2018/16: The Portable Veblen -- Elizabeth McKenzie

... the work of maintaining your life with your own skills was never counted in hours. The days were long and arduous, but there was no wishing them to go by. The very word "weekend" was a monstrous little propaganda of modernity. Of gladness that time had passed, your very life! [p. 190]

Veblen Amundsen-Hovda ('experienced cheerer-upper, and freelance self', or alternatively something of a slacker) falls in love with Paul, a research neurologist (inventor of the Pneumatic Turbo Skull Punch) who's grown up in a hippie, marijuana-scented family home, and wants a normal life. Spoiler: he is not going to get that with Veblen, who is delighted by the squirrel that clatters around in her loft, who hasn't got around to mentioning the antidepressants, whose general good cheer at once charms and vexes Paul.

And of course, having agreed to marry, they must meet one another's families.

Paul's parents are pretty much devoted to his disabled brother Justin (the nature of the disability is never discussed by Paul). Veblen's father is in a psychiatric hospital. Veblen's mother Melanie -- possibly the star of this novel: certainly the most vivid character -- is a narcissistic hypochondriac who seizes on Paul as a representative of the American medical profession, and proceeds to relate her impressive catalogue of symptoms. It is to Paul's credit that he does not immediately run screaming from the house.

Veblen's relationship with her mother rang nauseatingly, claustrophobically true. (Possibly the reason it's taken me so long to write this review: Melanie, though nothing like my mother in most respects, nevertheless felt very familiar.) It's the kind of relationship that flavours every aspect of life: no wonder Veblen thinks of Paul as 'a human safe house from her mother', though he turns out to be more of a bridge. Each helps the other grow up, in a sense; both Veblen and Paul have to let go of their families -- or at least learn how to become an adult, rather than a child, within those families -- before they can truly commit to one another.

I think this is the first novel I've ever read that features a love triangle where one of the three is a squirrel. (And there are tantalising hints that there is rather more to the squirrel than Paul, at least, would ever suspect.)

Often very funny; frequently philosophical; sometimes almost painfully raw. And there is plenty of plot to fit around the familial interactions -- a whole black comedy of the American pharmaceutical industry. An entertaining and unsettling read.

2018/15: The Mysteries -- Lisa Tuttle

Nobody wanted to be merely human these days. Kids imagined being Harry Potter or Buffy or Sabrina the teenage witch, with magical powers their birthright. But Etain wasn't a person at all, certainly not a role model. Unlike a modern girl, she was merely a possession. She could be bought or sold, won back or stolen. [p. 105]

Ian Kennedy is a private detective who specialises in finding missing people -- specifically, those who have vanished without trace. His profession is rooted in his past: his father disappeared when he was a child, and his girlfriend Jenny left him. Since then, he's tried to track down those who have vanished. He is engaged by Laura Lensky to find her missing daughter Peri, who seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. Laura's friend Polly -- why can't he place the name? -- recommended Ian, and Laura, along with Peri's boyfriend Hugh, is desperate to find a sensible and rational explanation for Peri's disappearance.

Ian's first-person narrative jumps from present to past (his investigation into the disappearance of Amy Schneider, which seems to have been the case that made his name) as well as from personal to historical: the chapters of his narrative are interspersed with accounts of historical disappearances, some of them well-documented (the Flannan Isles lighthousekeepers, the British Ambassador to the Austrian Empire) and some more like folklore.

And Ian, unlike Laura, is perfectly willing to consider the possibility of some supernatural agency. He's familiar with Celtic myths -- primarily the story of Midir and Etain -- and has, during the Amy case, met at least one young woman whose need to escape the mundane world seems to Ian a kind of suicidal impulse.

Hugh, Laura and Ian all have their own motivations for finding Peri -- and their own reasons for being reluctant to face the facts. Ian, for me, was not a likeable character: he's prone to sexist generalisations, he's arrogant, and by his own account of Jenny's disappearance he refused to accept that she wanted to leave. On the other hand, his memories and perceptions are not always reliable ...

This is a gradual novel: it starts slow, and picks up the pace -- and the strangeness -- to the denouement. Midir and Etain are't the only mythological resonances here: there are also echoes of Demeter and Persephone, and perhaps of Orpheus and Eurydice. I'm still not sure if Ian gets what he wants: I'm not sure if he knows what he wants. But he knows enough to realise that he's missing something, excluded from something, mysterious.