2019/123: The Wayward Girls -- Amanda Mason

A couple of nights in a haunted house. A bit of a laugh, really. Only now he can’t sleep and the vague, queasy feeling that he’d had when he’d first arrived in the house hasn’t let up. He has the sense of being … infected with something. [loc. 1777]

There are two timelines to this novel. 'Then', in the mid-Seventies, Cathy is living with her five home-schooled children (Lucy, Bee, Dan, Florian and Anto) on an isolated farm. The childrens' father Joe, an artist, is away 'for work', and odd things have begun to happen in the house. Light-bulbs don't last; marbles appear from nowhere; and Lucy (known as Loo) speaks in a voice that isn't her own. Paranormal investigators from the local university show up, disrupting the situation and forcing a crisis.

'Now', in the present day, Cathy is living in a care home, Lucy is grown up and the other children live abroad. A woman named Nina is keen to discuss the phenomena experienced at the farmhouse, and the investigation that went so tragically wrong. Lucy, not wanting her mother disturbed, agrees to help with Nina's new investigation, but she's uneasy about raking over the past. And rightly so.

At the heart of this novel is the relationship between the two sisters, Bee and Loo: Bee is unsettling, and possibly unhinged, and Loo is almost wholly caught up by her sister's influence. I was reminded to some extent of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, though that novel's compelling quality is partly due to its use of the first-person narrative. The Wayward Girls is told in third person, focussing on Loo / Lucy: it's still not a very reliable narrative, though.

Bee's absence in the 'Now' timeline feels like a missing tooth, and could have done with being explained sooner. I was not altogether surprised by the initial twist: the subsequent reversal felt somewhat rushed, and not wholly coherent. It's an intriguing scenario, and the Seventies chapters are claustrophobically atmospheric: but it didn't quite come together for me, perhaps because many of the characters seemed shallow in contrast to the two sisters at the heart of the story.

2019/122: All Among the Barley -- Melissa Harrison

I thought about the photograph of me in Connie's magazine ... my own image pressed into the service of something I hadn't consented to and didn't understand. That this could happen was further proof that I was not a real person, I realised; not real in the way that other people were real: Frank and John and Connie, for example. None of this would ever have happened to them. Perhaps I had made myself up entirely, and kept doing so every day. [loc. 3659]

Set in rural Suffolk in 1933, this is the story of Edie Mather, who is thirteen and somewhat isolated. The Mathers live and work at Wych Farm, and Edie knows and loves every inch of the land: the oaks which have grown around an old hitching-post, the barley-birds in the eaves, the horse-pond in the woods. When Constance FitzAllen, who wears trousers and writes for a magazine, comes to the village to preserve its ancient traditions, she befriends Edie, who knows all about the old customs and traditions.

Over it all hangs the distant shadow of the Great War, and perhaps the first stirrings of the next one. Some of the farm workers fought in Flanders: others never returned from soldiering. Edie, though, is more concerned with Alf Rose, and with the mysterious marks on the beams, and with her big brother's insistence that their grandmother is a witch.

This is a slow novel, but I didn't mind the slowness because of the immediacy of the world Harrisson describes. It's rural, but far from idyllic: as Constance says, "not one of these elegies for a lost world". [loc. 467] Edie's magical thinking feels organic: the beliefs and habits of a child who is aware that she has no agency in the world. There are tensions that Edie is only beginning to perceive (though the reader may be older and wiser), and Constance brings her own kind of trouble.

The framing narrative, hinted from the first page and shadowed throughout, is rather sad, and wholly convincing. I'm glad the book stopped when it does. "It will only appear strange for a moment, I'm sure of it ..."

2019/121: Idaho -- Emily Ruskovich

He has lost his daughters, but he has also lost the memory of losing them. But he has not lost the loss. [loc. 2867]

An odd, unsettling and (for me) unsatisfying novel. It's set in Idaho, mostly in an isolated house, high on a mountainside, that's cut off by snow every winter.

Ann is married to Wade. She is his second wife: his first wife is in prison, having murdered one of their daughters. The other daughter fled the murder scene and was never found.

But Wade cannot remember this. He has dementia -- as did his father -- and is losing his memories and his internal logic. He cuts cat-doors all over the house so that a stray cat can come and go (or perhaps as a metaphor for the gaps in his own memory). When Ann innocently mentions something from his past, he punishes her as he would punish a dog: but he cannot tell her why.

In some ways Ann is the central character: she longs to piece together what happened that long-ago summer day. But she wasn't there, and the only person who can remember it is Jenny, who barely speaks, and has never explained her actions.

It's hard to be sure, here, whether the flashback narratives of the two little girls (May and June) are 'true', or whether they are Ann's imaginings. And there is no way for the characters or the reader to know whether Ann's fears of her own, unwitting involvement are imaginary or real.

Ruskovich writes beautifully, with an ear for a poetic line and a startling way with imagery. There is a sense of closure at the novel's end, but it was insufficient for me: still, I will read Ruskovich again for the beauty of her prose.

Outside, the coyotes' howls bore tunnels through the frozen silence. The ravens in the trees anticipate the spring, when they will nudge their weakest from their nests, this act already in their hearts, as if already committed. The garter snakes, deep in the ground, hibernate alert. Bodies cold, unmoving; minds twitching, hot. So many secret, coiled wills, a million centers spiraling out, colliding into a clap of silence that is this very moment in the house, this beautiful oblivion in which they love each other. [loc. 1759]

2019/120: Time Song: Searching for Doggerland -- Julia Blackburn

I was going to go to [Mesolithic site] Star Carr and then I decided not to because I was told there is no longer anything there to see, although I suppose I could have gone anyway since trying to see through the fact of absence is what this book is mostly about. [loc. 1821]

A marvellous, engaging, idiosyncratic book about finding traces of Doggerland -- the region that joined southern Britain to Europe, until it flooded around 6500BC. Fishing boats have been bringing up mammoth bones, prehistoric tools and Neanderthal remains since the nineteenth century, and in the 1990s Bryony Coles produced speculative maps of the area.

Julia Blackburn is, like me, a person who likes to pick up old things -- fossils, stones, bones -- and think about them. Her approach to Doggerland is as much poetic as scientific. Her speculations are rooted in solid evidence, and in conversations with those who are familiar, professionally or personally, with some aspect of Doggerland. (An archaeologist, studying 'past disaster science', tells her it's very likely that there will be a catastrophic, climate-altering volcanic eruption in Europe: 'such disasters are the natural consequences of lifting the weight of ice from the land' [loc. 1501]. A fossil hunter gifts her a mammoth bone. An artist friend, Enrique Brinkmann, provides illustrations.)

The high points of this book, for me, were the moments where the past came alive for the author in a way that could be shared. Next to some small, blurry human footprints she sees "... the constellation of little pockmarks imprinted on the flesh-like softness of the clay and made by the rain that was falling on one particular day between 5500 and 5200 BC. As I look I can hear the pattering sound and I can feel the wetness of it soaking into my hair and skin. The crane has flown away, the children have gone, but the rain goes on falling." [loc. 2567]. Such moments recur throughout Time Song, sometimes in the 'songs' or poems that divide the book, sometimes in the author's descriptions of exploration, sometimes in the memories that are triggered by thinking about the past. (She's mourning her husband, and in a way searching for his absence as well as the vanished land beneath the sea.)

A beautiful book: sadly, it did not work well on Kindle. The illustrations were unclear, the maps were fuzzy, and worst of all the publishers lazily included the index from the print edition: "The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader." Regenerating an index is not difficult. Nor is returning a Kindle book in favour of eventually acquiring a paper version.

2019/119: First Grave On The Right -- Darynda Jones

"You have only two homicides from last night? There were three."
Garrett went still, probably wondering what I was up to, how I could know any such thing since I couldn't possibly see dead people, so dead people couldn't possibly tell me they were dead. It just wasn't possible. [loc. 382]

First in a series of thirteen, but definitely stands alone. Charley Davidson is a private investigator with a unique gift: she's a -- in fact, the -- grim reaper, helping souls to cross to the 'other side'. The ability to see, and speak with, ghosts is immensely useful in her line of work. But she's not the only supernatural entity around: there's something stalking her, something that's known her since the day she was born. Charley refers to it as 'Bad', and it's capable of killing anyone who threatens her.

This was great fun: competently written (if occasionally a little repetitive), with good characterisation not only of Charley but of the supporting cast, especially her friend Cookie, her Uncle Bob (a homicide detective), and Angel, a teenage criminal who happens to be dead. Charley does seem to be more than humanly resilient -- this is highlighted when she sprains an ankle due to unsuitable footwear, having survived a fall from a roof, an attempted murder and being beaten up by a hacked-off, drunken bloke who objects to Charley helping his wife leave him. Charley is also relentlessly sarcastic, which makes the occasional moments of softness and emotion all the more effective.

Very enjoyable, I shall likely read more in the series.

2019/118: Under the Hill: The Full Story -- Alex Beecroft

"You are supposed to free her." Liadain shook her head with a sound like the sea. "Then you would have been comrades in arms, bound by a shared adventure. It is powerful, here, to have gone through a story together, and the sleeping princess brought back to life by her swain? That is a powerful story." [p. 119]

Combined edition including Bomber's Moon and Dogfighters: I don't think I noticed the transition between one volume and the next, but that might be because the narrative is fragmented in both books -- multiple viewpoints, multiple timelines.

Ben Chaudhry lives in Bakewell and works in a bank. He's suffering some PTSD, having survived the 7/7 London bombings: he is not the kind of person who believes in the supernatural. Except that a faerie rade has just passed through his house, and he's seen things he can't believe. Out of his depth, he calls the local paranormal society, and is promptly visited by the handsome Wing-Commander Chris Gattrell.

Chris is a man out of time, having somehow been propelled from WWII to the 1990s. He's lost everything, and he knows that the elves exist: they're the reason he was invalided out of the RAF.

Meanwhile, a very long way away, Flynn is caught up in Elven politics, also completely out of his depth, and with no sense of when or where or even who he is.

It's such an interesting set-up: but there is perhaps just too much happening, to too many characters. Dragons! Aliens! Stone circles! Feuding queens! Shapechangers! Identity porn! Ecology! WWII Bomber Shot Down by Elves!

Some minor nitpicks, too: why does a two-week, primarily sexual liaison assume such significance to the parties involved, after so long? Why are so many individuals so ready to assume homophobia? (I know it is horribly prevalent, but still: seems somewhat out of character in at least two instances.) And I wasn't wholly convinced by the story arc and conclusion for one of the characters: it didn't feel finished, somehow.

A very enjoyable read but I struggled to remember what had happened to whom even while reading, and am now hard-pressed to explain or summarise the plot.

2019/117: The Reddening -- Adam Nevill

Something hunted there, in that cave, always. The paintings on the wall were only understood by the terrified when inside such a darkness. [loc. 4690]

The small town of Brickburgh, on the Devon coast, is superficially idyllic. Many visitors are intrigued by the archaeological finds in the area. Katrine, a lifestyle journalist, has fled an abusive relationship and is enjoying a relatively quiet life: she's not impressed with her current assignment, reporting on a press conference about evidence of ancient cannibalism. Helene, whose brother disappeared in the area after recording weird sounds from the caves, is hoping to discover what happened to him. Gradually both women realise that there have been multiple disappearances in the area, and that nobody can be trusted.

There are some intriguing ideas in here, but the impression it left on me was one of gore, violence and all-round nastiness. Kudos for having two female leads (who actually behave like real people) and for blending ancient horror with modern criminality. No subtlety, though, and no joy.