2023/052: Black Water Sister — Zen Cho

“I only became a Datuk recently, when the old Datuk here moved to another place. If I can run, I’ll run. But what can I do? The humans there” — he pointed at the construction site — “they give me nasi lemak every day. They all are not rich also. They’re construction workers, from Bangladesh. Half of them don’t have permits. You think that Chinaman will pay them a lot? How can I not protect them?”
Ah Ma was taken aback. “They’re Bangladeshi also they pray to you?”
“When you’re scared, you’ll pray to anybody,” said the Datuk Kong. [p. 96]

Jess's life isn't going to plan. Her parents, after years in America, have decided to return to Malaysia, and she's come with them, to a birth country that she barely remembers. She's trying to deal with the loss of 'her beautiful life, with her beautiful girlfriend, her friends, her creative projects, her ambitions' and reinvent her relationship with said girlfriend, Sharanya. Now she's the outsider, the immigrant -- and the novel opens with the ghost of her dead grandmother asking if her parents know she's a lesbian.

Spoiler: they don't.

Black Water Sister is a novel about religion, about family, about homophobia; about wronged women and deified men; about unregulated development, and the clash of ancient and modern; about power, and who has and holds it, and who grants it. It's the story of Jess, under her grandmother Ah Ma's influence, becoming a medium to the local deity known as Black Water Sister, whose temple is threatened by development. And it's about Jess negotiating a place for herself in Malay culture, and in a traditionally-minded family (the most terrifying vision she experiences is that of her family shunning her after she comes out to them), and in a world that has more dimensions, more possibilities and definitely more deities than she'd ever suspected at Harvard.

I really liked Cho's distinctive voice here, the rhythm of Malaysian English, and the surprisingly mundane requests (usually for specific meals) of the deities Jess encounters. The characters are vivid, the setting intriguing, and the dialogue crackling, witty and full of unfamiliar terms -- no glossary, hurrah! but easy to interpret from context. And Ah Ma's frugal habits (using a red pen instead of god's blood to 'open the eyes': "Ah Ku, he always thinks you have to buy special things to do the rituals. He doesn’t listen to me... You don’t need all those expensive things.") reminded me vividly of my mother's 'make do and mend' approach. A fascinating and enjoyable read.

2023/051: Master and God — Lindsey Davis

He will be a good emperor. Work diligently. Take a meticulous interest in all aspects of administering the Empire. Honour the gods. Rebuild, replenish coffers, tackle moral degeneration, crush revolt, initiate festivals, encourage artistic and athletic achievement, leave Rome flourishing and ready for a Golden Age. His name will reverberate through history. His fame will be perpetual. Knowing these things is not enough. [p. 79]

Part historical novel, part overview of the Emperor Domitian's reign (81-96 CE). The love story between two complex and credible characters, soldier Gaius Vinius Clodianus and hairdresser Flavia Lucilla, plays out against the backdrop of Domitian's increasing paranoia, and the ways in which it impacted the citizens of Rome. The two protagonists become unlikely friends when Lucilla, aged fifteen, reports a theft to the local vigiles office: the officer on duty is Gaius Vinius Clodianus, a war veteran with disfiguring scars and a strong sense of decency. Master and God follows the two through bad marriages (mostly Gaius', as he has a habit of choosing unsuitable women, or having them chosen for him: Lucilla does marry a man who wears sandals with socks, though), war, family intrigue, increasingly ridiculous hairstyles, hand-crafted toupees for the Emperor, a guard dog named Terror (who answers to 'Baby') and a treasonous conspiracy. The romance is very well done: two world-weary, competent, self-reliant individuals, gradually realising that they are a great match. The interjections of Roman history and social context were occasionally jarring -- Davis puts events in context, but that context can involve events well after the novel's conclusion -- but definitely intriguing. There is also a chapter narrated by a house-fly, in a nod to Domitian's entirely normal and wholesome hobby of stabbing flies with his pen. Not quite as cheerful as the Falco or Flavia Albia novels, but a good read.

2023/050: The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart — Margarita Montimore

...she tried to believe the future held better things than the past. Is this what it means to get older, replaying happy memories because the best times are behind you? [loc. 809]

Oona Lockhart's birthday is January 1st, so on the last night of 1982 she's expecting to celebrate both the new year and her 19th birthday, in the company of her friends, boyfriend and bandmates. But she's not feeling great: she faints... and wakes up in 2015, in her 51-year-old body: which her 19-year-old mind has some trouble coming to terms with. A young man named Kenzie claims to be her assistant, and tells her the huge, sophisticated house she woke in is her own home. Of course Oona doesn't believe him: but a frantic crosstown dash to her old haunts indicates that he might be telling the truth.

That first year's a bit of a nightmare. Her mother is around, and very supportive; Kenzie takes care of quotidian matters and provides company and guidance; future (or past) Oona wrote herself a letter, explaining the basics. But Oona, gradually accepting her mother's assurance that this will happen again and again, that she'll wake each New Year's Day into a different year, is miserable. How can she hope to live her life out of order, with nothing lasting? What happened to her old friends? What happened to her?

The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart (originally published as Oona Out of Order) covers seven out-of-sequence years of Oona's life, from 19 to 26 (or from 1983 to 2017). Like any good time-traveller, Oona has made some good investments and is wealthy in her own right: at least she doesn't have to deal with evolving workplace technology, or the lack of a feasible career ladder. But, despite her mother and Kenzie (who isn't always around, for reasons that become clear late in the novel), Oona is lonely. She still misses Dale, the guy she was seeing in 1982, and she still hopes to find love. But the primary focus is on her relationship with her mother, which is intense and sometimes difficult -- on both sides.

I enjoyed this, though as someone even older than the body in which Oona wakes in 2015, I was irritated by the implication that youth is best and ageing is awful. (On the other hand, I probably thought that way when I was nineteen...) Sometimes the message, of living in the moment and enjoying the good times while they last, was rather heavy-handed. But I liked the way that music -- especially Kate Bush's 'The Ninth Wave' -- was woven through the story, and I liked the ways in which Oona coped with, and even came to terms with, her condition, and how she explained it to others.

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

2023/049: Highfire — Eoin Colfer

Highfire, son, he thought to himself, you don’t wanna stop being mythical and start being real. This was surely true, as being real was only one step away from being extinct. [p. 337]

Vern is probably the last of his kind. He lives in a shack deep in the bayou, watching cable TV and drinking Absolut, and reminiscing with his old friend Waxman. Then Squib, a teenaged boy fleeing a corrupt police officer with a crush on Squib's mother Elodie, stumbles upon Vern's home, and finds himself employed to run Vern's errands while Waxman is unavailable. Which is not as simple as it sounds, because Vern (formerly Wyvern, Lord Highfire) is a dragon, and Waxman (who's going to bury himself in the ground to regenerate for a few months) is a mogwai, which here is a dragon half-breed.

Constable Hooke, who's thoroughly crooked and generally nasty ('Every time he met someone, Hooke was figuring how to murder them and get away with it, in case the need arose') encounters Vern, too. He's on the outs with a mafia gang in New Orleans, and is quick to concoct a cunning scheme in which both Vern and Squib will have starring roles, whether they like it or not. Vern's grudging friendship with Squib -- they hang out, talk about movies and TV, and Squib talks Vern up from a bad fit of the blues -- might yet come back to bite him.

This was great fun, sometimes reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen with its humour, bent cops, noirish ambience, and people choosing life off the grid. It's very definitely not for children, though Colfer's other work (Artemis Fowl et cetera) is aimed at younger readers. The plot wraps up satisfyingly despite some setbacks, and Squib, Vern and Elodie all get happy endings and new beginnings.

I started reading this because the first line ('Vern did not trust humans was the long and short of it. Not a single one. He had known many in his life, even liked a few, but in the end they all sold him out to the angry mob.') was mentioned in a Guardian article on 'Top 10 first lines in fiction'. Hmm, I thought, that sounds interesting... then discovered I'd owned it for three years. It's possible that my Kindle TBR pile is becoming unwieldy.

2023/048: Delphi — Clare Pollard

In the parks of South-East London there are always feral green parakeets. Somehow I find myself telling Sophie’s glazed face about the parrot astrologers of Tamil Nadu who are trained to pick fortune cards. ‘A bit like that psychic octopus, Paul, you know, who could predict the World Cup results,’ I say, as she passive-aggressively tops up her own Prosecco. [loc. 760]

The narrator of Delphi, an unnamed academic and translator, is researching prophecy in the ancient world for her next book. She and her husband have booked a family trip to Delphi at Easter: unfortunately, it's beginning to look as though they'll have to cancel, because this is spring 2020 and, unforetold, the Covid pandemic is under way.

Forced to stay at home with her husband Jason (who isn't pulling his weight domestically) and her ten-year-old son Xander (who isn't adjusting well to lockdown), she writes about the various flavours of classical prophecy ('Haruspicy: Prophesy by Entrails'; 'Anthomancy: Prophecy by Flowers') and creates her own for the contemporary world ('Postdiction: Prophecy Written After The Fact', a chapter about Dominic Cummings' blog; 'Shufflemancy: Prophecy by the Use of an Electronic Media Player'). The chapter on 'Psephomancy: Prophecy by Lots or Ballots' deals with the run-up to the 2020 US Presidential election: 'I don’t need a Ouija board, I just touch my fingers gently to the Twitter timeline and see what it can say that makes the hairs on my neck stand up.' [loc. 1606]. And winding through the narrator's experience is another story, one she hasn't been able to predict with tarot or I Ching or Ouija boards or Twitter.

If this were only a novel about living through lockdown it would be a great read: Pollard demonstrates that there is humour and optimism to be found at the worst of times. Delphi is also an intriguing exploration of the intricacies and history of fortune-telling and prophecy, and about the nature of tragedy. There's an amusing aside about the 'Rider-Waite' Tarot deck, the role of artist Pamela Colman Smith in the cards' creation, and the surprising fact that A.E. Waite was a manager for Horlicks (and that Crowley referred to him as 'dead Waite'). Pollard posits a beguiling theory about the internet: 'it’s filled a void left by the decline in religion. For centuries humanity always felt it was being watched, and this knowledge gave even our smallest actions a sense of importance. Then, for a while, no one was bearing witness. No one was looking and it made us feel trivial and tenuous; utterly disposable to the indifferent world. That’s why we wanted to be on reality TV, so someone would see us. And now social media has filled the void. No evil tweet, it promises, will go unread and unpunished; goodness will be rewarded with ‘likes’ and supportive Mandela quotes, or photos of cats.' [loc. 412]. She also suggests that the Furies are on Twitter. (I wonder if they have a blue tick?)

I had not expected a novel about prophecy and pandemic to be so very uplifting. That's not to say it's altogether cheerful, but I am drawn to, and drawn into, the way the narrator looks at, interrogates and interprets her world and her experience. And I am very grateful that I spent my lockdown with only a cat for company!

Afterthought: Pollard's narrator wakes from a dream with the thought that heaven and hell exist, but in time rather than in space. That is, they are memories? Hopes? But no less real, either way. This notion has stuck in my mind.

Fulfils the ‘contemporary setting’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge. Contemporary in place as well as time: the quotation at the top of this review reflects my own lockdown experience (socially-distanced picnics in Greenwich Park with parakeets)

2023/047: Babel — R. F. Kuang

...if the system is so fragile, why do we so easily accept the colonial situation? Why do we think it’s inevitable? Why doesn’t Man Friday ever get himself a rifle, or slit Robinson Crusoe’s neck in the night? The problem is that we’re always living like we’ve lost. [loc. 7046]

A small boy is plucked from the room in Canton where his mother lies dead. A new name, 'Robin Swift', is bestowed upon him by his saviour, Professor Lowell, who takes him back to London and ensures that he is properly educated in Latin and Greek. Eventually he's enrolled in the Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel, which 'alone among the Oxford faculties accepts students not of European origin'. Robin's cohort consists of Ramy, from Calcutta; Victoire, from Haiti; and Letty, an admiral's daughter from Brighton. They're trained to create spells, encoded in silver bars, that capture what is lost in translation when translating a word into a different language. One example: a spell based on the English word 'treacle' (a sweet substance traditionally used to disguise the taste of medicine) and the Old French 'triacle' (an antidote or cure for snakebite), which produces a sweet-tasting antidote for most poisons. Another example, based on 'chattel' (property as wealth) and 'cattle' (livestock): 'they fix those bars to iron chains so that slaves can’t escape. You know how? It makes them docile. Like animals.' [loc. 6264].

Babel is a novel about language, about revolution (the subtitle is 'An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution'), about friendship, about racism and, to some degree, sexism -- but most of all it's about colonialism. Robin and the other 'Babblers' are exploited for their knowledge of non-European languages, and expected to be grateful for the privileges conferred (or imposed) upon them. Professor Lowell, like most of the professors of Babel, is portrayed as unremittingly villainous in his dehumanisation of non-Europeans. The British Empire cannot exist without the work of Babel, but doesn't respect or reward those who produce the spell-imbued silver.

I was not wholly convinced by the worldbuilding. In her introduction, Kuang writes that the novel 'takes place in a fantastical version of Oxford in the 1830s, whose history was thoroughly altered by silver-work': and yet the wider world seems indistinguishable from our own. Britain has still lost America; unskilled labourers are only just starting to be put out of work by silvery satanic mills; the opium wars are wreaking havoc in China; the 1832 June Rebellion, later to be the subject of Hugo's Les Miserables, has happened, just as it happened in our timeline. So what difference has all the silver-working made?

This was an engrossing read, though not a cheerful one. I was fascinated by the linguistic elements, repelled by the colonialism, and exhausted by the relentless misery: which I know is the point, but I felt it would have been even more powerful if alleviated by occasional scenes of light-heartedness or happiness. Babel is a tragedy through and through, on every scale from Robin's maltreatment to the appalling oppressions of Empire. Beautifully written, thoroughly researched (there are footnotes throughout, adding historical or linguistic context), and featuring complex, flawed characters with equally complex moral dilemmas: there are so many layers to this novel that I could write about it for hours. That said, the never-ending injustice and dehumanisation were numbing, and I found some of the scenes of magical and mundane violence and death very distressing.

Read for Lockdownbookclub.

Fulfils the ‘a book with a subtitle’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge. The full title is Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution.

2023/046: Echo — Thomas Olde Heuvelt (translated by Moshe Gilula)

"...Satellite images make it look like the glacier that used to flow through it has mostly melted away, but he says that doesn’t tally with what it looks like up there, either. He says no one knows exactly how big the valley really is. Bigger than assumed, in any case. And the mountain, it’s higher.” “Most of the time,” Cécile added. [p.179]

Nick Grevers, travel writer and mountaineer, has survived a terrible accident on the Maudit, a little-climbed peak in the Swiss Alps. His climbing partner Augustin is missing, and Nick's face is so badly injured that he can't speak, can't tell anyone about what really happened up there. He claims, via a scribbled note, that he can't remember: but he remembers everything. And his nurse passes another note to Nick's boyfriend Sam: 'Don’t believe them. It wasn’t an accident.'

Sam is initially repulsed by Nick's injuries, though what drives him out of the hospital and back to America is something that he sees, or thinks he sees, under the bandages. Fortunately, his love for Nick proves stronger than his repulsion, and he returns to Europe. The two decide to confront the memories, the trauma and the oddities, and travel to the village of Grimentz, high in the Alps, in the shadow of the Maudit.

There's a lot going on in this novel: Sam's own past trauma, focussed on a childhood act of arson, and on the myth of Prometheus; Nick's account of the ascent, and what they found there; the black birds that seem to haunt Grimentz, where the villagers are profoundly anti-cat. (Yes, Nick and Sam are accompanied by their cat Ramses, who survives. No apologies for this spoiler.) Some truly chilling scenes, and an ending that is credible conclusion rather than happy resolution. While I didn't find Echo quite as terrifying as Michelle Paver's Thin Air, it was a compelling read, and I'm still thinking about the layers of narrative here.

This is a novel that knows its cultural references. The chapters are titled after horror classics: At The Mountains of Madness; Sleepy Hollow; In the Hills, the Cities; The Turn of the Screw... I have to confess, though, that I nearly stopped reading quite early, put off by Sam's slangy contractions -- 'coulda', 'gonna', and especially 'cuz'. I did warm to him and his narrative voice, perhaps because of his coping mechanism of dark humour.

Fulfils the ‘survival story’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/045: Silverview — John Le Carré

Had Florian given away the Service’s plans or its paralysis? Its sources, or the fact that some part of it had thrown off a long tradition of objective advice in favour of a giddy late-life romp through the wild woods of colonial fantasy? [loc. 2381]

Le Carré's last completed novel, polished and published by his son Nick (whose afterword is as fascinating as the novel itself). I suspect if Le Carré had lived, he'd have expanded some parts of Silverview, maybe sketched in a bit more background for Julian Lawndsley, City broker turned rural bookseller, who has a bad habit of credulity.

There are two viewpoint characters: the aforementioned Julian, who encounters a chap, Edward Avon, who claims to be an old friend of his father; and Proctor, a witchhunter, Head of Domestic Security, who's investigating a breach of security brought to his attention by Edward's wife Debbie, and couriered to London by their daughter Lily. And at the heart of the novel is Edward Avon, whose wife Debbie (formerly a brilliant intelligence analyst) is dying of cancer; Edward -- 'call me Teddy' -- who guides Julian's literary purchases (one cannot help but wonder why Julian, who has never heard of Chomsky or Sebald, has chosen bookselling as a career) and asks in return only a few small favours: a letter hand-delivered to a woman in Belsize Park, use of a computer to track down some porcelain ...

While I can see how the novel might have been reworked and expanded had Le Carré lived longer, I liked it very much in its current state. Nick Cornwell's afterword indicates that he inherited Silverview in a state not much different to its published form: "it was more than usually polished for a document not yet in proof, and... it was a kind of perfect reflection on his previous work – a song of experience – and yet fully its own narrative, with its own emotional power and its own concerns. What held him back? What kept it in his desk drawer, to be taken out and redrafted again, and again put away, unsatisfying, until this moment? What, exactly, was I supposed to fix?" [loc. 2624] Perhaps, as Cornwell suggests, Le Carré held off publishing Silverview because it showed the gradual disintegration of the Service. Or perhaps there would have been more of a sense of closure, of the many betrayals and complex loyalties of Edward Avon coming together in one grand final act. But I think the indeterminacy is very effective, and the disintegration feels apt for these post-EU years.

Fulfils the ‘published posthumously’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/044: Tommy Catkins — Stephen Palmer

Every caw of the din a detonation, every wing beat a ricochet, every black silhouette a spinning shell. [p. 10]

Tommy Catkins (or, at least, a young man going by that name) is sent to Salixbury Island Hospital, in the Wiltshire countryside, after appalling experiences at Verdun. He's warned that he 'may notice a few odd things on the island ...not everything is what it seems to be'. This might explain the talking cat, or the blue-skinned folk with tails who Tommy sees in a puddle, who tell him of their peaceful land Onderwater. Tommy tells his two doctors -- military Dr Snell and civilian Dr Hendriks -- about some of his odder experiences. They want to send him back to the Front; he's understandably reluctant, and barbarous 'therapeutic' treatments (including electric shocks) do nothing to convince him otherwise. He forms more positive relationships with Nurse Vann, Gardener Holt (who's given to gnomic utterances) and Maid Mooren. But the war needs young men to devour, and Tommy is going to have to make a choice.

This novel was on my wishlist for quite a while: I can no longer find the review that tempted me in, but I think I was expecting more 'bloody weird cats' and fewer horrific experiences, in battle and at the hospital. Onderwater is intriguing, with its maritime themes (travel by manta ray; nictitating membranes; narwhal airships) and the gradual revelation of Tommy's backstory was poignant. Salixbury Island had more than a touch of the mythic about it, with the Ferryman (who must be paid), the gnomic gardener, the dog whose shadow has three heads... Excellent depiction of class distinctions, too: encountering his old CO who's been admitted, mute and trembling, with neurasthenia, Tommy says brightly "It’s what officers g-get – the neurasthenia bug. But I g-got the war neurosis one, for p-p-privates, and that was pretty b-bad." [p. 160] But, perhaps due to my expectations, I finished Tommy Catkins with a strong sense of having missed the point.

2023/043: One for my Enemy — Olivie Blake

"I thought you both hated each other."
Dimitri and Marya exchanged a glance.
"'Hate' is a strong word," Dimitri said to her. "Don't you think, Masha?"
"Oh, of course, Dima," Marya agreed, "though 'vengeance' is somewhat stronger."
They smiled at each other. [loc. 4365]

New York's magical underworld is dominated by two families. Lazar Federov, known as Koschei the Deathless, runs his shadowy empire with his sons Dimitri, Roman and Lev. More wholesome is Marya Antonova, known as Baba Yaga, and her seven daughters -- the eldest is Marya (Masha), the youngest is Sasha, the others are less distinctive -- and their trade in magical intoxicants. For over a decade an uneasy detente has been in place, but one family has broken the pact, and this means ... well, if not actually war, at least a bloody feud. Except that Koschei's sons and Baba Yaga's daughters are entangled in ill-starred ways...

One for my Enemy riffs off Romeo and Juliet (the chapter headings are quotations from the play) as well as Russian folklore and American mafia tales. Add magic, and everything becomes a great deal more complex. Characters are slain; characters are resurrected. Deals are made and broken. Loyalties are tested to breaking point. And the past is never truly past: Dimitri's teenage romance with Masha, Lev's accidental affair with Sasha, both echo the mistakes of their parents.

I'd have liked this a lot more if it hadn't been quite so focussed on emotional complexity -- between lovers, between parent and child, between siblings. Blake often tells us the different layers (spoken, unspoken, implicit) of a conversation, but there's much less detail about the setting, about the characters' physical appearance (mentioning someone's berry-coloured lipstick does not suffice, even if you do it repeatedly), and about the magical mechanics. I've enjoyed Blake's 'Atlas' novels, but this feels hollower, less cohesive. And it could be set anywhere: there's nothing here that, for me, evokes New York City more than, say, fair Verona.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 20 April 2023: it's actually been out since last year, but this is a sumptuously-illustrated new edition.

2023/042: Killers of a Certain Age — Deanna Raybourn

That’s the thing about being a sixty-year-old woman -- no one notices you unless you want them to. [p. 55]

In 1979, four teenage girls are recruited by a small extra-governmental organisation known as the Museum. They become an elite squad of assassins, hunting Nazis and -- when the Nazis run out -- drug dealers, cult leaders, sex traffickers and the like. Fast-forward to late 2018, and the four (Billie, Helen, Mary Alice and Natalie) are being treated to a luxury cruise to celebrate their retirement. Except it's a ruse: the assassins are now targets, and they have to evade and outwit the Museum and find out what's made them suddenly expendable.

It's so nice to read about authentic older women! Billie has to do some serious yoga stretches after, er, garrotting an attacker. (The garrotte she used was a rather nice amber necklace belonging to Helen: "It was made for the Helsinki job, and I liked how it looked with this dress, so I kept it...Piano wire. I used it on the head of the Finnish national bank.") Helen herself is coping badly with the death of her husband; Natalie is a cancer survivor; Mary Alice has managed to keep her wife Akiko in the dark about her career. And all are aware that, as older women, they're effectively invisible. Shout-out, too, to the delightful Minka, a Ukrainian app developer who provides the four with a foolproof method of communication -- an app called Menopaws, complete with an animated kitten and, crucially, direct messaging. (“Why a menopause app?” “Because security people are men.”) There is female friendship in all its sometimes prickly, sometimes bawdy glory. And I applaud the inclusion of a painting by Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola as a plot point.

It's also, I think, worth noting that despite their rather unpleasant profession, the four women don't really seem to have any regrets. They felt they were doing the right thing and, at least in Billie's case, living the lives they wanted. And (perhaps because of the lack of regrets?) there are second chances. Great fun, violent without (much) nastiness, would make a great film.