2020/87: The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter -- Theodora Goss

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I can’t tell you how much I regret allowing Mary and the rest of them to see this manuscript while I was writing it. First they started commenting on what I had written, and then they insisted I make changes in response to their comments. Well, I’m not going to. I’m going to leave their comments in the narrative itself. ... It will be a new way of writing a novel, and why not? This is the ’90s, as Mary pointed out. It’s time we developed new ways of writing for the new century. We are no longer in the age of Charles Dickens or George Eliot, after all. We are modern. And, of course, monstrous . . .[p. 20]

Mary Jekyll's father died fourteen years ago (it was rumoured to be a suicide) and her mother has just passed away after years of madness. Mary is destitute, and quite alone in the world save for her redoubtable housekeeper Mrs Poole: but, investigating her mother's affairs, she finds a regular payment for the upkeep of one Diana Hyde, who turns out to be all that Mary is not -- emotional, savage and unconcerned with Victorian morality.

Together the two young women discover a disturbing network of scientists -- all male, of course -- known as the Société des Alchimistes. And they also encounter the daughters (by blood or otherwise) of some of these men: the beautiful scientific researcher Beatrice Rappacini, the lithe and dangerous Catherine Moreau, and the tragically youthful-looking Justine Frankenstein. ('That book is a pack of lies. If Mrs. Shelley were here, I would slap her for all the trouble she caused,' says Mary crossly on page 4.)

With the help of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, the women investigate the Whitechapel murders, and their own diverse natures. Each bears -- each is -- the legacy of her father's experimentation: each is dealing with her own monstrousness in different ways.

This is an entertaining and cleverly-constructed work of what I like to term literary fanfiction: a transformative work exploring and experimenting with canon texts. In her afterword, Goss describes the genesis of the novel: "This novel began as a question I asked myself while writing my doctoral dissertation: Why did so many of the mad scientists in nineteenth-century narratives create, or start creating but then destroy, female monsters?" [p. 401] In The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter these experimental monsters are given dimension and personality. Catherine, presented as the author of the work we are reading, is vexed by (but includes) the interjections of her companions, each of whom has a distinctive voice and a unique agenda: this gives the narrative a nicely post-modern flavour. All the women are young (mentally if not physically) and, though they have led very different lives, are united by their sense of being outsiders. They are not always sensible, but they are determined. And though their experiences have not been typical of the lives of young Victorian gentlewomen, they are perfectly capable of playing that role.

I could have done with slightly less Holmes (though he does facilitate their adventures and enquiries) and slightly more Mrs Poole (though she seems confused as to whether she's ever been married). But I am looking forward to reading the next in the series.

"With pockets, women could conquer the world!" [p. 191]

2020/86: Cottingley -- Alison Littlewood

‘They don’t really like us. They don’t want to play. They don’t really know how to dance. They only wish to make us want to be where they are.’ ‘And where is that, child?’ I asked, but she would not say... [loc. 462]

Another NewCon Press novella, this is a dark and unsettling epistolary tale, framed as the letters written by country gentleman Lawrence H. Fairclough in the 1920s, initially to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and later to his associate Edward Gardner. Fairclough, a resident of Cottingley whose granddaughter Harriet has shown him the fairies (and has complained to him of being 'stung' by one) wishes to contribute to Conan Doyle's work. The fairies encountered by Harriet, her mother Charlotte and Fairclough himself are not like those photographed by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith -- they are 'minuscule, but very bright', and (Harriet informs him) they do not like to be looked at.

Fairclough's letters provide a one-sided narrative of increasing unease: it's easy to understand the tone and content of the unseen letters he receives in return. Clearly the fairies encountered by his family are rather less benign, and Littlewood does an excellent job of building suspense and a creeping sense of horror.

Very atmospheric, with a thoroughly credible narrative voice and just enough explication that the ending is really quite dark.

2020/85: Down -- Ally Blue

A vision of vast black seas exploded behind Armin’s eyes — oceans spanning entire worlds, deep and crushing, cold as space. In that endless void swam things whose shape and substance defied description, whose thoughts cut like razor wire and left his psyche slashed and bleeding. [loc. 4671]

A science fiction novel with horror elements, set seven kilometres beneath the ocean's surface, and featuring a romance between two male characters. Mo Rees is a deep-sea miner, part of the team on the BathyTech 3 facility which sits at the edge of Richards Deep, off the coast of Chile. Their rover has picked up images of a strange spherical object on the ocean floor: a team of scientists, led by Dr Armin Savage-Hall who has seen something similar in Antarctica, arrives to examine it.

Mo and Armin hook up almost immediately, but that's not the focus of the novel. The thing they bring back from the deep begins to affect the crew of the BathyTech 3, and the visiting scientists: hallucinations, mood swings, and worse. And the strange mermaid-fish -- which most still believe are just stories -- seem to be gathering in the darkness beyond the module.

Down is extremely atmospheric and generally well-paced, though I was not entirely convinced by Mo and Armin's instant connection. Still, they both have something to bring to the story. Less convincing was the future setting: it's some time in the 22nd century, but the technology (apart from, importantly, the actual deep-sea mining module) doesn't seem especially advanced. And apart from Mo's backstory, which involves a long blackout in Dubai during his childhood -- it's made him tough and resourceful -- there's little sense of the outside world.

The ending is unsettling, and I felt Mo and Armin's responses to its implications were a little out of character, a little too blase: but then, they've been changed by their experiences in the deep.

Would make an excellent film!

2020/84: False Value -- Ben Aaronovitch

...a tingle of vestigium. Nothing professionally worrying, just a whiff of glitter and stardust. A middle-aged woman a couple of armpits down the carriage from me said, ‘It’s a godawful small affair,’ and burst into tears. As the train pulled out I thought I heard a man’s voice say, ‘To the girl with the mousy hair,’ but the noise of the train drowned it out. By the time we got to Colliers Wood, nobody was singing but I’d picked up enough of a nearby conversation to learn that David Bowie was dead. [loc. 118]

After the story arc that culminated in Lies Sleeping, I was interested to see where Aaronovitch was going next with Peter Grant, the Folly, Beverley &co. The answer? Old Street roundabout, which is where I used to work BC (Before Covid). Or in another sense, 42. (The answer, that is. This book features a plethora of Hitch-Hiker's Guide references, which became rather wearing ...)

Set in winter, 2015/2016, before the world changed. Peter is undercover as security at the Serious Cybernetics Corporation, trying to work out what's in the secret room with all its safeguards. Also interested in that room and its contents is Stephen, who is a person of interest from a previous case: cue back-and-forth timeline. There's some connection to an artifact known as the Mary Engine, which may have been constructed by Ada Lovelace. And there's a missing music book for a 137-key fairground organ.

False Value didn't really satisfy me, because it felt almost like the beginning of a new series -- effectively a new cast, and new locations: Peter now lives with Beverley -- and at this point that's not what I want. I was hoping for more Nightingale, more foxen, more Varvara (whatever happened to Varvara?), more Abigail and Guleed and Jaget ... Which is not to say that Peter's new colleagues are uninteresting, but they are not magical (though one is trans, which is well-handled).

I enjoyed the Old Street references (ah, drinks at the Magic Roundabout!) and the scenes with Peter and Bev, and I suspect that a reread would help me appreciate the plot more than on first reading. (It might also help me make sense of the title.) But this is probably my least favourite of the series to date.

2020/83: Prophecies, Libels and Dreams -- Ysabeau Wilce

Her hair is ruffled black feathers, it is slickery green snakes, it is as fluffy and lofty as frosting. Her eyes—one, two, three, four, maybe five—are as round and polished as green apples, are long tapered crimson slits, they are as flat white as sugar. She’s as narrow as nightfall, She’s as round as winter, She’s as tall as moonrise, She’s shorter than love. [loc. 1859]

I bought this a while back but don't think I ever read all the way through. Having indulged in a reread of the Flora trilogy, I wanted more Califa, so this was the obvious next read. It's definitely written for an adult audience rather than YA, and some of the stories feature younger versions of the 'parental' generation in the Flora books. (Though sadly not Hotspur, who is my crush.)

The collection contains seven stories ranging in length from 'short' to 'novella'. My favourites were 'The Lineaments of Gratified Desire' and 'Metal More Attractive', whose protagonist is Hardhands -- teenaged, Machiavellian, a powerful magician and a beautiful bisexual. There are a couple of asides here (a drowned sister?) that don't quite mesh with Hardhands' backstory in the Flora novels, but nothing significant. Hardhands is an absolute, exuberant delight, and I would happily read whole novels about him.

I wish there was more Califa. Wilce's writing is luscious and surprising, and her cities feel like places I've visited: I'd like to return.

2020/80-82: Flora Segunda, Flora's Dare, Flora's Fury -- Ysabeau Wilce

I don't want my heart to be hard, and even if I end up like Poppy, trying to drink my heart to death, or like Mamma, trying to work my heart to death, at least I will know that I have a heart and I used it honestly. [Flora Segunda, p. 39]

Reread Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog for Lockdown Book Club: I also reread Flora's Dare and Flora's Fury, all in paper format. I am sad that these novels -- which are immense fun and have a distinctive voice and a fascinating setting -- never made it into Kindle format ... and I'm sad that there were no further novels after Flora's Fury, which ended on something of a cliffhanger.

Thoughts from this reread: it's a society in which women are at least as likely as men to get the 'top' jobs; Flora is quite mature for her age (but there is little or no sexual threat); never trust something that just wants a little taste of your spiritual energy...

My original reviews:
Flora Segunda (15MAR09)
Flora's Dare (23MAR09)
Flora's Fury (15JUN12)

2020/79: LOTE --Shola von Reinhold

The classic counterpart traits of the Arcadian, like a fondness for old objects and buildings, and an inclination towards historicised figments, were, as far as I was concerned, much easier to inhabit for white people, who continued to cast and curate all the readymade, ready-to-hand visions. Being born in a body that’s apparently historically impermissible, however, only meant I was not as prone to those traps that lie in wait for Arcadians — the various and insidious forms of history-worship and past-lust. [loc. 178]

Lote, by (non-binary?) debut author Shola von Reinhold, is one of Jacaranda's #Twentyin2020 initiative -- publishing twenty books by black British writers this year. It's a stunning novel that sets a high bar: aesthetics, queerness, Blackness, alchemy, Modernism ...

Narrator Mathilde Adamarola is Black, working-class and gay. Devoted to Transfixions (sensual, almost hallucinatory obsessions with aesthetic icons such as Stephen Tennant, Josephine Baker, Jeanne Duval, the Marchesa Casati) and prone to Escapes (self-reinventions, rejections of one self's name, friends, social context), Mathilde discovers and is Transfixed by the queer Black Modernist Scottish poet Hermia Druitt (or Drumm), first seen in an old photograph where she is dressed as an angel, her hair 'an excruciation of coil and kink', not treated or straightened or tamed.

Determined to learn more about Hermia, Mathilde blags a place on an artistic residency in a small European town. The Residency is focussed on the work of Garreaux, and a branch of performance art known as Thought Art. It is wholly impenetrable, and antithetical to Mathilde's passionate interests. But Mathilde's encounter with Erskine-Lily, a local eccentric whose walls are adorned with images of Mathilde's Transfixions. Erskine-Lily introduces Mathilde to the Book of the Luxuries, a mystical Renaissance tract revived and reimagined by an interwar 'modernist cult' known as LOTE. (Think 'lotus eaters'.) LOTE, whose members include all of Mathilde's Transfixions, focussed on pleasure, adornment and luxury -- notions rejected by the heterosexual, white, Eurocentric establishment. But is there a connection between Garreaux and Hermia? And what will the irridescent tincture, brewed from an ancient recipe in true alchemical fashion by Erskine-Lily and Mathilde, reveal to them?

This is a lush, queer, exuberant novel, playfully interrogating decadence and modernism but also exploring the ways in which Black culture and Black art are suppressed and dismissed. Von Reinhold's prose is elaborate and amusing: Mathilde's narrative sometimes arch, often defiant. There are interesting undercurrents of genderqueerness, though here sexuality and queerness are wholly separable. And the historical (and ahistorical) interludes, Hermia's story and the stories of various Transfixions, are pitch-perfect.

I think I admired, rather than liked, Mathilde -- who is on one level a fraud and a con-artist, because that is the only register in which she can achieve her goals -- but I found myself seduced by, and pleasuraby drowned in, the prose and the plot of Lote: also angered at the erasure depicted therein, and vastly entertained by the impenetrable doublespeak of the Residency. Highly recommended, and full of joy and hope.