2024/128: Bury Your Dead — Louise Penny

That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad. [loc. 5220]

Bury Your Dead is the most complex and the most compelling of the Gamache novels that I've read to date. There are three strands, at least, to the story. Gamache is staying with his old mentor in Quebec, recovering (physically, mentally and emotionally) from an operation that ended tragically. Insomniac and tormented by memories, it's with a sense of relief that he finds himself involved in a murder, a body buried in the cellar of 'the Literary and Historical Society, that bastion of Anglo Quebéc'. The dead man, Augustin Renaud, had been obsessed with finding the grave of Samuel de Champlain, founder of Quebéc and focus of the separatist movement. 

In parallel to this are Gamache's memories of a shoot-out in an abandoned factory, and those who died under his command: but not until the very end of the novel does everything about that operation become clear. And meanwhile, in Three Pines, Jean Guy Beauvoir is continuing investigation of the murder case that was the focus of The Brutal Telling, talking to the villagers, being assailed by Ruth Zardo's poetry, and discovering the truth -- or something closer to it -- about who murdered an elderly man deep in the woods.

That Penny keeps all these plots balanced, clear and engaging is laudable in itself: that she also shows us Gamache's guilt and sorrow over his failure to save his colleagues, and evokes wintry Quebec and the close-knit community of the Lit and His, is virtuosic. It was good to see Gamache's second-in-command, Beauvoir, out of Gamache's shadow: and to see sullen Agent Nichols saving the day.

I am very tempted to read my way through the whole series now (especially as I've accidentally encountered some spoilers for future novels): but it's not as though I have nothing else to read...

2024/127: A Rule Against Murder — Louise Penny

“Not everything needed to be brought into the light, he knew. Not every truth needed to be told.”

Reading The Cruellest Month (third in the series) reminded me that (a) I enjoy Penny's 'Three Pines' series very much (b) I found The Brutal Telling (fifth in the series) an uncomfortable read, and attributed this to reading it out of sequence. When I discovered that I could borrow the fourth novel, A Rule Against Murder (under its US title, The Murder Stone) from Internet Archive, I decided it was time to fill in the gaps.

Inspector Gamache and his wife, the fragrant Reine-Marie, are celebrating their wedding anniversary at Manoir Bellechasse, a beautiful and secluded inn not far from the village of Three Pines. Most of the rooms at the inn have been taken by members of the Finney family, rich and entitled, who are using their reunion to make one another miserable. There are surprise guests, a tremendous storm, an ungendered child named Bean, and an impossible murder.

Which is, of course, Gamache's milieu (though the Finneys think he is a shopkeeper). Lacoste and Beauvoir arrive on the scene, and Gamache's steely resolution and profound understanding of humanity are focussed on the murder -- though there are subplots and layers: fathers and sons, wealth and ruin...

I felt there were some weaknesses in the plot, but overall this was a good read, and kept me guessing until the eventual revelation of the murderer's identity and motivation. And it was interesting to see a little more of Gamache's personal life, and his relationship with his own son. I did miss the ambience and characters of Three Pines, though.

After this I reread The Brutal Telling in preparation for the sixth book in the series...

Fulfils the ‘set during a holiday you don't celebrate’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. The action occurs around Canada Day, 1st July.

2024/126: The Cruellest Month — Louise Penny

Kneeling in the fragrant moist grass of the village green Clara Morrow carefully hid the Easter egg and thought about raising the dead, which she planned to do right after supper. [opening line]

It's spring in the cosy Canadian village of Three Pines, and a famous psychic has come to stay at the B&B. Well, not that famous; not actually a psychic; and not that willing to parade her skills for the villagers. Nevertheless, they decide to hold a seance in the old Hadley House, a nexus of nastiness in the first novel and generally not a cheerful place. What could possibly go wrong? One of the participants is literally scared to death: or is she?

Chief Inspector Gamache and his team become involved in the investigation, turning up some old secrets, some new friends and an undercurrent of treachery. Nothing is quite what it seems, and Myrna's explication of 'near enemies' -- emotions and their almost-indistinguishable opposites, such as attachment / love, pity / compassion, indifference / equanimity -- provides one route towards solving the crimes. (I use the plural because besides murder, there is corruption, slander and deceit. Jealousy is not a crime, but there's a lot of that here too.)

I know these people are imaginary, but I like them: their friendly rudeness, their long-held secrets, their idiosyncrasies, and especially Gamache's determination to be, and do, good. Louise Penny's prose occasionally jolts me, especially when her viewpoint character changes abruptly, but on the whole it's well-written and evocative. I can see myself becoming addicted to these novels...

2024/125: The Power — Naomi Alderman

When he walked past a group of women on the road – laughing and joking and making arcs against the sky – Tunde said to himself, I’m not here, I’m nothing, don’t notice me, you can’t see me, there’s nothing here to see. [loc. 3846]

Some time soon, teenaged girls everywhere begin to develop the ability to zap other people with electricity -- anything from a minor shock to a lethal one. A new organ, the 'skein', is identified as the organ of electricity. The girls can awaken the power in older women, too. And within months women all over the world are rising up, targetting oppressors, fighting back.

Alderman's four protagonists experience this change in different ways. Allie, whose Christian foster parents have abused her, begins to hear a guiding voice, convincing her to found an all-female community. Roxy, a London gangster's daughter, avenges her mother and stands up to her father. Margot, a middle-aged American politician, acquires the power from her troubled daughter Jos, and uses it to clear her path to power. And Tunde, a young Nigerian man who's training as a journalist, becomes a chronicler of this unforeseen revolution, travelling the world and meeting formerly-enslaved sex workers, female soldiers, and the redoubtable Tatiana, the wife of Moldova's president.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that power corrupts: that women are capable of being just as violent and cruel as men. There are some deeply unsettling scenes in the latter part of the novel, and Alderman evokes the Bacchae at one point to remind us that there's a long history of female violence. And though at first it's amusing to see the microaggressions, the nervousness, the imbalances turned upside down, it quickly becomes sobering, even depressing.

Though I've owned this novel for some years, I'd never got around to it before. I didn't know about the framing narrative, which is set far in our future (though I don't wholly accept the implicit history of how we might get there from here) and I didn't know just how unpleasant some scenes would be. I'm glad I've read it, despite those scenes, despite the bleakness: it's well-written and inventive, with interesting viewpoint characters, and it examines its central conceit with care and nuance. I wonder if the novel would be more intersectional if Alderman were writing it now.

Fulfils the ‘self-insert by author’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. The framing narrative features letters by 'Neil Adam Armon' to a 'Naomi', who is a successful author and probably a former lover...

2024/124: The Perfect Golden Circle — Benjamin Myers

...the call of the cuckoo, the sonorous song of it, sung from little lungs, a sweet thrum freed from the funnel of its throat. It is a call down the centuries, shaped by deep time and desire. Desire to spread the message that summer is coming in on the breeze and all the sins of winter shall be forgiven and forgotten. Forgotten as the new scents and notes stir senses nullified by dead seasons past. [loc. 506]

The setting is somewhere in the west of England, in 1989. Calvert (ex-SAS, Falklands veteran, lives in the second smallest house in England) and Redbone (crusty new age traveller type, no fixed abode) are spending the summer creating corn circles. Their friendship is a quiet one, full of things left unsaid and questions never asked or answered. They are the fixed points in one another's lives: Redbone has a series of girlfriends, who all eventually give up on him, and Calvert does not do relationships. Their shared passion is to 'fuel the myth and strive for beauty', and perhaps also to get people to learn to love the land. Also, of course, to mess with the straights, cause chaos, and instil a sense of wonder in those who flock to see their art.

There's one chapter per 'crop circle' (most of which aren't circles) and several involve nocturnal encounters with other people: fly-tippers, hare-coursers, an elderly woman calling for the dog who ran away many years before, a coked-up aristocrat who thinks Redbone is his gamekeeper... Redbone creates the designs, Calvert scouts for locations, and they relish both the anonymity and the appreciation. The two men are profoundly rooted in the land, its histories, its stories.

I suppose that this is technically historical fiction: but 1989 feels realler to me, in many ways, than 2024. I remember the media reporting of corn circles, and the various myths that sprung up about them (even after Doug Bower and Dave Chorley went public with their admission that they'd made many circles in Wiltshire and the surrounding counties). Myers has the benefit of a vantage point in the novel's future, and hindsight is 20:20. Calvert's speech about the 'island mentality' is especially sobering from a post-Brexit era: "The sea is a border, a boundary, and living on an island like this makes us think we’re something special. But we’re not. We’re just scared, that’s all. We’re scared of the world. And that breeds arrogance and ignorance, and ignorance signals the death of decency." [loc. 869] 

The two are also both wondering if humanity will even make it to the third millennium. The heatwave of summer 1989 was unusual for that decade ('I've never known it this hot for this long,' says Redbone, stripped to the waist at 4am), but relatively normal for the 2020s, though climate change is only mentioned towards the end of The Perfect Golden Circle.

I found this marvellously immersive, evocative, rural without sentimentality, emotional without much being said: I'll keep an eye out for more of Myers' novels.

Anonymous, anti-capitalist and awe-inspiring: were crop circles actually great art? -- article by Myers.

2024/123: Masters of Death — Olivie Blake

Slowly, slowly, she became again what she’d once been—not a being, but a current, a force, a spirit. She dissolved back into foam, heaving a sigh that salted the earth’s shore, driving gracelessly against bigger things; stronger things. With her secrets restored, she became again nothing; became, again, everything... [p. 347]

An estate agent is trying to sell a mansion in an up-market district of Chicago: except the estate agent is a vampire, and the house is haunted, and the ghost would like his murder solved, please. There are plenty of other supernatural beings -- 'creatures' -- around, including a siren, a werewolf, a demon, a reaper (a soldier in Lucifer's army), and a man named Brandt who claims to be a son of Odin. And there is Death's godson, more-or-less-fraudulent medium Fox d'Mora, who's still mourning a lover who left him nearly two centuries ago. That lover's return is tied in with the disappearance of Death himself, and with a game that the immortals play. There's only one rule: don't lose.

One of Blake's earliest novels, Masters of Death was first published in 2018, a couple of years before The Atlas Six. It does read like an early work and I'm surprised that Tor have republished it without any amendments. The prose is arch and melodramatic, which suits the story, but the plot is tangled and murky (I'm still not entirely clear on what the game involves: emotional torture via the evocation of memories?) and, aargh! the saidisms! Characters seldom say anything: they point out, or tell, or mutter, or comment, or agree, or argue, or return, or realize, or add, or judge, or conclude, or... When I find myself paying more attention to synonyms for speech than to the plot, the prose is a distraction.

There are some lovely passages, though, and some very likeable characters. Viola the estate agent, 'not the Dracula kind of vampire', is great: so is her friend, Isis, a demon who works as a personal trainer. And I do wish there was more about Brandt. If I'd read this first, I doubt I'd have gone on to The Atlas Six: but seeing the seeds of Blake's style was interesting.

2024/122: Render Unto Caesar — Gillian Bradshaw

This has never been about the money, Roman. This has been about whether Roman officials can rob, cheat and murder with impunity.

The setting is Rome, 16BC. Cleopatra was defeated fairly recently: many Romans still look down on the Greeks. Hermogenes is a Greek businessman from Alexandria who travels to Rome to seek justice from the man who ruined his family by defaulting on a debt. He's accompanied by two slaves, and he stays with a friend of his father's, Titus Crispus. His initial meeting with Tarius Rufus, who owes him over half a million sestertii, doesn't go well: Rufus spits on Hermogenes, calls him 'Greekling', and generally seems disinclined to pay. When Hermogenes -- who is a Roman citizen, with all the rights that entails -- pursues the matter, he finds himself in mortal peril. He's attacked in a dark alleyway, but rescued by a witness, an ex-gladiator who becomes his bodyguard.

There's a lot packed into this novel: anti-Greek sentiment, citizens' rights, Roman politics (Hermogenes is opposed by a trio of wealthy men, friends of the absent Emperor Augustus, who are manoeuvring for dominance), and the ethics of slavery -- in particular, of sexual relations between slaves and citizens. Hermogenes, whilst definitely a man of his time and perfectly comfortable with slavery as an institution, finds himself considering how to help one of Crispus' slaves, who is not happy at having to sleep with Crispus. And that leads him to recollections of his own youthful relationship with an enslaved woman...

Hermogenes is a delightful character: he is interested in people, and he likes to be liked, but there's an inner strength that not even Hermogenes himself realises is beneath the sunny exterior. His resolution and courage are in sharp contrast to the corrupt Romans he encounters. Render Unto Caesar would be interesting if it consisted solely of his quest for justice and his growing awareness of the inequities of slavery: that it's also an unusual and thoughtful romance, and a vivid evocation of Imperial Rome with its bedbugs and stenches and wealth and squalor, makes it a splendid read.

2024/121: Buried Deep, and other stories — Naomi Novik

Her brother, her little brother, had pulled his hand out of hers and gone down into the dark to save her life, and she hadn't run down the hill shouting, begging a shepherd, a priest, a rich man for help.
So it was her lie, too. She was in the lie, and the lie was in her, and the lie couldn't go any further into the dark. ['Buried Deep': loc. 1444]

Like many collections of short stories, this selection of Novik's shorter work is interesting because of the author's introductions to each story, as well as for the stories themselves. There's a cautionary note in the Introduction, though: "only the stories themselves can tell you what I was thinking".

The stories range widely, from an after-dark adventure at an alternate Scholomance to a Pride and Prejudice-flavoured novella set in the world of Temeraire: there's a story about medieval Europe that's inspired by Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, and the original novella which grew into Spinning Silver. 'Seven Years from Home', the most science-fictional of the tales, reminded me of Le Guin, while the title story is a dark meditation on the myth of Ariadne and the minotaur. I greatly enjoyed the piratical 'Araminta, or, the Wreck of the Amphidrake', with its Amulet of Tiresias: and 'The Long Way Round', which is set in the world of the novel she's working on now, piqued my interest.

While the mood and style varies from story to story. There are often queer characters, often women who are coping with difficult or lonely situations (very few of these stories are romances in the conventional sense), and often a sense of revolution or change. While I've read some of the stories before, it was very interesting to immerse myself in this book and appreciate the breadth of Novik's interests and of her style. Definitely worth reading, and rereading.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 17 SEP 2024.

2024/120: Polostan — Neal Stephenson

He avoided meeting Aurora's eye -- as well he might. She didn't imagine this kind of situation was covered in Emily Post. It must happen a lot, though, in the Soviet Union: bumping into persons who had tortured you or murdered members of your family. [loc. 3279]

First in new trilogy 'Bomblight', Polostan is the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, also known as Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva. Dawn is the daughter of a Russian communist and an anarchist cowgirl from Montana. After a childhood in Leningrad, where she's tended by a veteran of the Red Women's Death Batallion, she spends her teenage years trailing around the USA after her father, who is very much in favour of workers' rights. This period of Dawn's life culminates in marching to Washington as part of the Bonus Army and helping to facilitate armed insurrection against the US government. She also encounters, and flirts with, George Patton: and she attends the Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago in 1933, where she works as a shoe saleswoman, hears Niels Bohr lecturing, and has a brief fling with a young man named Dick (who may be Richard Feynman). Then off to Russia via San Francisco, to resume her Russian identity, introduces the game of polo to the Soviet Union, and encounters Lavrentiy Beria -- not in a good way, though luckily she's too old for him.

I found this very readable, and quintessentially Stephensonian: behold our fearless, intrepid and engaging heroine, who hobnobs with famous men and attends an advanced physics lecture despite having spent much of her childhood avoiding school, who uses sex as a weapon or a distraction, who endures ill-treatment with dignity and an offhand quip... I did like Aurora/Dawn, though, and the famous names aren't as plethoric as in the Baroque Cycle. And I do like Stephenson's prose style, with his liking for lists and his wry observations. Looking forward to seeing where this trilogy is going!

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 26 SEP 2024.

2024/119: Cuddy — Benjamin Myers

Granted, death comes only once,
and they are alarmed,
but I’m glad you’re here now, dear friend,
to join me in the amber of the moment,
holding my cracked and callused hand
as we stride forth into the fevered hinterland. [p.5]

Told in many voices (including that of Durham Cathedral) and spanning more than a millennium, Cuddy won the Goldsmiths prize in 2023 and the Winston Graham Historical Prize in 2024. Beginning with St Cuthbert -- 'Cuddy' -- dying on the tiny isle of Inner Farne in 687 AD, it continues with the story of the Haliwerfolc, the "folk of the holy man" who carried his coffin around the north of England for a century, fleeing the Danes; then to a passage that features stonemasons working on Durham Cathedral just before the Black Death; then, darkly, to the use of the post-dissolution cathedral as a prison to house wounded Scottish soldiers after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650; then a ghost story, very much in the style of M R James, set in 1827 when Cuddy's remains were exhumed; and finally the more or less contemporary story of Michael Cuthbert, a labourer working to support his dying mother.

There's a strong sense of northern culture and community, and the landscape around Durham: in some passages I was strongly reminded of Alan Garner. Myers' style varies from almost Anglo-Saxon free verse in Cuddy's prologue, to lavish Victoriana, to Michael's uneducated but strongly felt narration. Each voice is unique and credibly of its time: throughout the novel there's a sense of history tied to place.

Everything is circular: similar characters recur in each section (a woman who's a cook or healer or brewer, an owl-eyed young man, a corrupt monk, a violent husband) and there are secondary characters whose names -- 'Brother Chad, Brother Hunred, Brother Stitheard, Brother Eadmer'; 'Harry, Frankie, Ed and Stoddard' -- seem to tie them to earlier iterations. And Cuddy is a presence throughout, gentle and humane, speaking to those in need. 

I liked this very much: it felt rooted in the history and landscape of north-east England, and in honest faith, and in changeless humanity. 

I was still soil-sunk then, not yet tall, not yet holy. Not yet a quarried arrangement of a singular vision set in stone and called a cathedral. Now you might call me a coffin, a mausoleum for the many. [p. 270]

2024/118: The Gay Detective — Lou Rand

“Mr. Olsen, I’ll make you a proposition.”
Looking Francis directly in the eyes, Tiger smiled wryly, and said, “That, Mr. Morley, is what I am afraid of.” [p. 49]

Recommended by a friend on Dreamwidth, this is a short and entertaining novel which does what it says on the tin: but it did it in 1961, when homosexuality was still illegal throughout the United States, and even in San Francisco -- cunningly disguised in The Gay Detective as 'Bay City' -- attitudes were, shall we say, rather less broad-minded than today's.

Francis Morley, formerly 'in the theatre', has inherited a detective agency in Bay City. His first task is to acquire an assistant, which he does by offering car salesman, retired football professional and war hero Tiger Olsen a job -- and then demonstrating in the boxing ring that he can knock Tiger's misconceptions out of his head. Together the dynamic duo investigate a series of murders: the victims were all gay men, and the chief of police suspects a connection with a vice ring operating in the city's underworld. As they venture deeper into the city's dives -- encountering bright young things, Italian gangsters, voyeurs and exhibitionists -- many tropes ensue.

This was great fun. It's heavy on stereotyped effeminacy, but it's surprisingly unmisogynistic. (There are two significant female characters: the sister of one of the victims, and Morley's middle-aged and unflappable secretary Hattie.) A subplot involves an excellent cat. And the introduction gives a good overview of the author, and of the novel as a coded guide to queer San Francisco. Yes, it's pulp fiction, and the prose is sometimes OTT and sometimes deliberately camp: but the story is solid and the characters likeable.

Puzzled, though, as to why this has been reissued as part of Mills and Boon's 'Spice' imprint: there is very little actual sex, even off-page, and apart from veiled hints it's all het.

“Just for the record, Mr. Olsen, let me do the camping in this act. I’ll make with the gay talk. You just be big and beasty. Okay?” [p. 161]

2024/117: Countess — Suzan Palumbo

Space colonization had not been the great equalizer the capitalist billionaires had advertised. When their homes vanished due to the rising seas, the people of the Antillean islands found no sanctuary from any nation on Terra. With nowhere to go, they signed contracts that put them back in bondage, to work jobs on the far-flung mining and agricultural planets. [loc. 204]

This novella, described by the publisher as 'a queer Caribbean anti-colonial Count of Monte Cristo set in space', snagged my interest. Virika Sameroo lives in the Æcerbot Empire: the Exterran Antilles star system is nominally independent, but economically and politically subjugated by a number of competing empires. Virika has risen quickly to first lieutenant in the Æcerbot merchant fleet -- but when her captain dies under suspicious circumstances, a jealous rival frames her for murder and treason, and Virika is imprisoned in solitary confinement in the terrible Pit of the prison planet Tintaris. When she creates art in her cell, she's punished. She is medicated, without her consent. She has no hope of escape: but one of the warders, Kalima, is sympathetic to her plight. And finally Virika, with a decade's worth of rage, is free...

Countess has the framework of a good novel, but doesn't really work at novella level. There's little sense of the passage of time (that 'decade's worth of rage' comes from a random comment about something happening a decade ago) and the vengeance consists mostly of piracy and sabotage, with a side order of tracking down the rival who framed her. Virika's title of 'Countess' is never really justified, and her personal relationships feel shallow.

There is much to like here, but I'd have enjoyed it more at novel length with more depth, more sense of the interminable imprisonment, more explication of Virika's post-prison rise to success and happiness.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 10 SEP 2024.

2024/116: In Ascension — Martin MacInnes

‘I mean I want to explore this strangeness as rigorously as I can, and to see myself in it too.’ [loc. 676]

In Ascension won the Arthur C Clarke Award this year, and deservedly so. There are echoes of Rendezvous with Rama, and protagonist Leigh quotes Clarke's maxim that 'Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear indistinguishable from magic'. But Leigh is a (possibly neurodivergent) woman, and her experiences are much stranger than anything I recall from Golden Age SF.

The novel takes place in the near future. Leigh has grown up in the Netherlands with an abusive father, an emotionally distant mother, and her younger sister Helena, who she's tried to protect. Leigh trains as a marine biologist, and is thrilled to be part of an expedition on board the Endeavour, exploring an undersea vent in the western Atlantic. The depth readings are anomalous: one survey shows the trench as 12 kilometres deep, another triples that. And something odd happens to those who dive there: but Leigh can't remember quite what it was.

That section of the novel ends abruptly, and the story picks up a couple of years later. Leigh is working with samples from the Endeavour, trying to design a robust form of algae that will provide a sustainable food supply in space: she's been recruited to a project which plans to use astonishing new technology to send a spacecraft -- and three humans -- outwards, a million times further than any previous crewed vessel. She's bound by confidentiality agreements, so can't tell her sister -- or her mother, who is declining mentally and physically -- much about what she's doing. But the work is more important than anything else.

Leigh is a 'difficult' woman: pushing people away, unwilling to recognise her own emotions, determined not to be defined by her past. (Late in the novel there's a section from Helena's point of view, which casts some of Leigh's statements and behaviours into doubt: but I think Leigh's version of her childhood is valid and honest.) She's also the ideal person for her role, unfazed by the long hours, the repetition, the isolation, the lack of information about the mission. And above all she is a scientist, endlessly fascinated by the living world of which she is a part, endlessly surprised by and curious about her work. I learnt a great deal about many things, including archaea, cell structure, symbiosis and slime moulds (which can navigate to the nearest star).

I wasn't wholly convinced by the ending, which seems to imply a circularity of plot as well as a call-back to an argument earlier in the novel. McInnes' writing is gorgeous, the characters flawed and human and sometimes refreshingly kind, and the story itself is cosmically vast, mysterious and yet utterly rooted in the phenomenon of life on Earth. Proper wide-screen SF, without the fallbacks of monsters or warfare or colonisation, In Ascension is humane and transcendent. I'm looking forward to a reread in the next few years.

In my mind, the world is not reasonable, and can never be made reasonable. It is much more interesting than that. [loc. 280]

2024/115: The Book of Two Ways — Jodie Picoult

...what fascinated me most about the Book of Two Ways was how comforting it would be to have a map to reach the afterlife. Even the Ancient Egyptians recognized that knowledge was the difference between a good death and a bad one. [p. 211]

The Book of Two Ways is an ancient Egyptian text is a map of the underworld, describing two routes to the afterlife -- by land or by water -- and the lake of fire and knife wielders that lies between those paths. The Book of Two Ways is a novel about Dawn, a 'death doula', who helps the dying towards a good death: and it is about her marriage to physicist Brian, her youthful affair with archaeologist Wyatt, and her daughter Meret.

The novel opens with a plane crash, and then seems to split into two timelines: 'water/Boston', in which Dawn struggles with her husband's potential infidelity (he's been targetted by a student), and 'land/Egypt', in which Dawn sets off for Cairo to see Wyatt again. There are several passages describing Everett's 'multi-world' theory of quantum physics, implying that there are versions of Dawn splitting off at each choice she makes. There's also a great deal of Egyptology, which made me happy: and a certain amount of misogyny in that Dawn's original theories about the Book of Two Ways, and how it's positioned in tombs, have been claimed by Wyatt.

This was an interesting read, though Dawn is not always a likeable character. Actually, all three of the main characters (Dawn, Wyatt and Brian) behave badly at one point or another: dishonesty, secrecy, pettiness. But that is what humans do: and Dawn's behaviour in her personal life is somewhat balanced by her care for her dying clients. I especially liked the five things she tells caregivers to say to people they love before they die: 'I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.'. (The author's afterword cites sources for this, and for a great deal of the Egyptology and physics.) And I liked the parallels between her work and the treatment of the dead in Ancient Egypt. I enjoyed this more than I'd expected, though the ending is unsatisfying.

Fulfils the ‘an author 'everyone' has read, except you’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge. Picoult is a super-popular author, who is best-known for her novels about families, relationships and Big Themes. The word 'poignant' often crops up... From other reviews, I suspect The Book of Two Ways is not typical of her novels: many readers seemed disappointed or frustrated.

2024/114: Dead Egyptians — Del Blackwater

"The veil is so thin in Egypt."
"The veil? the veil between us and [the ghosts], you mean?"
This pleased him. "The same!" Then, noting the lack of introduction, he said, "Aleister Crowley -- a pleasure to make your acquaintance. [p. 31]

Albion Stanley is a young Englishman returning to Egypt in 1902, after many years' absence and a degree at Cambridge. Since childhood, when he encountered the spirit of legendary architect and physician Imhotep, he's been surrounded by ghosts and terrified of the dead. But anybody who's drunk of the Nile will return to Egypt: and Imhotep assured him, as a child, that he would be waiting.

Meanwhile Albion finds himself caught up in the occult experiments of Aleister Crowley, the wickedest man in the world: he and Crowley have history, but Albion is less enthusiastic about their liaison now that he's in Egypt, awaiting his reunion with Imhotep. He has so much that he wants to learn -- and he's suspicious of anything that Crowley wants to teach him. In Egypt, the dead are very much present, and Albion discovers that the ancient myths of Egypt have not faded away into dust. But he has to keep his occult explorations completely separate from his work as a translator for the Antiquities Service.

Dead Egyptians is a rambling novel, first in a projected series: the ambience of Cairo and the early twentieth century -- with the glitter of fashionable society and the taint of colonialism -- is beautifully evoked. Albion's interactions with Imhotep are intriguing, and he learns of past lives in which he was ... not an Englishman. And the author has used hieroglyphic symbols as dividers, to indicate various plot themes and nuances: I was doubtful at first, but this definitely added to the reading experience.

There are quite a few typos and homonyms in the second half of the novel (for example, 'horde after horde of 12th dynasty jewellery' or 'an uncommon site in the museum') but the wealth of historical detail kept my attention, even when Albion's adventures with the eponymous 'dead Egyptians' did not.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 24 AUG 2024.

2024/113: The World According to Bob — James Bowen

‘Saw you with Boris, James,’ she smiled. ‘Did he see you all right?’
‘No he didn’t as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘ He gave me a pile of Swiss Francs.’ [p. 146]

Read for the 52 Book Club reading challenge: I'd bought it years ago, along with A Street Cat Named Bob, which I read last summer and found uplifting and inspiring. This is very much more of the same: Bob is a characterful and opinionated cat, and confounds those who bother his human (including a thrilling, and rather gory, moment where he sees off a potential mugger). When James is ill, Bob tries to help him; when an interfering busybody tells James that Bob is unhappy and doesn't want to be with him, Bob 'gave the woman a really disdainful look, then padded his way back towards me. He began rubbing his head against the outside of my leg, and purring noisily'. [p. 25] Bob, sadly, does not attack Boris Johnson when he 'amusingly' donates a handful of Swiss francs, instead of actual spendable money, to James.

Reading this -- which is a quick and easy read -- inspired me to find out what had happened to Bob and James since their moments of fame. That made me sad. They'd moved to Carshalton, away from the inner city, on the proceeds of books and film. Bob had escaped and been hit by a car, and died: this sent James spiralling into depression, exacerbated by theft, assault and treachery. He lost the house, ended up back on the streets and (briefly) back on heroin. report in the Sun. Poor guy.

Fulfils the ‘Written by a ghostwriter’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.