2020/046: Frankissstein -- Jeanette Winterson

You have appeared in the pages of a novel, she said. You and the monster you created. I am the monster you created, said Victor Frankenstein. I am the thing that cannot die – and I cannot die because I have never lived. [loc. 2198]

In 1816, a young woman is spending time with her husband, her step-sister, her step-sister's lover and his doctor in an Italian villa. Confined by appalling weather (this is the Year Without a Summer), they challenge one another to write ghost stories ...

In contemporary, or near-future, America, Dr Ry Shelley is attending a conference on robotics and artificial intelligence. Ry, who self-defines as trans but is also non-binary ('what I am is not one thing, not one gender. I live with doubleness'), encounters Ron Lord, an unashamedly misogynist sex-doll producer whose attitudes are exaggerated enough to be caricature; Claire, an event facilitator who happens to be an evangelical Christian; Polly D, a journalist who's had an unfortunate technical issue with the default settings of a sex toy; and Professor Victor Stein, a charismatic figure with interests in machine learning, medicine and transhumanism. Victor is intrigued by Ry's method of aligning their physical reality with their mental impression of theirself: he is also uneasy about Ry's partial maleness. Nevertheless, theirs is one of the love stories herein.

Winterson's shifts in key, from Ry's narrative to Mary Shelley's, are impressive and sustained. The 19th-century chapters have a lyricism and bleakness to them that brings to mind Frankenstein and its author. The 21st-century chapters are faster-paced, with more dialogue and a great deal of philosophical discussion which frames the novel's climax, and (perhaps) bring the two strands of Frankissstein together. I'm still thinking about how the two stories join, and where Ada Lovelace and the madhouse patient fit into the overall picture ...

I confess I didn't really warm to the 21st-century characters, though Ry is an intriguing and sardonic observer, and an excellent foil for the extravagantly biased perspectives of Polly D, Ron Lord and Claire. The love story between Ry and Victor is fascinating: neither is quite able to accept the other as they are, or to trust them, and yet they are drawn together.

Read for the 'A Book from the 2019 Reading Women Award Shortlists or Honorable Mentions' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020. I'd intended to read Frankissstein anyway, as it's a transformative work and I generally enjoy Winterson's fiction. This was no exception: it is vastly playful, thought-provoking and often very funny. From the reviews I've read, it's also very polarising: I did not find it transphobic or reductive, but your mileage may vary.

Is Donald Trump getting his brain frozen? asks Ron. Max explains that the brain has to be fully functioning at clinical death. [loc. 2301]

2020/045: The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings --Lily Morton

“I didn’t need to lie about anything, Levi. The reason it worked was because it wasn’t a con for me.” He smiles at what must be the confusion on my face. “I am psychic,” he says slowly, his wolf eyes steady and clear on mine. “I can see the dead.” He huffs. “I can also occasionally hear the fuckers, and worst of all, they keep trying to bloody talk to me.” [loc. 948]

Graphic artist Levi Black has experienced some major life changes recently: he's broken up with his long-term boyfriend, his mother has died, and he's left London to live in York, in the centuries-old house he's inherited. The problem is that the house has been empty for quite a while: within hours of crossing the threshold, Levi decides that he can't blame the previous owners. There are footsteps in empty rooms, an overpowering scent of lily-of-the-valley, windows and doors that mysteriously fly open ... Apparently a great deal of repair and modernisation will be needed before the house can become a home.

It doesn't help to hear a dashingly-handsome ghost walk guide describing Levi's residence as 'the Murder House'. Though it does give Levi an excuse to strike up a conversation with Blue Billings, who has a tragic past, an impecunious present, an affinity for ghosts, and blue hair.

This is a sweet M/M romance, with credible emotions and motivations for both characters, which is complicated by a century-old murder mystery and an increasingly nerve-wracking series of ghostly encounters. Blue's powers, though questioned by Levi, are real; Levi's intrinsic goodness, though mistrusted by Blue, is genuine and practical. There's a strong sense of place, too: the author clearly knows York well, and evokes the narrow streets and sense of history very effectively. Also, there is an excellent bookshop.

Despite being primarily a romance, there are some dark aspects to Blue's past, and to the house's history. Overall, though, a charming and often funny read.

2020/044: Comet Weather --Liz Williams

Stella could see it now, the snow changing to white rose petals and drifting down onto the water. The oaks flushed a darker green with the heavy leaf of midsummer, not solstice but beyond, lammas-tide when the tides of the land grow slower and the days begin to darken and things begin to ripen and die. [loc. 3870]

Bee Fallow has been the guardian of the family house, Mooncote, since her mother Alys went missing a year ago. Mooncote is a rambling old house, with the ghost of an Elizabethan privateer in the orchard, and star spirits, extravagantly dressed and bearing flowers or herbs, appearing randomly. Bee's three sisters -- Stella the DJ, Serena the fashion designer and Luna the uprooted traveller -- are unfazed by these quiet magics, and are busy with their own lives. But the sisters find themselves drawn back to Mooncote as autumn fades and Lerninsky's Comet approaches. Can they discover their mother's fate? Who, or what, are the slithery Stare siblings who suddenly seem to be worming their way into the Fallow sisters' lives? And what will the comet bring?

That is a paltry summary of a rich and very English novel which I vastly enjoyed. The Fallow sisters, with their distinct personalities and passions, and their various reactions to the weird and unsettling happenings around them, are so vividly depicted that they felt like people I knew. There's a strong theme of place, of persistence and belonging, in the novel: the Fallows have lived at Mooncote for centuries, and there are others who have been in the area for much longer. The star spirits personify the Behenian stars, which was an educational insight into medieval astrology and astronomy: Alys' father, now dead, was an astronomer, and his influence is clear throughout the novel. The ghost in the orchard, Ned Dark, sailed with Drake -- and may do so again, for time is a mutable construct in Comet Weather. And, for someone trapped in an urban environment during lockdown, the evocative descriptions of woodland, coast and hills were tantalising as well as satisfying.

I was reminded of several favourite fantasies: Rob Holdstock's Mythago Wood and especially Lavondyss; various works by Diana Wynne Jones and Alan Garner; and, oddly, Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love, perhaps because of the vaguely counter-cultural ambience. But Comet Weather is very much its own book: a story about the sometimes difficult relationships between sisters, about the perils of hunting thieves and of seeking help from old cold entities, about women making their own way in the world and reshaping that world.

There are a lot of intriguing loose ends here (not least American cousin Nell's purpose in the story), so I was overjoyed to read that a second volume, Blackthorn Winter, is due. But when, when ...?

2020/043: Water Shall Refuse Them -- Lucie McKnight Hardy

The relics sat on the mantelpiece in the correct order: Robin’s egg, magpie’s egg, duckling bill and bone. Blackbird’s egg, feathers of wren…and then the space where the incantation should have continued. It niggled at me, the vacuum at the end of the rhyme an itch to be scratched. [loc. 342]

Nif (short for Jennifer) is sixteen, and looks after her four-year-old brother Lorry: their mother has withdrawn from the family after the death of Lorry's twin sister Petra, and their father, in desperation, has brought them all to an isolated cottage in Wales, for a change of scene and an escape from the suburban house where Petra died.

Nif is guided by the Creed: a kind of religion, embodied in a set of Relics which she has found (or which have found her) and demanding balance. If she breaks a cup with her right hand, she must break another with her left: if Lorry grazes one knee, he must graze the other too. Nif believes that by adhering to her growing understanding of the Creed, she'll wake up remembering the dream she dreams every night, about her little sister's death.

She becomes friends with Mally, a lad who lives in the next cottage and who, like her, is an outsider. The villagers hate Mally and his mother Janet, and blame them for an ancient visitation of the plague. Mally goes everywhere with his Polaroid Instamatic, photographing the unaware: he protects Nif from the village bullies, and tells her his secrets.

It's clear early on that Nif doesn't much care for the countryside: houses are 'clustered like flies on raw meat', sheep are 'tatty', the villagers flock and chatter like birds. But as the heatwave bakes the land, she becomes more at home in exile, and more extreme in her adherence to the Creed. Her parents, too, are changing: Linda, her mother, befriends Janet and accepts her potions and her gooseberry wine; Clive, her father, shapes and reshapes the bust of Linda that he's modelling until it barely resembles her at all.

The title can be read in several ways. This is a novel set in the summer of 1976, when England was stricken by drought, the earth parched and the rivers low. (In the novel, there's no water supply in the house: Nif has to fetch water from Janet's well.) Secondly, Nif's sister drowned in the bath. ("The accident," as Nif refers to it throughout.) And thirdly, per King James: "So it appears that God hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of the witches, that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom".

I am edging around the core of the novel, Nif's practices, because I found them deeply unpleasant. This is folk horror at its strongest: much crueller than anything in Starve Acre or Little Eve. There are images in Water Shall Refuse Them that I fear will haunt me for years.

And yet, and yet: the cruelties are wholly in character, and Hardy's skilful depiction of Nif, shading from the 'good girl' who looks after her little brother to the vengeful, powerful Nif of the last pages, is pitch-perfect. Hardy's prose is rivetting and there's a splendid note of sullenness to Nif's voice. Wonderful writing, slightly too abrupt an ending, some scenes I wish I hadn't read.

2020/042: The Dinosaur Hunters -- Patrick Samphire

“I’m not killing them!” Dinosaurs were a rarity, confined by the Great Wall to this single peninsula, no larger than France on Earth. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to reduce their numbers any further.

“I know. But don’t you want a better look? We only caught a glimpse of that one by the stream. How many people can say they’ve seen a dinosaur close up?” [p. 49]

Steampunk-flavoured novella set on Mars in 1815. Napoleon won at Trafalgar, but the British Empire is steadfastly holding onto its Martian territories, its stiff upper lip, and its aristocratic traditions. Harriet George does not wish to fall prey to these, especially the one about being married off advantageously to save her family's fortunes: therefore, she must ensure that her hapless brother-in-law's latest police investigation, into the mysterious jewel thief known as the Glass Phantom, is a success.

But Bertrand is so very hapless...

Luckily Harriet -- or 'Harry', since she is of course masquerading as a boy -- is resourceful, brave, quick-thinking and perceptive. She and Bertrand join a party of dinosaur hunters (slaughtering innocent animals being another great aristocratic tradition) after a tip-off concerning the Countess von Krakendorff's famous ruby necklace. Any of the hunters could be the villainous Phantom. But meanwhile: dinosaurs!

I have to admit it was the promise of dinosaurs that lured me in, and they did not disappoint. But I also discovered a charming heroine, an intriguing steampunk setting, and a proper old-fashioned Mars. (And a pompous git pontificating on the 'savage' extinct Martians, and whether the fossils found on Earth bear any relation to the living Triceratops, etc, that he is hunting.) Great fun and very readable.

2020/041: Abandon -- Blake Crouch

This is hell—the absolute loss borne from all those slivers of perfection that passed unnoticed, unrelished. [p. 513]

Abandon is a ghost town high in the Rockies. On Christmas Day in 1893, every inhabitant vanished, leaving half-eaten meals on tables, wine freezing in glasses, and Christmas gifts still wrapped. The town is, of course, rumoured to be haunted: there are also tales of hidden treasure.

A small expedition sets forth to explore. The party consists of two experienced guides, a history professor and his estranged journalist daughter, and a married couple who've lost their son and now have an affinity for ghosts and the supernatural. He takes photos, she senses the spirits of the dead.

Unfortunately there are other threats, much more substantial than ghosts: treachery is afoot, and a storm is blowing in. Abigail will discover not only the fate of the townsfolk, but the truth behind the stories. Whether she'll ever get to write about it is another matter.

Abandon was an uneasy blend of suspense, historical fiction -- Abigail's narrative alternates with scenes from the 1890s, when Abandon was a rough gold-mining town -- and action thriller. There is a lot of violence in both timelines, and some grim decisions to be made. And it definitely ends in a minor key (though I'm not sure it ever made it into a major key). A lot of loose ends, too, some of which were disappointing and some merely exasperating. At its best, the writing is precise and evocative -- though sometimes overreliant on period detail and slang -- which kept me reading. But it was not a cheering experience.

2020/040: The Ten Thousand Doors of January -- Alix E Harrow

There’s only one way to run away from your own story, and that’s to sneak into someone else’s. [p. 92]

January Scaller, growing up as the ward of a wealthy industrialist in the first years of the twentieth century, is at once privileged and deprived. She misses her father, who roams the world collecting antiquities for Mr Locke; she never knew her mother; she endures a succession of nannies and tutors whose care for her does not extend to affection; and she is painfully aware that she is treated as a curiosity, set apart by the colour of her skin and the texture of her hair.

But January is already aware of the power of words. When she discovers a book called The Ten Thousand Doors she is drawn into the story of a man and a woman from different worlds who fall in love. And perhaps she has already glimpsed another world, through a ramshackle door standing alone in a field.

It took me a couple of tries to get into this novel: my initial, rather curmudgeonly, impression was that it was a fantasy novel for people who didn't read much fantasy! I think this is because it explores some of the tropes of YA fantasy: the lonely child who hides in books, the general oppression of that child, the discovery of a portal to another place ... January, though very young at the start of the book, becomes a likeable and determined heroine, defying society's expectations and refusing to accept her guardian's plans for her. She inspires loyalty in others, which is her salvation: she discovers her own abilities, and works to improve them.

And the story told here is larger than one young woman's coming of age and self-emancipation. There are doors between worlds, and doors are there to let things in: change, revolution, variety, magic. January wants to open doors: the conservative faction wants to keep them closed, to maintain the status quo and the patriarchal power of industrialists, colonists, oligarchs. Ranged against that faction are January and her allies: women, people of colour, scholars, wanderers, the displaced and dispossessed.

I especially liked the typographic elements (is that the right word?) of the novel: January's perceptions of the shapes of words, as well as their meaning. The capital V in Villain 'like dagger points or sharpened teeth'; 'that P, like a woman with her hand on her hip' ...

Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges... [p. 6]

2020/039: Pressure Head -- J L Merrow

Even when it’s mates — especially when it’s mates — there’s always stuff they don’t want you to know about, and generally speaking, they’re right. Some things you’re just better off not knowing. [p. 104]

Tom Paretski works as a plumber in and around St Albans. He also, occasionally, does a favour for his friend Dave, who's with the police. Tom has a knack for finding things that are hidden or 'not right': great for fixing leaks, but also useful for locating, in this instance, the body of a murder victim.

The police aren't the only ones with an interest in the murder. Tom is introduced to private investigator Phil Morrison, who he's met before. At school, Tom had a crush on Phil: at school, Phil was part of a group of bullies who were responsible for an accident that left Tom with a dodgy hip.

But Phil, it turns out, is no longer prone to homophobic slurs. Quite the opposite ...

A surprisingly cosy murder mystery with an enemies-to-lovers romance, a twist of weirdness and an affectionate depiction of life in an English dormitory town. I wasn't wholly convinced by some of Tom's actions, and the villain was obvious almost from their first introduction: but I enjoyed the setting, and Tom's narrative voice is a delight. A fun read, and I may well read more in the series.

2020/038: Pine -- Francine Toon

She’s visiting to say there’s trouble afoot. Most don’t remember seeing her though, do they? Most don’t want to, that’s the thing. It’s a kind of shock that passes over and they push her away out of their heads. [loc. 1932]

Lauren is ten years old and lives with her father Niall in a house at the edge of the pine forest. Her mother went away when she was very small, and Niall won't say much about her. Lauren isn't popular at school, and her only real friends are Billy, who lives nearby and makes dens with her in the woods, and Diane and Ann-Marie, who are both older and who occasionally baby-sit.

Coming home from Halloween guising, Niall and Lauren see a woman in the road, wearing only a dirty white dressing-gown. They take her back with them, but the next morning she's vanished, and Niall doesn't seem to remember her. Lauren's sure of what she saw, just as she is in the woods when she and Billy see a woman in white -- whom Billy immediately forgets about. But Lauren can't forget.

This novel felt imbalanced. I enjoyed the slow build of atmosphere in the first two-thirds of the book, and the depiction of small-town life in rural Scotland. (I grew up somewhere like that, with the nearest supermarket miles away, and a gaggle of unfriendly schoolmates, an hour-long bus ride to school and wild land within five minutes of home.) But the last third of the book, where a lot happens very quickly, seemed to lose its way a bit: the story became at once more threatening and more mundane, though the strong supernatural element remains throughout. I also felt the prose was less precise, more rushed, in those last chapters. ('Tentatively', for example, seems a very mild word to use for the progression of two young girls in a dark deserted house, at night, with a definite sense of presence and a perfect circle of broken crockery manifesting around them ...)

Lauren is an entirely credible pre-teen girl, old beyond her years in some ways -- she's isolated from her peers, and has lived alone with her father for years -- and childish in others. She is also in possession of a 'Spaewife's Beuk' that was once her mother's, and which has given her a solid grounding in the occult. I wish I had thought of casting spells on the bullies at school: but my spells might not have worked. I also liked Lauren's older friends, Diane and Ann-Marie: both have secrets and are probably not the kind of girl that Lauren should be hanging out with, but they, and Billy, show loyalty and affection towards her.

The final third of the book didn't live up to the promise of the earlier parts, but overall Pine left a positive impression: I'll be looking out for more of Francine Toon's work.

2020/037: Dolly and the Starry Bird -- Dorothy Dunnett

Maurice had style, panache, courtship, indeed adulation. Johnson had more woolly jerseys, and the recognition due to his profession. If you discerned in his anything remarkable, he forced you to recognise it with the eye of the intellect. [p. 173]

First published in 1973, later reissued under the title Roman Nights. For my summary of the premise of the Dolly series, see my review of Dolly and the Nanny Bird.

The competent young professional woman here is Ruth Russell, an astronomer working in Rome. Her fiance Charles is a fashion photographer: one day his camera is stolen. And hemlines are big business, says the scruffy-looking portrait-painter they meet outside the zoo, who claims to be in Rome to paint the Pope.

Cue nuclear espionage, a fleeing balloon-seller, an elderly movie star holding court in a Roman villa, a savage ex-fiancee, a lady astronomer [sic], and a wholly inexplicable sub-plot about Ruth being encouraged to go on a diet.

This novel felt more dated than others in the series: that may be because it was published earlier, or it may be that Dunnett never connected with the 'astronomy' setting in the way she did with film makeup, opera, nannying ... I didn't warm to Ruth, and she felt less effectual than other Dolly-series heroines. She's competent, all right, but we don't get much of a glimpse into her professional life: it doesn't seem to provide her with much satisfaction either. Possibly one of my least favourites of the series: I've certainly read it at least twice before, and remembered nothing at all about the plot or the characters. Still, even Dunnett's worst is better than some authors' best.

2020/036: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise -- Dorothy Dunnett

Now I was what I had always resisted being in private life: part of a team. For a moment, on board the Princess, I had thought the team had gone, and I might be on my own. And instead of feeling free, I'd felt the opposite. [p. 261]

For a description of the underlying scenario of the 'Dolly' series, see my review of Dolly and the Nanny Bird. This is the second of the two hardcovers gifted to me last Easter: like the other novels in the series, I've read and reread it before, but not for a couple of decades.

In Dolly and the Bird of Paradise (first published 1983: republished as Tropical Issue), the narrator is Rita Geddes, a successful makeup artist working in the film industry, who is four foot eleven inches tall and whose personal look includes brightly-coloured Mohawks and makeup in the style of Adam Ant. She is also dyslexic. And she doesn't suffer fools lightly.

Though this was published rather late in the series, it's possibly the earliest in terms of chronology: Johnson has just survived the plane crash ('plane crash') that killed his wife. Rita ends up walking his dog, sailing on his yacht the Dolly, and involved in a murder case and an international drug-smuggling operation.

I think Rita might be one of my favourite of the Dolly heroines: she is thoroughly competent, self-possessed and witty. And this time around, I started to wonder if Dunnett deliberately wrote Rita as queer. There are a lot of 'teasing' comments, from people who know Rita well, about lesbians, beautiful women et cetera. And she shows no interest in anything more than a kiss from any man, even from her old friend Ferdy 'who would take no for an answer, after a struggle'. (See under 'period-typical sexism'.) Her sexuality's irrelevant to the plot, of course: but I like to think that this was Dunnett's attempt at depicting a positive, likeable queer female character.

2020/035: Dolly and the Nanny Bird -- Dorothy Dunnett

You couldn't say of the anthropologists that they were stoned out of their skulls: but neither were they in the way of dealing with what you might call emergencies. The Booker-Readmans had, at public or finishing school, never even met a Boy Scout. But you would expect, alone in the howling wastelands of Canada, in a deserted railway carriage with the temperature at twenty five under, that the men for the job would be Eskimos. [p.22]

Dorothy Dunnett is one of my favourite novelists: her thrillers, while much lighter and less epic than her better-known historical sagas, are written with typical verve, humour and drama.

Dolly and the Nanny Bird -- later republished as Split Code -- was first published in 1976, and is very much of its time. (Tag for period-typical sexism, racism et cetera.) The premise of each novel in the 'Dolly' series is that an independent and capable young woman becomes involved in the swashbuckling spy adventures of Johnson Johnson, the thinking woman's James Bond: an enigmatic aristocrat who paints portraits (as Dunnett did herself), and turns up, with his yacht Dolly, to solve or spark secret-service crises, spouting witty and impenetrable asides.

In this novel, the independent young woman is Joanna Emerson, a trained nanny whose father is a colleague of Johnson's and whose previous employer died under mysterious circumstances. She's manoeuvred into accepting a job as nanny to the Booker-Readmans, who may be involved in perfidious business, and whose offspring Benedict becomes a target for kidnappers.

One thing I love about these novels, and about Dunnett as a writer, is the characterisation. We never really get to know Johnson, but the narrators of the novels are complex, likeable and interesting. Case in point: Joanna, in this book, gave me some idea of how it might feel to form strong bonds with babies and small children. (This is otherwise wholly outside my experience.)

I'd read this novel before, several times, but not in the last twenty years or so: I remembered some details (such as the melancholy last line), but the plot was pretty much opaque to me.

Immense gratitude to Caroline, who gave me the hardcover of this and my next read (Dolly and the Bird of Paradise) last Easter. I don't read many hardcovers these days, because they're unwieldy when one is rushing from place to place: but I spotted these on the shelf just when I craved an easy, pleasant read and was locked in place by the pandemic.