2023/041: Oak King Holly King — Sebastian Nothwell

even as his rational mind supposed that such an adventure could only end in mugging or murder, his Romantic soul stretched its withered wings and soared at the notion of leaving the suffocating fog of Staple Inn behind to venture out into the wilderness beneath the full moon. Furthermore, if he did end up murdered, it meant he’d never have to copy out another account-book again. [loc. 527]

Shrike is a faerie knight, a mercenary whose prowess in battle attracts the attention of the Faerie Queen. He is not given a choice about becoming the Oak King, destined to die in single combat with the Holly King and thus ensure the turning of the seasons -- but he can attempt magic to save himself. And that magic leads him to the unprepossessing figure of Wren Lofthouse, a clerk in Staple's Inn, a man who dreams of romance between Gawain and his Green Knight, who's estranged from his family and friends but, at least, has steady employment with the affable Mr Grigsby. Wren's employer would probably cast him off if he knew his clerk was a sodomite, prone to sketching handsome men in erotic poses -- though Grigsby indulges his ward, Felix, an unlikeable and profligate but performatively heterosexual young fellow.

This is a sweet romance, with the emphasis very much on Wren and Shrike's growing regard for, and trust in, one another. Wren is smart and creative (he repurposes a sigil from his copy of Gawain and the Green Knight to provide protection for Shrike; he hypothesises that, the last time the Oak King and the Holly King didn't duel, the mortal world endured 1816, the Year Without a Summer) while Shrike is centuries old, a mighty warrior, and at home with magic. The wider world that Nothwell depicts is rich with detail: the leather masks Shrike makes for the fae, the Ambassador from the Court of Spindles, the delightful Nell and her entourage of nymphs, the velvet shedding from the antlers Shrike grows. And the mortal world is no less vivid, with Grigsby's other ward Miss Flora Fairfield, who is not what she seems; with mystical gateways from fairyland to Rochester; with guardsmen loitering near the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park, hoping to find like-minded companions for the night; with Wren, who never seems to do any work, but is given to sketching handsome knights in the margins of his account books.

I felt the last few chapters were a little rushed, and perhaps there was slightly too much plot. (A rare complaint!) There were many threads to keep track of, some tied off more neatly than others. The language was occasionally overwrought and faux-archaic ('the fae gazed on him not with censure or derision'): Nothwell also uses the Old English spelling of girdle ('gyrdel') throughout, which vexed me. But on the whole this was a charming and vivid fantasy romance, featuring sexual encounters more magically imbued than is usual in romance.

2023/040: Binti — Nnedi Okorafor

My tribe is obsessed with innovation and technology, but it is small, private, and, as I said, we don’t like to leave Earth. We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward. No Himba has ever gone to Oomza Uni. [p. 21]

Binti is 16, a mathematical genius, and the first of her people to leave Earth and go to the prestigious Oomza Uni. As a Himba, she braids her hair in coded patterns, covers her skin in otjize (a mixture of clay and botanical essences) and wears steel anklets to protect her from snakebite. Despite her differences, she begins to make friends among her fellow passengers. Then disaster strikes: the Meduse, aliens with an implacable hatred of humans, kill everyone on board except Binti. She is smart enough and lucky enough (being equipped with a mysterious artifact she found in the desert) to engineer a fragile detente, and to aid in negotiations when the ship finally reaches Oomza Uni.

This novella won several awards after its first publication in 2015: it's splendidly Africa-centric, and Binti is a marvellous heroine. But I found it weirdly imbalanced. Binti leaves home; Binti makes friends; Binti witnesses genocide; Binti helps to broker a peace with the Meduse, whose grievance relates to the restitution of a cultural treasure held by the university. The genocide seems disproportionate, as well as deeply traumatic for Binti, the sole survivor.

Well-written, distinctive and mostly enjoyable (apart from -- obviously -- the genocide): I'll read the sequels, but hope for less wholesale slaughter.

2023/039: Still Alive — Eleanor Lerman

The moon was hidden behind clouds that lay on the sky like hooks, waiting to snag the stars.  Down the block, beyond the boardwalk, I could hear the ocean chewing up the shore. [p. 365]

I'm confused by Eleanor Lerman: I thought I'd wishlisted her works having read and loved at least one of them, but evidence suggests that this is actually the first novel I've read by her. I liked it very much, though, and will read more of her work.

Jessie, who works at a New York restaurant called Vampire's and lives with her Russian girlfriend Rita in a beachside town on Long Island, is surprised to get a phone call from a schoolteacher in Minnesota saying that her long-lost stepsister Jackie has been found: or, more accurately, that the remains of a murdered woman have been identified as Jackie. Jessie blames Jackie (who was schizophrenic) for her estrangement from her father, and for the breakup of the family: she has coped, all these years, by becoming the person who keeps others safe. Her brother Rob has coped by becoming the producer of a wildly popular TV show called Trackdown, which aims to reunite missing persons with their families and loved ones. Neither Jessie nor Rob is especially convinced by the schoolteacher's account or her 'evidence', but obviously they can't just ignore the situation.

But Jackie's fate is not the focus of the novel. It's more about Jessie's everyday life as a forty-something queer Jewish working-class woman: her relationship with Rita, her friendship with Malcolm, her affection for her brother, her gradual realisation that Jackie's lack of medical treatment, rather than Jackie herself, was the problem. There's a strong sense of community, of found family as well as birth family. Lerman is an astute observer of the details that bring a character -- or a place -- to life.

The novel doesn't really end, per se: there is no closure. (I did think the title might be a spoiler, but it's something that a medium told one of the family after Jackie's disappearance. Jessie does visit the same psychic, but seems disinclined to believe what she's told, though it seems to me ... well.) There is a missing person who's found, and there is a crisis which is overcome. But the pleasure of this novel, for me, was in the characters, and in Lerman's prose, which -- despite the lack of proofreading and the fact that, halfway through, the novel goes into italic font and never escapes -- is distinctive and warm and very readable.

2023/038: The Fall of Koli — M R Carey

Sword of Albion was quite the fashion on your little island. They promised to bring back everything people used to have in the good old days – clean streets, smiling children, jobs for life, meals that contained actual food, public hangings – and to protect what was left of Great Britain against what was left of the rest of the world. [p. 124]

In which the origins of Koli's future England -- with its small illiterate population, its oddly-named folk villains, its ferocious forests and the mysterious 'Sword of Albion' signal that Koli and his friends have been following -- are revealed, as is the agenda of the person who set the whole story in motion. There's more here, too, about stories and who tells them; about the making of new myths; about love between very different people; about how to improve the gene pool, and how to build your own dictator. There are also some truly horrific scenes, and one (at least one) that made me cry.

Much of the history that Koli learns is unpleasantly relevant to our own society. (“It’s called fascism... It’s like ra-ra skirts and flared trousers. People get all hot for it and make themselves look ridiculous, then when the fad blows over they pretend they were never that into it.” [p. 148]) But this is very definitely the future: a future blighted by climate change, genetic engineering and the aftermath of war, but also featuring technology well beyond our own, from the 'parents' of the boy Stanley to the battle-engine Challenger and his companion Elaine, to the intelligence which led Koli to the Sword of Albion and its hidden treasures.

There's a lot more from Spinner in this novel, and more of Monono too: yet Koli's voice is the one that will stay with me, because he is presented as a genuinely good and kind person. And his closing revelation made me want to reread the whole trilogy: but perhaps not quite yet, when the world outside the book seems so ominous, and a sentence like 'The time of people was over and the time of the endless forests was come' feels like hope.

Fulfils the ‘final book in a series’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/037: The Trials of Koli — M R Carey

...what I miss is what I never had. Being alive. Being real. Virtual girls are sweet as sugar and thin as paper. I’m trying to come up with a way to be something more than that, but the science is sketchy. [p.422]

Second in the Ramparts trilogy, which began with The Book of Koli: Koli is travelling south to London with Ursala (a healer who has some knowledge of technology), Cup (a trans girl who may be seeking vengeance for the death of her cult leader), and Monono (an AI housed in a Sony media player). Unlike the first volume, the narrative here isn't wholly Koli's: some chapters are told by Spinner, whose wedding was disrupted by Koli and Monono, and who's still living in Mythen Rood and beginning to question the supremacy of the Ramparts -- individuals who can use technology that survived the fall of civilisation. All the Ramparts come from the same family (what a coincidence, eh?) but Spinner finds herself 'assisting' one of them, an old man whose failing mind can't come up with the right questions for the 'database' device when a mysterious illness strikes the settlement.

Carey's depiction of a dystopian future England, in which literacy is a lost art and nature has turned against humanity, is horribly credible (and more vivid in this middle volume, when Koli and co see some of the effects of the Unfinished War and attendant disasters: layers of human bones in Birmagen, a new sea where London used to be, a community hiding in underground shelters. But the interactions of the characters, human and otherwise, are equally compelling and equally credible. I especially enjoyed the friction between Ursala and Monono, and Koli's defence of Cup.

I'd intended to let this one soak in for a while before embarking on the final volume: but the suspense had built to such a height that I could not. And the fragment of Monono's narrative was too tantalising to resist.

Fulfils the ‘Dystopian fiction’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/036: Star Sand — Roger Pulvers

I was not allowing myself anything resembling hope. No landscape, no flower, no sea or sky or meadow could be that beautiful in wartime. Getting through each day required ignoring the beauty around me. [loc. 1001]

Set on the small Japanese island of Hatoma in the last days of the Second World War, Star Sand is presented as the narrative of Umeno Hiromi, a sixteen-year-old girl with a Japanese father and an American mother, who's living alone in a deserted house after the death of her aunt. Every day she goes to the beach to collect star sand: the schoolteacher left behind hundreds of milk bottles, 'each little bottle represented the life of a child under his care', and Hiromi has set herself the task of filling every bottle. One morning, though, she sees a soldier, an American, holding a gun to his head. Following him, she discovers another soldier, a Japanese deserter named Iwabuchi Takayasu, who's living in a cave on the beach. Takasayu, Hiromi and Bob the American form an improbable friendship based on their shared pacifism and disgust with the war. But then Takasayu's injured elder brother discovers the cave: a fervent patriot, he vows vengeance on the deserters and on Hiromi, who he regards as a traitor.

Decades later, Hiromi's diary is found in the cave, together with the remains of three bodies, one of them dressed in female clothing. A university student identifies inconsistencies in Hiromi's account, and sets out to discover what really happened.

Star Sand is a gentle, understated novella, though the parts aren't as balanced as they could be. (There is, however, a happy ending!) Pulvers' depiction of rural life in Japan during wartime ('We had all been told to sharpen a long rod of bamboo, like a lance, so that we could kill the Americans if they landed. I was using mine to catch fish.') is fascinating, and Hiromi is a capable and practical young woman, refusing to think about either past or future but happy to befriend the two soldiers and to translate for them. I bought this -- or possibly acquired it as a Kindle First -- in 2016: I'm glad to have read it.

Fulfils the ‘an alliterative title’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/035: The Book Eaters — Sunyi Dean

...here was the thing that no fairy tale would ever admit, but that she understood in that moment: love was not inherently good. [loc. 2856]

Devon Fairweather is a princess: cossetted but commodified, her sole worth in the children she can bear. Her species (not human but 'clothed in the skin of humankind') mostly eat books, retaining the content and relishing the varying tastes of old novels, fairy tales and lurid thrillers: at one point Devon, devouring maps to broaden her understanding of the world, seasons the glossy paper with ketchup.

Devon needs maps because she's determined to escape her fate. She's had not one but two arranged marriages, and borne a child to each husband. The first of these was civil enough, but made empty promises to Devon, implying that she could keep her daughter. The second husband was an abuser, and their son Cai was born the other kind of book eater: a mind eater, a creature that literally sucks out human brains. There's a drug, Redemption, that can help Cai, but the family who made it have vanished. Devon's on a quest to find them: but meanwhile Cai must feed, and thus Devon -- luring a likely morsel back to their lodging -- encounters Hester, who may be able to put her in touch with a source of Redemption. And whom Devon, acknowledging a truth she's never been able to admit to herself, wants to kiss.

The world-building of The Book Eaters, is expansive, though occasionally seems self-contradictory: I'm not convinced by some of the details of how the book eaters live alongside, but unnoticed by, humans. The interpersonal relationships, especially Devon's fraught relationship with her brother Ramsey (who she believes she's doomed to the terrible life of a Knight, an enforcer), are horribly compelling, and I do mean horribly. Devon is not always a likeable character, though to be fair she's a product of her upbringing and the carefully-selected diet of books with hapless heroines that she's consumed from an early age. (Has nobody ever given her anything more revolutionary?) Her love for her children is her only real motivation: it gives her the strength to commit atrocities, to break free of the Families, and to let Cai make his own choices.

This is a dark novel, and not often a happy one: nevertheless, perhaps because of the Gothic mood and melodramatic behaviour, it felt to me like a YA novel. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but I'm glad I didn't read this as a teenager.

Fulfils the ‘A book about siblings’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/034: The Anomaly — Hervé Le Tellier (translated by Adriana Hunter)

‘We’ll give you a list of scientists in thirty minutes,’ Tina Brewster-Wang adds. ‘Two or three philosophers as well.’
‘Really? Why?’ Silveria asks.
‘Why should scientists always be the only people woken in the night?’ [loc. 1836]

I bought this expecting ... well, an airport thriller, I suppose: a solidly-plotted novel with an exciting plot, an upbeat ending, a large cast and adequate prose. This is not what I got. The Anomaly's prose, albeit translated from the French, is excellent (and has some stylistic flourishes that are familiar from my days of proofreading French non-fiction); the cast is indeed large, but each character has a distinct voice and a unique plot arc; and the plot is solid but unpredictable. The premise feels vaguely familiar from TV and film: an aeroplane flies through a tremendous storm and is somehow duplicated, with one version landing three months after the other. Instead of focussing on the cause, Le Tellier concentrates on the effects of duplication on the passengers, in a philosophical exploration of alternate realities and, perhaps, the nature of 'reality' itself.

I enjoyed this immensely, though it's hard to talk about specifics without either minimising the impact of each doubled character's arc, or reducing the stories Le Tellier tells to mundanity. There is a hitman; a couple on the verge of separation; an angst-ridden author (who, of course, writes a book called The Anomaly), a man diagnosed with an aggressive cancer; an abused child; a gay Nigerian musician; a Black lawyer; and a pair of rather sweet scientists. Some of their stories end happily, others ... not so much.

And now I want to reread and see just how much of what transpires is signalled in the earliest chapters, before we know what has befallen the characters.

‘There are more than two hundred of us who’ve had to look at the things our “doubles” did between March and June, perhaps regretting they didn’t take another route. Some may want to do things differently, or better, or do something else altogether. [loc. 3871]

Great article on Le Tellier and translation: here

2023/033: The Enchantment Emporium — Tanya Huff

“If my mother dies here…” Allie looked down at Jack’s thin fingers clutching her arm, and braced herself. “…I get to help eat her.” [loc. 6387]

I was a big fan of Huff's 'Blood' series of urban vampire fantasies, but I hadn't read any of her more recent novels, until now. The Enchantment Emporium (which I purchased in 2015, aargh), fitted a reading-group prompt so I decided to give it a try.

The Gale family is strongly matriarchal and mostly female. They have magical gifts (different for men and for women) and it's implied that there's a lot of cousin-marriage to keep the gifts within the family. Most of them seem to be 'enthusiastically nondiscriminating' sexually: the novel opens with protagonist Allie (Alysha) in bed with two cousins, one male and one female. She's moved back home after losing her job and the cousin man she loves, who turned out to be gay. Allie has a lot of aunties -- a more or less formal title for the post-menopausal ladies who run the family -- and it's a relief to get a letter from her grandmother, leaving her the Enchantment Emporium. Nobody really believes that her grandmother is dead, but she's certainly disappeared: when Allie goes off to Calgary, it's as much to investigate that disappearance (and escape her loving but claustrophobic family) as to run the junk shop. Which turns out to be a key element in the city's fey community, as well as a place stuffed with magical artifacts, some more benign than others. (The shop only ever seem to sell yoyos...) Allie employs a leprechaun, encounters a handsome journalist who actually works for a sorcerer, and begins to realise that the shadows passing overhead aren't just birds of prey.

I found the family's charms and powers very confusing at the beginning of the novel, and wasn't much edified by the end (though this is the first in a series). Allie's habit of writing invisible runes ('mine') on the male characters made me a little uncomfortable, too. The aunties were great, and fearsome: cousin Charlie, a world-walker with lurid hair and a gift for music, was probably the most intriguing of Allie's cohort. It was a fun read, very fast-paced, with romantic elements and family interactions, but it didn't hook me: lucky, that, as the series is no longer available for Kindle and seems to be out of print too.

Fulfils the ‘An author with a same name as you’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/032: And Put Away Childish Things — Adrian Tchaikovsky

"Sometimes a wardrobe is just a wardrobe. Sometimes books are just books. That's why we call it 'fiction'."[loc. 624]

Harry Bodie is a failing TV presenter, stuck in children's programming and approaching middle age, lonely and petty and prone to drinking too much. He hopes an appearance on a TV genealogy show will revive his career, but instead he discovers that his great-grandmother died in a lunatic asylum. Her daughter, Harry's grandmother, wrote a beloved series of books about the magical kingdom of Underhill: typical post-war children's fantasy, with magical creatures, slap-up feasts and home to the real world with no time passing. When a private investigator shows up, claiming that her client takes Underhill 'very seriously', Harry is dubious. But what does he have to lose?

The Underlings do indeed take Underhill very seriously, and are quite prepared to use Harry's blood to open a portal. Luckily rescue is at hand. Less luckily, it's in the person of Timon, who is a fictional character (or so Harry tells himself firmly) and not a real faun, much less a decaying one. When Seitchman, the mysterious PI, gets in touch again, Harry is intrigued enough to meet her in the house that was his grandfather's. Where there is a wardrobe ('no, that's the other one. With the lion. We didn't do wardrobes in our family') which turns out to be a portal to Underhill. The magical kingdom of his grandmother's books is not at its best, and as Harry comes to understand its origins, he realises that he's the only hope that Underhill's crumbling inhabitants have ...

And Put Away Childish Things is another example of Tchaikovsky's versatility as an author, but it didn't quite work for me: I wasn't sure if it was aiming for comedy, profundity (about the responsibilities of creators, and the origins of magical worlds) or an exploration of what happens when (as Gaiman puts it) 'real things happen to imaginary people'. I did think the pandemic elements were very well handled: that sense of unreality and timelessness in the first lockdown, the erosion of 'normal' life: no wonder Harry is willing to return to Underhill. And the philosophies of Underhill's inhabitants, from 'rascally' Timon to the creepy clown Gombles, are well-considered. Fun, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 28 MAR 2023.

2023/031: The Dovekeepers — Alice Hoffman

If a man sees his brother tied with ropes and dragged down the cobblestone road, does he ever see anything else? If ten men are kept in a room with a lion and only one survives, what does that man become? If a woman with red hair keeps silent, will she ever be able to speak the truth again? [loc. 908]

A novel about the Siege of Masada in 72-73 CE, The Dovekeepers focusses on four women who are drawn together as they care for the doves whose 'leavings' fertilise the gardens and fields of the nigh-impregnable mountain fortress. Yael is the reviled daughter of a master assassin, who crossed the desert with her father and another family after the fall of Jerusalem; Aziza was raised as a boy and taught martial skills; her mother Shirah, a former holy prostitute ('kedeshah'), is reputed to be a witch, and is the lover of Sicarii leader Eleazar ben Ya'ir; Revka, a baker's widow, saw her daughter raped and murdered by Romans. These four care for various children, love their brothers and fathers, burn with passion for unsuitable men, and -- despite their apparent powerlessness -- find ways to change the world around them.

I like and admire Hoffman's writing, but I really struggled with this novel: it is cheerless, bleak and brutal. The women are oppressed, treated with contempt, riddled with guilt or grief or both: though each finds a kind of power of her own, these powers (from Revka's loving care of mute orphans to Shirah's witchcraft) are feared and suppressed by the men of the citadel. And, of course, I knew more or less how the story ended ...

There were some fascinating aspects to The Dovekeepers. Hoffman's depiction of early Judaism was intriguing, full of ritual and mysticism (though it's deemed inaccurate by Jewish readers); the descriptions of magical practice, based on Hoffman's reading of Ancient Jewish Magic: A History by Gideon Bohak, were compelling, though I was sad for the doves. (Discussion of the magical elements here.) And the historical context is clearly explained, though Hoffman sticks to Josephus' account of the siege, and to the earliest archaeological evidence rather than more recent excavations.

Fulfils the ‘Set during a war other than WWI or WWII’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge: The Dovekeepers is set during the First Jewish-Roman War in 70-73 CE.

2023/030: The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen — KJ Charles

One couldn’t ask for perfect, he told himself, and decided not to consider if there might be a middle way between ‘perfect’ and ‘professional criminal’. [loc. 2333]

Gareth's having a passionate affair with a man he knows only as 'Kent'. It's England in 1811 and much safer to stay anonymous. When Kent declares he's heading home to Romney Marsh, Gareth -- 'London' -- refuses to divulge name or address, and resigns himself to never seeing Kent again. Then Gareth abruptly inherits a title and a manor house (his father, who abandoned him when he was six years old, left his will unchanged since before his second marriage and the birth of his daughter), and abandons the city for the wilds of Romney Marsh and a half-sister who didn't know he existed until very recently. Gareth doesn't really miss London: he likes the peace and quiet, and is fascinated by the natural world and his father's notebooks of observations. Whilst on a moonlit quest for the great diving beetle, he stumbles across a gang of smugglers going about their business -- and finds himself facing 'Kent', revealed as Joss Doomsday, dashing leader of the local gang of smugglers, across a courtroom.

Can the two move past blackmail, perjury and the yawning chasm between their social classes to some accommodation? Or will Gareth's beastly uncle and cousin, and Joss's differently-beastly uncle and his henchmen, doom them both? And will the enemies that Gareth's inherited along with the baronetcy give him a chance to prove his worth?

This was a charming read, though I confess I didn't warm to Gareth as much as to the Doomsdays. Joss and his delightful sister Sophy have a Black grandfather, a former slave in Georgia (I'd love to know how he came to Romney Marsh) and a wholly fearsome mother, Sybil, as well as a plethora of cousins, friends, and hangers-on. (Gareth, having grown up in the household of an unloving uncle, is not at all sure how this 'family' thing works.) Joss is happy to show Gareth just where the crested newt swims, and to explain his radical politics (yes, smugglers did import grain when the harvest failed and Parliament did nothing): and Gareth, to give him his due, is prepared to consider that Joss might have a point.

Despite the dual narrative voices, it was difficult to get a sense of the growing affection between Gareth and Joss. I could accept that they'd formed a strong connection during their anonymous trysts, despite their Vere Street affair lasting less than a week, but I didn't find their romance as credible as some of KJ Charles' other pairings. Nevertheless, this was fun and pacy and plotty, and I laughed aloud several times -- not least at the line 'On Romney Marsh, nobody would hear you scream'. Looking forward to the sequel, which seems to focus on Luke, a secondary character in this novel but all grown up in A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, due in September.

2023/029: Looking Glass Sound — Catriona Ward

I don't remember writing this. Magic seems to be making its way into this book. Or maybe it started with magic, because there is a worse possibility than all of this. I'm not being haunted by a book... [loc. 2963]

Wilder's father inherits a cottage on the coast of Maine, and the family spend the summer there. Whistler Bay is idyllic, though there's an unsettling local mystery: the Dagger Man, who photographs sleeping children. And over the years, a number of women -- lone swimmers -- have gone missing: but that's just the tides, the treacherous ocean. Wilder meets Harper, with her British accent and her witchy rituals, and Nat, who has a difficult relationship with his father. The three become close: they visit a sea cave and whisper secrets to the god that Nat says dwells beneath the water. One day, though, there's an accident: Nat is injured, and a serial killer is unmasked.

Years later, Wilder returns to Whistler Bay to write his account of the events of that summer, and his college friendship (or perhaps love affair) with Sky, who betrayed him and stole the manuscript of his first attempt to explore what happened to the three of them. He's still trying to make sense of everything, trying to construct a story about fathers and sons, or about Harper and Sky, or about his own sense of loss. But is it his story to tell?

This is a layered and labyrinthine novel about stories -- who tells them, how they're told, whose they are -- and identity. I've now read it three times (once is definitely not enough) and am still making new connections, hearing new echoes, recognising new threads weaving through the novel. Wilder, Nat and (especially) Harper are compelling characters, and their emotional tangle needs, and deserves, a lot of unravelling. And Sky... Sky is something else.

I think this might be my favourite of Ward's novels -- Rawblood, Little Eve, The Last House on Needless Street and Sundial -- and I am beginning to see patterns: stories that veer in unexpected directions, endings that can be seen as happy if one squints, surviving trauma and the scars it leaves, unreliable narrators with distinctive voices. And who is more untrustworthy than a novelist?

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review: UK publication date is 20 APR 2023.

2023/028: Murder Before Evensong — Richard Coles

It was not Daniel’s first brutal death. In his first parish there had been a murder in his first week, and in the years since several had followed, some brought to book, others unproven, perhaps many that had gone unnoticed? More than once he had buried someone whose murderer he was sure was among the pall-bearers. [loc. 1162]

There are two wolves -- sorry, two books -- inside this one: a charming memoir of a rector's life in 1980s rural England (complete with very civilised feuds and lingering shadows of the Second World War), and a murder mystery rooted in wartime life. The two books (or wolves) do not play well together.

The murder mystery relies on plot elements that are only revealed late in the novel. The 1980s setting can perhaps be justified by the WW2 elements of the story, and that peculiar British nostalgia for an idealised vision of life during wartime: though yes, it is amusing that Daniel has never seen a mobile phone in the wild. (I can't help feeling that most of the cultural references -- Wham!, Celine Dion, Upstairs Downstairs, Erasure et cetera, though curiously not the Communards -- will be wasted on anybody under 50, though.) There are some excellent, almost mystical passages as Daniel reflects on the murders, and some evocative character sketches: but there are also some extremely clunky sentences and inadequate punctuation. I didn't hate it, but I didn't think it worked very well as a murder mystery.

Fulfils the ‘Includes a funeral’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/027: The Bookshop — Penelope Fitzgerald

‘It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won’t understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy.’ [p. 100]

It's 1959, and Florence Green, a resident for ten years of the small Suffolk town of Hardborough ('where everyone could be seen coming over the wide distances and everything seen was discussed'), decides to open a bookshop. She purchases the Old House, which has a resident poltergeist, and at once meets opposition from the redoubtable Mrs Gamart, who regards herself as 'the natural patroness of all public activities in Hardborough', and who'd rather the Old House became an arts centre. Undaunted, Florence stocks and opens the shop, and recruits a young girl, Christine, to help her. Christine is bolshy, rude and uninterested in reading, but she and Florence develop an odd friendship. Florence also becomes friendly with the town recluse, Mr Brundish. But Florence has made enemies, and her forthright manner doesn't win her any leeway. In the end, Old House Books fails.

This is an odd little novel, very short (156 pages in print), very focused on the story rather than the backstory, leaving much unsaid. I was intrigued by the poltergeist, which was a distinct presence -- perhaps more present than Mrs Gamart and her off-page machinations -- and depressed by Christine's understanding of her probable future. The Bookshop was not exactly enjoyable -- the bleakness of the East Anglian landscape seemed to colour the whole novel -- but I was drawn in by its subtle humour and acute observations of life in a small, isolated town.

Fulfils the ‘Books on the cover’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.