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.

2020/122: The Lantern Bearers -- Rosemary Sutcliff

He had a sudden longing, which wasn’t a bit like him now, though it was like the person he had been before the Saxons burned his home, to give Ness things; to bring them and heap them into her lap. New songs and the three stars of Orion’s belt, and honey-in-the-comb, and branches of white flowering thorn at mid-winter; not only for her sake, but for Flavia’s sake as well. [p. 154]

A novel of the end of Rome in Britain, and the British resistance to the Saxon invasion. It's the Roman aspect, and the turmoil of Britain after Rome's retreat, that captivated me as a ten-year-old: this was one of my favourite novels as a child, though I hadn't reread it for many years. As usual, I was surprised at how much I remembered more or less verbatim, and how much I'd completely forgotten. 

 In the latter category comes the uneven sense of time passing. The Lantern Bearers covers a period of twenty years or more: long enough for Aquila, who deserted from the army on the night the last Auxiliaries sailed, to spend three years as a slave in Jutland; encounter his sister, now married to a Saxon; find his way back to Britain, and his freedom; join the resistance movement led by Ambrosius Aurelianius, self-styled Prince of Britain; contract an arranged marriage, father a child, mentor the wild young warrior Artos, and be reconciled with his sister's fate. Yet much of that time passes in phrases such as 'the sixth summer since Hengest and Ambrosius had faced each other' or 'after twelve, nearly thirteen years' ... 

 Aquila, I now see, is badly damaged by the destruction of his home and family, the abandonment by the legions, the perceived fickleness of his sister Flavia. Though this is a third-person narrative, Sutcliff shows us the pain, the bitterness and the desperate loyalty beneath the mask of the emotionless warrior. I feel a lot more sympathy for Ness, his British wife, than I did before: he is clearly not a communicative husband, though he does warm to her after a while. ('some years ...') 

 Sutcliff's prose still stuns me with its vividness and clarity, especially when she's writing about landscapes: 'the twilight came lapping up the valley like a quiet tide, and the sky above the long wave-lift of the downs was translucent and colourless as crystal'; 'a flamed and feathered sunset was fading behind the Great Forest'; 'the beacon platform in the dead silver moonlight, the sudden red flare of the beacon'. That scene on the watch-tower at Rutupaie still hits me hard: lighting the beacon 'to hold back the dark for one more night.’ 

 And I'm impressed, too, with the structure of the novel -- something that never registered with me as a child! -- and the triplets of relationship beats: three meetings with the priest Brother Ninnias, three scenes with Flavia or her representative, three chances for Flavian to show his loyalty ... 

 Rereading this novel awoke my long-held fascination with Roman Britain (initially sparked by Rosemary Sutcliff's books but much broadened by other novelists, non-fiction writers and classicists). But who writes like Sutcliff? 

 NB: Just discovered this fascinating article on the genesis of The Lantern Bearers, reproduced on a Sutcliff-centred Dreamwidth community.

2020/121: A Deadly Education -- Naomi Novik

"...What have I ever done that turns people off?” I waited for her to say all the usual things: You’re rude, you’re cold, you’re mean, you’re angry, all the things people say to make it my fault, but she looked over at me and frowned like she was really thinking about it, and then she said with decision, “You feel like it’s going to rain.” [loc. 1736]

Galadriel (El to her classmates: she has no friends) is a student at the Scholomance, a school for the magically-gifted which actively feeds on the deaths of the students. Despite the lack of (visible, human) teachers, punishments for academic failure are dire, and the school is overrun by maleficaria, magical vermin that range from almost microscopic to house-sized, and which love to snack on mana, the magical energy of the students. Constant hypervigilance is the only way to survive. It does help if you have allies who'll watch your back or save you a table in the cafeteria or take out a mal that's come after you. 

 El has no friends, in part because everyone has an affinity and hers is mass destruction, and in part because she is spiky and sarcastic and rude. She is especially rude when Orion Lake, the most popular and gifted student in the New York clique, saves her life -- again -- and seems to expect her to appreciate it. El's only chance of surviving the melee that is graduation will be to impress others with her power and ability, and she can't do that if Orion treats her as a damsel in distress. It doesn't help, either, that Orion's friends regard her as a threat because obviously she's coercing him, and she must be a maleficer, a user of darker magics. But growing up in a Welsh commune with a mother who's a famous healer will turn a girl against that sort of thing. 

 This was a massively enjoyable read that also interrogates the 'school of wizardry' trope. Novik's Scholomance has a student body drawn from all over the world, so there's cultural and ethnic diversity -- El herself is half-Welsh, half-Indian -- and exploration of how various magical traditions complement one another. Because there are no adults, there's no sense that the students are being forced to suffer when they could be saved by a more experienced practitioner. There's a lot of exploration of class, and how it works in the wizarding world: the economics of mana, if you like, and the various ways in which El might survive and flourish when (if) she graduates: most magic-users are part of an enclave, but not all enclaves are equal, and none of them are interested in recruiting El until she suddenly appears to be dating Orion . The ecology of the maleficaria, and the Scholomance itself, is part of the plot: where do all the mals come from? Why don't they feed on mundanes? Why have there been more incursions this year? 

 Also, refreshingly, appearance doesn't count for much. None of the students can bring very much into the Scholomance with them, so everyone's dressed in whatever suits them best for running: hairstyles are typically worn short, so the mals can't get a grip. (See note below, though.) Physical characteristics, including skin colour, are only mentioned when it's relevant: for example, a student whose room is near El's, has been using malia, dark magic, as evidenced by her glossy hair and black fingernails. 

 I liked the detailed worldbuilding; the mirror-versions of the Chosen One trope (El the potential destroyer and Orion the ridiculously powerful guy who doesn't think he's anything special) make an interesting contrast; the fake-dating trope is fun, the pop-culture references ditto. On a more serious level it's also a critique of systematic oppression, the ways in which the success of the few is founded on the sacrifice (in this case literal) of the many. "You get used to things," says one of the enclave girls near the end of the novel. "And you don't think about whether they're good. Or even okay... And there's nothing you can see to do about it, because there's not meant to be anything you can do about it." Which ... resonates, right now. 

•  Website for the Scholomance here (I believe some of the images from that site appear in the book, but the Kindle version made them hard to see). 
•  Naomi Novik talks about the book on the Be The Serpent podcast, episode 71. 
•  A particular passage, about maleficaria that target 'dreadlocks', has been called out as racist. My opinion is neither relevant nor required, but for what it's worth I pictured this as referring to the hippie / grunge style, rather than to specifically Black hairstyles (which I'd expect to read as 'locs'). Novik's apology is here.