2021/079: Subtle Blood -- KJ Charles

"...De mortuis nil nisi bonum is all very well, but the man was a cad.”
“Right,” Will said, since it was usually best to ride out the Latin and wait for things to make sense again.[loc. 869]

Culmination of the Will Darling Adventures, begun in Slippery Creatures and continues in The Sugared Game. Will Darling and Kim Secretan have achieved a kind of peace. Kim, fired from his role in the Bureau by the mysterious DS, is working in Will's bookshop; for a man who's lost his job and his fiancée, he's coping remarkably well. (He has promised not to lie to Will again. I took this with a pinch of salt ...) Then Kim's brother Chingford (a thoroughly unlikeable character) apparently murders a man at his club, and Kim and Will investigate the case -- not because of any fondness for Chingford, who reminded me uncomfortably of Boris Johnson, but because if Chingford hangs for murder, Kim will be his father's heir, and that would be the end of anything between him and Will.

It was especially interesting reading this novel because I've followed the author's accounts of her struggles with it: I kept wondering whether a particular scene was the one she'd mentioned in a post ...

I admired the ways in which various plot threads were tied up, such as the devious machinations of the perfidious Zodiac: I was happy to encounter DS again: I cheered at the return and resolution of Maisie and Phoebe: I was chilled by Kim's interactions with his family, and I very much appreciated the backstory of Kim's 'gentleman's gentleman', Peacock. There were welcome cameos from the cast of Proper English, including Jimmy's nephew, now an adult in his own right, and Bill Merton. And K J Charles knows how to write a well-paced plot, complete with false resolution and ever-more-desperate situations. 

What I most liked, though, was the acknowledgement that it's not only Kim who carries psychological damage from the war. Will has coped with his wartime experiences in very different ways: and Kim calls him out on those coping mechanisms, which have been glossed over by Will's viewpoint narrative.

There is also some piquant literary criticism (of Aleister Crowley's White Stains, which Will finds much more readable than Lady Chattersley's Lover). And, unusually, a sex scene where things don't work smoothly: which is wholly relevant to the plot,  rather than distracting from it.

Happy endings and just deserts all round: dashing adventure, sudden reversals, sleaze and sophistication. I enjoyed this a lot and have just accidentally reread it. (And Proper English. Oops.)

2021/078: The Sudden Appearance of Hope -- Claire North

Whoever that Hope Arden is who laughs with her friends, smiles with her family, flirts with her lover, resents her boss, triumphs with her colleagues – she ceased to exist, and it has been surprising for me to discover just how little of me is left behind, when all that is stripped away. [loc. 172]

Hope Arden is utterly unmemorable: that is, nobody she meets remembers her once they're not looking at her, interacting with her. It began in childhood, when her parents would forget to lay a place for her at the dinner table, and her friends would look at her and see a stranger. (Animals, and people with damaged brains, seem to be able to recognise her.)

Without any of the social context that makes us human, Hope lives in a perpetual present. Hers is an appallingly lonely life, but Hope, realising the difficulty of sheer existence as a perpetual stranger, has made a virtue of her condition. She's a thief and a con artist: a criminal who nobody can remember, who can't be matched to photographs or surveillance video ("I studied her picture, I know her face, you are not her, I would recognise her ..." [2696]), who will be forgotten as soon as she's out of sight. Whose guilt nobody knows, except Hope herself.

When a young, insecure woman commits suicide, driven to despair by the Perfection app ('the new life-enhancing, you-enhancing app from Prometheus', a way of spending and exercising and connecting that makes its more dedicated users truly memorable), Hope -- who is the antithesis of Perfection -- is appalled. She studies Perfection's origins, its app permissions (horribly close to Facebook Messenger!), the brother and sister who developed it, and the ways in which it changes and shapes personality. Because maybe, in Perfection, there's something that addresses Hope's condition.

Hope's situation is unique, and North explores the ramifications of being instantly forgettable: the habits (running, counting, learning) that Hope cultivates in order to fill the spaces where there should be work, or friends, or family; the impossibility of decent medical care; the way that any sexual relationship will be, at best, a series of one-night stands. (At worst, she's a rapist, if her partner forgets that they consented.) It's freedom, yes, but at the cost of any connection.

This philosophical examination spins out against a glamorous, globe-trotting thriller-plot that felt very cinematic. There are friends and foes, abuses of trust, cunning schemes, narrow escapes. There is the creeping homogenous vileness of Perfection, and the mysterious Byron's quest to destroy it. There are darknet transactions, a Möbius bracelet that I covet, a plethora of hotel rooms, and the poetry of Lord Byron.

I loved this novel, though it meanders and rambles, and some parts of it already feel dated (it was published in 2016). I loved its meanders and rambles: I liked Hope, and her situation felt uncomfortably relatable during lockdown, when so many social ties have withered and fallen away. There's that old adage that we live for as long as we're remembered: Hope, the character, lives on regardless.

2021/077: Regeneration -- Pat Barker

Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace. [p. 222]

After The Pull of the Stars, I felt an urge for more WW1 fiction, so finally embarked upon Regeneration. It's the kind of 'literary' novel that I tended to avoid in the decade after finishing my literature degree ... but that was in another millennium.

Regeneration is based on the time that Siegfried Sassoon spent in Craiglockhart War Hospital as a patient of Dr W H R Rivers, after Sassoon was diagnosed with shell-shock to avoid a court-martial for his anti-war declaration. It's effectively a novel about therapy: Rivers is presented as a deeply humane character, keen to unravel the various psychological and neurological symptoms of his patients. In addition to Sassoon, these include Wilfred Owen (whose workshopping of 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' with Sassoon is fascinating); Burns, who is unable to eat after a close encounter with a rotting corpse; and Billy Prior, a working-class lad made good who is initially mute. Prior's war experiences, and his time at Craiglockhart, are in sharp contrast to Sassoon's.

There is plenty of conflict here: between duty and conscience, between upper and working class, between the 'proper' camaraderie of soldiers and the homosexual impulses that Sassoon tries to repress and that Robert Graves is at pains to deny, between Rivers' approach to treatment and the horrific electroshock 'therapy' practiced by Dr Lewis Yealland.

It's a very masculine book, though Prior's girlfriend Sarah -- a munitions worker -- carries a lot of weight as a representative of working-class women. And it deals sensitively with 'war neurosis' in its various forms, without subscribing to the contemporary view of it as weakness. There's a lot of anger here too, not only in Sassoon but in Rivers, and in the narration, which doesn't wax lyrical but also doesn't gloss over the horrors.

I shall, quite probably, read the rest of the trilogy (The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road) eventually: but although I found Regeneration interesting, well-written, informative and powerful, it was (unsurprisingly) not an especially enjoyable read.

2021/076: The Pull of the Stars -- Emma Donoghue

So many rules I was getting used to breaking, bending to an unrecognizable degree, or interpreting in the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Only for the duration, of course, for the foreseeable future, as the posters said. Though I was having trouble foreseeing any future. How would we ever get back to normal after the pandemic? [p. 204]

I came down with something that fortunately wasn't Covid, and The Pull of the Stars -- set in Dublin during the 'Spanish' flu epidemic of 1918 -- was what I chose to read while ill: it gave me a sense of proportion, and a great appreciation for how far medicine has advanced in a century.

Julia Power is a nurse working on a small maternity ward in Dublin in 1918: this ward is for expectant mothers who are also suffering from the flu. Julia has had the flu, and has recovered: she is once again working 14-hour days under the strict eye of Sister Luke, and then cycling home to look after her brother, who is mute with shell-shock.

This is an Ireland reeling from the Uprising, as well as the First World War and the flu. Most of Julia's patients are Catholics ('she doesn't love him unless she gives him twelve'), ground down by repeated childbearing and raising large families in the 'dampest, most crowded housing in Europe'. Julia's own middle-class privilege is called out by a new doctor, Kathleen Lynn, who was chief medical officer for the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising. Dr Lynn has been imprisoned, wears a fur coat lent to her by 'a friend who's a countess', and gives Julia free rein to administer medicine as she sees fit. ("You seem competent.")

Dr Lynn inspires Julia both personally and professionally, but it's Bridie Sweeney -- a teenage girl sent by the local convent as a 'runner' -- with whom Julia forms a close emotional bond. Over the three days of the novel, against a constant procession of mothers and babies (not all of whom survive), Julia begins to realise that Bridie comes from a very different background to herself.

I was caught up in the exhausting frenzy of Julia's work, and horrified by the primitive techniques in use. The rapid onset and progression of the flu was vividly described: so were the morale-boosting efforts of the government ("THE GOVERNMENT HAS THE SITUATION WELL IN HAND AND THE EPIDEMIC IS ACTUALLY IN DECLINE." [p. 235]) which felt eerily familiar. Another congruence: the slum children don't go to school because of the pandemic, so they miss out on free school meals ... Julia's world is almost entirely female, partly because she's on the maternity ward but mostly because so many of the men have died in the war or of the flu.

The Pull of the Stars isn't a cheerful read, but it is fascinating because of Julia's emotional and political transformation over those three days; because of the little details that make the historical setting both immediate and relatable, like the stories people tell about how the pandemic started (fish eating dead soldiers? the wind blowing from the battlefields of Europe?) and the government's insistence that everything is under control. Julia is a very likeable narrator, competent and sensible and with a true vocation. This novel will stay with me: it's already more vivid in my mind than books I've read more recently.

Published in July 2020, just after the end of the first UK lockdown, this must have seemed uncannily well-timed. In the Afterword, Donoghue notes that 'In October 2018, inspired by the centenary of the great flu, I began writing The Pull of the Stars. Just after I delivered my last draft to my publishers, in March 2020, COVID-19 changed everything.' [p. 292]

The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end.... Or a stalemate, at the least. We somehow muddle along, sharing the earth with each new form of life. [p. 265]

2021/075: Daughters of the Lake -- Wendy Webb

...some stories, especially peculiar, hidden ones involving murder and mystery, have a way of bubbling to the surface, especially when wrongs need to be righted. They make themselves heard despite efforts to keep them silent. All in the proper time. [loc. 170]

Featuring some of the same characters as The Haunting of Brynn Wilder: I was in the mood for more cosy Gothic, so decided to read this next. Daughters of the Lake was published earlier, and I didn't think it was quite as coherent.

Kate Granger has retreated to her parents' house in the little town of Wharton, on Lake Superior, after her husband cheated on her. One morning she finds a dead woman washed up on the beach, with a baby in her arms. Kate knows this woman: she's been dreaming of her, dreaming of being her. But the woman's identity is a mystery, and nobody can tell how long she's been in the water.

Kate, her cousin Simon and the local police chief Nick work to uncover the secret: interspersed with their investigations are chapters telling the story of a young woman, Addie, who lived by the lake in the mid-nineteenth century. The two stories fit neatly together, though there is an unexpected twist that I felt invalidated the century-old revenge plot. I was also unconvinced by just how ready everyone in Wharton was to believe in Kate's dreams about the dead woman, and their acceptance of supernatural elements.

Plenty of ghosts, more tangible than in Brynn Wilder: plenty of kindness, very little dissent. I didn't find this as enjoyable a read as The Haunting of Brynn Wilder, but it was interesting to see the two plot lines converge, and the historical elements of the plot were distinctly Gothic and quite poignant.

2021/074: The Haunting of Brynn Wilder -- Wendy Webb

“In some cases, it’s like [Alzheimer's patients] submerge into ... The collective. The otherworld. The beyond. They’re so close to death, they dip into it. And they’re gone from us for a while. Still here, but in another world, too, at the same time. They don’t know us. Don’t remember our names or anything about the life we lived together. But then, without warning, they can pop up. Put their heads above the surface." [loc. 1213]

I think I acquired this as an Amazon First read: it's marketed as a gothic thriller with supernatural elements, but it's rather more cosy than that.

Brynn Wilder has had a bad year -- breakup of a long-term relationship, parental death, death of beloved dog, career burnout -- and decides to spend summer in the little lakeside town of Wharton. She takes up residence in a boarding house run by the redoubtable LuAnn (who informs her that there's a ghost in room five) which is 'filled with nice strangers who might become friends'. I think that sums up Brynn's attitude, and it's perfectly accurate: there are no real antagonists here.

Brynn meets Jason and Gil, a charming gay couple who have taken in Jason's ex-wife, Alice. Alice is suffering from Alzheimer's, and believes she and Jason are still married. She also seems to be able to prophesy the future, and knows secrets about people she's never met before. At the boarding house, Brynn also encounters, and falls for, the heavily-tattooed Dominic: he claims his job is to 'help people who are in transition', but the local police chief is suspicious of him. A certain amount of rudeness ensues.

There are ghosts, dreams of past lives, and a great deal of peace, love and kindness. Wharton is a charming place, and everyone is nice. A low-drama read, with unthreatening mysteries and a comforting depiction of Alzheimer's that chimed with my own views.

2021/073: Castle Shade -- Laurie R King

"Holmes, I absolutely refuse to believe that the dead are walking in Eastern Europe."
"Of course not. This agency stands flat-footed --"
"On the ground. Yes, I read Dr Watson's story. 'The Sussex Vampire' turns out not to be a vampire ..." [loc. 201]

I'd rather lost track of the Mary Russell series: the last one I read was The Pirate King back in 2012. I've dipped into subsequent novels and not been hooked, which may simply be 'right book, wrong time'. So when this instalment appeared on NetGalley I thought I'd give it a try: and I have to say it was the perfect beach read for my first (and so far only) beach trip this year.

The setting is Transylvania in 1925. Holmes and Russell have been summoned to Roumania by Queen Marie. There are dark tales of revenants in the churchyard, bowls of blood, attacks on young women, et cetera, and recently the life of the queen's daughter Ileana has been threatened. The queen and her household cherish their time in Castle Bran, the gift of a grateful populace: but are they really welcome there?

Not having read the last few novels in the series, there were references that meant nothing to me (though intrigued me enough that I'll probably give them another try): but I didn't feel that the undercurrents were too intrusive, or that they detracted from the main plot. Russell and Holmes, singly and together, unravel a series of mysteries and meet a number of vivid characters, some of them historical. There are quite a few infodumps in Castle Shade, but these didn't really disrupt the flow, and the information being conveyed -- Queen Marie's ancestry, her role in the Paris Peace Conference, her general good nature -- was interesting and pertinent.

Castle Shade was a pleasing mystery, though I didn't enjoy it as much as the earlier novels in the series: however, it's lured me back into the world of Russell and Holmes.

One minor irritation was the anglicisation: it seems that '-ize' had been converted to '-ise' throughout. I recognised this after the third or fourth mention of the maise fields ...

Thanks to NetGalley for my free review copy, received in exchange for this honest review.

2021/072: The Queer Principles of Kit Webb -- Cat Sebastian

“I used to think that revenge was about defending one’s honor, but it turns out that honor is just spite dressed up for Sunday.” [loc. 2120]

London, 1751. Former highwayman Kit Webb, crippled by a gunshot wound that prevents him from resuming his previous career, runs a successful coffee house in Covent Garden, and dreams of vengeance against the man who he blames for the death of his family. Edward Percy, exquisite fop, conspires with his stepmother Marian -- with whom he's been friends since childhood -- against his bigamous and abusive father, the Duke of Clare. Percy's sure that if he can steal the small green book his father carries everywhere, he'll be able to gain the upper hand. Time to enlist a dashing highwayman for one last heist!

Of course it's not that simple. Kit is no longer a gentleman of the road, beguiling though he finds Percy. And Marian has a secret she's not sharing with her co-conspirator.

I felt this novel needed another edit: it's a headlong, well-paced read with plenty of period detail, but there are occasional clumsy sentences, and some plot developments which would have been more convincing with a little foreshadowing. I did occasionally feel that Kit's sexual interest in Percy came out of nowhere -- he's never done anything with a man before -- but with hindsight I'm inclined to read him as demisexual: he doesn't seem especially interested in sex with anyone, male or female, until Percy saunters into the (nameless) coffee shop.

A thoroughly enjoyable adventure, with echoes of Heyer and some intriguing minor characters: I especially liked Percy's valet Collins, and Betty who works in Kit's coffee shop. Kit himself, half-dead of boredom with his world shrunk to the coffee shop and its customers, is amiably rude and thoroughly competent, and educates Percy on the iniquities of the English class machine. Percy, with his hidden talents and his growing disinclination to embrace his noble heritage, is colourfully foppish and extravagantly queer without being mocked or feminised. (Well, Kit mocks him, but Kit mocks everyone.) And there's to be a sequel next year, featuring Marian and .... but that would be telling.

2021/071: How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic -- Emily Croy Barker

"Real magic isn't just about power. It's about knowing the world around you." [loc. 5613]

It's a long time since I read The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (on a beach in the Canaries, one Christmas) and I remember enjoying it very much. Graduate student Nora wanders into a faerie realm, is courted by the Faitoren queen and married to a prince: but her days pass in a blur, and she's under the influence of strong magic. She escapes, and ends up working for the magician Aruendiel, and is eventually -- reluctantly -- returned to her mundane life. Now the long-awaited sequel has appeared, and though I didn't like it quite as much as the first book, I found it enjoyable and very much in the same vein.

Nora's life has turned around: she has won a scholarship to England, she's no longer in love with her ex, and she's concocted a fraught tale of injury, illness and isolated communities to explain her absence. The only person who knows what really happened -- knows about real magic, and Aruendiel, and being careful what you wish for -- is her little sister Ramona. When Nora encounters Adam she decides to tell him what really happened: his response? "So many wonderful narrative elements. So much resonance. An anti-Cinderella story that's also reminiscent of Cupid and Psyche... Fictionalizing a bad experience is healthy."

A chance encounter lets Nora return, though her reunion with Aruendiel is not as joyous as she might have hoped, and she's still somehow bound to the Faitoren court. Fleeing danger, she finds herself appointed as high priestess to a goddess of healing, and revels in the power her deity bestows on her. But power corrupts, and gift horses are not always what they seem.

Nora didn't seem quite as independent, or as outspoken about women's rights (or indeed literature), as in the previous novel. Though she has more agency than before, and more (borrowed) power, her story feels less epic. I felt that she was rather too trusting, despite her previous experiences of deceit in both Aruendiel's world and her own. She seems to take things at face value, which is not a great survival strategy in a world of demons, gods, magic-users and illusionists. I was fascinated by Aruendiel's encounter with the real Ilissa: let's just say that underneath the enchantments she is nothing like the elegant lady who took Nora into her court.

I would have liked a more definite resolution to the Ilissa thread, since her malign influence is responsible for one of the more distressing passages in this novel: instead, Aruendiel merely says 'she can cause no more trouble'. And I would have liked more interaction between he and Nora: they spend a great deal of the novel apart. How to Talk to A Goddess... felt, to me, rather more fragmented than the first book, though Barker does wrap up some elements that were left unresolved: Nora achieves some closure, Aruendiel's chapters give us more insight into his thoughts and feelings, and there is a sense of pleasant possibilities opening up as the story draws to a close. Though I'm not confident that Nora will begin to make more sensible decisions, she does seem to be happier, with a firmer sense of purpose.

UK Publication 29 June 2021. Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy, received in exchange for this honest review.

2021/070: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic -- Emily Croy Barker

“I worked as a cook, a couple of years ago,” Nora said. “Before I was, um, a fairy princess.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Toristel, as though this were a well-established career progression. [p. 105]

Reread in advance of the long-awaited sequel, How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic, which I requested and received for review. This time around, the chapters that Nora spends in Ilissa's palace felt too long, too formless: the real story only starts when she leaves. Other than that, still an enjoyable read, and as usual I had forgotten all but a few fragments of plot. (I'd have liked to know what really happened to Emmeline, whose tombstone Nora reads.)

My original review from 2014 ...

2021/069: The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics -- Olivia Waite

...tonight I learned that there were other women before me. So very, very many of them. They were here all along: spotting comets, naming stars, pointing telescopes at the sky alongside their fathers and brothers and sons. And still the men they worked with scorned them. [loc. 3655]

Set in 1816, this is the love story of two women: Lucy Muchelny, whose astronomical work has been thwarted by the death of her father (and whose heart has been broken by the marriage of her lover Pris), and Catherine, Countess of Moth, a widow who writes to Lucy to request recommendations for someone to translate a treatise on celestial mechanics. Lucy, keen to escape the confines and expectations of her home and her brother's plans for her, offers her services as translator, and finds a like-minded spirit in Catherine, who travelled the globe with her emotionally-abusive husband before his death.

Catherine is a keen embroiderer, producing vivid textile art inspired by her travels, and the plants and animals she encountered: but she has to learn to see her art as art, rather than as a feminine pursuit. And Lucy, who did the majority of her father's calculations as his health declined, finds herself enthralled by the 'crystalline clarity' of Oleron's work -- and keen to make it more accessible to the general reader, for example Catherine ...

The romance encounters the usual stumbling blocks -- poor communication, assumptions on both parts, social differences -- plus, of course, the potential scandal of a same-sex relationship. But Catherine, the more inexperienced of the two when it comes to love between women, begins to realise that such relationships can exist in plain sight, without fear of exposure.

I enjoyed this a lot: the contrast between scientific Lucy and artistic Catherine, the ways in which they both gained confidence from the other's company, the vignettes of Regency life. Waite focusses on lives more ordinary than those of the aristocracy, who people Heyer's novels and a thousand more inspired by Heyer and Austen. I was also pleased to find both plot and sub-plot concerned with female independence and women's competences.

There have been criticisms that astronomer Caroline Herschel is absent from this novel, and of the suggestion that Black students weren't admitted to university. I didn't find the first to be true (names have been changed, but the president of the 'Polite Science Society' is a Mr Hawley, and "Half the comets discovered in the last century were first observed by Mr. Hawley’s sister" [loc. 3646]). The second required a little research: Cambridge University admitted at least one Black student in the 18th century, but the first Black student at Oxford -- which is the university being discussed here -- didn't matriculate until 1873. I don't know whether the absence of Black students was, as presented in the novel, a matter of policy.

Arguing only because the Herschel criticism nearly stopped me from reading the novel, and I'd like to reassure others.

2021/068: The Last Romeo -- Justin Myers

On paper, he was annoyingly perfect and aesthetically everything aligned pretty well. Another date looked imminent. And then… I thought of Romeo, and started looking for problems. [loc. 914]

Justin Myers writes the Guyliner blog, and The Last Romeo feels like the novelisation of that blog: gossip journalist James, newly-single after six years of a toxic relationship and disillusioned with his job, decides to throw himself into the gay dating scene and blog every date. He's encouraged by his friends -- Bella, who's just moved to Russia; Nicole and Richie, whose sons he's godfather to; Curtis, gay man-about-town; Seonaid and Carrie, friends of his ex -- but gradually the notoriety and the pressure begin to warp his life. Will he ever find 'the one', or even 'the next one', if he's treating every date as blog-fodder?

The blog entries', bitchy and amusing and not always fair to their subjects, were much less interesting to me -- as was the blogging 'Romeo' persona -- than the scenes with James and his friends and dates, such as the closetted Olympian he thinks he might have a chance with, or the guy who's in a relationship but hits it off with James over a bottle of gin at a party. (There is a great deal of drinking herein.) There are Twitter storms, crises of confidence, and a mystery fan of 'Romeo' who may not be a complete stranger. The ending was cheerful, but inconclusive: I felt it fizzled out a bit. But I was entertained and emotionally engaged, and it was fun to read about the London dating scene, a distant memory.