2024/058: Where the Wild Ladies Are — Aoko Matsuda (translated by Polly Barton)

I want a special skill, a power that I can wield with all my force when the time comes. I don’t mind what kind of creature I am. It doesn’t bother me if I stay as a nameless monster. [loc. 91]

A collection of feminist, or at least female-centred, short stories by Japanese author Aoko Matsuda, fluently translated by Polly Barton: the stories are interlinked by references to a company run by a Mr Tei. This company remains nameless, but seems to employ both the living and the dead, ghosts and non-human supernatural creatures. One of their products is an incense which allows a bereaved human to see their lost loved one as they were in life: this incense is the focus of one of my favourite stories in the collection, 'Loved One', in which Mr Tei visits a customer to find out if there is 'some issue preventing [the incense] taking effect'. The narrator has no sense of smell, and the only creature she mourns is her cat Tortie. Mr Tei promises that the technical team will adjust the incense so that it's not limited to human beings -- 'a truly embarrassing oversight on our part, a bug in our system that we've been too short-sighted to recognise'.

Elsewhere we find fox-spirits, vengeful ghosts (and a pathologically jealous wife who learns that she'd be perfect as a vengeful ghost, and would it be all right for the company to approach her once she's dead?), as well as a giant toad that protects women; a young lady whose aunt advises her to reject the beauty industry's blandishments and focus on her own power; and a number of women who find, or bestow, peace and kindness after their deaths. And a delightful sapphic romance between a skeleton and a living woman. There are definitely feminist themes here, but perhaps the major theme is of finding a place to be oneself, and to belong -- whether that's in this life or the next.

Many of the stories are drawn from Japanese folklore and ghost stories: references to the original stories are provided, and the Introduction provides context for the telling of ghost stories in summer, during the Buddhist festival of Obon, when the deceased return to wander the earth (and when the chill of a well-told spooky story can offset the summer heat). 

You can read a couple of the stories on the Granta site: here is 'Smartening Up'.

Fulfils the ‘a yellow spine’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

Fulfils the ‘A short story collection in translation’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/057: Traveller's Joy — Victoria Goddard

(Hal should, perhaps, have asked more questions, but he was a gardener: he planted seeds, and waited for them to grow. He could have asked more questions, and perhaps a few things would have been very different as a result. But he was not wrong to wait for what came from the seeds planted in hope, either.) [loc. 544]

A novella, possibly a short story, set before the main sequence of Greenwing and Dart novels, and told from the viewpoint of Hal, who has not yet revealed to his friend Jemis Greenwing that he is an Imperial Duke. (For that matter, their friend Marcan has not yet 'fessed up to being the second son of the King of Lind.) The three set off on a walking tour after the appalling finale of Jemis' time at Morrowlea University: not much happens, but there is friendship and comfort, some intriguing foreshadowing, and plenty of botanising. This was a delight, albeit a brief one, and prompted me to reread the entire Greenwing and Dart saga...

2024/056: The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez — Ann Swinfen

My whole life was a lie... but now I was play-acting again, this time as a servant boy, messenger for a renegade Catholic, who had entered the country illegally and was offering his services to the Scottish queen. Except he wasn’t. [p. 219]

London, 1590: Christoval Alvarez has lived in Duck Street, near St Barts Hospital, for some years, after fleeing the Inquisition in Portugal with his father: they have shared a life of secrets ever since. Jews have been banned from England for three hundred years, so Christoval -- Kit -- and his father attend church with the Christians: and the two share another secret which would surely doom them both. 

A gifted physician, musician and mathematician, Kit is drawn into the web of spymaster Francis Walsingham, initially to assist with deciphering encrypted messages, but later to carry altered documents and entrap the players in what will eventually be known as the Babington plot. Kit is uneasy with the deceits involved, afraid of secret (possibly double) agent Robert Poley, and exhausted by Walsingham's demands: he'd rather be at the playhouse with his friend Simon.

Swinfen's descriptions of Tudor London are evocative, and her depiction of Kit's life has depth and credibility. There were a few typos ('pouring' over documents, 'leant' a hand, 'few if none') and I wasn't wholly convinced that, even in Tudor times, it would take more than an hour to walk from Tower Hill to Lombard Street -- or that it would be any quicker on horseback. But I can forgive these minor errors, for The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez was a gripping read, with some hefty moral issues and plenty of derring-do. I'll read more in this series.

Fulfils the ‘The word “secret” in the title’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

2024/055: The Lost City of Z — David Grann

...in Fawcett’s mind, what he had been taught his whole life about the superiority of Western civilization clashed with what he experienced beyond its shores. “I transgressed again and again the awful laws of traditional behavior, but in doing so learned a great deal..” [loc. 650]

In which journalist David Grann becomes fascinated by the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon jungle in 1925 (along with his son and his son's best friend) while searching for a mythical Lost City that he codenamed Z. Grann does a certain amount of following-in-the-footsteps, but he's as intrigued by Fawcett's failings as by the legends that were his obsession.

Fawcett (who travelled with a stone idol, gifted to him by H Rider Haggard) was, by all accounts, a martinet: he was also somewhat less racist than his peers, though still couldn't quite accept that any 'superior civilisation' in the hidden depths of South America might have arisen independently of white Europeans. He respected the 'Indians' who dwelt in the forest, and adopted many of their medicines and their survival techniques, surviving where others failed. His final expedition most likely ended in a swift death at the hands of an unfriendly tribe.

What I liked most about this book was Grann's reactions to Fawcett's story, from his own expedition into the Amazon -- perhaps discovering the city that Fawcett searched for -- to his research in the archives of the National Geographical Society, and his interactions with the present-day inhabitants of the area. Grann includes a good overview of the history, ecology, geography and anthropology of the Amazon (coincidentally, I was listening to a novel featuring Sir Clements Markham just as his name popped up in The Lost City of Z) and, though he clearly admires Fawcett's singlemindedness, he's also critical of his approach to exploration.

I read an interesting article about how this book is 'a very long way from the truth': I'm willing to believe that, but it is still a great adventure story and very readable.

Fulfils the ‘Mobile’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge. People exploring are ... on the move.

2024/054: The Mimicking of Known Successes — Malka Older: read by Lindsey Dorcus

...many of the species in the mauzooleum had more space to wander around in than most human residential platforms offered. If they were in captivity on this inhospitable planet, then so were we. [21%]

Humanity, having wrecked both Earth and Mars by untrammelled greed, now inhabits a series of floating platforms in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, here called Giant. The idiosyncrasies of this setting produce a cosy steampunk vibe, laced with an 'epigenetic ache' of longing for lost Earth. Giant's social structure is post-capitalist, and I was extremely pleased that 'the C word' here means 'conservative'.

That's background. The Mimicking of Known Successes presents Mossa, an Investigator (currently attempting to discover the fate of a man who disappeared from a remote platform, presumed to have plummetted into the roiling clouds below), and Pleiti, a Classicist at Valdegeld. 'Classicist' in this setting refers to the texts of Old Earth, and Pleiti is reading Watership Down for information about British ecosystems in the 20th century. She is also Mossa's ex-girlfriend, and when Mossa enlists her help in solving the mystery -- since the dead man was a colleague of Pleiti's -- there's an emotional element (at least in Pleiti's first-person narrative) to their investigations. 

The obvious comparison, to Holmes and Watson, isn't wholly accurate: Mossa is more aware of her emotional shortcomings than Holmes, Pleiti is more of an equal partner in the sleuthing than Watson. But there's definitely a Baker Street ambience to Pleiti's cosy apartment, and to the weather outside (Jupiter's storms standing in for London smog). 

I enjoyed this a great deal, even in audiobook format, which I've lately discovered suits me well for rereads, but not for 'first contact' with a work. (It took me several tries to follow the story: it helps if I am doing something else at the same time.) Lindsey Dorcus' English accent is pretty good, and her occasional lapses into American pronunciation ('route' is here rhymed with 'sprout', not 'hoot') weren't frequent enough to irritate. A good solid mystery with an intriguing, unfussy setting (I look forward to further exploration of 'Giant' in this series), intelligent and likeable characters, and vivid prose.

2024/053: The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years — Shubnum Khan

The girl is interfering too much; she is upsetting the house; it can no longer hold on to its secrets the way it used to. More and more of the past is slipping through its fingers, and the house begins to break down further; pipes start to leak, cracks open in the walls, mold spreads, and the cold becomes unbearable. History is beginning to emerge, and the more the house fails to hide it, the more the djinn’s own terror grows. [p. 153]

Sana is fifteen, introverted and motherless: she is still dealing with her mother's death, and her belief that her mother never loved her at all. Her father Bilal decides that they'll move to Durban, a city in South Africa with a large Indian population. There, they rent rooms in Akbar Manzil, a mansion that's been shoddily converted into individual flats. The other inhabitants of the house -- glamorous former pianist Zuleikha, timid Fancy and her garrulous parrot Mr Patel, bitter Razia Bibi, the maid Pinky, the likeable owner Doctor -- are suitably eccentric. But the house itself is also a character, and so are two other entities: the djinn, which weeps in a wardrobe in a boarded-up room, and the ghost of Sana's twin sister, who didn't live long enough to be named and who wants Sana to join her. 

Sana roams the house, discovering hidden photographs and diaries, and becomes fascinated with the house's glorious heyday, when ethical industrialist Akbar Manzil built the house for his snooty Anglophile wife Jahanara, populated the garden with exotic plants and animals, and then took a second wife named Meena. The love story of Meena and Akbar, and the bitter jealousy of Jahanara and of Akbar's tyrannical mother, fascinate Sana, and as she unravels the story of Meena's death the unseen djinn (who loved Meena dearly) finds that it can still be interested -- and effectual -- in the world.

I loved the prose style, and the distinct voices of the characters (especially the house!); was slightly irritated by occasional errors (such as 'the Queen's English' in 1930: nope); found Sana's mother-mourning and her 'unmothered' state both poignant and familiar. I'd have liked more of the djinn, though. Though there's not much about Sana's life outside the house, the glimpses of present-day Durban intrigued me. I'll look out for more by this author.

Fulfils the ‘South African Author’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

Fulfils the ‘Told in non-chronological order’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

2024/052: The Hydrogen Sonata — Iain M Banks

Why do we bother with this sort of bio-tangling stuff in the first place? We could live lives of such uncomplicated joy if we left them to their own sordid, murderous devices. [loc. 1207]

The Gzilt, a Culture-adjacent civilisation, are counting down the days to Sublimation, when their entire species / civilisation will enter a higher plane of being (or possibly a 'great retirement home'), as foretold in their Book of Truth. But when a neighbouring civilisation sends a ship to reveal a long-held secret to the Gzilt, that ship is destroyed. What secret can possibly be deemed so dangerous at this point?

The key to the mystery involves musician Vyr Cossont, a grown woman who is repeatedly referred to as 'the girl'. Vyr has grown an extra pair of arms to enable her to play the eponymous Hydrogen Sonata, an experimental and perhaps unlistenable piece subtitled 'String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented'. With the help of a mysterious Culture ship, the Mistake Not..., she has to track down an old friend who may know the solution to the mystery. Meanwhile, two non-human races are squabbling for scavenger rights to anything the Gzilt leave behind, and various Culture ships are zooming around, having long conversations and involving themselves in other civilisations' business. So no change there.

I have fond memories of earlier Culture novels but found this one a slog: possibly just a case of 'right book, wrong time', but I found it less engaging than expected. There were some glorious, and some gloriously self-indulgent, ideas and scenes; some interesting observations about the allegedly-peaceful Culture, and the Minds; some intriguing characters, and enticing asides ('the broad hips of a non-mammalian humanoid': why?). But I didn't especially like any of the characters (except perhaps the Mistake Not...) and there seemed to be elements, such as Vyr's shawl-form companion Pyan, which could have been removed without damage to the overall structure.

The Hydrogen Sonata (Banks' last Culture novel) was published in 2012, and I suspect the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum was looming large in the author's mind: but lines like 'if we’re all about to step into the big bright and shining light, Vyr, but there is just a chance that we’d be doing so under false pretences, and it would be good to know the truth, don’t you think? Just in case we wanted to rethink...' [loc. 1802] just make me think of a later referendum whose outcome was shaped by lies.

Now I want to reread the earlier novels, most of which I have not revisited in at least two decades. But looking back over my reviews of Matter, Consider Phlebas, The Algebraist, and Excession (two of which were rereads), I find that my enjoyment of Banks' SF has not been unalloyed. Perhaps I should skip the rereads and retain my faint hazy impression of excitement, adventure and really wild things.

2024/051: Expect Me Tomorrow — Christopher Priest

The future no longer bore thinking about.
So, tomorrow? What to expect of tomorrow?
The future had become a sequence of days: they survived this day, worked through it as it came, managed somehow. Tomorrow dawned with the apprehension that something else might have to be survived, worked through, managed. They lived on the edge. [p. 229]

In the first decade of the twentieth century, glaciologist Adler Beck makes the final corrections to his new book, Take Heed!—A Scientist Warns of the Terror to Come, in which he argues for the inevitability of the coming Ice Age. In the middle of the twenty-first century, Chad Ramsey negotiates redundancy (he was a police profiler) and stifling heat as he uses cutting-edge technology implants to research his family history. Both men are twins. Adler's bohemian brother Adolf, after a stint as an opera singer in Manaus, buys shares in a copper mine; flits around Europe, with the occasional letter to his brother; is convicted of defrauding multiple women, and imprisoned. Like his brother, Adolf is plagued by 'incursions' in which a man's voice questions him about his life. Chad's rather less bohemian brother Greg is working for a national broadcasting company as an investigative journalist, most recently involved with a company called Schmiederhahn which doesn't believe in coincidence.

Priest's depiction of near-future England is all too credible. 'Already the physical symbols of civilisation were serving notice.' The journey from Hastings to Heathrow takes nearly a day; storm-damaged sea defences are left to crumble, the hospitals only take emergency cases, wildfires devastate much of England's farmland. In contrast, Adler Beck's nineteenth-century life seems idyllic, despite disasters natural and otherwise, Adolf's precarious and mysterious lifestyle, and Adler's certainty that the ice is coming.

Priest draws together climate fiction (this is one of the most positive novels I've read on the subject), historical fiction and some futuristic technology into a story about brothers, about equilibrium and about hope. I found the contrast between Adler's sedate account and Chad's quiet desperation very effective, and the descriptive passages -- especially post-Krakatoa sunsets as seen from Blackheath -- vivid and credible. And I was fascinated to discover that, despite the standard disclaimer ('All the characters in this book are fictitious') Adolf Beck was a real person.

Surprisingly cheering, though near-future England, with its isolationist mentality and its gradual collapse, seems depressingly imminent. Expect it tomorrow.

Fulfils the ‘chapter headings have dates’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

Fulfils the ‘a book that features twins’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/050: Olive Kitteridge — Elizabeth Strout

...spring arriving once again; foolish, foolish spring, breaking open its tiny buds, and what she couldn’t stand was how -— for many years, really -— she had been made happy by such a thing. [loc. 3799]

A 'novel in stories', which is apparently the term for something Impressionistically vague, the protagonist glimpsed in the background of what appear to be other people's tales. A couple of the stories do focus on retired school teacher Olive and her kind-hearted, long-suffering husband Henry, the town pharmacist: others feature grown adults who were taught by Olive years ago, a nightclub pianist who plays a song for the couple, their son Christopher, a neighbour's difficulties, a chaste love affair, a woman falling into the sea...

I think Olive is supposed to be unlikeable: she is brusque, moody, judgemental, difficult, disappointed. I warmed to her, and (or?) perhaps identified with her. I liked the understatedness of the prose, the way that all the awful things are matter-of-fact and low-key, the way that Olive's inner state is never labelled or analysed. This is a masterclass in 'show, don't tell'. On the surface everything is fine: on the surface.

I shall be reading more by Elizabeth Strout. Though possibly not if I am feeling low.

Fulfils the ‘lowercase letters on the spine’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

2024/049: Running Close to the Wind — Alexandra Rowland

"I'm going to tear down something that the most powerful people in the world very much don't want to have torn down. And I'm going to get away with it." [loc. 5067]

Ex-spy Avra Helvaçi is possessed of unusually good luck, a bunch of secret papers from the Shipbuilders' Guild, and a long-lasting fixation on dashing nonbinary pirate captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār. (He is not, however, possessed of any personal dignity whatsoever.) Reunited, the two join forces to become (a) really rich and (b) not dead, with a mutual aim of (c) persuading the gorgeous Brother Julian that vows of celibacy are really boring.

I've reread the novel for a more thorough review, though the summary above encompasses most of the important points. I note that I did not mention the Heralds, the Tarotesque deck (the Alchemist, the Bower (which is not always about sex), the Sea-Serpent) which Avra often uses -- his possibly-Goddess-given luck providing spookily accurate readings -- to assess a situation or predict an outcome; the truthwitch, overwhelmed by Brother Julian's oversharing; the Scuttle Cove cake competition, with its high seagull mortality rate and creative critiques; the subtle exploration of Avra's psyche and Tev's backstory; the crew of The Running Sun, as diverse and characterful a bunch as you could wish for; and the overarching theme of revolution. It's apposite that the author dedicates this book to Terry Pratchett, and says in the afterword that 'the best comedy comes from a place of deep, righteous anger -- and as long as you can laugh, there's still a part of you that's free.'

This is a hilarious and heartfelt novel, which I suspect some people will find highly irritating. I loved it and look forward to buying it for all my friends, especially those who are fans of a recent, much-lamented TV show about queer pirates.

Fulfils the ‘Published in a Year of the Dragon’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy: UK publication date is 13 JUN 2024.

"Intelligence knows," Avra said airily, "that 'sane' doesn't exist. Nobody is sane. Nobody has ever been sane. Sane is fake. Sane is ..." He waved at his own face. "One of those things you wear to a masked ball."
"... A mask?"
"Yes, thank you, one of those. Behind everybody's sanity mask is someone who is unalloyed batshit in one way or another." [loc. 5067]

2024/048: The Silence Factory — Bridget Collins

"Poor Echo. I wonder sometimes what it would feel like, to be condemned to say what you never wanted to say, while the most important thing of all is beyond your reach." There was a pause that felt as though something unspoken was hanging in the air like invisible fruit, left unplucked. [loc. 1665]

Bridget Collins' third novel for adults, following The Binding (which I loved) and The Betrayals (which I liked), is The Silence Factory, which I'm still considering. It's a novel about the luxury of silence, about power and powerlessness: it features queer romance, dual narratives, abusive relationships, social class and ... spiders, again. (Perhaps the most fantastical aspect of the plot is that nobody in Collins' version of 19th-century England seems to suffer from arachnophobia.)

Part of the book is formed by the 1820s diaries of Sophia, wife to scientifically-minded and ambitious James Ashmore. James has brought her to the Greek island of Kratos, following the trace of a dead scholar's letters about marvellous spiders, the pseudonephila. While her husband becomes increasingly focussed on his work, Sophia befriends a local woman named Hira, and is drawn into the island's secrets.

The larger part of the narrative is the story of Henry Latimer, recently widowed (his wife died in childbirth) and working for his father-in-law, an audiologist. When Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy (great-nephew of James Ashmore) visits the shop in search of a device that will restore the hearing of his deaf daughter Philomel, Henry is struck by the man's charisma: he soon finds himself on a train to Telverton, with a suitcase of auricles and audinets, where he will test Philomel's hearing himself. Telverton is dominated by the silk factory, and Henry has already discovered that Telverton silk has miraculous properties. One side of the fabric confers blessed, luxurious silence. The other side of the silk gives off 'some sort of unpredictable vibration', which has rendered many of the factory workers partially deaf -- or worse. Henry quickly becomes Sir Edward's assistant and confidant, refusing to listen to the warnings of Philomel's governess. All factories have accidents, don't they?

There are no happy endings here, though the conclusion of Henry's story is undeservedly hopeful. I found it hard to like him, though his situation was pitiable: he's spineless, indecisive and blinkered. Sophia and her story were much more engaging, but she too was under the influence of a selfish, privileged man. James was monstrous in his disregard for his wife: Sir Edward's motivation, in his dealings with Henry, was opaque to me. Collins' writing is luscious and Gothic, and she writes powerfully about the gift of silence, and the ways in which women can be silenced, as well as the horrors of industry and the evils to which knowledge can be bent. I think this is a well-written, fascinating and complex book. I am not at all sure that I liked it.

Warnings for ableism, miscarriage, drowning, cruelty to animals, poverty, torture, emotional abuse, capitalism, spiders.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 09 MAY 2024.

Fulfils the ‘picked without reading the blurb’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge: the author's name was sufficient incentive for me to request this from Netgalley.