2012/65: Dead Water -- Simon Ings

They have no idea where they are, or when, but they are beginning to grasp that geography matters less to them than it matters to the living. They make their own journeys with the stories they tell. They fashion – somehow, they don’t yet know how – their own escapes. They survived a barren and virtually unpeopled Arctic: they’ll make a story of this place too. Stories are their breath. Their food. Their blood. And they’re getting stronger. [location 795]

The term 'dead water' refers to the phenomenon of a ship making no headway through waters of different densities and temperatures. It also, in this novel, encodes a global conspiracy involving shipping containers and a mad magnate. The plot of Dead Water -- Simon Ings' best novel yet, I believe; certainly the one I've enjoyed most -- reels from the wreck of the airship Italia in the Arctic (1928) to a nightmarishly-detailed train crash in India (1995), to the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, to a private satellite network run from a grimy Soho office, to dodgy deals done in Dubai, to a ship seized by pirates off Sri Lanka. In range, cast and complexity it's reminiscent of Ian McDonald (India! djinni!) or Neal Stephenson (a long game of vengeance); the structure calls to mind Cloud Atlas, though Dead Water is not a nested narrative. It's also marvellously poetic, and often blackly humorous.

It's bloody hard to write about. <g>

This is a dense novel, a great deal of observation and examination shoehorned in around the plot(s). It's to Ings' credit that his excursions into side-story don't feel forced; the pace seldom slackens, and when it does it's necessary respite. But everything within Dead Water is connected, though some connections are more tenuous than others.

I learnt a lot from this novel. A lot about shipping containers, obviously: but also about the unique problems of building skyscrapers in the desert; forgery techniques in Mumbai; the biological origin of ambergris; fluid dynamics, in smoke as well as water; the impact of 9/11 on the global shipping industry; how to evade bureaucracy when sailing from Darwin to Timor ...

I was fascinated by the boys Abhik and Kaneer, whose life existence is changed by the sudden appearance of a Moyse shipping container; by Eric Moyse, reclusive shipping magnate with a vision (and an excellent retirement plan); by Vibeke Dunfjeld, whose physicist sweetheart -- Eric Moyse's protege -- dies in the Italia crash; by Roopa, daughter of a heroic policeman, and her implacable quest for vengeance. But most of all by the boys, unlimited by space and time, eager for stories and for vengeance of their own.

A few plot threads seemed unresolved, but in a novel of this scope it isn't essential to tie up all the loose ends, and the story as a whole is complete.

After the concert he retires to the penthouse suite, orders all light bulbs removed from the apartment, and behind bespoke blackout curtains that utterly extinguish the desert sun he writes a string of clumsy, blindhanded memos giving his staff explicit instructions not to look at him or speak to him unless they’re spoken to. For six months he subsists entirely on black tea, chocolate and pemmican: Arctic rations.[location 3005]

2012/64: The Drowning Season -- Alice Hoffman

Phillip had not wanted to kill himself, and he truly felt sorry about ruining the hound’s-tooth jacket. He wanted only to be left alone. Alone, so that he could merge with the water. He believed any water was beautiful, whether for its dark waves or for its slow-moving currents. He wanted to be a part of that beauty, traveling at a natural speed through the waves, without effort.
[location 1358]

Esther the White is a Russian emigre with a complex and sometimes treacherous past, living in an isolated seaside property on Long Island. She is vaguely fond of her husband Mischa, though she has no interest in sharing his bed; determined to control her apparently-suicidal son Philip, whose summertime urge towards the water gives the novel its title; and enraged that Philip named his own daughter -- known as Esther the Black -- after Esther the White. You don't use a living person's name for a child.

The person she doesn't know what to do with is Cohen, a landscape artist whom she chose a quarter of a century ago to guard Philip against himself. Cohen knows a great deal about Esther the White, was present at many of her worst moments: he also happens to be in love with her, though she doesn't necessarily recognise this.

There's another tide, the tide of development threatening their peaceful enclave and the community in which they live. Esther the White is going to have to learn to let go of a lot of things -- and by doing so, perhaps bring herself closer to her granddaughter, and to the one person whose loyalty is unquestionable. And pretty much everyone in the novel is going to have to start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Alice Hoffman's writing is always clear, evocative, precise: The Drowning Season is no different, yet it didn't move me as profoundly as some of her other novels. It's possible to read Esther the White as a witch, exerting preternatural control over her family; it's possible to read Philip as not quite human. But these are no more than suggestions. The supernatural, the magical, is less present (or too subtle) in this novel than in, for instance, The Blue Diary.

2012/63: Throne of Glass -- Sarah J Maas

where was that writhing darkness? Why didn’t it show itself so he could just throw her into the dungeon and call off this ridiculous competition? There was something great and deadly concealed within her, and he didn’t like it. [loc. 1788]

First in a YA fantasy series, featuring Celaena Sardothien. Celaena is eighteen, and (of course) beautiful, witty and tough. An infamous assassin who made the mistake of getting caught, she's spent the last year in the grim salt mines of Endovier. Then the captain of the guard shows up with an offer she'd be daft to refuse -- her freedom (eventually). To earn her liberty, though, she has to be the Prince's champion in a lethal tournament: her opponents will be the most experienced and ruthless warriors, fighters and thieves in the land.

Celaena, not over-burdened with humility, does not foresee a problem with this. But gradually she realises that she's starting to develop -- oh no! -- emotions, for both the handsome but laconic Chaol (the captain who recruited her) and the dashing Prince Dorian in whose name she's fighting. And that's not her only worry. The King, Dorian's father, rules with an iron fist: he's outlawed magic and Fae so thoroughly that 'even those who had magic in their blood almost believed it had never really existed, Celaena herself being one of them' [loc 586].

Magic, of course, doesn't take kindly to being suppressed, and the depths of the glass castle hold not only dungeons but ancient secrets. And then there's Nehemia, a princess from a conquered land, who seems to have an agenda all of her own. Can Celaena trust her?

Throne of Glass is definitely aimed at a young-adult audience. It's a pleasant romantic fantasy, with characters who occasionally rise above their stereotypes (strong-but-silent, dashing-and-debauched, gorgeous-and-gifted). There's some witty dialogue, and Celaena's training and fighting scenes are sweaty and believable. But Celaena herself is just a little too arrogant -- and bombproof -- to be a likeable heroine. (Not only does she escape sexual abuse in the salt mines, she also manages to survive her climactic duel without any permanent damage: her face is unmarred.) Clearly 'Celaena' is a pseudonym: she was born Mary Sue ...

2012/62: All My Friends are Superheroes -- Andrew Kaufman

"I don't remember a single monster before I met you," he'd told the Amphibian. "Now they seem to be all over the place."
"You mean there wasn't anything you were afraid of?" the Amphibian had asked him.
"Lots."
"What did they look like?"
It was a funny question. "They didn't look like anything. They were ideas," Tom told him. "Like not being able to pay rent, or being lonely."
"That's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard," the Amphibian replied. [location 447]

All My Friends are Superheroes is a short (108-page), sweet book about love, with a last line of utter perfection. Kaufman's writing is philosophical, plain-spoken and precise. And the title is completely accurate: all Tom's friends are superheroes. There's Someday ('she had red hair, a compact frame and two superpowers: an amazing ability to think big and an unlimited capacity to procrastinate'); the Ticker, whose superpower is her amazing potential; the Clock, the Broken Heart, the Ear, the Amphibian ... Each is sketched in a flashback scene, and these scenes string together to tell the story of Tom's apparently-doomed marriage.

Tom is married to the Perfectionist, but at their wedding she was hypnotised (by Hypno, of course: he happens to be an ex of hers). Now she can't see (or feel, or hear) Tom. The entire novel takes place on a plane trip to Vancouver, with Tom desperately trying to make himself visible before the Perfectionist swans off to a perfect new life.

Try it, right now; boil down your personality and abilities to a single phrase or image. If you can do that, you’re probably a superhero already. Part of the problem with finding your superhero name is that it may refer to something you don’t like about yourself. It may actually be the part of yourself you hate the most, would pay money to get rid of. [location 826]

2012/61: Mr Fox -- Helen Oyeyemi

"What you're doing is building a horrible kind of logic. People read what you write and they say, 'Yes, he is talking about things that really happen," and they keep reading, and it makes sense to them. You're explaining things that can't be defended, and the explanations themselves are mad, just bizarre – but you offer them with such confidence. It was because she kept the chain on the door, it was because he needed to let off steam after a hard day's scraping and bowing at work, it was because she was irritating and stupid, it was because she lied to him, made a fool of him, it was because she had to die, she just had to, it makes dramatic sense, it was because 'nothing is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman', it was because of this, it was because of that. It's obscene to make such things reasonable." [location 1515]

Helen Oyeyemi riffs on the folktale of Reynardine (a man, who may also sometimes be a fox, given to seducing and abandoning / murdering young women) and on the notion of the writer's Muse. (I was reminded repeatedly of Robert Graves' assertion that 'Woman is not a poet: she is either muse or she is nothing', though I think he qualifies this by saying that a female poet is her own muse.)

Mr Fox opens with an encounter between Mr Fox, a successful writer, and his muse Mary Foxe. No relation, except that he invented her -- or believes that he did. She accuses him of killing off his female characters: he tells her that it's ridiculous to be so sensitive about the content of fiction. She counters with a challenge, says it's her turn now. And the rest of the novel twists through the tales they tell one another, from literary New York in 1938, to a spinster in an attic, to a boys' school in London, to an African village, to a European forest where a woman rescues a fox ...

Threaded through these variations are recurring themes: violence against women, misogyny, infidelity, betrayal. There are also at least two love stories. Mr Fox is in love (and lust) with Mary: but Mary would 'like not to disappear when you're not thinking about me' [loc 2317]. To complicate matters, Mr Fox is married, and his wife Daphne suspects the involvement of another woman. It scarcely seems relevant that Mary is an invention. She's eaten up Mr Fox's attention.

The end of Mr Fox is not especially cheerful -- unsurprising, considering the beheadings, poisonings, stabbings etc that have occurred -- but, nevertheless, there are happy endings aplenty.

I think this would make a very good film, though personally I gain more pleasure from reading Oyeyemi's fluid, flexible prose than I'd get from watching the threads unspool outside my head.

And I'm hoping that the book Mr Fox picks up, with a steamboat on the cover and 'Vampires in the Deep South', is Fevre Dream rather than one of Anne Rice's ...

Afterthought: I may be wrong, but though there's a lot of violence in the novel, I don't believe there's any sexual assault; also, much of the violence -- at least in my recollection -- is inflicted with knives or swords. Please let this not be Freudian. Though I fear that it is.

2012/60: Angelica Lost and Found -- Russell Hoban

"Dum spiro, spero, baby, if I may speak classical and modern at the same time."
"Gimme an asterisk."
"'While I breathe, I hope.'" [location 1026]

He's a pictorial representation of an imaginary beast in a Renaissance oil painting. She's the eternal heroine of an epic poem, currently incarnate in San Francisco. Their love is ... complicated.

This is Hoban at his most playful, with a voice that reminds me of R. A. Lafferty -- I'm not sure why -- or, on occasion, John Crowley. This short novel strays from the sublime (Emma Kirkby singing Monteverdi) to the ridiculous (Volatore's ejection from Vassily's body), via hairdressing salons, art galleries, and a rock on the isle of Ebuda.

Volatore is the hitherto-nameless hippogriff ridden by Ruggiero in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. With the help of an intimidated sorcerer, he manages to turn up in contemporary San Francisco. Volatore doesn't stick to one form, either, switching between idea and human and animal. This leads to some touching scenes of (technically) bestiality, and a rather nasty revenge on the aforementioned Vassily.

Angelica Lost and Found doesn't have the wordplay, let alone the mythic resonance, of Riddley Walker: but it's a rollicking read, with undercurrents of profundity and a po-mo self-awareness. ("I was an ontological outlaw" [loc. 974]). There are weird resonances (a painting of 'tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep', the description of which surfaces, variously mangled, from time to time; the voice of Emma Kirkby; the power of placebos) and a continuo regarding the importance of being based in the right reality. Magic realism? Literary fanfiction? Whatever it's filed under, Angelica Lost and Found is vastly inventive.

2012/59: The Siren -- Alison Bruce

... she’d always swum in deep waters, murky in some places, fast-flowing in others, but she’d never seen the danger. That had emerged organically, as a series of developments that had rippled over one another and ultimately carried her too far out of her depth. She was no longer convinced that she could reach the shore, nor even had any idea whether the tide was in ebb or flow.
[location 2998]

I enjoyed Bruce's first Cambridge-based police procedural, Cambridge Blue, not least for its sense of place. The Siren is centred on Mill Road Cemetary, and namechecks plenty of Cambridge geography -- the Reality Checkpoint, Gwydir Street, Parkside Pools ...

DC Goodhew is investigating the disappearance of Kimberly Guyver's baby son, and the death of Kimberley's best friend Rachel. Could it be connected to the time the two girls spent working in Spain, years ago? Is the past buried (or drowned) deep enough? Or is the villain someone closer to home -- Rachel's rough-edged husband, or her boss, or a relative of Kimberley's dead fiance Nick? And where does Jay, a 'locked-in' patient in a Cambridge nursing home, fit in?

Goodhew has plenty to occupy him without the machinations and misunderstandings of his colleagues at Parkside Police Station. Kincaide, Mel and new recruit Sue Gully (perhaps the most likeable character in The Siren) all have agendas of their own, and Goodhew had better watch his step.

There are some nice extended metaphors (including the title) and some unexpected twists, which are made less predictable by clever narrative -- juxtaposition, red herrings, unattributed speech. I also like the way that Bruce portrays Kimberley and Rachel: though they may be towards the chav end of the scale, they don't think of themselves as disadvantaged, inferior or stupid, and they're not stereotyped.