doesn't like.'

2018/03: Swordspoint -- Ellen Kushner

Let the fairy-tale begin on a winter's morning, then, with one drop of blood new-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as the single spot of claret on the lace cuff. And it therefore follows that evil lurks behind each broken window, scheming malice and enchantment; while behind the latched shutters the good are sleeping their just sleeps at this early hour in Riverside. Soon they will arise to go about their business; and one, maybe, will be as lovely as the day, armed, as are the good, for a predestined triumph.… [p. 1]

Reread, for a panel item at Follycon: it's ... quite a long time since I last read this novel (over ten years, in fact), and I still find new facets to it.

The unnamed city which contains Riverside, the University and the Hill has a decidedly eighteenth-century ambience, a sense of decadence and danger. The nobles drink chocolate and wear lace; the underclass of Riverside drink beer and play cards; the theatre is a spectacle for all. Swordsmen are pawns in political and personal games: they're also highly-paid professionals, and Richard St Vier is the best of the current generation. His lover Alec, a former University student, revels in Richard's protection, and in the lethality at his disposal. But Alec's past, and his familiarity with the nobles on the Hill, intrudes into Richard's professional and personal life.

Especially interesting to see Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, through the kaleidoscope lens of Tremontaine, the SerialBox series (now up to season 3) set a generation before Swordspoint. Diane's past adds a fascinating dimension to her actions and motivations in this novel. I liked her rather more for it.

Swordspoint is that delightful thing, a fantasy novel without magic. What, then, makes it fantastical? I still don't have an answer to that one. Unless it's the sex'n'gender elements: most characters are bisexual, and this time round I observed that the only avowedly heterosexual (monosexual?) character is a villain.

Note regarding this e-book version: not only does it omit the three short stories I was so pleased to find in my previous, vanished paperback edition, but it shows signs of imperfect OCR ('Marie! Mane!' ... Helms-leigh usually, though not always, hyphenated).

Still a delight to read: and after this I found myself eager to reread the other two novels in the main sequence, The Privilege of the Sword and The Fall of the Kings. I don't think I'd ever read them in sequence before: it was a revelation. Watch this space!

2018/02: The Illumination of Ursula Flight -- Anna Marie Crowhurst

A film of sweat broke across my back – I was not gravely ill with a lethal bleeding; I would not burst out in pulsing buboes and end the day consigned, by my elbow, to a plague-cart. Nay, it was much, much worse: I was become a woman and could now bear children! [loc. 901]

A delightful Restoration romp, which might take as its subtitle one of the chapter headings: 'HERE BE THE MOSTE SECRETE DIARY OF U. FLIGHT'. Told entirely in Ursula's voice, a mixture of journal entries, letters and play scripts, it is the story of one woman's determination to live independently.

Though Ursula is of moderately noble birth -- her father, a keen astronomer, is lord of the manor -- she has little time as a child for the life of a gently-born female, preferring instead to read (and write) plays, and direct the local children (some of them peasants) in acting them out. She develops a fancy for a friend's cousin, the charming Samuel Sherewin -- but her father arranges her marriage with odious Lord Tyringham, who is old and ugly and has little time for Ursula's interests.

However, Ursula's husband does take her to London, and there Ursula discovers the theatre, which is a magic beyond her wildest dreams. She meets an actress; discovers a secret; and embarks upon a new career.

There are very occasional lapses in language ('like' rather than 'as if' or 'as though'; 'godly' rather than 'goodly') and in historical fact (eating pineapple in England in the 17th century); and I can't be altogether impressed by Ursula's father's astronomy when he claims that Polaris is the 'biggest, brightest star of all', or that Jupiter (not the moons of Jupiter, but the planet itself) was discovered by 'an Italian and his telescope'. I am also not familiar with the musical instrument 'the linnet' ...

But these are nitpicks. In general the bawdy, dirty, dramatic Restoration period is evoked very nicely, and Ursula -- though she sometimes seems remarkably modern in her behaviour and outlook -- is a likeable heroine, easy to sympathise with and relate to. The Illumination of Ursula Flight feels at times like a feminist response to The Adventures of Moll Flanders: a woman making her own way in the world, without a male protector, living on her wits, surviving and succeeding.

I received a free advance copy of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

2018/01: Nightbird -- Alice Hoffman

We were really very normal people, despite ...the curse and the way we were so solitary. I wondered if all monsters were so ordinary in their day-to-day lives. [p. 82]

Twig Fowler is twelve years old and lives in Sidwell, an idyllic small town somewhere in Massachussetts that's famous for its apples. Twig lives with her mother, and the brother who she's forbidden to mention to anyone -- especially the Hall girls, who are descended from the witch who cursed the Fowler family two hundred years ago.

Sidwell does have monsters, too: they keep showing up on the graffiti around town, with the message 'Don't take our home away'. And there are disturbing rumours of a flying creature glimpsed by night. And of course there's the Sidwell Witch, memorialised in a play that's performed annually by the children of Sidwell.

Twig, who is horribly lonely at the beginning of the novel, blossoms in her new friendship with Julia Hall: and it turns out that Julia and her sister Agate, and the mysterious Mr Rose, may hold the keys to several Sidwell mysteries.

This is a short, sweet novel about friendship, magic, unspoken secrets and the power of the past. It's also, if you look sideways at it, about parental pressure -- perhaps even mental health issues -- and how they can affect parent and child alike. Twig's upbringing has shrivelled her social confidence: she's as much a victim of the family curse as anyone.

Hoffman's writing is simple and evocative. I think this novel may be aimed at a young adult audience: I found it a delightful read, though it was over too quickly.