2023/108: House of Odysseus — Claire North

It has been a while since he has had a fight - a real fight. He had forgotten the taste of it, the flavour upon his tongue, and now here it is. Here she is. Enemy. His enemy, pure and glorious and simple and true.
He had not thought he could be so thrilled to look upon a combatant and see that she is female. [loc. 3357]

Ithaca, the first in Claire North's 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy, was a refreshingly different perspective on Greek myth: witty, colloquial and profoundly feminist. Ithaca was narrated by the goddess Hera. Volume two, House of Odysseus, is narrated by Aphrodite, and I suspect that the concluding volume will be narrated by Athena, for reasons to do with Paris and Mount Ida.

Penelope is still beset by suitors, and her son Telemachus has gone in search of his absent father Odysseus (who is, ahem, 'captivated' by the nymph Calypso). She'd hoped she'd seen the last of the House of Atreus after Orestes' murder of his mother Clytemnestra, but Elektra and Orestes return to Ithaca, the latter raving, insane and tormented by Furies. The Furies are only visible to Aphrodite, but the madness is plain to all. And, as though this weren't enough, Menelaus and his lovely wife Helen arrive, in search of the absent pair -- for Orestes is the king of all Greece, and if he's unfit for the job then Menelaus will bravely and selflessly step up.

It's a silent invasion: the Spartans are everywhere, 'guarding' those in the palace, 'going hunting' and rocking up at the house where Laertes (father of Odysseus) is sheltering Orestes and his sister, eclipsing the local bards, insisting that their priest take charge of Orestes' healing. Menelaus, addressing Penelope as 'sister', is loudly solicitous, and Penelope is well aware of her vulnerability -- and of the fact that Menelaus knows her husband better, and has spent more time with him, than Penelope herself.

Of course Penelope is not alone. Laertes (an utterly splendid grumpy old man in North's version) is one of the few to whom even Menelaus shows respect. Penelope's maids and the other women of Ithaca, all effectively invisible to the Spartans because female, conduct effective guerilla warfare. A few of the suitors -- notably the Egyptian, Kenemon, whose intriguing backstory is only hinted at -- play key parts in Penelope's plots, while others find themselves unwillingly pressed into service. And Penelope, for all her meekness and pious 'prayer' (the only way she gets peace to think), is a fearsome opponent, making some brutal decisions for the good of her island and her people.

Aphrodite's light-hearted narration offsets the grimness of the story very well, and her conversations with Athena and Artemis -- Hera having been confined in Olympus -- are often hilarious. Aphrodite reminds us, too, that she's the one who started all this, who 'broke the world' by promising Paris the love of the most beautiful woman alive. And though she may appear to be as empty-headed as her chatterbox protégé Helen, neither goddess nor mortal are as foolish -- or as harmless -- as they take pains to appear.

I am really looking forward to the third volume, in which it seems likely that Odysseus will finally return. His welcome may not be all he hopes, though, for Penelope is thoroughly fed up with men and their honour and their oaths...

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 22nd August 2023.

2023/107: The Last Witness — K J Parker

"What's so sad about it ... is that all the really bad things you ever did were done for love." [p. 136]

The anonymous narrator of The Last Witness has what he believes is a unique talent: he can steal memories. The person whose memory is stolen has no idea that they've forgotten -- or lost -- something: the memory thief has a new memory that is indistinguishable from his own.

People pay him to take their memories of things they want to forget; people also pay him to take inconvenient memories from other, inconvenient people. Our narrator picks up a lot of useful skills this way, such as playing the flute. He also collects a great deal of dangerous knowledge: bribes, corruption, murder, every nasty thing that humans can do to one another.

Of course, these are also useful skills.

Our narrator believes his talent is unique, but perhaps it's not. Perhaps someone else can steal memories, or even put ideas into other people's minds. Perhaps this has already happened to him.

This is a dark little story, somewhat obfuscated by Parker's habit of not using names. Instead we have the first-person narrator, the father and son, the ambassador, the skinny girl, the sister. There are a few likeable characters, but the narrator is not really one of them -- though by the end of the novella I did feel some sympathy for him. Parker explores the concept of memory-theft thoroughly: the narrator's principled stand on never divulging the content of any memories he's stolen; the risks of people seeking revenge on him, or attempting to force him to tell the secrets he's stolen; the danger of being unable to distinguish between events that happened to him and stolen memories of other people's lives; the possibility that at least some of his (generally horrible) behaviour did not originate in his own mind.

'Only forget,' he says near the beginning of the story, 'and who’s to say any of it ever happened? What’s forgotten might as well never have existed.' For you, yes: but for the people around you, perhaps not so much.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 06OCT2015, prompt 'snack' -- it's a novella.

2023/106: The Nothing Girl — Jodie Taylor

‘If life was easy then everyone would get it right first time. A few do. You might be one of them.’ [p. 126]

Jenny Dove has been raised by her aunt and uncle to believe that she's at risk of being institutionalised. She does have a bad stammer, and she feels invisible. Aged thirteen, she decides to kill herself -- but is saved by the sudden appearance of a great golden horse who smells of ginger biscuits, is invisible (and, luckily, inaudible) to everyone but Jenny, and who remarks that she hadn't really meant to kill herself, since she'd done her homework for Monday... Jenny and Thomas (the horse) spend the next 15 years quietly but happily: then Thomas persuades Jenny to attend a party, where she meets the very drunken Russell Checkland, an artist whose muse has deserted him along with his fiancee (who happens to be Jenny's cousin Francesca). In short order a marriage of convenience is arranged -- he wants her money, she wants to escape from her aunt and uncle -- and the stage is set for a pleasingly Gothic romance.

This was surprisingly sweet. Thomas (the horse) is delightful, possessed of a wry and sometimes savage sense of humour, and always ready to push Jenny past her innate shyness and lack of confidence. Until, one day, he has to go away... There are, by then, plenty of other people (and animals) on Jenny's side: Mrs Crisp the housekeeper, Russell's cousin Andrew and his partner Tanya, Marilyn the donkey, Kevin the inept mugger. But is Russell on Jenny's side, or is he plotting against her?

The presence of Thomas (who may be some kind of guardian angel) lifted it out of the ordinary, and also added poignancy: the love between him and Jenny was beautifully written. The Nothing Girl is nicely (if sometimes predictably) plotted, and Taylor's prose is smooth and humorous. Light and fun: a heartening tale of a woman discovering that life is, unexpectedly, full of possibilities.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 22SEP2014, prompt 'my precious' -- there are definite fantastical elements.

2023/105: Her Majesty's Royal Coven — Juno Dawson

HMRC was nice scones-and-jam English witchcraft. No menstrual blood. No sacrifices. No sex, please. We’re British. [loc. 2329]

Possibly because of the cover design, I'd somehow formed the impression that this was another Regency-set fantasy*. This error was very quickly dispelled in the prologue, which finds five pre-adolescent girls lurking in a treehouse and talking about which member of Boyzone they intend to marry. They're distracting themselves from the ceremony the next day in which they'll swear allegience to the eponymous Coven, founded by Anne Boleyn and charged with protecting the United Kingdom from magical threat.

A quarter of a century after that opening, a lot has changed. There's been a civil war, ravaging arcane society. The five baby witches in the treehouse are now women in their mid-thirties. Helena is the High Priestess of HMRC; Leonie (Black and lesbian) has formed a more inclusive coven, Diaspora; Elle doesn't have much to do with HMRC, but does routinely assume a glamour so her husband will still fancy her; Niamh, who lost her fiancé in the war, is living in Hebden Bridge and working as a vet; and Ciara, Niamh's twin, is imprisoned after picking the losing side in that war. There's a prophecy about a 'sullied child' who will destroy HMRC, and possibly the world: but prophecies are like film trailers. Some give away the plot, others are twisty and misleading. Helena thinks she's found this sullen child, and takes Niamh to assess the threat, who appears to be a skinny, electively-mute teenage lad. But appearances can deceive.

I liked this a great deal. Dawson's prose is occasionally clunky or misphrased ('virtuosity' rather than virtue, for example) but that didn't get in the way of her exploration of intersectionality, loyalty, love and friendship, mothers and daughters (there are very few boys or men in this novel), gender, transphobia... I especially liked how HMRC fits around the edges of modern life: oracles in 2019 seeing portents of plague and unrest ('some governments heeded their witches'); the British PM giving a national broadcast that erases memories of the war and of witches; Elle's teenage daughter Holly (one of my favourite characters) protesting 'You’re not a witch. You shop at Next'.

The four viewpoint characters -- Helena, Niamh, Elle and Leonie -- have distinct personalities, concerns and talents, and they're all written sympathetically, even when their actions are appalling. There's not much sugar-coating here, and the ending is something of a cliff-hanger. The second novel in the trilogy, The Shadow Cabinet, is available now: I'm very tempted, but then I'd have nearly a year to wait until the trilogy's conclusion ...

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 27OCT2022, prompt 'bestseller'.

*It could be worse. A friend assumed it was another exposé about Meghan Markle.

2023/104: Cemetery Boys — Aiden Thomas

His mom championed for Yadriel to be given a brujo’s [quinceañero], to be welcomed into the community as he was — a boy. She’d taken on the task of trying to explain to his dad that he was a brujo. He was a boy. ... It’s not a choice, his mother had said, her voice calm but firm. It’s who he is. [p. 32]

Yadriel's family are mostly unable to accept that he's a boy ('you'll always be my little girl') and, with the Día de Muertos approaching, Yadriel is desperate to prove himself worthy of becoming a brujo. The close-knit Latinx community in which he's grown up has gendered roles for brujo and bruja. The men can release the spirits of the dead to the hereafter: the women are primarily healers. Yadriel is not a good healer, but he's sure he can free a ghost. With the help of his cousin Maritza (a confirmed vegetarian who won't perform blood magic), Yadriel goes in search of the spirit of another cousin, Miguel, who's disappeared, and is believed dead. Instead the two find the spirit of a boy Yadriel knows from school, extrovert rebel Julian Diaz. Yadriel has never had much time for Julian and his friends, but he finds himself warming to Julian's ghost, and determined to help Julian solve the mystery of his own murder. Though it's silly to want to kiss a dead boy...

This is a YA romance, with plenty of teenage drama, adult oppression, lack of agency and overthinking. I guessed most of the plot twists well in advance, and I found some of the characters two-dimensional. Without the trans/LGBT element, I doubt I'd have picked it up. I'm glad I did, though: Thomas' (#ownvoices) depiction of Latinx culture, and how it's evolved to fit into and around modern American life, drew me in. The relationships between Yadriel and Julian, and Yadriel and Maritza, felt solid and real, and Yadriel's grief for his recently-dead mother was poignant -- despite the fact that he fully expects to see and speak to her on Día de Muertos. (There is never any doubt that the magic is real.) There's enough spooky-shiveriness to give the story an edge, and to balance the mundane horrors of homophobia, family estrangements, poverty and lack of communication. Looking forward to more by this author.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 01 FEB 23, prompt 'party' -- the novel's climax coincides with the Día de Muertos festival, preparations for which feature throughout.

And for The 52 Book Challenge 2023, prompt 'banned'. "Texas legislators have proposed banning this book due to drinking, drugs, profanity, sex, and violence." Or possibly ... just a thought ... because it features LGBTQ+ characters in a positive light?

2023/103: The Bones of the Earth — Michael Swanwick

"I can't believe how much has changed in only ten years. So very many things are going to happen in the next decade!"
"Anything important?"
"Compared to this? Compared to time travel? Nothing. Nothing at all." [loc. 290]

The exchange above is from a conversation between a time-traveller from 2022 and a man in 2012. The Bones of the Earth was published in 2002. I read it in 2009. Now that future is the past.

My original review stands -- I still think this is one of the best 'modern humans and dinosaurs' novels -- except that this time around I'm more, rather than less, confused by Gertrude Salley's motives. The Bones of the Earth is still a delightful read. I was amused and saddened by Swanwick's depiction of the first couple of decades of the 21st century; somewhat vexed by his characters referring to dinosaurs as 'brutes', which seems a word from an earlier Boys Own era; enthralled, still, by the evocation of the Mesozoic, and pleasantly perplexed by the twistiness and looping of the plot.

2023/102: Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It — Janina Ramirez

Hildegard was a product of her time; it is not simply that she was extraordinary, but the world she grew up in was more hospitable to extraordinary women than we might think.[loc. 3686]

Ramirez aims to find 'empowered women with agency' from medieval Europe: she eschews the best-known candidates (Joan of Arc, Isabella of France, et cetera) but reveals her subjects from multiple angles. Each chapter starts with a section on 'Discovery!', which may be an archaeological find or the canonisation of a queen; then there's a fictionalised account of an episode in the woman's life; and then there's an exploration of the woman's impact, her power, and her context. Ramirez' subjects range from 'the Loftus Princess' (an unknown woman given a 'bed burial' in the seventh century with exquisite grave goods, and the wider context of women gaining power by converting to Christianity) to a sex worker known as Eleanor, who was arrested as a man for sodomy but explained in their trial that they had dressed and behaved as a woman for years. Other women featured include Margery Kempe; Hildegard of Bingen; the Mercian queens Cynethryth and Æthelflæd; several Cathar heretics; Jadwiga who ruled Poland as a king rather than a queen; and the anonymous embroiderers of the Bayeux tapestry.

Femina is full of fascinating facts and observations -- for instance, I hadn't known that the infamous 'arrow through the eye' of the Bayeux tapestry was added in the nineteenth century! -- and conveys the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of reclaiming women's history. It's let down, though, by errors that should have been picked up during the editing stage. Lindisfarne is not a 'west-coast satellite of Iona': it's on the east coast. The passage about the post-war rescue of Hildegard's Riesencodex seems confused as to whether one of the two conspirators was named Catherine or Caroline. And when Ramirez uses Norse myth as a starting-point for a discussion of gender norms in Viking society, she betrays more familiarity with the MCU than with Þrymskviða: in the Eddas, Thor was not Loki's brother.

A really interesting and wide-ranging book, with copious illustrations (not all of which render well on my Kindle): it would have been even better with a more careful edit.

Fulfils the ‘one-word title’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge. I'm not counting the subtitle!

2023/101: The Dry — Jane Harper

Somewhere in the inky garden the nocturnal insects rattled like white noise. [p. 25]

Aaron Falk, a Federal Police agent, returns to his hometown Kiewarra for the funeral of his childhood best friend. Luke Hadler is alleged to have killed his wife and child before turning the gun on himself: times are hard in Kiewarra, which is suffering from prolonged drought -- exarcerbating the petty feuds and long-standing grudges of small-town life. But Falk isn't convinced by the story of Luke's death. And he's not welcomed with open arms by all the townsfolk. Twenty years ago, their friend Ellie was drowned in the river -- now a mere trickle -- and Falk was blamed for her death. He and Luke provided one another's alibis, but they lied. Falk and his father (his mother's dead) were effectively run out of town by the dead girl's father, who isn't best pleased to see Falk again.

This is a well-plotted murder mystery, with two layers: what happened to Luke and his wife Karen in the last few months of their lives, and what happened to Ellie all those years ago. The characters are strong, the claustrophobic small town atmosphere and the weight of the drought are palpable, the Australian outback -- not a landscape I've ever experienced -- is vividly described, and Harper's prose is sometimes dazzling. I wasn't eager to read another novel about murder, sexual abuse and deceit, but The Dry did engage me from beginning to end.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 21 MAY 2018, prompt 'heat wave'.

2023/100: Unmasked by the Marquess — Cat Sebastian

He knew that what he felt for young Selby was a kind of desire. And he knew himself well enough to understand that he felt this kind of desire for men as well as women. Thus far, he had been able—for the most part—to ignore this inconvenient urge when it applied to men. [p. 56]

Louisa Selby is blonde, pretty and penniless. She's come to London with her brother Robert, looking to make an advantageous match. The pair concoct a scheme which seems harmless: Robert approaches Alistair de Lacey, Marquess of Pembroke, claiming that his father was Louisa's godfather, and hoping that he'll help launch Louisa into society. The Marquess is more interested in Selby than in Louisa, and swiftly finds himself in a compromising position. After which Selby reveals that he is not in fact Robert Selby, but a former housemaid named Charity Church.

Charity is a refreshing protagonist, with a strict moral code despite the constant deception of her 'Robin' persona. She was married to Robert Selby -- and studying in his place at Cambridge -- when Robert died: Charity assumed his identity, and felt more comfortable as a young man than she'd ever felt as a young woman. She's determined to see Louisa, Robert's little sister, properly settled, even at her own expense. And she is far from oblivious to the charms of Alistair de Lacey.

There are, of course, considerable reversals, miscommunications and shenanigans before all comes right. Charity is revealed (though refuses to ever live) as a woman, to a reassuring lack of fuss: “Well," says one of her university pals, "I knew you weren’t quite in the ordinary way of things... I wondered if you might be French.” And there's a good chance that most of the characters live happily ever after.

Unmasked by the Marquess was great fun, as well as being a surprisingly sincere portrait of a non-binary person (Charity thinks of herself as neither woman nor man, just 'Robin') and a bisexual aristocrat. The other characters are lightly sketched: the focus is very much on Robin and Alistair, and their initially-antagonistic relationship.

I'm intrigued by a mention of 'a man with a cat ... some kind of astronomer.' Oh no! I shall have to read more in the 'Regency Imposters' series!

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 27 DEC 2018, prompt 'favourite trope'. Hey, I have a lot of favourite tropes :) but I do like a nice bit of cross-dressing.

2023/099: Elidor — Alan Garner

Roland looked through the windows out over Elidor. He saw the tall figure on the battlements of Gorias, with the golden cloak about him. He saw the life spring in the land from Mondrum to the mountains of the north. He saw the morning. It was not enough. [loc. 1854]

I've been meaning to reread Elidor for a while, and after reading Thursbitch I became curious about how much Garner's early works foreshadowed his later fiction. Elidor was published the year that I was born. (It's aged rather better than I have). I suspect contemporary children would have little patience with its narrow focus, its innovative language (the Mound is 'supple to evil'), and its defiantly downbeat ending: but it is a compelling read.

Spoilers for the plot from here on.

Four children -- David, Nick, Helen and Roland -- are wandering through an urban wasteland when they find a ruined church and a mysterious fiddler: separately, they find their way to a twilight, monochrome realm. This is Elidor. Roland encounters Malebron, the last defender of the land: he enters an eldritch Mound, and saves his elder siblings from a magical trap. The four discover, or are led to, the four treasures of Elidor: and then they return to the mundane world. None of them will ever visit Elidor again.

But the story has only just started, because Elidor is about the intrusion of the fantastic into the real. The Treasures are disruptive. They cause electrical interference. (Will contemporary readers have a clue about 'vertical hold' on a television?) After the children bury the Treasures in the garden, birds and animals avoid that spot. And someone or something is coming after the Treasures. There are man-shaped shadows where no shadows should be; there are watchers in the porch of the Watsons' suburban house, because Roland envisioned their front door as the entrance to the Mound. There is a sense of peril, but also of the lull before the storm. It's over a year later when matters come to a head: the unicorn Findhorn enters the mundane world, is mortally wounded by Elidor's foes, and sings the song that restores Elidor to its former glory.

And dies.

Garner has called this novel the 'anti-Narnia', and I think I see what he means. The Watsons feel more rooted in reality than the Pevensies. Mr and Mrs Watson -- very present parents -- aspire to be middle class, with their nice house in 'a decent area' and their hopes of making friends with the Brodies, whose children go to boarding school. Instead of embracing the magic, the Watson children (except Roland) try to deny it. The Treasures are too much trouble, too disruptive to the real world, too dangerous. (Too frightening.) They intrude on the real world of school and children's parties and bike rides in a way that Narnia never could. “We didn’t volunteer for this.” ... “We can’t hide them, and we can’t fight for them.”

There is no joyous resurrection here, no cheerful animal friends, no playing dress-up as kings and queens. Elidor is, if anything, bleaker than the slums of Manchester, and we only see impressionist glimpses of golden towers on dark hills. Apart from Malebron (possibly a king) and the warriors who come through to the real world, Elidor is as unpeopled as the razed slumland. When Findhorn's sacrifice '[sweeps] the land with colour', the focus remains on the real world, the broken windows of a slum, the distraught children, their refusal of the golden promise.

Brilliant, haunting, bleak. That last line: "The song faded. The children were alone with the broken windows of a slum."

2023/098: From the Mouth of the Whale — Sjón (translated by Victoria Cribb)

The antlers of a hart, coral, spread fingers, birch twigs, a loosely knotted fishing net, crystals, river deltas, ivy, mackerel clouds, women’s hair … diverse as these phenomena are and formed from opposing elements, nevertheless they all revolve around the invisible joints, their opposite forms touch even though they are far apart … and if I imitate their form, reaching my arms to the sky – moving them together and apart in turn, waving them to and fro – then Jónas Pálmason the Learned is no longer alone … I am the brother of all that divides, all that curls, all that intertwines, all that waves … [loc. 2256]

A short, dense, poetic novel, set mainly in Iceland in the 1630s. This is the tale of Jónas Pálmason, exorcist of ghosts and natural philosopher, ostracised and outcast, banished to an uninhabited island with his wife, sent to Denmark (where he explains to Ole Worm that the valuable 'unicorn horns' are actually narwhal teeth), returning to Iceland with a royal pardon, only to be exiled once more... Jónas is an unstable combination of medieval superstition and Renaissance science. As a child he recalls being led to an 'elf-mound' where statues of the Virgin Mary and the saints are buried, to be disinterred and worshipped by country folk out of sight of the Lutheran, post-Reformation establishment. Influenced by Paracelsus, young Jónas collects ravens' skulls, believing that a mystical stone -- the bezoar -- can be found within some rare specimens: but Paracelsus also gives him a reputation as a healer. Later, he helps 'Wizard-Láfi Thórdarson, alias the specialist and poet Thórólfur' deal with a troublesome ghost, in an episode reminiscent of Norse sagas where such events are regarded as a part of the natural world. Jónas suffers great losses: his home, his wife (who understood eclipses), three of his children. By 1635 he is alone on his island, reflecting on his tumultuous life and the almost medieval barbarism of Icelandic society. In several respects he is his own worst enemy, refusing to conform. And yet, and yet: he persists in finding joy and beauty in the natural world, and interpreting what he sees in his own idiosyncratic way.

After reading From the Mouth of the Whale, and giving it time to sink in, I discovered that Jónas is a fictionalised version of Jón lærði Guðmundsson, also known as 'Jon the Learned'. And Sjón (a poet and musician who's worked with Bjork) is also co-writer of The Northman, a blood-soaked, historically accurate film about the Viking prince Amleth.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 13 JUL 2012, prompt 'animals' -- not only the titular whale, but narwhals, sandpipers, ravens, bluebottles...

2023/097: Deadly Election — Lindsay Davis

I could have been married. I simply preferred to keep looking for a man whose habits and personality did not fill me with rage. [loc. 726]

Set in Rome in 89CE, this is the third in the Flavia Albia series, following The Ides of April and Enemies at Home. Albia is still not sure whether the aedile Manlius Faustus fancies her (she bemoans having found 'the last chaste man in Rome') but there's plenty to distract her: the candidates vying to be elected as aedile for the coming year, one of whom has enlisted Albia to dig up slander and sleaze on the others; four sisters all named Julia; their mother, noted in the character list as 'the mother-in-law from Hades'; a body in a stringbox (in July, in Rome: the smell is appalling); and a dog named Incitatus, who behaves very badly.

This is an engaging tale of corruption, rigged elections, family feuds, and women who -- even in the patriarchal society of Imperial Rome -- find their own routes to power. Julia Verecunda and her four daughters are all powerful women in different, and differingly unpleasant, ways. Albia, self-employed as an informer, is also perfectly capable of running an auction at the family auction house (whilst hoping that someone will bid for that pungent strongbox). In an era in which even wealthy women have few rights (see A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), Davis reveals the extent of matriarchal power, and how much of that power is the result of women being dismissed by men.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 08 JUN 2016, prompt 'copy a square' -- the square I copied is 'in a series'. I think there are about ten more Flavia Albia novels, and -- having enjoyed this one rather more than the previous two -- I shall gradually acquire and read them.

2023/096: Mrs Caliban — Rachel Ingalls

'...And any child or half-child of mine would be called a monster, wouldn’t it?’
‘Born on American soil to an American mother – such a child could become President. It would be American. And I’m married so it would also be legitimate. After I sold the story to the dailies, it would be rich, too. It’s surprising how little people mind what they’re called, so long as they have enough money.’ [loc. 747]

In the introduction, Irenosen Okojie notes that this novel 'has quietly influenced and been championed by many cultural juggernauts: Guillermo del Toro’s film The Shape of Water, for one'... The basic premise is remarkably similar to that film's: a suburban woman has her life upturned when she encounters a humanoid amphibian, captured by scientists but desperate for freedom. There is love, and sex, and an escape. But Ingalls' novel focusses more on Dorothy than on Larry (the amphibian), and there is rather more going on in Dorothy's life than in the life of the mute Elisa in del Toro's film.

Dorothy is married to Fred ('we're too unhappy to get a divorce') and is well aware that he's cheating on her, again. The couple have no children, but Dorothy's good friend Estelle has a teenaged daughter who's becoming a bit of a handful. Estelle also has two lovers -- apparently they don't know about each other -- while Dorothy feels she is 'no longer a part of any world in which love was possible'. Dorothy had a dog: it died. She is more than ready for Larry to transform her life, and to reawaken her interest in the world: he's curious about humans, enamoured of avocados, tender and caring towards Dorothy. And he killed the scientists at the Institute, because they were torturing him.

This is a short novel, 124 pages in print, but Ingalls makes every sentence count. Dorothy's life of quiet desperation is vividly and poignantly described, and the glorious blossoming that Larry brings with him transforms her for ever. Not always a cheerful novel(la), but a beautiful, warm-hearted and quietly anarchic one.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 03 FEB 2022, prompt 'monstrous'.

2023/095: A Man of Some Repute — Elizabeth Edmondson

...this was quintessential England. Inward-looking, still licking the wounds of war, keeping the flag flying and hoping that Life Was Getting Better. [p. 105]

Rural England in 1953: Hugo Hawksworth, former intelligence officer, is confined to desk work following an injury. With his 13-year-old sister Georgia, he moves to the little town of Selchester to work on 'statistics' (which are clearly nothing of the kind) and is accommodated at the Castle, once the home of the Earl of Selchester but now inhabited, since the Earl's mysterious disappearance in a blizzard nearly seven years ago, by his niece Freya and a number of staff.

New evidence suggests that the Earl's disappearance is not as mysterious as all that, at least to one or more of the guests he'd invited to dinner on the night he vanished. Someone knows what really happened, but who? Hugo, Georgia and Freya -- with able assistance from Mrs Partridge, the housekeeper, and Hugh's uncle Leo -- navigate a maze of clues, red herrings, random discoveries and improbable revelations to discover what really happened on that winter night.

I bought this, some time ago, because I'm a great admirer of Elizabeth Edmondson's Mountjoy novels (2005 review, 2014 review) which were published under the name of Elizabeth Pewsey: she also wrote as Elizabeth Aston. I didn't find A Man of Some Repute quite as likeable as the Mountjoy books (perhaps because of the lack of that vague tinge of the supernatural that I found so intriguing; perhaps because Hugh, the protagonist, is somewhat opaque) but I'm keeping the other two novels in this trilogy in reserve for when I want cosy crime, rural England and interesting characters. Though it has to be said that the villains here are rather more stereotypical than in the author's other works.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 01 JUN 2015, prompt 'outside' -- I read most of it in the garden on a sunny Sunday morning.

2023/094: Empire Games — Charles Stross

“They’ve given me a Priority One tasking to look at the state of geological and paleontological research and confirm that BLACK RAIN [timeline 2] was created in the Year of Our Lord 4004 B.C., just like our own time line.” [p. 269]

The first of a trilogy set in the same universe as Stross' six-volume Merchant Princes series, of which I've only read the first volume (The Family Trade). I picked up the essentials very quickly in Empire Games, which is set some time after the Merchant Princes series, but shares the concept of 'world-walkers' who can move between Earths on different timelines. In the Merchant Princes books, it turns out, the USA (not quite our USA, but recognisable) behaved very badly. Refugees from a devastated timeline (referred to as 'timeline 1' in Empire Games' useful preface) are now working hard to bring technological innovation to timeline 3, where the North American Commonwealth confronts the French Empire. Timeline 2, very similar to our world but heavier on surveillance and policing, is the initial setting of Empire Games, introducing Gen Z slacker Rita Douglas. Rita was educated by her grandfather, a former Cold War spy, in all manner of tradecraft, but she's working as a 'booth babe' at a tech show when she's recruited by the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently Rita is an inactive carrier of the world-walking gene, and the DHS believes they can activate her ability and send her to spy on timeline 3 ...

This was great fun, and I'm keen to read the rest of the trilogy when the TBR pile has gone down a bit -- especially as Empire Games does feel like the first third of a larger work, rather than a self-contained novel. Stross' humour chimes with my own, and his characters, even stereotypes like 'bad cop' Agent Gomez, are credible and rounded. I'm intrigued by the ruins in timeline 4, and by the genetics of the Clan: I applaud the cultural references ('they canceled the War on Drugs and replaced it with the Crisis on Infinite Earths'), and I look forward to watching Rita come into her full power.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 01 AUG 2018, prompt 'games'.

2023/093: Thursbitch — Alan Garner

She heard Jack again, but his was the only mortal voice, and even for him Nan Sarah could not move. Something was in the field. It grew from the mass, and was it, yet made it more, drawing the dark writhing into its own purpose, the yelling to its own tongue. What was there grew to reach the moon and gave one cry such as Nan Sarah had not heard in all her days: the cry of both man and bull. [p. 59]

A short (178 pages in print) but very dense novel: I've read it twice and suspect I will find new angles, new elements, when I read it again.

The setting is the valley of Thursbitch, a name which Garner has interpreted as either 'the valley of the demon' or 'the valley where something big dwells'. There are two parallel narratives, which may intersect but do not do so explicitly. In the eighteenth century, a jagger (salt-trader) named Jack Turner undertakes epic journeys, but always returns to his home. He has been chosen by the previous incumbent to be the focus of a religious ritual that occurs once every eighteen years: a kind of tauroctony, aided by hallucinogenic mushrooms and shared by a dozen or so families. Christianity does not seem to have reached this corner of Cheshire -- there is a delightful exchange between Jack and his father on the nature of sin: "Yon’s a word; same as, It’s long sin we had such a storm. Or, It’s a while sin you gave me this here thackstone to hold while you rambled and romped with your mither." (p. 101) -- and Jack, whose origins are mysterious, is pledged to the Bull.

In the twenty-first century (or the twentieth? this novel was published in 2003) two friends, Ian and Sal, visit Thursbitch. Ian is a Jesuit priest: Sal is a professor of geology, and is suffering a degenerative disease. She's convinced that the valley is 'sentient', and the two experience some oddities: a thrown cup, signs of a bull where no bull should be, a distant figure who vanishes.

Whatever happens to Jack is real, to Jack, and is recounted as stolidly (and in as dense a dialect) as his roof-mending or pack-leading. He's very much at one with the valley, with its elements (sun, stone, brook and cloud; fire, earth, air and water) and he accepts without question -- as must the reader -- that the massive stones come down to the brook to drink. (Sal determines that they all weigh about the same, seven-tenths of a ton, and posits that this was the maximum practical weight.)

I loved the rhythm and flow of the eighteenth-century scenes, even when the language was puzzling. Jack's faith is Mithraic, possibly a relic of Roman times (though I can't find anything in the text to support that). Jack himself is clearly a well-travelled character, speaking of the 'Red Erythræan Strand' and 'bog o' Mirollies' as easily as of Derby and London, and perhaps earlier travellers brought the Bull and the Snake back with them...

I would love to be able to talk to the late Maureen Kincaid Speller about this novel. I miss her.

Garner's lecture 'The Valley of the Demon'. From the same site, Thursbitch Tangents (warning! rabbit hole!).

Fulfils the ‘a book I meant to read last year’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 15 OCT 2022, prompt 'standalone'. I'd previously owned a paperback copy, acquired in 2013, and eventually discarded in 2019 as my deteriorating eyesight made me take a good long look squint at my shelves of physical books, which I would now struggle to read.

2023/092: Plutoshine — Lucy Kissick

He came to understand that humans needed, on some deep-seated level, the sight of the Sun in the sky. But why? Why try to light the Martian sky with dangerous mirrors? Why build a vulnerable structure on the Mercurian surface below its searing heat, and not move sensibly underground? The Sun, he decided, was a tyrant. [loc. 1665]

Lucian Merriweather is a solar engineer, part of a team of terraformers who've come to Pluto (no longer a planet, in this near-future solar system, but very definitely a world) to bring sunlight and warmth to this furthesy outpost of humanity. There, Lucian and his colleagues find a thriving community, with indie and folk bands, gardens, a swimming pool, cake, cider and -- possibly, terrifyingly -- a saboteur.

The colony's charismatic founder, Clavius Harbour, is in a coma after an expedition with his son Edmund and daughter Nou to investigate Nou's tale of life on Pluto. No life, apparently, was found, and a freak accident damaged Clavius' air supply. In his effective absence, Edmund is running the colony, and Nou has not spoken for a year. But she wants to help with the terraforming project, and Lucius takes her under his wing, teaching her sign language and involving her in the preparations for the 'sun-bringing'.

There's a lot of science here, but nothing that I found too technical. There are fabulous descriptions of the Plutonic landscape, and some of the most urgent and thrilling writing about a scientist tackling an emergency that I have ever read. The focus for me, though, was the characters. Lucian -- who brought his cat, Captain Whiskers, all the way from Earth, and clearly loves his 'dear savage' a lot (thus instantly winning my affection) -- is an absolute delight, extroverted, inventive, great sense of humour, splendid hair. His older colleague Halley, the grande dame of terraforming, is an acidic counterbalance to Lucian's exuberance. Stan, Lucian's PhD student, provides a lot of the technical detail whilst trying to prove his credentials. And Nou, who is one of the viewpoint characters, is a fascinating enigma: her friendship with Lucian and her increasing confidence are powerfully written.

There are so many neat and pleasing details here: the vegetarian, self-sufficient diet of the colony (see also Dinner on Mars); the naming of captured asteroids (which'll graze Pluto's negligable atmosphere to increase atmospheric pressure) after powerful beings in a cult fantasy series; Captain Whiskers and his plot-relevance; the Tombaugh Day festival, commemorating Clyde Tombaugh who first observed Pluto in 1930; the backstories of successful and failed terraforming schemes; the discovery of primitive life on Europa and Enceladus, and the desire to move people off Earth and save the only known planet with multi-cellular life... Kissick, who's a planetary physicist, achieves a compelling balancing act here, with science, setting and characters all integral parts of the plot. I liked this much more than I'd expected, and it would be a worthy winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award, for which it's shortlisted.

2023/091: The Secrets of Pain — Phil Rickman

'...Had what you might call a spiritual experience where I seen the poetic truth of ley lines. Looked at the veins in my wrist and seen the arteries of the countryside. Magic, that was.’
‘I thought it was acid.’
‘Well, aye, it was, but a vision’s a vision, ennit?' [loc. 3489]

Jumping from the first to the eleventh in a series means discovering that a lot has happened in the intervening nine books... Having read and enjoyed The Wine of Angels, first in the Merrily Watkins series, I found The Secrets of Pain in my well-populated Kindle TBR folder, and dived in.

Merrily, formerly the new vicar of Ledwardine on the Welsh Borders, is now a bona fide Deliverance Consultant for the Diocese of Hereford: that is, a professional exorcist. She encounters an old friend, SAS soldier turned chaplain Syd Spicer, who seems unsettled about something from his past. But hey, 'every SAS chaplain worth his kit knows thirty-seven ways to kill with a wooden cross': surely Syd can look after himself? Because there's plenty else on Merrily's plate: her daughter Jane's plans to sabotage a local landowner who's running shooting weekends at the Lodge; the savage murder of a local farmer; the deaths of two Romanian refugees in nearby Hereford; the reports of shadowy figures coming up from the river...

There are more perspectives in this novel than in The Wine of Angels, and plenty of plot that isn't directly related to Merrily and Ledwardine. The local police are attempting to find the murderer or murderers, and their complicated web of personal relationships might affect their investigations. There's still plenty of psychogeography, weirdness and the supernatural, from Alfred Watkins and his Old Straight Track to Julian of Norwich, from Mithraism to motor sports, with a diversion into exactly why the SAS have moved their headquarters to a site at the junction of two Roman roads, in the shadow of an Iron Age hillfort. Several delightful new characters join the 'starter set', in particular Miss White, currently resident in a care home (all the staff are scared of her) but with 'over fifty years’ experience of the techniques for personal growth circulating in the ruins of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Tragically, I shall have to read the rest of the series!

Interesting Phil Rickman interview, describing Merrily as "a decent woman trying to do a medieval job in a scornful world".

Read for Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 31 MAR 2018, prompt 'In the Same Series'.

2023/090: The Wine of Angels — Phil Rickman

'...standing in that orchard, covered with that poor old bloke’s blood, that was when I decided to go for it. I clearly remember thinking that nothing so immediate and so utterly shocking ever happened quite that close to me in Liverpool. That maybe, in some ways, this village could actually be the sharp end. I thought, am I going to wash off his blood and walk away?’ [loc. 339]

Set in the charming and picturesque Herefordshire village of Ledwardine, and featuring single mother Merrily Watkins and her teenaged daughter Jane as they arrive in the village and adjust to local life, this -- the first in the Merrily Watkins series -- has all the ingredients of a cosy mystery. It also features apples, poetry, the Church, and a long-standing tradition of violence, prejudice and paganism.

Merrily Watkins decides to take up the post of Ledwardine's vicar after witnessing the suicide of an elderly local during a reinvented apple orchard ritual. She quickly discovers that beneath the picture-postcard calm of the village lurk a number of nasties, including the great old families of Bull-Davies and Powell; the nouveau-riche incomers, eager to preserve and wallow in the olde-worlde atmosphere; the three-hundred-year old legend of a local priest who was found hanging in the orchard after reports of depravity; and the teenaged oiks who leer and jeer at Jane and her new friend Colette. Oh, and Merrily is convinced that the vicarage is haunted... To counter those unpleasantnesses, there are more benign elements: Lol Robinson, washed-up rock star and devotee of iconic musician Nick Drake; Gomer, a dyed-in-the-wool yokel with a penchant for farm machinery; and Lucy Devenish, who may just be an eccentric old lady.

There's violence and murder, but it's not the focus: this is a novel about Merrily and the village learning to rub along together, and about Jane's reaction to some very unChristian experiences, and about the local legend of priest Wil Williams, who may have been hounded to death by ancestors of the contemporary villagers. There are all manner of prejudices, including misogyny, homophobia, class conflict, and a fierce grip on tradition ('we always fetches ’em back yere'), and Merrily's faith is tested in several ways.

I've owned this for over a decade! And once I read it, I was very much inclined to dive into the whole series: it reminds me, in ambience though not content, of ELizabeth Pewsey's delightful Mountjoy series (2005 review, 2014 review). Merrily and Jane are splendid characters, and the setting, with its blend of paganism and Christianity -- plus a nice old pub, an unsettling orchard, et cetera -- is beguiling.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 13 APR 2012, prompt 'In A Series'.

2023/089: The Cost of All Things — Maggie Lehrman

“If you really loved him, you would’ve wanted the memories and the pain. You excused yourself from being a human being.” [p. 285]

A hekamist can sell you a spell that'll give you what you want -- or what you think you want. Ari's boyfriend Win has just died, and she can't bear the grief, so she buys a spell to make her forget him. She doesn't tell the hekamist that she's already had a spell, years ago, to alleviate the trauma of her parents' death in a fire. And spells ... well, spells react with one another. When Ari wakes up the next day with no memory of Win, she finds that her gift for ballet has deserted her too.

Set in an America very like our own, this YA novel is told from four viewpoints: Ari; Markos who was Win's best friend; Kay who's insecure about her friends; and Win (before his death) trying to hide his depression from everybody, including himself. Each of their lives is changed by spells in ways they don't expect, as well -- in some cases -- as ways that were what they thought they wanted. Markos' relationship with his brothers is not what he thought it was, and Ari's friends discover that she lied about mourning Win: she can't remember him at all. And as the timeline skitters back and forward, zeroing in on the night before Win's death, it becomes clear that there's another spell at work.

Spells protect themselves, says the nameless hekamist. They don't want to be broken. They work by rebalancing body, mind and soul: they consist of 'food, blood and will', and are typically presented as sandwiches or cookies. What the spells most reminded me of, though, were medication (especially medication prescribed for mental health issues). They have side effects, especially when combined, and they might stop you being the person you were. "I’d be changing the “real” me forever... [activating the spell] would be the same as killing myself."

There are some powerful themes here, well-handled. The central characters, though occasionally annoying, feel rounded and real: their interactions, their lies and selfishness and love, feel authentic. Every piece of the novel, from Kay's cookies to the hekamist's physical and mental deterioration, fits together to make a whole. The ending is a little melodramatic, but overall an engaging and thought-provoking read.

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo, Summer 2023: purchased 11 MAY 2017, prompt 'Water' (the cover shows four silhouetted people on a boardwalk against bright water).