2020/154: Sulwe -- Lupita Nyong'o (illustrated by Vashti Harrison)

The story, written by actor Lupita Nyong'o, is about a little girl named Sulwe, whose skin is darker than anyone else's in her family, and who is teased and called names -- Blackie, Darky -- at school. She longs to be paler, and tries a number of methods to lighten her skin, such as eating pale-coloured food and using makeup. Then a star comes into her room one night and takes her on a journey exploring the origins of Night and Day, cosmic sisters who are beautiful in their different ways. As her mother has told her, the beauty within is as important as external beauty, and darkness has its own beauty. Sulwe accepts her dark skin and her own beauty.

Beautifully illustrated: Sulwe is shown with very expressive eyes, and the different skin tones are rich and varied. The mythic tale of Day and Night has a distinctly African flavour, and the whole book has deep, vivid purple and blue tones. In an afterword, Lupita Nyong'o tells of the teasing she endured because of her own dark skin, and reinforced the message that 'it's important to feel good about yourself when you look in the mirror, but what is more important is working to be beautiful inside'. While I, a white woman, have not experienced prejudice based on my skin colour, I am thoroughly in accord with the message of 'beauty inside' and feeling good about your appearance.

Read for the 'Picture Book by a BIPOC Author' rubric of the Reading Women 2020 Challenge, concluding the challenge with a whole day to spare!

2020/153: Strange Weather in Tokyo -- Hiromi Kawakami (translated by Allison Markin Powell)

‘Tsukiko, do you know what that means, a “karmic connection”?’ Sensei asked in return. Something to do with chance? I ventured, after thinking for a moment. Sensei shook his head with a furrowed brow. ‘Not chance, but rather, destiny. Transmigration of the soul.’ [loc. 895]

Tsukiko is in her late thirties: she has a career, though we're never given any details about it, and lives alone. She likes to drink alone, too: one night, in her local bar, she encounters one of her teachers from high school. Forgetting his name, she refers to him as 'Sensei',

Slowly and without fanfare, the two become friends. They eat and drink together (there is a lot of eating in this novel, and it made me crave good Japanese food) and discuss their individual eccentricities. Sensei had a wife, but she left him: Tsukiko doesn't seem particularly interested in romantic or sexual relationships. Sensei likes to collect railway teapots: Tsukiko has an irrational loathing of a particular baseball team. Despite the difference in their age, despite the imbalance of their relationship, they are comfortable together. Tsukiko finally identifies the emotion she feels for Sensei as love, but seems content for that love to be platonic. She reflects that she's never really grown up: perhaps it's the love of a student for a teacher.

Strange Weather in Tokyo is a very slow novel. Objectively, nothing much happens. There is, though, a sense of hidden depth, and perhaps of changes occurring which Tsukiko cannot perceive. I found the relationship between the two protagonists somewhat unsettling, mostly because of the age gap and the sense that Sensei holds all the power. Because we seldom get any insight into Sensei's true thoughts and emotions, it was all too easy to overthink some of his apparently-random observations: about karma, about souls, about emotion affecting the weather.

The translation flowed smoothly, though I was confused by the way that some lines of dialogue were within quotation marks and others weren't. The final chapter was jarring: it seemed considerably weirder and more fantastical than the rest of the novel. Eventually I realised (from the copyright notices) that it was a wholly separate short story, 'Parade'. This could have been made clearer in the body of the text.

Overall, a gentle and often poetic novel that didn't quite work for me.

Read for the 'Translated from an Asian language' rubric of the Reading Women 2020 challenge.

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2020/152: Hexbreaker -- Jordan L Hawk

...magic was an art and shouldn’t be degraded by capitalism, and definitely shouldn’t be used in service of the police. Easy for him to say, when he didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped off the street and forced to bond. [p. 24]

Set in New York in the 1890s, just before the consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City, Hexbreaker is the story of New York cop Tom Halloran (who has been concealing his witchy heritage, and his true identity, since tragedy struck nine years before) and cat-shifter Cicero (who, as a familiar, should -- in society's eyes -- be bonded to a witch). It can be read as a variation on the 'soulmate' theme: Cicero is still desperately hoping that he'll meet and be welcomed by his witch, the one he'll instinctively recognise, the one who'll magnify Cicero's own magic. He's aware, though, that not all witches are kind to the familiars they bond with. Tom, on the other hand, is keen to conceal his witch potential, lest his criminal past be brought to the attention of his superiors.

The romantic conclusion is a given, but it's how they get there -- and how they each make sacrifices for the other -- that makes this an interesting read. I liked the worldbuilding: the implicit history of familiars and witches (parallels with slavery?), the ways in which the magical and non-magical communities of New York intersect, the trade in licit and illicit hexes which drives the 'whodunnit' element of the plot. Also very enjoyable was the friction between Tom and Cicero: the former a tough no-nonsense patrolman who, in Cicero's assessment, is "rough. Uncultured. Says ‘ain’t’... doesn't even know who Oscar Wilde was", the latter a smooth sophisticated Italian-American, or sometimes a sleek and subtle black cat, who enjoys art and poetry and is at home in the queer community.

I confess I'm more interested in the worldbuilding than the characters, but that might simply be because the 'odd couple' trope (sophisticated/rough, openly queer/repressed, et cetera) is something I've read a lot of lately. This novel was just what I needed on a bleak day between Christmas and New Year, and I'll likely read more of the series when I need a similarly cheerful, engaging romance.

2020/151: The Mere Wife -- Maria Dahvana Headley

It’s everyone, all the people of Herot Hall, the police and the babies, the men with their names all the same, the women with their perfect faces, all cracking and showing what’s underneath, what’s always been there, coarse fur and gaping maws, whipping tails, scales, claws and hunger, and teeth, and teeth, and teeth. [loc. 3616]

Dana Mills, a US Marine deployed in a desert country, is captured by enemy forces. Her 'execution' is televised: but, months later, she staggers out of the desert, amnesiac and pregnant. (Rape or consensual? She doesn't know.) The military are keen on discovering what really happened, but Dana escapes hospital/prison and makes her way back to the town where she was born. Which turns out to have been levelled, and replaced by the pristine gated community of Herot Hall. Dana holes up in an abandoned train station underneath the mountain that overlooks Herot Hall, and bears her son -- Gren -- and guards him as he grows.

Meanwhile down in Herot Hall, Willa, the wife of Roger Herot, circulates through the routine of meal plans, cocktail hours (the toast is 'to us, and people like us') and diets approved by her mother. Her son, Dylan, grows up with every luxury: yet it's the strange 'wild' boy from the mountain whom he befriends.

If some of those names resonate, it may be because The Mere Wife is a feminist reimagining of Beowulf, that Old English poem about monsters. Headley opens her novel with translations of terms used in the original: "AGLÆCA (Old English, noun, masculine): fighter, warrior, hero: AGLÆC-WIF (Old English, noun, feminine): wretch, monster, hell-bride, hag". Though these definitions are contentious, they highlight how the same qualities can be heroic in a man in monstrous in a woman. And the focal characters in this novel are the women. You can read the title two ways: Dana is the merewif, 'woman of the mere', living beside the underground lake; Willa is, to all appearances, merely a trophy wife -- until her son is threatened. Then she enlists the help of another former Marine, Ben Woolf, who can't help casting himself as the hero.

But who are the heroes and who are the monsters?

Lots to consider here: racism (Dana thinks her son will be othered, monstered, by the folk down the mountain because of his brown skin), social class, sexism, Willa hiding her ferocity beneath designer clothes and glossy cosmetics, Dana hiding her whole self in the darkness ...

The language of this novel is rich and bloody. There are some unpleasant and unsettling scenes, and there are moments of great beauty. I loved the contrast between Dana's first-person narrative, Willa's third-person chapters (external, because she is always, always under observation -- by her mother and her mother's coterie, by CCTV, by her internalised prejudices), and especially the first-person-plural narratives of a dog pack, a group of older women and (possibly?) the assembled spirits who live underneath the mountain.

Headley's translation of Beowulf has recently been published, and I'm very much looking forward to reading it and then rereading this novel. Which, if it's not clear, I enjoyed and admired: was moved by: has taken up residence in the dark recesses of my mind.

2020/150: The October Man -- Ben Aaronovitch

‘This is all forbidden knowledge that was not supposed to be kept,’ I said. ‘Too much risk that other countries will know we kept it.’ [loc. 572]

In which the 'Rivers of London' milieu expands to include Germany, where Tobias Winter is working for the Abteilung KDA, the “Complex and Diffuse Matters” department of the federal police. Unlike Peter Grant in the London novels, Tobi is already an established practitioner, and his liaison (Detective Vanessa Sommer) is the wide-eyed innocent with the Harry Potter jokes.

I didn't find the plot or cast of this novella as immediately engaging as Rivers of London: Tobi is more reserved than Peter Grant, his Director is a shadowy figure, and Detective Sommer, while suitably wowed by the revelation that magic is real, didn't get to do much other than provide information about the wine-growing industry. (The crime under investigation is very definitely wine-related, though the plot became more convoluted as the story progressed.)

More interesting to me was the Research Department, which has 'several tonnes' of pre-war documentation in filing cabinets: it's deemed too dangerous to transfer to microfiche, let alone a proper database. That means that the German 'magic police' have greater resources than their counterparts in other countries: and it is also clear that Tobi's boss has been keeping an eye on Nightingale, the Rivers, and Peter Grant.

Not a bad read, but not as enjoyable for me as the main canon. And of course there was added piquancy, and sadness, at reading about European policing -- European lives -- on the eve of Brexit.

2020/149: Blackthorn Winter -- Liz Williams

"Old country types used to call them the People, which is a bit ironic, really, because they aren’t."
"What, you mean they aren’t human?"
"No, I mean they aren’t people. Not like you and me. Well, not like me, anyway. ... They’re all scraps and patches, bits of greed and lust and envy and spite. And some good things too, sometimes. But not often." [loc. 5736]

Blackthorn Winter, the second in the series (quartet?) that began with Comet Weather (one of my most enjoyable reads this year), is a very wintry novel: I'm glad I read it during the liminal days at year's end.

Again, the four Fallow sisters are brought together (for Christmas) and taken elsewhere -- and elsewhen -- by resonance and ritual, by their own loyalties and friendships, and by the requirements of those who have, in one character's words, 'stayed around to help'. It's a quartet of journeys that encompasses the Wild Hunt, the Green Children of Woolpit, the Maunsell Forts, the Mithraeum, and a number of London pubs. (Williams' descriptions of these made me tremendously nostalgic for the time before Covid when pubs were somewhere you could go at Christmas.) Oh, and I believe there's a nod to the Bridge Theatre's role-swapping Midsummer Night's Dream, which made me happy.

A plethora of the arcane, with new characters introduced and existing characters reimagined. I did feel that this volume wasn't quite as tightly plotted, or written, as Comet Weather: in particular, there was a lot of dialogue that could have been trimmed without damage to the plot. Much of Blackthorn Winter is set in London, and there were moments where the geography felt unclear, or perhaps dreamlike. (Also, there is no tube station in Peckham).

Despite those minor criticisms, I enjoyed this a great deal, and learnt a lot (Lincrusta, Austin Osman Spare, the temple of Nodens). And there was a lovely warm sense of familiarity, as though the author had visited places that I knew, and had the same responses to those places.

I am very much looking forward to the next volume(s) in the sequence, and to the resolution of some tantalising sub-plots.

2020/148: Strange Practice -- Vivian Shaw

... treating the differently alive was not only more interesting than catering to the ordinary human population, it was in many ways a great deal more rewarding. [loc. 90]

Dr Greta Helsing (her family dropped the 'van' when they relocated from the Netherlands to London in the 1930s) in the is a GP catering primarily to the supernatural community. Her friends, acquaintances and assistants include vampires (foremost among whom is Edward, Lord Ruthven, who insists that Polidori's novel is mostly libel); ghouls, witches, mummies ... and when another vampire, the self-tormenting Sir Francis Varney, is attacked by a group of men dressed as monks, Greta is called in to help. It quickly becomes apparent that the attack on Varney is connected with a series of gruesome murders that also have a religious aspect: the 'Rosary Ripper' is roaming London and nobody is safe.

This was a fun read, though I was vexed by the frequent Americanisms. (No, we do not refer to Dennis Nilsen as 'the British Jeffrey Dahmer', nor do we have blood drives or attorneys.) What Shaw does really well here is sketching an evolving social group, with new characters introduced into a comfortable community of friends and acquaintances -- all of whom are idiosyncratic individuals displaying a realistic spectrum of physiological and psychological issues, from Ruthven's deadly boredom to Varney's self-loathing to Fastitocalon's disregard for his own wellbeing.

This felt very much a character-driven novel to me. That's not to say that the plot is dull: there were moments where everything seemed hopeless for one or more of the characters, and moments when the villain (embedded in truly scary technology) seemed invincible. But these moments mattered because of their effect on Shaw's cast. The characters, and characterisation, kept me reading and incline me to seek out more in the series.

2020/147: The Echo Wife -- Sarah Gailey

It was one of the things that made my work legal and ethical: each duplicative clone was an island, incapable of reproduction, isolated and, ultimately, disposable. It was bedrock. Clones don't have families. [loc. 468]

Excellent, dark and thought-provoking novel from the author of River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow. The first-person narrator of The Echo Wife -- a scientific genius and a woman who has put her career before everything -- is a compelling creation, and the story unfolds as weightily as a Greek tragedy.

Evelyn Caldwell has devoted her life to perfecting the process of human cloning. She's happiest in the laboratory, though her dedication has cost her her marriage. Nathan, her former husband, was also involved in Evelyn's research, but his work was slapdash and he didn't seem to appreciate how much science meant to his wife. Now he's left her for another woman ... or, rather, for another version of Evelyn herself. Martine, the clone, has been created by Nathan in secret, using Evelyn's research: he's taken shortcuts, and he's made one major variation to the template.

The cloning technology developed by Evelyn, and especially the mechanisms by which a clone's personality is written into their neurological framework, is described in vague terms: 'how' is not the focus of the story. The description of conditioning, the process of inflicting wounds on a clone to mimic the original's scars and fractures, is more germane, because The Echo Wife is, in part, a novel about the nature/nurture debate. Are humans simply the sum of their genetics and physiology, or are they changed by their environment and their history? The whole cloning industry implies the former, but the clones Evelyn creates are never intended to last for long, or to procreate. They're certainly not supposed to change.

Evelyn herself is the product of her experiences: a cold, emotionally (and physically?) abusive father, a self-effacing mother, and the tension between them; her marriage to Nathan, and her decision to abort a pregnancy; the long-healed fracture in her wrist. None of those factors should be able to affect Martine -- who didn't get the 'conditioning' that a standard, body-double clone would get -- and Martine should not be able to deviate from the way she's been programmed. Evelyn notes, with distaste, that Nathan designed Martine to need him, and to give him what the original Evelyn couldn't. Does that make Martine a different person? Is she a person at all?

One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is that it's a first-person narrative told by a complex, and not necessarily sympathetic, character. Evelyn keeps telling us (or herself) that she's not a monster, that she is rational and justified and objective: but she is the sum of her experiences, and the child of her parents. She can't help comparing herself to Martine, but she doesn't want to accept their similarities -- or their differences, which should not exist.

The relationship between Evelyn and her clone is claustrophobic, mother/daughter, scientist/subject, abusive and loving. I'm not sure, even after rereading, which of them is the monster, which of them is human; which is the voice and which the echo; which of them has broken free of her conditioning. But I am certain that there are real monsters here.

Thanks to Netgalley for this advance review copy.

2020/146: Voyage of Innocence -- Elizabeth Edmondson

'...I can see that when everything grinds to a halt, as it will have to, and the sources of supply are taken over but aren’t working properly, and the rich are holed up in their castles, then no duck nor cat nor even dogs will have a hope.’
‘I don’t think anything would induce an English person to eat his dog.’
‘No, most Englishmen would probably rather devour their children.’ [p. 266]

I've enjoyed almost everything I've read by Elizabeth Edmondson (who also wrote as Elizabeth Pewsey), and this -- after a slow start -- was no exception.

The novel opens in 1938, on board the SS Gloriana, bound from Tilbury to India. Verity -- known as Vee -- is fleeing undisclosed dangers; Lally, her American friend who happens to be on the same ship, is going out to join her husband; and Claudia, Vee's cousin who joins the ship at Lisbon, needs to be out of Europe now that she's 'come to her senses'. All three women were students together at Oxford six years before, and the choices and friendships they made in their undergraduate days have led them down very different paths.

Vee's early starry-eyed communism is considerably dulled by the things she's done for her nameless controllers; Claudia, so enamoured of Mosley and National Socialism, has met up with another university friend whose Jewish husband has been murdered; and Lally, always the most sensible of the three, is on unsteady footing with her husband -- though she is travelling with her step-son, Peter, who has been ill.

Verity is determined to record the events of her life so that if any 'accident' befalls her, there is a testimony of the crimes (legal and moral) which she's committed for the cause. Her account forms the bulk of the novel, and it's Vee's depiction of her time at Oxford which charmed me. She's a true innocent, shocked to learn that men (apart from Oscar Wilde) might indulge in intimacy with other men; appalled by the poverty and degradation she witnesses on leafletting trips to the East End of London; inexplicably drawn to the charismatic John Petrus; rejecting the Christian faith in which she was raised.

Claudia, though she has less of a voice in the novel, is also a fascinating character: not only is she comfortable in her aristocracy, she's also prone to 'flashes' of prescience about the future, all of them accurate. She does, however, sincerely believe that Hitler can save the world ... Of the three female protagonists, it's Lally who is least present in the story, least characterful. Her function seems to be more of balance and calm than of any political action.

Voyage of Innocence starts with someone going overboard off Alexandria, and ends with a sequence of newspaper clippings, society anecdotes and the like which detail the post-war fates of most of the characters. I was reminded, inevitably, of the Mitford sisters; of the Cambridge Spies; of Brideshead Revisited, and the heroic lies that led so many young British men to fight in the Spanish Civil War. This is a powerful novel, but seldom solemn: in the Oxford chapters, Vee, Claudia and Lally are young women enjoying liberty and intellectual stimulation in the heyday of their class, and despite their various crises they're a light-hearted set.

This is also a very feminist take on the trope of idealistic youth getting involved in the weighty political manouevres of the older generation. And for most, though not all, of the characters, there are happy endings, albeit with a bittersweet aftertaste: what Vee has done cannot be undone.

Some minor quibbles regarding copy-editing, such as mention of May Balls being on 'the thirty-first of April'. Also worth noting that this novel features cameos by a couple of characters from The Frozen Lake, set in 1936.

Phrase that snagged my attention: 'walking straight into the trap of her time'.

2020/145: Tales from the Folly -- Ben Aaronovich

Hail Dominic and Victor, the foxes had hailed us, soon to be blessed above all other minor landowners in Herefordshire and the wider border regions. The little bastards could have given us more of a warning.
‘He seems like a good little chap,’ said Victor.
‘Victor,’ I said slowly. ‘He’s the god of the River Lugg.’ [p. 205]

An assortment of short stories and vignettes set in the world of the Rivers of London series. The first six stories are told from Peter Grant's viewpoint: the others by more-or-less minor characters, or characters who don't appear in the novels.

To be honest I don't think short fiction is Aaronovitch's forte: perhaps it's because I read the entire book in a single sitting, but none of the stories really stood out, and some seemed very slight. Probably the two I enjoyed best were 'Three Rivers, Two Husbands and a Baby' (which picks up the story of Victor and Dominic, previously encountered in Foxglove Summer) and 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion', a tale of the Swinging Sixties, South London, drug dealers and thugs and the Wandle. This barely intersected at all with the Rivers novels, and may well have been better for it: plus, there are some truly luscious descriptions of fabric.

Far from awful, but could have done with more Nightingale (my perennial complaint) and also more foxes.

2020/144: Squeeze Me -- Carl Hiaasen

He claimed that Angie had sought out the reptile, into whose gaping maw she’d inserted Pruitt’s left fist, the one that had been holding his knife. Angie eventually resigned, pleading guilty to one felony count of aggravated assault and one misdemeanor charge of illegally feeding wildlife. [loc. 72]

This is a fascinating dystopia, set after the Covid pandemic but during the second term of a US President (referred to only by his Secret Service codename, Mastodon) who plays a lot of golf, likes junk food, hates immigrants, and refuses to believe in climate change. Obviously this character is wholly fictitious, as is his wife, the fragrant First Lady, whose codename is Mockingbird.

The mansions and hotels of Palm Beach are engaged in a cutthroat competition for the honour of hosting charity galas and political events. One venue, Lipid House, loses a lot of points when a wealthy socialite (and supporter of the President) goes missing. The searchers don't find her -- but they do find an enormous python lurking in the grounds. Wildlife wrangler Angie Armstrong is called in to deal with the reptile, and cannot fail to notice a huge bulge in its midriff. Cue shenanigans, inept criminals, mislaid corpses human and otherwise, a torrid affair between Mockingbird and her Secret Service minder, and the intervention of the eco-activist Skink, familiar to Hiaasen fans from a number of other works.

There is far too much plot for me to summarise here: enough to say that Squeeze Me is one of the better Hiaasen novels, with an excellent heroine (Angie does not play nice with climate-change deniers) and some dark satire. The President exhibits an irrational hatred of 'foreigners', and blames a hapless migrant for the socialite's death, condemning the man to imprisonment and abuse. (One Secret Service minion wonders if the President might have been mistaken. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t fucking matter whether he’s right or not. That’s the scary part.” [loc. 2148]). While this felt a little too close to the bone for Hiaasen's usual breezy humour, I was vastly amused by the depiction of POTUS-supporting ladies who lunch, and by the various hapless petty criminals and low-lifes who feature herein. Great fun, though it made me nostalgic for Floridian beach bars, long drives, nature, and ... ah yes, life without lockdowns.

2020/143: The Remaking of Corbin Wale -- Roan Parrish

This was what he’d been struggling to understand since the beginning. If they were cursed, why would the signs lead him to the person who might activate it? The only explanation was that the universe, instead of being indifferent, or kind, wished for him to suffer. And Corbin couldn’t believe that. It wasn’t what he’d ever known. The sky and the trees and the grass and the seasons—no, the universe wasn’t vengeful. And Corbin was so small. [loc. 2243]

Alex Barrow, a successful New York pastry chef, suddenly finds himself without job or boyfriend: at a loose end, he returns to his hometown, Ann Arbor, where he takes over his mother's coffee shop and transforms it into an artisan bakery.

Corbin Wale is one of his first customers. He's aloof, unsociable and strangely familiar, and Alex thinks he's the most beautiful man he's ever seen. Some days Corbin will sit in the coffee shop for hours, drawing as though his life depends on it: other days he's nowhere to be found. Alex gradually pieces together Corbin's story: an outcast at high school, openly gay (or at least not denying it), speaking only to animals and not to his classmates. What Alex doesn't know is that Corbin -- brought up by two elderly aunts, now deceased -- is, like all the Wales, under a curse. Anyone he loves will die. And yet he can't help the attraction he feels for Alex...

This is a sweet M/M holiday romance, very wintry -- though note that the major holiday herein is neither Thanksgiving (boyotted and critiqued by one of the protagonists) nor Christmas, but Chanukah. Corbin feels truly strange -- almost fey but wholly explicable as human -- and there are intriguing hints of the supernatural that never overwhelm the real-world romance. The secondary characters were likeable and well-rounded, and the small-town setting (with its prejudices as well as its sense of community) made me think of old Christmas movies. The love story between Alex and Corbin worked especially well because Alex accepted Corbin, with all his oddness and his imagination: this is something I appreciate a great deal in a romance.

And there was a resonance that nagged at me all the time I was reading this: aha! The author notes that this is her M/M take on Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, aunts and all. Plenty of originality here, though, which is probably why I didn't identify the homage.

2020/142: Beloved -- Toni Morrison

This here Sethe was new. The ghost in her house didn’t bother her for the very same reason a room-and-board witch with new shoes was welcome...This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn’t know where the world stopped and she began. [loc. 2898]

Set in Cincinatti in 1873, Beloved is the story of former slave Sethe, and how the arrival of Paul D, a fellow slave from the Sweet Home plantation, is the catalyst for both oppression and liberation. Sethe, who lives with her teenaged daughter Denver, is mourning her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and is haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed to prevent her being returned to the plantation. After Paul D and Sethe begin a relationship, the ghost seems to be banished; but then a young woman, soaking wet, appears on Sethe's doorstep.

Beloved is an extremely emotional novel that deals with the psychological and physiological traumas of slavery. Though Sethe and Paul D are no longer enslaved, they can't forget or get past the appalling abuses they suffered at Sweet Home and afterwards. Denver, who was born during Sethe's escape, can't understand the sheer horror of what Sethe endured, though she sees the scars on Sethe's back.

One aspect of this story that really struck me was the depiction of the ways in which slavery in the American South destroyed families, destroyed any hope of family: mothers and children separated, marriage barely recognised, no way of tracing relatives. Sethe would do anything for her children, yet her two sons fled the haunted house and the murderous mother, and their fate remains unknown.

I found this a harrowing read, but Morrison's prose (and her ear for dialogue, for a Black voice) is marvellous, and I especially liked the non-linear narrative, the way that the story is built up in anecdotes and 'rememories'. I understand now why this is a modern classic, why it's a set text in schools (though banned in some US institutions), why Morrison is such an important writer -- the fact that she portrays beauty amid the horror, sometimes as part of the horror, makes the story incredibly powerful. I don't think I liked it, but it moved me and educated me.

Read for the 'Toni Morrison' bonus of the Reading Women 2020 Challenge.

2020/141: Cage of Souls -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

“The sun may be a million years in dying, but we will not live to see its end. We are the last remains of a once-great people and we do not look into the sky because we have no wish, now, to see what the future holds. We study the past, instead, and make up stories about how things used to be. [loc. 988]

This is the narrative of Stefan Advani, convicted of inciting revolution in humanity's last city, Shadrapur. He is imprisoned downriver, in the notorious Island -- a penal colony in the heart of the jungle, beset on all sides by dangerous wildlife and harbouring the worst criminals of the age. There is violence, corruption and tyranny: the Marshal is prone to random acts of retribution, and there are factions amongst the prisoners. Stefan, a self-declared coward, makes alliances and keeps his head (literally and figuratively) above water while he tries to find an escape route. 

Interspersed with his time in the Island are reminiscences of his life before imprisonment: expeditions into the desert, rabble-rousing in the shadow of the Weapon that stands like a monument at the heart of Shadrapur. 

Sounds fascinating, yes? But somehow it is not. I disliked Stefan and most of the characters he encounters; the constant violence and arrogance wore me down; the 'dying Earth' tropes felt two-dimensional and unexamined. And worst of all, a plethora of intriguing notions -- accelerated evolution, unlicensed medical experiments, a cosmonaut from 1972, the Weapon itself -- are introduced and then cast aside. I did not find this an enjoyable read, though it's well-written: I am tempted to return to Gene Wolfe's 'Book of the New Sun'. 

It's not going to put me off Tchaikovsky's work, because I have enjoyed several of his novels: but this one was not a winner for me.

2020/140: Seaworthy -- K L Noone

Colby ran a hand through his own hair and offered Jason an encouraging head-tip, and then did—
Something. No good word for it. Suddenly he was William Crawford, Viscount Easterly: brittle and breakable and lonely and longing, good with maps and ciphers, never having been allowed further than the family estate on his own. Even his shoulders carried that weight, thin and distressed. [loc. 189]

Jason Mirelli is an actor noted for his action-movie roles, notably the John Kill series: 'my name's John Kill. That's what I do.' He's had less work since he came out as bi, but now there's a project that's highly relevant to his interests: a movie of a 1940s novel about the homosexual relationship between a nineteenth-century naval captain and a consumptive, aristocratic cryptographer. (Why yes, the Aubrey/Maturin books are acknowledged as an influence in the Afterword.)

Unfortunately Jason's first encounter with the film's producer and star, openly-gay Colby Kent, does not go as well as might be expected. But they're both professionals, right? And that frisson between them in the audition, that was just the characters. Right?

Seaworthy is the first volume of the 'Character Bleed' series: 'character bleed' is a term used to describe the blurring of actor and character, and it is an apt description for the experiences of both Jason and Colby. Their characters are in love, and they are becoming increasingly drawn to one another. This is immensely convenient for the film, as both have complex anxieties rooted in real-life experiences: Jason is afraid of water, Colby is still recovering from an abusive relationship. As the fiction they're filming and the reality they're experiencing overlap (and perhaps converge), Jason draws strength not only from Colby but also from the fictional Captain Stephen Lanyon, and Colby is similarly buoyed by Will Crawford as well as by his co-star.

What I loved about this novel (and recognised from the author's other work) was the lyrical prose and the almost animist descriptions: Jason and Colby both think of the objects around them as having emotions, and this is not nearly as irritating or irrational as it might sound. An elevator provides 'friendly' support, a towel 'collected the sound for him'.

Seaworthy is moving, romantic and often extremely funny: it dropped a star because it felt more like the first part of a two-part novel than the first volume in a series, but I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series over the winter holiday. (Actually, I'm going to reinstate that star in honour of Colby being a fan of 'Heartbreak Beat' by the Psychedelic Furs: one among many cultural allusions that made me warm to the character!)

2020/139: The Kingdoms -- Natasha Pulley

"Londres Gare du Roi..." Joe wondered why the hell the train company was giving London station names in French, and then wondered helplessly why he'd wondered. All the London station names were in French. Everyone knew that. [loc. 27]

I was so very happy to get an advance review copy from NetGalley, having loved Pulley's previous novels (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow). I am happy to report that The Kingdoms (UK publication date 27 MAY 2021) is an absolute delight, the kind of book that I race through, immediately read again, and mourn for days because it's over.

🗹 identity porn
🗹 diversity
🗹 ambiguous moral choices
🗹 spectacular weather
🗹 historical conundrums
🗹 true love
🗹 london
☒ explaining everything

... I have now read this for the third time, to refresh my memory for this review, and it's still very. very good. I think, too, that it's probably Pulley's most accessible novel to date.

1898: Joe Tournier arrives in London Londres with no luggage and no memory. Nothing about the life that he apparently fits into -- a slave, with a much younger wife and a kind master -- feels at all familiar. He has a vague memory of a woman named Madeline, small and dark and wearing green: wife? sister? When he receives a postcard of a lighthouse, with the message "Dearest Joe, come home if you remember. --M", he's sure that it was sent by Madeline. But the lighthouse on the postcard has only recently been built, and the postcard was sent 93 years ago ...

Joe's quest to recover his identity takes him from Londres to Pont du Cam to the Outer Hebrides to beseiged Edinburgh; from 1898 to 1807 to 1797; from ballrooms and wardrooms to an abandoned lighthouse, and to Newgate. And, though the narrative focusses on Joe, other characters' voices recur: a Spanish naval officer turned pirate captain, his sister the ship's surgeon, and the elusive Madeline.

This is, in part, an alternate history. It's the perennial time-travel conundrum: can history be changed? In this case, yes, and that part of the plot hinges on a sketched map of the London Underground and a telegraph machine created too early. (There's also an experiment involving tortoises.) But what makes The Kingdoms so compelling is the shifting relationships between Joe, Kite and Agatha. Agatha is monstrous, and has crafted a monster: Kite is a study in a warped kind of toxic masculinity, both fragile and brutal. They both know more about Joe than they're prepared to tell, and they will go to atrocious lengths to preserve his ignorance. But he can't stay ignorant for ever, and even though he may not be able to remember anything about his life before arriving at the Gare du Roi, his subconscious, or his heart, or history itself still resonates.

I'm intrigued, and still a little perplexed, about what does and doesn't feel familiar to Joe: what he remembers, and what he recognises with hindsight. He's lost so much -- lost so many people who mattered -- and some of those memories are weightier than others. And he is inexorably drawn to Kite, despite the threats of violence, despite Kite's obvious insanity.

So much rawness and vulnerability in the dialogue of this novel, and so many harrowing scenes. (Pulley's description of sweeping the deck after a battle: 'Sailors were going over the deck with wide brooms, pushing all the pieces of people overboard and leaving red comb patterns behind -- it was the brooms that hissed.'[2798]. At least as vivid as anything in Patrick O'Brian.) And there is a lot of sudden, casual violence: because much of the novel is set during wartime, and pragmatism is the order of the day.

I would love to read a novel by Natasha Pulley in which there is a likeable, sympathetic female protagonist. There are plenty of excellent women in The Kingdoms, but: Agatha. And yet, when her backstory was revealed, her motives were thoroughly comprehensible, and I pitied her.

And now I have a book hangover again -- that feeling where you don't want to read anything else, but only to fall back into what you've just read ...

Natasha Pulley talks about and reads from The Kingdoms.

2020/138: The Perfect Gentleman: The Remarkable Life of Dr James Miranda Barry -- June Rose

‘Good form’ was not enough for her – she needed to believe in the innate chivalry of a gentleman in order to maintain her masquerade. [loc. 1209]

James Miranda Barry (1789-1865) was, by vocation, a military surgeon who advocated hygiene and humane treatment of the mentally ill, strove to ignore racism in South African society, and insisted that 'it was better to be without advice than to have bad advice whether in Law or Physic’. Dr Barry was also a woman who lived her whole life, from boyhood, as a man. Though, according to this biography, 'everyone knew': rumours were rife during Barry's lifetime, and when the charwoman who laid out the body exclaimed that 'it's a woman', the staff surgeon was not especially surprised.

This may say more about Victorian attitudes to gender and medicine than it says about Barry as a person, though. Several of the opinions and accounts quoted by Rose indicate a very clear prejudice against those who didn't conform to gender stereotypes: "the physique, the absence of hair, the voice, all pointed one way and the petulance of temper, the unreasoning impulsiveness, the fondness for pets were in the same direction." [loc. 127] Barry was regarded as 'extraordinary' or 'odd' in appearance and 'eccentric' in behaviour, and had a reputation for argument, independent thinking and bypassing the rigorous procedures of the military. Florence Nightingale, never afraid to use her femininity to get what she wanted, quarrelled with Barry, who'd achieved success in a man's world by pretending to be a man: "After she was dead I was told she was a woman. I should say she was the most hardened creature I ever met throughout the army." [loc. 2394]

June Rose is a meticulous biographer, examining the evidence and making it clear when she's extrapolating from her sources. She examines Barry's (likely) childhood experience, connection to high society, and education at Edinburgh University. Barry's career took her to South Africa -- where she may have borne a child to her long-term friend and protector Lord Charles Somerset -- and to the Caribbean, and through a series of increasingly disputatious conflicts with her superiors. Much of Barry's medical work seems to have consisted in treating and preventing disease, rather than battle-field surgery, but she was certainly capable of the latter.

I was familiar with Barry's story from Patricia Duncker's fictionalised account, James Miranda Barry. I believe that novel uses the male pronoun throughout, as Barry did: this biography, on the other hand, refers to Barry as 'she', which I found ... slightly jarring. June Rose -- writing in 1977 -- does address the eagerness of nineteenth-century society to diagnose Barry as a 'hermaphrodite', an intersex person. Discussing one eminent physician's opinion, she writes '[his] obsession with the specifically sexual identity is typical of a common – and predominantly male – assumption that a woman by nature would have been incapable of sustaining the masquerade and attaining such professional prominence'. [loc. 2610]

I suspect that a biographer writing Barry's story today would respect his pronouns (which sadly I have not done here), and perhaps venture further into Barry's private life -- and biology. But I did find this an illuminating and compassionate account of an unusual and courageous life.

Read for the 'a biography' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/137: Our House is on Fire -- Malena Ernman

Hope is extremely important, but it will come later. When your house is on fire you don’t start by sitting down at the kitchen table and telling the family how nice it will be once you’ve finished renovating and building the add-ons. When your house is on fire you call 999, you waken everyone you can and you crawl towards the front door.’ [loc. 1803]

Our House Is On Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis was written by Greta Thunberg, her mother Malena Ernman (the primary narrator), her father Svante and her sister Beata. The personal is political, and the microcosm of Greta's family -- her own, initially undiagnosed autism, her sister's ADHD, her mother's international opera career, her father's youthful habit of memorising airline timetables -- is the more immediate aspect of the book. It's an intimate and honest account of the sheer difficulty of living with, and finding a diagnosis for, a young girl whose psychiatric problems are inextricably entwined with her growing understanding of the headlong rush towards ecological catastrophe. The family theorise that the girls' mental health issues are part of a web of issues that disproportionately affect women and the highly sensitive: that the mental health epidemic, with its facets of loneliness, isolation, depression and inability to adjust to the modern world, is the result of prioritising wealth and power over the natural world and the human mind.

I found the 'family' chapters, the story of how they reimagined and redefined and renegotiated their lives together, moving and relateable: the sections on climate change didn't feel as thoughtful or as well-presented. Possibly because, like most people, I've heard them all before -- sometimes literally, in that there are phrases that recur in Greta's speeches -- and possibly because they are written in oratory style: many short sentences, building on one another. There isn't much in the way of solid fact here, but that's fine because we all know where to find it: however, I would have liked slightly more supporting science.

Read for the 'a woman who inspires you' element of the Reading Women Challenge 2020: I really struggled with this rubric because I found it hard to identify 'famous' women who I find inspirational. I'm amazed and impressed by Greta, though, and I am inspired by her message (nobody is too small to make a difference) and her forthright delivery of it.

2020/136: Surfacing -- Kathleen Jamie

‘How long have you people been here?’ ‘’Bout ten thousand years. In winter we come up here on snow machines...' [p. 80]

A collection of essays, ranging from conversations between the author and her elderly father, to memories of a long-ago stay in Tibet, to archaeology in the Arctic and the Orkneys. I found the archaeology chapters most fascinating, especially Jamie's account of her stay in a Yup'ik community in Alaska. There, the permafrost is melting and exposing objects dating back hundreds of years, from a time before settlers and missionaries and oil pipelines. Jamie splendidly conveys the sense of continuity felt, and clung to, by the Yup'ik. Though the temptations of 'modern' life are encroaching on the village, the villagers still live in ways that their ancestors would have recognised: they are attentive to their environment, to the minute changes and signs of life that might indicate good hunting, a change in the weather, a bear roaming down from the empty tundra. This is life on the front line of the climate emergency, and the Yup'ik are well aware that change is coming and that they may need to revert to older ways of life if the planes stop coming.

Kathleen Jamie, an acclaimed poet, is fascinated by the deep past: there's a marvellous account of her reflections on a cave in the Scottish Highlands, where bear bones from the Ice Age have been discovered. 'The skull was in the cave and what was in the skull? Bear mind, bear memory – when autumn came and the nights began to freeze, he remembered where the cave-mouth was, so he padded across the glacier.' [p. 3] And she's equally engaged with the distant past that is uncovered by ferocious storms that sweep away the sand dunes in Orkney. She evokes a sense of place and of presence, a sense that there were people who lived there on the coast, intimately aware of and interacting with the world around them.

All the essays in this volume display an intellectual response to the world that incorporates a subjective, emotional response without triteness or sentimentality. The essays about the changing, damaged world have an immediacy that I found very affecting and effective. Lucid and beautiful prose, too.

Read for the 'about the environment' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/135: Broken Places and Outer Spaces -- Nnedi Okorafor

Writing the story was a spark to dry kindling. The act of creating a story had a delicious sensation and I instantly fell madly in love with it. It felt like stepping off the edge of a cliff on purpose when you subconsciously knew you had the ability to fly. It took me to a place where I didn’t need to walk. [p. 73]

When Nnedi Okorafor was 19 and already a successful athlete, she underwent an operation to combat the effects of scoliosis. The operation had a 1% failure rate: Okorafor was that 1%, and woke paralysed from the waist down. 

After this catastrophe, which she calls the Breaking, she experienced hallucinations, despair, agony: she also drew on her knowledge of Frida Kahlo, whose art was powered by her own chronic pain, and Mary Shelley, who may have written Frankenstein as a way of dealing with pain and fear. Okorafor began to scribble stories in the margins of a book -- in the margins, in fact, of I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. 

Though she wasn't at that point writing SF, she did consider the irony of her paralysis having made her more suited to life in space or in water, where gravity wouldn't interfere: due to nerve damage, her proprioception (sense of where one's body is) was unreliable. Thinking about how technology might assist and support her, how she might become a cyborg, sat oddly with her loss of faith in science. Then, during her recovery period, a friend suggested she take a creative writing class: and it clicked. Visits to family in Nigeria inspired her to write about the Nigeria she experienced -- a place of the future as much as, or more than, the past -- and to explore Africanfuturism, 'similar to Afrofuturism, but ... specifically and more directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and perspective, where the centre is non-Western' [p. 83]. 

I was struck by Okorafor's resilience and determination, and also by her matter-of-fact account of the bad days: the hallucinations, the rage and despair, the fears that she faced. (Try driving at night when you can't feel your foot on the pedal.) The ways in which she's sublimated pain into art, and accepted her body's limitations while working to minimise them, are humbling. And I'm fascinated by the process that led her to recognise the disconnect between the Nigerian and American aspects of her heritage, and the way she's worked to integrate them. 

A short book, but there's a lot in it: skimming for this review, I found myself rereading chapters I'd half-forgotten. I'm certain that I'll be looking out for elements of this story, transmuted, in my future readings of her fiction. 

Read for the 'featuring a woman with a disability' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/134: A Pure Heart -- Rajia Hassib

she feels she is losing herself, that she has been shredded into parts that have been scattered, like Osiris’s body... unlike him, her scattering is not restricted to Egypt, but is global: her arms in Egypt at her parents’, wrapped around them in a tight hug; her head in New York, studying and producing enviable scholarly work; her legs in West Virginia, hiking its many trails; her heart buried with Gameela. [loc. 2667]

Rose's sister Gameela has been killed by a suicide bomber in Cairo. Their parents are devastated. Rose, who's flown back from New York, leaving behind her husband Mark and her high-profile Egyptology career, is trying to make sense of what Gameela left behind: a teacup of unfamiliar pattern, documents that indicate she quit her job, a newspaper clipping of a boy with intense eyes. Rose finds parallels with her current project at the Met, which involves exploration of the ancient Egyptian view of the afterlife: a place to which one can address letters, a place from which the beloved dead can return. A place in which the avowal of a pure heart would preserve the soul. 

Gameela was a devout Muslim, who wore the hijab and didn't hide her mistrust of Rose's husband's insincere conversion to Islam, undertaken so that the two could marry. Rose -- who feels nostalgic when called by her birth name, Fayrouz -- still prays five times a day, but religion isn't the centre of her life in the way that she's becoming to realise it was for her sister. And as she learns more about her sister's life and death, she comes to realise she may inadvertently have been complicit in Gameela's murder. 

This was an intriguing insight into Egyptian life, and the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. I hadn't been aware of just how divided (and corrupt) Egyptian society is, or how overshadowed by postcolonial attitudes. Rose's reconstruction of Gameela's last months of life -- and her own growing alienation from her husband and from American life -- formed a compelling account of the privilege and prejudice experienced by educated middle-class women in Egypt. 

But I did feel the novel didn't live up to the promise of its early chapters, the influence of ancient mythology, the history of a land that has seven thousand years of history and nearly as many of occupation. It's not Gameela who needs piecing together like Osiris: it's Rose, who contains multitudes and wears different masks for family, for husband, for Egyptian society and for her colleagues in America. By the end of the novel she's closer to reconciling the many versions of herself, and perhaps closer to understanding the decisions made and secrets kept by Gameela: it's a hopeful ending, rather than a conclusive one. 

 Read for the 'by an Arab woman' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/133: Consolation Songs -- Iona Datt Sharma (ed.)

You can take a red pen to the world and point out its flaws, but you can't force every change. [loc. 1379: 'Four', by Freya Marske]

Subtitled 'Optimistic Speculative Fiction for a Time of Pandemic': all proceeds from this anthology were donated to the COVID-19 appeal run by University College London Hospitals NHS Trust. I bought it because I could do with some consolation, and also because most of the stories are by women, thus fulfilling the 'anthology by multiple authors' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020. Plus, though I didn't recognise all the authors' names, those I recognised had good associations. 

 And it was so good to read positive and uplifting fiction! Twelve short stories, twelve very different voices, twelve happy endings. (Also a lot of loving queerness: about a third of the stories feature same-sex romantic relationships, and several more have significant relationships that aren't romantic or sexual.) 

 There isn't a weak story in here, though some are shorter and less weighty than others. My favourite three, in no particular order, were 'Four' by Freya Marske (in which the four horsemen of the apocalypse are neighbours in suburban New Zealand); 'St Anselm-by-the-Riverside', by editor Iona Datt Sharma (in which a middle-aged ward sister in an alternate, frozen London finds love and hope); and 'Love, Your Flatmate' by Stephanie Burgis Samphire (in which a fey composer and a human editor are forced to share a flat during lockdown). Those are my favourite three right now, but ask me again in a week and I might give you a different answer. 

 Not just consolation here, but comfort and hope and joy and love -- and surprisingly little sentimentality.

2020/132: The Hollow Places -- T Kingfisher

You can, if you find yourself in a strange world, ignore the intuition of your friend who devoured his twin in the womb and is seeing the world with one of her eyes. You would probably be foolish to do so, but I suppose it’s an option that you do have. [loc. 1110]

Kingfisher's latest novel is based on Algernon Blackwood's novella 'The Willows', of which I had only vague memories. That's set during a canoe trip down the Danube: The Hollow Places, in contrast, is set in small-town America, in Hog Chapel, North Carolina. Kara, newly-divorced and broke, is offered a place to live by her Uncle Earl, who owns and runs the Wonder Museum -- a place that fascinated Kara as a child (she decided the stuffed elk was the Great Prince from Bambi, and adored him accordingly) and which now seems a charming backwater of the weird, the mysterious and the kitsch. A place of safety. 

 Little does she know, et cetera. 

 With her new friend Simon, who is flamboyantly queer and works in the coffee shop where Kara gets her wifi, Kara discovers a passage to another world. It's not a nice place. There is evidence of military presence; there are many little islands, all similar but not identical; there are silvery willow trees; there is a message that reads 'Pray they are hungry'. Only gradually do Simon and Kara work out the nature of 'they': and when they finally manage to find the portal back to their own world, that's not the end of their story. 

 I was drawn into the story by Kingfisher's blend of the truly horrific and the oddball humorous. The humour doesn't mellow the horror -- indeed, it sharpens it by way of contrast -- but it brings the characters to life in a way that distinguishes them from the standard horror movie cast. Kara, in particular, is the kind of fannish geek with whom I thoroughly identify. She has 'very strong feelings that C. S. Lewis had not spent nearly enough time on the sudden realization, when moving between worlds, that nothing could be taken for granted' [loc. 878] 

 Despite the humour and the comfortable geekery, this is not a frivolous novel. There is a vivid sense of risk, and several points where I couldn't see how the protagonists (or the cat Beau) were going to survive. And Kara's method of protecting herself (distraction with pain) made me queasy, but is utterly credible. Splendid, ominous and a very interesting transformation of Blackwood's original story.

2020/131: Boyfriend Material -- Alexis Hall

I’d spent five years not wanting to be helped. And it had taken nearly losing my job, dating a guy I would never have considered dating... and having some dick from a nightclub feel sorry for me in the Guardian for me to realise that I hadn’t been as safe as I thought I was. [p. 394]

Luc has grown up with a terrible handicap: he is the children of famous, estranged, rock-star parents. This has made him tabloid fodder, culminating five years ago in his ex selling all Luc's secrets to the tabloids. Since then Luc has lived a rather reclusive life, with a small group of good friends and a solid relationship with his mum (who is awesome). 

 Unfortunately Luc makes the mistake of chatting to a bloke at a party and then being photographed tripping and falling -- or, as the red-tops would have it, 'drunkenly staggering out of a nightclub'. Luc's employers, the Coleoptera Research and Protection Project (an entertainingly-acronymed charity devoted to saving dung-beetles), require him to find an 'appropriate' boyfriend before his antics drive away the sponsors. 

 His friends rally round, and Token Straight Friend [sic] Bridget suggests the only other gay man she knows, barrister Oliver Blackwood, who's previously made it clear that he wants nothing to do with Luc. Nevertheless, needs must: Oliver, too, has a social engagement for which he needs a significant other. Cue operation Fake Boyfriend, which gradually metamorphoses into something rather more sincere. 

This is a light-hearted read with some dark undercurrents. Luc's mother is an absolute delight, but his father is ... less so. Luc himself has spent so long pushing people away for fear of getting hurt that he's forgotten how to let people in. And Oliver is not without his own issues, though they're initially less visible through the polished and principled exterior. 

 The supporting cast were great, and generally well-rounded, especially Bridget (who works in publishing and endures a succession of hilarious-to-everyone-else crises) and Alex (Luc's incredibly dense colleague: unable to distinguish between jury trials and badgers). I also loved the different ways in which those close to Luc accept him with all his bitterness and damage.

Despite Luc's hollowness and depression, he is a hilarious first-person narrator, even if some of his most barbed asides are aimed at himself. In a way it's not just Luc learning to love someone else, but also rediscovering a sense of self-worth. 

  Boyfriend Material was the perfect read for a November evening in lockdown. It cheered me massively, and I intend to read more by Alexis Hall.

2020/130: The Betrayals -- Bridget Collins

A grand jeu is a kind of web made of abstractions. It glitters, it seduces; but its beauty is essentially functional ... and its aim is to draw down the divine into a human trap. [loc. 2302]

The Binding, Bridget Collins' first novel for adults, was one of my reading highlights of 2019, so I was eager to read her new novel (thanks to NetGalley for the advance reading copy, of which this is an honest review).

The setting, again, is a world which is not quite our own: it's the 1930s, and in a nameless European country the Party is on the rise. Léo Martin, formerly Minister for Culture, falls out of favour for attempting to soften a particularly oppressive Bill. The Party arranges for his exile to Montverre, a remote institute of learning devoted to the grand jeu -- the 'national game', which combines maths, music, literature and meditation into a performative ritual.

Montverre has changed since Léo's student days. Oh, it still doesn't admit women; there are still rumours of a ghost; it's still a crumbling edifice housing a vast library of material relating to the grand jeu. But now the Magister Ludi is a woman, Claire Dryden, who seems familiar to Léo though he's sure they have never met before.

And being back at Montverre, bitterly resentful and self-deluding about his fall from grace, brings back memories of his student days and his love-hate relationship with Aimé Carfax de Courcey, who was top of the class when Léo was second, and with whom he discovered the joys of collaborative creation.

The Betrayals has four narrative threads: the Rat, who lives secretly at Montverre; Léo himself; Claire; and student Léo's diary from ten years ago. (I'm still not wholly convinced that the Rat's narrative deserves as much weight as the others.) There's a well-signalled twist which felt vaguely disappointing: and I am uncomfortable with the denouement, and with the sense that Léo's story, his growth over the course of the novel, is unsatisfactory.

There was a lot to like here, though. Collins' writing is as rich and strange as it was in The Binding, and the beats of Léo's prickly relationships -- with Carfax, and with Claire -- are meticulously observed. I loved the descriptions of Léo and Carfax working together on their grand jeu: 'those moments when something uncanny happens, something else steps into the space between us, and we're both left marvelling at a move neither of us would ever play'. [loc 1572] There was a solid underpinning of class issues: Léo is the son of a scrap merchant, Carfax the scion of an ancient noble house plagued by madness. And the depiction of Claire's career as the first female Magister Ludi in a misogynistic society, and an especially misogynist institution, had the sour ring of verisimilitude. (In a way she's brought low, not once but twice, by the simple unpleasantness of menstruation.)

The details of this secondary world are intriguing: distracting, too, because this is (I think) a world in which the 'scriptural' religions have been supplanted by the grand jeu; Christians -- including, possibly, Léo's former mistress -- are persecuted. I'd like to have had more sense of what was happening in other countries, especially countries outside Europe: and I spent far too much time trying to envisage how the grand jeu was actually played or performed. (The author's afterword indicates that it was inspired by Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, a novel I have never managed to finish.)

I found the novel enthralling, especially on a second read when I could appreciate the construction of plot and counter-plot: but I think my main problem was the character of Léo, a man so suited to political life that he can't be honest even with himself. He is petulant, petty and arrogant, and even when the truth is revealed to him he's incapable of learning from it.   I did not like him: I would rather have read this story from Claire's viewpoint. Perhaps the greatest betrayal in the novel is Léo's betrayal of himself, of his heart and his soul.

Guardian review "Not all the intricate twists of the tale quite hold up, with [characters] making choices that stretch credulity, if you think about them too much. It’s best not to." A view that is at once accurate and irritating.

2020/129: Blood, Water, Paint -- Joy McCullough

Perhaps I don’t have blood at all.
Not really.
Only paint.
Perfectly pure
ruby red paint
flowing straight
to my heart:
    my canvas. [p. 290]

A novel in one hundred chapters, mostly blank verse, about the early life of Artermisia Gentileschi. Artemisia's monologue is punctuated by the stories her dead mother told her: Judith, Susannah. And sometimes these Biblical heroines, these women who fought back, are present with Artemisia in her moments of despair.

I find this quite a difficult book to review, and not only because of the blank verse. Artemisia seems a very modern seventeen-year-old, and she bears an understandable grudge against her brothers (for being granted more education despite their lack of artistic talent) and her father (for passing off her work as his own). She desperately misses her mother, and her only female companion is Tuzia, a middle-aged servant who does not necessarily have Artemisia's well-being at heart.

In this account of her story, Artemisia is not wholly averse to Tassi, her tutor. 'Every time he’s near it feels like brushstrokes on a canvas', [loc. 955]. In his favour, unlike all the other men of her acquaintance, he seems to be taking her seriously as an artist. It's not until Tassi is touching her, regardless of her consent, that she realises this is not a courtship. 'Hands on bodies have no in-between. Love or possession.' [loc. 1217]

Even before this, though, McCullough shows us the roots of Artemisia's anger, and how it's reflected in her art: her awareness of the realities of women's lives, an understanding opaque to her father or her tutor. She recognises Susanna's shame and impotent fury at being observed bathing; she empathises with the fury that gives Judith strength to decapitate Holofernes.

Blood, Water, Paint is written (or at least marketed) for a young-adult audience, and I think it serves that audience very well. There is a great afterword: "You may recognize yourself in parts of Artemisia’s story in much the same way Artemisia recognized herself in Susanna’s and Judith’s stories. Sometimes it feels like little has changed. But there are resources available to today’s survivors of sexual violence." I do recognise myself, and especially my teenaged self, in Artemisia's anger and her sense of injustice. And I'm glad that there are so many more ways, now, to talk about that.

This novel fulfils the 'A Book about a Woman Artist' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.

2020/128: Honeytrap -- Aster Glenn Gray

"We defended Stalingrad! We took Berlin! And you can’t even seduce an American?” [loc. 3161]

America, 1959: FBI agent Daniel Hawthorne is partnered with Soviet agent Gennady Matskevich in an investigation an assassination attempt. Someone shot at the train carrying Nikita Khrushchev through small-town America, and though Khruschev wasn't injured, such a diplomatic nightmare can't be allowed to go unpunished. 

 Both men have secondary missions, too. Daniel is tasked with showing Gennady the best aspects of America. ("No trips to the slums, no forays below the Mason-Dixon line.") Gennady is tasked with seducing and blackmailing Daniel. Daniel approaches his secret mission with rather more zest than Gennady: Gennady would not actually mind kissing Daniel, though discovery could mean the destruction of both their careers. 

 Their hunt for the assassin is more of a road trip than anything. Gennady's inspired by the Soviet writers Ilf and Petrov, who documented their American adventures in One-Storied America (1937). Daniel is happy to accompany Gennady to church dinners, bookstores (Hemingway is, apparently, big in Moscow), ice-skating rinks, et cetera. He tries not to repeat his previous mistake of falling for a colleague. 

 Then, just as their relationship starts to become more than merely camaraderie, the U2 spy plane crisis happens; Gennady is recalled to Moscow; and when they next meet it's 1975, and Daniel is married, and Gennady has received a two-year posting to Washington DC. Is there anything left between them after so long? 

 And a coda, in 1992: “‘Until the world changes,’ you said. And then the world changed, so… I wrote to you.” [loc. 5712] 

The 1959/60 section, a slow-burn enemies-to-friends-to-more, was extremely enjoyable, with Cold War politics as a backdrop to the interaction of two very different men with unhappy pasts and complex identities. The dialogue was vivid and funny, romantic idealist Daniel frequently wrong-footed by Gennady's cynicism and deadpan humour. Later sections, though, didn't quite live up to that initial promise. While Daniel and Gennady were both 'aged up' credibly and intriguingly -- both became quieter, less passionate about life, less idealistic -- I wasn't convinced by their emotional reactions to one another, or to others around them. And without the Cold War, their lives seemed to be conducted in something of a vacuum. 

 There's a very good story in this novel, but it seemed unbalanced. I felt that it needed tightening up, evening out, expanding in some areas (the assignments / cases, for instance: I have no idea what they were doing in Boston) and perhaps compressed a little during that very first case, the hunt for the lone shooter who targetted Khruschev. I like Aster Glenn Gray's style and voice, and it's always pleasing to read a well-researched historical m/m romance grounded in its setting. The pacing, and the vagueness about what they're doing (apart from slow-burning), were the only aspects that didn't quite work for me.

2020/127: Harvester of Bones -- Jordan L Hawk

“The purpose of Operation Mephisto was to study the viability of using possession to boost paranormal abilities.” [loc. 533]

I should probably have waited until I could read all of SPECTR Series 3 in a single volume: this novella, episode 4, felt a bit too lean. (I devoured the SPECTR collections in one binge-read over a period of about three days earlier this year: first series, second series, books 1-3 of third series.)

In Harvester of Bones, John heads off with his 'cousin' Ryan and his colleague Zahira to discover more about his contradictory memories and mysterious childhood. Meanwhile, Caleb and Gray (and the 'new' drakul Night) are left to deal with the latest monster of the week, the eponymous bone-harvester. Some lighter moments here, as Night is still not very good around humans: it's a good contrast to John's investigations.

But this really was just a chapter of a larger work and the situation (and relationships) deteriorated over the course of the 86 pages. I think I'll wait until this series is finished before reading more.

2020/126: Division Bells -- Iona Datt Sharma

"I wouldn't have done it before," Jules said, after a moment. If he owed Ari the truth, he owed him all of it. "I wouldn't have cared enough about the Bill, or climate change, or anything. But doing it, caring about it, despite the personal consequences?"
"Yes?" Ari said again, when Jules didn't go on.
Jules breathed in, and out. "I learned that from you." [loc. 984]

It's winter 2021 in post-Brexit London, and senior civil servant Ari has been burdened with a spad ("Special adviser, please"). The spad is Jules, whose father (Lord Elwin) has shunted him into politics, and who is somewhat out of his depth -- not helped by Ari's abrasive manner. 

 There is very little in Ari's life except his work: he's pulling long hours on a clean energy Bill, and he's close to burning out. Gradually, though, he finds that he does have time for Jules, and possibly even for love. 

 Iona Datt Sharma (co-author of one of my favourite reads last year, Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night) combines likeable and realistic characters and a soft, slow romance into something that is quietly life-affirming. I love the descriptions of London in winter, and the little details of parliamentary life (Ari not being allowed to set foot on the carpet in the 1922 Committee Room), and the minister who 'was there for the glory days of One Direction fandom'. I found the political / legal / administrative detail obscure, but that didn't matter: what did matter was that the setting was not just background, but an integral part of the plot. Part of Ari's burnout is that he cares too much: Jules, quite blase and detached at the opening of the novella, comes to care too. 

from a Goodreads review:   ...honestly anyone who doesn't enjoy melodramatic queers bickering over the finer points of clean energy regulation doesn't know how to live.

2020/125: Piranesi -- Susanna Clarke

... at the very point at which the Other has declared he will kill me if I become mad, I have discovered that I am mad already! Or, if not mad now, then certainly I have been mad in the past. I was mad when I wrote those entries! [loc. 1490]

There are, as far as Piranesi knows, two living humans in the World: himself, and the Other. The World is synonymous with the House, an apparently-infinite labyrinth of rooms populated by marble statues, ornaments and the occasional skeletal remains of other humans. Piranesi has spent years exploring the House, from its lower, tide-scoured rooms to the heights where birds and clouds and stars soar above him. He records his explorations, and the small events of his life -- albatrosses nesting, a conjunction of tides, a dream inspired by the statue of a faun -- in a series of journals. 

 Yet from the beginning we are aware, as Piranesi is not, that the Other is an outsider. He brings multivitamins and cheese sandwiches to supplement Piranesi's wholesome diet of mussels, seaweed and fresh-caught fish: he carries something that is probably a mobile phone. The Other is impatient with Piranesi's fascination with the House, and demands that Piranesi direct his energies to discovering the Great and Secret Knowledge that (so he believes) is hidden somewhere within the endless rooms. And he warns Piranesi about an incomer, an enemy, who will endanger Piranesi's very sanity. 

 Piranesi -- which he's aware is not his name, but a pseudonym bestowed by the Other, a referent to labyrinths -- is content, self-sufficient and without any memory of a time before the House. But the coming of 16 (the sixteenth person to exist, after himself and the Other and the thirteen people whose skeletons are hidden in the House) forces him to reread old journal entries, question his own identity and discover some hard truths. 

 Piranesi ('Piranesi') is a delightful protagonist, a holy innocent wholly appreciative of the immeasurable Beauty and infinite Kindness of the House. In contrast, it's very easy to dislike the Other for his contemptuous treatment of Piranesi, especially as more backstory is exposed. (I confess I am fascinated by the events of Christmas 1976: but that is another story, and not Piranesi's at all.) Clarke's skill in weaving a crime plot into an ontological experiment is admirable, and her pacing is exquisite. Though in many ways this is a very different book to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, it's just as consummately structured, plotted and written. 

A compact novel rather than a short one: there are depths here, and shadows of other stories, and much left unsaid. And the ending ... ouroboros. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite. 

Is it coincidence that I suffered a bout of labyrinthitis immediately after reading this?

2020/124: Island of Ghosts -- Gillian Bradshaw

We mutinied when we reached the ocean. [opening line]

Ariantes is a Sarmatian warrior, one of three prince-commanders who, defeated in battle, have sworn service to the Roman Emperor. Together with fifteen hundred heavy cavalry -- most of the surviving young Sarmatian noblemen of this generation -- they are en route to Britain. Their Roman minder, Marcus Flavius Facilis, is embittered by the loss of his son in battle, and (rightly) mistrusts the Sarmatians: they're not 'nice safe conquered barbarians', he insists, citing Arshak, the preeminent of the prince-commanders, who decorates himself and his horse with Roman scalps. (“Those tassels on the bridles?” said the procurator. “Those are scalps? I thought…”) 

 Ariantes, who has as much reason as any to hate the Romans, is nevertheless a man of honour: and he has nothing to return to, for his wife and son are dead. He is the diplomat, the smoother of ruffled pride and troubled waters, and it is largely due to his efforts that the three auxiliary cohorts reach their postings in the North of England. There, separated, Ariantes, Arshak and Gatalas become embroiled in a simmering revolt. The British -- well, some of them -- would like to be rid of their continental overlords. There are Druids, tribal alliances, a network of illegal Christians, a descendant of Boudicca, and a personable young widow who knows about horses and thus endears herself immensely to Ariantes. 

 This is a novel about compromise, assimilation and Romanisation. Ariantes -- who serves his Roman allies wine in gold cups that he looted in his raiding days ('perhaps they thought I’d bought them'); who, speaking with an arrogant young tribune, imagines the man's scalp on his own bridle -- has to learn about money, and what things cost, and sleeping between stone walls, and eating bread. Arshak is unimpressed with this Romanisation: but they have sworn an oath, and they cannot go home ... 

 Ariantes is a truly likeable narrator, balancing his personal grief with loyalty to his troop and to the Christian slave who becomes his secretary. He also has a quietly wicked sense of humour, and is not above playing up his reputation as a savage barbarian in order to disarm those he meets. And yes, actually, he is a savage barbarian at heart, and a killer. I liked him very much. 

  Island of Ghosts gives impressive insight into Sarmatian culture and society as well as everyday life in Roman Britain. I was reminded of Rosemary Sutcliff's work, especially The Mark of the Horse Lord, though the first-person narrative (and some of the more brutal scenes, mostly in flashback) give it a slightly different flavour. Still, I want to read more of Bradshaw's fiction: why is so little of it available in ebook format? 

 There is some evidence that the Kindle edition has been scanned from a printed copy: typos (Ariantes is frequently 'Aliantes', even to his countrymen) and right at the end there's an image of one of those forms for mail-ordering paperbacks: that felt like history! Also, the Amazon description of Britain as 'an Island of Ghosts, filled with pale faces, stone walls, and an uneasy past' is misleading, at least the bit about pale faces: Ariantes describes the British as 'a bit darker -- not so many blonds and redheads'.

2020/123: The Book of Koli -- M R Carey

Things we want to eat fight back, hard as they can, and oftentimes win. Things that want to eat us is thousands strong, so many of them that we only got names for the ones that live closest to us. [p. 13]

The Book of Koli is set in a future Britain that's been ravaged by climate change and ill-advised genetic tinkering. Koli is fifteen, and lives in the village of Mythen Rood, which relies on Ramparts -- villagers who can activate and operate the few surviving pieces of tech -- to protect the inhabitants against the many and varied threats outside the walls. Out there, Koli knows, are carnivorous trees (nobody leaves the village on a sunny day, when the trees are at their most mobile) as well as genetically-engineered wildlife and the infamous Shunned Men, outcasts who are rumoured to feast on human flesh. 

 So obviously Koli wants to be a Rampart when he grows up, and to this end he steals a bit of tech from the locked cellars of the Ramparts' house. This tech isn't a laser-cutter or a weapon, though: it's a media player with an integrated AI named Monono Aware (origin of the name) who is a self-described 'manic pixie dream girl in a box', and a thoroughly delightful character. However, Koli's theft of the media player -- which he reveals to the other villagers by having her play music ('Never Gonna Give You Up', in fact) at the wedding of his former best friend to the girl Koli likes -- is grounds for banishment from Mythen Rood. 

 Luckily Koli has an ally in the wandering healer Dam Ursala, who travels with a medical drone, likes a drink, tells stories of London and other semi-mythical places, and is generally fearsome. She's also rather more pragmatic than Koli, but the two come to rely upon each other. 

 I especially liked Koli's very distinctive voice here: it reminded me of the imaginary future dialect in Russell Hoban's Ridley Walker, though with a Yorkshire rather than a Kent accent and not nearly as distant a future. (While it's not clear just how far in the future The Book of Koli is set, the recognisable survivals from our own time indicate that it's more likely a couple of centuries than a couple of millennia.) Ursala and Monono have different accents or ways of speaking, as do the other folk that Koli encounters over the course of the novel, which adds to the richness of the world Koli inhabits. 

 Though the initial chapters have a pleasingly medieval feel, there is plenty outside the walls of Mythen Rood to challenge Koli's preconceptions. It is not only, literally, a jungle out there: there are other threats, human and otherwise, to Koli and Ursala, and even to Monono. 

 Koli's a very credible teenaged boy, trying to be grown up but also very aware that he's at the mercy of hormones and ignorance. By the end of the novel -- the first in a trilogy, of which the second is now available and the third due in March 2021 -- his childhood illusions (and his faith in the Ramparts) have crumbled, and he understands a little more of the wider world in which he lives, and the factors that threaten the future of the people of Britain. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy, though I'll likely wait until the third book has been published.