2024/155: We Are All Ghosts in the Forest — Lorraine Wilson

They were not ghosts, but the forest was not just a forest anymore and people had written far too many stories about wolves for them to be unchanged. You tell a thing it is hungry enough times, can you blame it for hunting? [loc. 2388]

Katerina, formerly a photojournalist, lives in her dead grandmother's house, near a small village in Estonia. The villagers think she's a witch (they're right) because she has a knack for herbalism, a talent for talking to bees, a coat whose pockets nearly always give her what she needs, and a ghost cat named Orlando. The forest is semi-sentient, and full of ghosts from the Crash -- when the internet collapsed in on itself, spawning infectious digital ghosts that might be fragments of birdsong, or a galloping horse, or sentient fungus. Or wolves out of fairytales, more intelligent and malevolent than their natural cousins.

The novel begins with Katerina returning to her village with a young boy in tow. His name is Stefan, and he's mute: he gave Katerina a note from his father (a man she doesn't know) asking her to take care of his son. Katerina teaches him to manage the basic tasks of the farm, and tries to find out what became of his father. Could he be somehow linked to the new and terrible illness that's killing travellers? And can Katerina -- with the help of the forest, and the bees, and even the ghosts -- find a cure for it?

This is a slow, dreamy novel, beautifully written and suffused with loneliness and mystery: it reveals its secrets only gradually. The characters seem defined as much as by what they've lost (Katerina mourning her sister, Jaakob trying to 'fish' for the ghost of his husband, Stefan missing his father) as by what they do. There is prejudice (Katerina, as well as being a witch and a traveller, is mixed-race) and xenophobia. The post-technological society that Wilson depicts is as mystical as it's practical. There is great power in stories, and in the ways those stories are told.

Pragmatic and practical, Katerina's inner conflict between her compassion and her fear of emotional connection is vividly depicted: I liked her interactions with the (sometimes prickly) villagers, and she won me over by sprinkling salt on Orlando the Ghost Cat, who turns black to soak up the heat of a stray sunbeam. 'Salt strengthens the signal... Or the current, if that’s how it works. Electricity, either way. Copper powder works better but it also lasts longer and then he starts shredding the rugs'. Definite pandemic vibes here, too, with the isolation and the constant threat of infection... A slow read, but a beautiful one.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 07 NOV 2024.

2024/154: Dreadnought — April Daniels

The dirty little secret about growing up as a boy is if you’re not any good at it, they will torture you daily until you have the good graces to kill yourself. [loc. 82]

YA superhero fiction. Danny, fifteen, has gone to the shopping mall to buy nail polish and is hiding out in an alleyway painting her toenails: it's the one way she can rebel against being stuck in a boy's body. Then a superhero, Dreadnought, falls out of the sky. Dying, he passes his 'mantle' -- his powers -- to Danny. And part of that mantle is changing the recipient's body to match their self-image. 'That is not the chest I woke up with', observes Danny.

She's finally herself: but her transformation is only the start of the novel. It's not easy being a fifteen-year-old superhero, but it's even harder being a girl with an abusive father who could never have accepted Danny's transgender identity, and refuses to believe that Danny can be happy about her new body. Danny quickly discovers that her best friend David is actually a complete jerk: but she makes a new friend, Latina vigilante Calamity. Calamity's a 'greycape', morally ambiguous: blackcapes are villains, and whitecapes are the good guys. The local whitecape chapter is the Legion Pacifica, who contact Danny and invite her to Legion Tower. Not all of the Legion are cool with the new Dreadnought, and TERFy Graywytch questions her gender. Danny's happier hanging out with Calamity and fighting crime, but their ambition is greater than their ability: going up against a major blackcape is not a smart move.

I enjoyed this a lot, though did feel that most of the characters could have done with more backstory, and indeed more personality. I'd have liked more world-building, too, though there are some intriguing snippets of superhero history: 'In the last great gasp of radio journalism, the whole world stayed glued to their sets to listen to the live reports as [the original] Dreadnought and Mistress Malice savaged each other...' But this gave me a warm glow and a nostalgic affection for the MCU in its heyday (the Legion are reminiscent of the Avengers: a super-strong fighter, an android, a Norse deity, a guy in a suit of armour, a witch...). Not sure I'll read the sequel just yet, but I'd recommend this as a fun read.

I bought this in DEC 2020, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2024/153: We'll Prescribe You a Cat — Syou Ishida (translated by Emmie Madison Shimoda)

‘The amount of time you spent together probably matters, but less time doesn’t mean less love. Whether it’s a day or a year, human or cat, and even if we may never see them again, there are those who are irreplaceable in our lives.’ [loc. 2613]

Somewhere in Kyoto, in an old building down a gloomy cobbled alleyway, is the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. It can only be found by those who need it, who are weighed down by emotional pain. And the door is very heavy, but you have to keep pushing. Inside, terse nurse Chitose will direct you to Doctor Nikké, who will -- as it says on the tin -- prescribe you a cat. An actual cat, in a carrier, with a printed instruction sheet.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat is a series of linked short stories. Kagawa is unhappy at work, and is prescribed a cat who upends his life: he ends up in a much more pleasant job. Koga loathes his new supervisor, who's full of compliments for everyone: his cat helps him connect. There's a ten-year-old girl who's struggling socially, a perfectionist who can't forgive others, a geiko who's lost her own cat and can't get over the guilt. Many of these patients also encounter Dr Kokoro, who looks exactly like Dr Nikké: and Abino the geiko is shocked to find that Nurse Chitose looks exactly like her. There are disturbing rumours about the unit occupied by the Clinic for the Soul: that it's jinxed; that it was used by unscrupulous cat breeders; that it's haunted by ghosts...

Chitose and Nikké are delightful characters, and each cat that they prescribe has a distinct personality. The patients, with their problems and their resolutions, are sensitively written, and though there are echoes of loss, grief and cruelty beneath the surface, the overall mood is joyous.

I liked this much more than I'd expected. The translation reads smoothly, and the hints of magic realism never overdone.

Buddy-read with N, but I kept getting ahead as it was so compelling.

You know the old saying, “A cat a day keeps the doctor away.” Cats are more effective than any other medicine out there.’

2024/152: The Bright Sword — Lev Grossman

“You are not who you think you are, and Britain is not what you think it is. I return you now to Camelot. Your disaster is already in progress.” [loc. 3099]

I rate Grossman's Magicians trilogy (The Magicians, The Magician King,The Magician's Land) very highly, but wasn't sure I wanted to read his take on the Matter of Britain. It was a Daily Deal, though, and I couldn't (well, didn't) resist. I think I loved it, but it's still too soon to say. There is a lot in its nearly 700 pages.

The story begins with Collum, an orphan and bastard who at seventeen is a spectacular warrior, heading for Camelot to pledge allegiance to King Arthur. He arrives too late: the Battle of Camlann was a fortnight ago, almost all the Knights of the Round Table (well, those who survived the Quest for the Holy Grail) are dead or missing, and Arthur was last seen being borne away, gravely wounded, on a magical ship. Those few who remain -- Sir Bedivere, Sir Dagonet, Sir Palomides, Sir Dinadan, Sir Scipio -- are empty of purpose and drowned in misery. Over the course of the novel, their histories (and some of the most famous episodes from Arthurian tradition) are explored, and we learn what the Round Table and Camelot meant to each knight. Morgan, Nimue and Guinevere are important figures, though -- unlike the knights -- none gets her own chapter. And meanwhile, there's a Green Knight and a new Quest and, perhaps, a new king.

This is post-Roman Britain, replete with anachronisms ('the Dark Ages king and the pretty high medieval trappings, Camelot and all the rest of it, [writers] who pick and choose what they like from history and sweep the messy bits under the rug', says Grossman in his entertaining Afterword), a land laid waste by the conflict between God and Faerie, a land threatened by Saxons fleeing rising seas to the east, and by the old gods, and by the new king at Camelot. I found the vestiges of pre-Roman Britain -- the light of civilisation going out, the people who 'scurried back to the old hill forts, which they barely remembered how to live in', the tribes that were once legions -- more engaging and poignant than the medieval-flavoured fantasies of flying ships, shining swords and combat in plate armour.

I very much liked the sense of time in this novel, of the events as happening at one brief moment between a long past and an equally complex future: of the history of Britain as a continual roil of story, 'the past never wholly lost, and the future never quite found'. I liked the knights' tales, which encompass cultural difference ('what the fuck is a zero?' someone asks Sir Palomides, who's from Baghdad), neurodivergence, gender and sexuality, and religious faith. Every time I dip into the novel for a quotation or a reference, I find myself rereading a page or so. I'm looking forward to revisiting The Bright Sword in years to come.

He looked up at the empty clouds, and ... wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one. [last lines]

2024/151: Can't Spell Treason Without Tea — Rebecca Thorne

... unlike Kianthe, who’d ignored this problem and hoped it’d go away, Reyna had spent the time strategizing. She’d always known her freedom wouldn’t come easily, or without a fight—but the Arcandor was supposed to be neutral, and thus, a fight wasn’t truly an option. Two people couldn’t topple a country. [p. 284]

Sapphic romantasy with Reyna (bodyguard to the ruthless Queen) and Kianthe (the Arcandor, leader of the mages) running away together to start a book-and-tea shop. Their elopement is triggered by an assassination attempt on the Queen, foiled by Reyna -- who's wounded in the process, and realises just how little regard said Queen has for her loyal staff.

...I just had to go back and amend that paragraph because I'd mixed up the two characters, an error which I think illustrates my response to this book. 

Though the chapter viewpoints alternate between the two women, they don't have especially distinct voices. They don't really do things as a couple (the books are Kianthe's thing, while Reyna never rereads a novel; the tea is Reyna's thing). Though they make much of their excellent communication ('This was dissolving from a productive conversation into a defensive debate. Kianthe was prone to that, but usually Reyna guided her to a better path') they don't really seem to understand one another very well.

I think I'd have enjoyed the book more if it had started earlier in their romance, rather than presenting them as an established couple -- albeit a couple who have never lived together. And as far as 'cosy' fantasy goes, the stakes here (angry dragons, treason, bandits, murderous monarch) feel rather too epic. I found the ending rather unsatisfactory -- it's basically just postponing any reckoning -- and the constant use of 'tome' instead of 'book' ('the tome on her bedside table'; 'plucked a random tome from the shelves') became irritating quite quickly.

Some nice themes and ideas, but it didn't engage me enough to read more in the series.

2024/150: The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door — H G Parry

Eddie has wanted to hide from the world. Hero had wanted to make it new. Alden and I, in our own ways, loved the old, safe world -- Ashfield and Camford, tradition and beauty, the sunlit days of our childhoods before the Great War.
But the world had never been safe, not for everybody. It had been broken for a very long time, and the war had only shown those cracks for what they were. [loc. 5056]

Clover Hill has grown up knowing that magic isn't for her: it's the realm of the Families, the aristocrats who have magical blood. Nevertheless, when her brother Matthew returns from war terribly wounded by a faerie attack at the Battle of Amiens, she becomes determined to find a way to heal him. She enters Camford, founded by the magical department of Oxford University and in the thirteenth century, as a scholarship witch, somewhat out of her depth both socially and academically. When golden youth Alden Lennox-Fontaine finds her reading a book about faerie magic -- which is banned, and all doors to the faerie realm supposedly closed -- he finds her intriguing enough to draw into his coterie. Clover becomes friends with Hero, Eddie and Alden, and they discover a shared interest in the faerie doors and where they might lead. But the doors were shut for a reason, and their daring experiments have catastrophic consequences.

Dark academia at its best, with a thoughtful exploration of class, privilege and prejudice. I've encountered some elements of this world, and this plot, before: for example, in The Golden Enclaves and a plethora of other works where the happiness of the many depends on the suffering of a few. There are plenty of novels about 'a school for magic' and the intense friendships that outsiders can form: there are plenty of novels about hubris. For me, this novel succeeded because of Clover's voice, and her (impulsive and sometimes immature) personality. The pace is slow and considered, the characters diverse in a period-typical way (Clover's mentor, Lady Winter, is from Madras; one of the characters is gay, one is bisexual; working-class characters as vividly drawn as the aristocrats). Though much of the first half of the novel (set in 1920) takes place in Camford, the second half sees Clover visiting London and Paris.

One minor complaint is the lack of Brit-picking: nobody in 1920 would think of anything as 'the size of a fifty-pence piece', and there are occasional unBritish turns of phrase ('you didn't have to come meet me'). Overall, though, I enjoyed this very much, and am now keen to read Parry's other novels.

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

2024/149: The Betrayal — Helen Dunmore

The blob of sun on the corridor wall wavers. The day shines before him, impossibly ordinary and beautiful. This must be how the dead think of life. All those things they used to take for granted, and can never have again. [p. 13]

Sequel to The Siege, The Betrayal begins ten years later, in late 1952. Anna is a nursery teacher, Andrei is a doctor, Kolya is a sullen and uncommunicative teenager who annoys the neighbours with his piano-playing. Andrei is asked by a colleague to give an opinion on a sick child, Gorya: "My ‘initial findings’," says the colleague, "are that this patient is the son of — an extremely influential person." No wonder he wants to pass the case to somebody else. Gorya forms a liking for Andrei, so Gorya's father Volkov -- a commissar in Stalin's secret police -- insists that Andrei takes the case. It does not end well, and Andrei, together with the Jewish doctor who performs surgery on the boy, become scapegoats.

Anna meanwhile is trying to conceive; trying not to draw her boss's attention to the fact that her father was a banned writer; hiding her father's diaries, which not even Andrei knows about; making a dress for the Doctors' Ball, from some silk left to her by Marina, with a sewing machine lent to her by her wealthy friend Julia; trying to keep envious neighbours at bay; trying to keep going after Andrei's arrest. She is a very ordinary person, but she does have good friends, and they are her salvation.

Andrei is the core of this novel, in particular his charged interactions with Volkov. His talent for diplomacy can only take him so far, though, and his professional ethics won't protect him from the system. In the background is the Doctors' Plot conspiracy, in which a number of doctors -- mostly Jewish -- were accused of deliberately causing harm to top Soviet figures. Andrei, though not Jewish, is subject to many of the same injustices and indignities. But Volkov still has a spark of humanity left in him.

I didn't find this as compelling a read as The Siege: in places it felt almost formulaic, and distinctly predictable. (I kept expecting more of a twist, perhaps Kolya's involvement in the denunciation of Andrei.) Perhaps the lack of tension was simply because, unlike the siege of Leningrad, the terrors of Stalin's Russia are so well-known, so common a theme in fiction. 

At the end of the novel, Anna celebrates the death of Stalin: "I hope that just before he died, he saw the ghosts of all the people he’d murdered, and knew that they were waiting for him." And perhaps that new world she was hoping for at the end of The Siege will have a chance at last.

I bought The Betrayal in November 2021, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2024/148: A Trick of the Light — Louise Penny

'That’s what this is about, Inspector. Bringing all the terrible stuff up from where it’s hiding.’
‘Just because you can see it,’ Beauvoir persisted, ‘doesn’t make it go away.’
‘True, but until you see it you haven’t a hope.’ [loc. 3510]

Clara Morrow, after a crippling attack of nerves, has celebrated her first solo art show: first at the gallery in Montreal and then in the little village of Three Pines, which can't be found on any maps. Her husband Peter, who is trying not to show his envy, discovers a dead body in their garden the morning after the festivities. The dead woman is Clara's old friend-turned-enemy, Lillian Dyson: near her body is an Alcoholics Anonymous token. Was Lillian dealing with step 9 in the programme, making amends to those you've hurt? And was she murdered because somebody couldn't forgive the pain she'd inflicted?

There are different kinds of pain in this novel. Gamache is still mourning the agents who died in the factory debacle (Bury Your Dead) and Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his second-in-command, is still in constant physical pain from the injuries he sustained. Jean-Guy has also separated from his wife, and is trying to summon the courage to invite another woman on a date. And there is Peter's consuming envy, and Lillian's vicious art criticism, and Ruth Zardo's bitterness, and art critic Denis Fortin's homophobia.

This is a novel about forgiveness and its lack, about addiction and breaking the cycle, about secrets that ferment and others that are spoken. Penny has an extraordinary knack for observing and describing emotions: her large cast all have complex and vivid internal landscapes, and Gamache has the gifts of understanding and compassion -- as well as a steely determination to solve the murder and see justice done. That he does so with grace and sympathy is, for me, the appeal of this series. I have stocked up on the next few novels to get me through the British winter...

Not for the first time Three Pines struck Myrna as the equivalent of the Humane Society. Taking in the wounded, the unwanted. The mad, the sore. This was a shelter. Though, clearly, not a no-kill shelter.

2024/147: O Caledonia — Elspeth Barker

The billows washed into Janet’s face, the wind took her breath, she clung to the mane, elemental air and water, terror and ecstasy. She could die like this and never know the difference, horsed on the sightless couriers of the air. [loc. 1710]

O Caledonia opens with the murder of sixteen-year-old Janet, and then flashes back to her short, unhappy but vividly beautiful life. Janet is a misfit in her family: poorly parented, fonder of animals than of humans (who behave inexplicably and unpredictably), intelligent, romantic, solitary. She is an utterly charming and relatable protagonist, though I do sympathise (a little) with her parents. I saw myself in Janet who, given a pram to play with, repurposes it as a chariot for Dandelion, the family's apex predator: 'so long as in transit he could gnaw at a sparrow’s wing or other pungent trophy from his lair'. Dandelion is not the only excellent cat in this novel: also of note is Mouflon, Aunt Lila's cat, who caused the death of Lila's husband. By way of contrast, when Janet and her brother Francis are presented with a new baby sister, they bury her under a heap of earth and dead leaves.

Janet's perception of the world is marvellously rich and voluptuous. There are hints of synaesthesia, and vivid multisensory responses to words: "...she intended to be a princess... she loved the word, with its tight beginning and its rustling, cascading end, like the gown a princess would wear, with a tiny waist and ruffles and trains of swirling silken skirts. Purple of course" [loc. 241]. The sheer exuberance of her solitary experiences in the wilderness surrounding Auchnasaugh Castle, the rambling family home, is uplifting -- and in sharp contrast to Janet's misery in the company of her family, and especially at boarding school.

For some reason -- perhaps the comparisons to I Capture the Castle and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, perhaps the measured and precise prose -- I'd assumed O Caledonia was written in the 1950s (when it's set) or a little later. No: Elspeth Barker's only novel, it was published in 1991, to great acclaim.

I bought this in April 2022, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

Maggie O'Farrell's introduction drew me in when I read the sample chapters...

2024/146: Still the Sun — Charlie N Holmberg

“Good night, Pell.”
The words are hard, final, but they give me pause. “What does that mean?”
He glances at me, bright eyes hard. “What does what mean?”
“Good night,” I repeat, letting go of the knob. “What’s ‘night’?” [loc. 2119]

Pell is a metalworker and engineer living in Emgarden, a small village which may be the only settlement that exists. Nearby is an old fortified tower, and an amaranthine wall which can't be crossed. There are thirty-eight people living in Emgarden: no newcomers, no births -- and Pell keeps losing her train of thought when she tries to think about that.

The villagers live in a cycle of sun and mist: eight hours of sun, five of mists which cloak the land. One cycle, a stranger appears at Pell's door during the mists. He says his name is Moseus, one of the two keepers of the tower, and he promises Pell plenty of scrap metal if she can help him get the machines in the tower working again. Pell, who frequently has to relinquish her tools to make farming implements so that they don't all starve, accepts with enthusiasm. But when she's amid the Ancient machines, working out their mechanisms and how to restart them, she experiences visions that could almost be memories -- and that seem to be connected with the other inhabitant of the tower, the mysterious Heartwood.

Pell is confused for much of the novel. Every time she begins to understand something, she discovers another mystery, and some of those mysteries have to do with her own sense of incompleteness, and her increasingly unreliable memory. When she finally discovers her connection to the tower, to Moseus and to Heartwood, it's almost an anticlimax except that it is extremely, gigantically Epic.

I enjoyed the engineering, but despite her first-person narration I didn't really warm to Pell, and the romance didn't convince me. There was very little world-building, though there is a rationale for that: still, I'd have liked more than desert, flowers and machinery.

An Amazon First Reads offer in June 2024.