2023/083: Insomnia — Stephen King

... wasn’t it at least possible that the phenomenon was real? That his persistent insomnia, coupled with the stabilizing influence of his lucid, coherent dreams, had afforded him a glimpse of a fabulous dimension just beyond the reach of ordinary perception? [p. 175]

This is really ... very long (916 pages in print), and could have been half the length without much loss of plot. King's prose is generally enjoyable to read, though, and his expansive descriptions effectively conjure up the ambience of each scene.

The viewpoint character is Ralph Roberts, a 70-year-old widower, who after the death of his wife suffers from insomnia. He also starts seeing things that nobody else can see: auras, small bald men, ribbons of colour. He spends time with his friend Bill who lives in the apartment downstairs; with his neighbour Helen whose husband Ed's personality has abruptly changed for the worse, with his other neighbour Lois who is two years younger than him and who may be nursing a secret crush. He tries not to get involved in the increasingly belligerent anti-abortion movement, which Ed seems to support even while muttering darkly about eldritch forces. And he discovers that he and Lois are unwilling recruits in a cosmic battle...

Set in King's fictional Maine town of Derry, this novel takes place about eight years after the events of IT. Despite Ralph reminding himself more than once (it's a long, long book) that Derry is 'not precisely like other places', the small-town atmosphere is (at least superficially) idyllc and the characters vivid and mostly likeable. I'd actually have been happier without the supernatural elements, which for me were the least interesting aspect of the novel. I liked Ralph and Lois, and I appreciated Ralph's willingness to cast aside his (rather sexist) assumptions about her. The women in this novel are generally well-written and interesting, with relatable concerns and motivations, though I was vexed by the description of a female villain as 'Pasty complexion... lots of acne, glasses so thick they make her eyes look like poached eggs'.

Note that Insomnia was first published in 1994, and there is one scene near the climax of the novel that I don't think King would write now, post-9/11.

Fulfils the ‘Title starts with 'I'’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/082: The Mountain in the Sea — Ray Nayler

I think what we fear most about finding a mind equal to our own, but of another species, is that they will truly see us — and find us lacking, and turn away from us in disgust. [p. 429]

Described on Amazon as a thriller, this is excellent SF: it's just won the Locus Best First Novel Award and has been shortlisted for the Nebula and for the Ray Bradbury Prize. It's a philosophical investigation into the nature of consciousness, a first-contact novel, a story about connections -- and yes, it is also a thriller. Three protagonists share the narrative. Foremost is Dr Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist who's fascinated by the concept of intelligence in octopuses. She arrives on an island in the Vietnamese Côn Đảo archipelago, where she is met by two unusual companions and informed that she cannot leave. The second narrator is hotshot hacker Rustem, who's been contracted by a woman in a identity-disguising digital mask to break into an extremely complex neural network. And the third is Eiko, a young Japanese man who is abducted from a brothel and forced to work on an AI fishing vessel, whimsically named the 'Sea Wolf'.

The primary focus is on Ha Nguyen, with her two companions: Altantsetseg, a Mongolian war veteran who provides security for the island, navigates a fleet of drones with her whole body, and prefers to use a malfunctioning translation device so that she doesn't have to talk to anyone; and Evrim, they/them, the world's only conscious android, whose existence has sparked a host of laws forbidding the creation of more androids. Together, they are investigating the rumours of a 'sea monster' which has been responsible for a number of deaths on the island. Ha is also negotiating her interactions with Evrim and Altantsetseg, neither of whom are straightforward characters. Oh, and there are automonks roaming the island, helping hatchling turtles find the sea, able to engage in conversation: each contains 'a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk'. They are not conscious or alive in any real sense, but they have agency.

The three protagonists are all connected to a powerful, shadowy corporation called DIANIMA, run by Dr. Arnkatla Minervudóttir-Chan: excerpts from her book Building Minds, about human brains and artificial intelligence, alternate with passages from Dr Nguyen's How Oceans Think as chapter headings. The DIANIMA corporation owns the island; it was where Eiko was due to start work before he became a slave; it created Evrim. And it has its own agenda regarding the possibility of intelligent, non-human life.

And at the heart of the novel, octopuses. Ha Nguyen's book posits the question: "The octopus is the “tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,” denounced by Homer. This solitude, along with her tragically short life span, presents an insurmountable barrier to the octopus’s emergence into culture. But this book asks the question: What if? What if a species of octopus emerged that attained longevity, intergenerational exchange, sociality?" [loc. 585] The Mountain in the Sea explores this, and the philosophical and practical issues of communicating with such a species. It's a very readable work, even when Ha and Evrim get into long discussions about the nature of consciousness and the biology of the octopus (distributed rather than centralised -- like a corporation, perhaps, or a neural network). The characterisation is vivid, the sense of otherness (from Evrim as well as the octopuses) is strong, and the lightly-sketched future seems credible. I liked it immensely, and shall be recommending it to all.

Incidentally, Dive magazine called it a 'tour de force': how many SF novels can quote that on the cover?

2023/081: Our Wives Under the Sea — Julia Arnfield

The problem isn’t that she went away, it’s that nothing about her going away felt normal. It isn’t that her being back is difficult, it’s that I’m not convinced she’s really back at all. [p. 53]

This was a literal beach read (I like a frisson with my sea-bathing) and a horribly timely one as it coincided with the Titan submersible incident. The premise is simple: a submersible vessel with a crew of three, on a mission to the uttermost depths of the ocean, the Hadal Zone. The submarine's power and communications cease to function during their descent, but life-support systems keep running, and the three spend an indeterminate period in the abyss. Leah, one of the crew, a marine biologist and Miri's wife, is away for six months rather than the expected three weeks, and when she comes back she has suffered a sea-change.

The novel opens after all this has happened, with Miri trying to make sense of the changes in Leah: a taste for salt water, a preference for lying in the bath all day, a silvering -- oystering -- of the skin. Miri rings the Centre daily, but although they funded the mission they never tell Miri anything about the recovery, the quarantine, or even the purpose of sending Leah, Jelka and Matteo into the abyss. There's nobody that Miri can really talk to. Her friend Carmen seems to think the problem is that Miri has to share her space again. Miri's parents are both dead, her mother after a prolonged decline into dementia, and that sense of somebody being present but simultaneously absent, of being changed, perfuses Our Wives Under the Sea. During Leah's absence, Miri joined an online group of women who pretend their husbands are on deep space missions: 'MHIS [my husband in space] was a common acronym, as was BS [before space], EB [earthbound] and CBW [came back wrong].' [p. 83] It's after this that she dreams about the Church of the Blessed Sacrament of Our Wives Under the Sea.

The novel is told in alternating chapters: Miri's unravelling as she tries to maintain a normal life while grieving Leah's absence, and Leah's (much shorter) account of her time under the sea, the smell of burning flesh, the sound of something tapping on the hull, the different ways in which her crewmates coped with the darkness and the hopelessness. I wish there'd been more of Leah: I don't mind the lack of explanation, of detail, of description, but the novel's focus is very much on Miri and her grief and anger.

Marvellous prose, an excellent exploration of mourning, and just enough body-horror to sharpen the softness of Miri's memories, of her love for someone who no longer exists.

2023/080: In the Unlikely Event — Judy Blume

Though, honestly, if she turned twenty-five and she still wasn’t engaged, she saw no point in saving it. She might as well enjoy it while she still could. She was pretty sure Aunt Alma had never enjoyed hers. [p. 37]

Purchased on a whim when it was part of Amazon's daily deal: I have vague but fond memories of reading Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret as an adolescent, and the premise of this novel -- written for an older readership -- seemed intriguing. It's based on real events: three planes crashed in Elizabeth, a small town in New Jersey, over a period of 8 weeks in the winter of 1951-52. Judy Blume grew up in Elizabeth and was in eighth grade that year, and she's writing from her own lived experience.

The protagonist of the novel is Miri Ammerman, who's 15 and lives with her mother Rusty, her Uncle Henry and her grandmother Irene. Her father abandoned her mother before Miri was born, and nobody will tell Miri anything about him. On Rusty's birthday (just before Hannukah and Christmas) she and Miri are walking home after seeing a film when the first plane crashes. Miri's best friend Natalie rushes to their house in floods of tears, afraid Miri has been hurt: Natalie's father, Dr Osner, has been called to help identify the bodies.

Blume is so good at capturing the different layers of life. Yes, Miri is horrified by the crash, but she's also still thinking about the mysterious boy she danced with at Natalie's party. Natalie herself believes that one of the victims of the crash, a dancer named Ruby, is talking to her. The boys at school are talking about zombies, communists, space aliens. Uncle Henry is a newspaper reporter, filing copy from the scene of the crash... Blume handles multiple narrators (we meet Ruby early on, 'savouring a scrumptious strawberry ice cream soda topped with whipped cream, chopped nuts and a Maraschino cherry') with confidence, and though Miri is at the centre of the novel her story is fleshed out by the other narratives. The secondary characters don't always get more than a single scene to themselves, and don't necessarily reveal their innermost secrets, but they add context -- even Ruby's ice cream soda is relevant.

One crash would have been calamitous enough: three crashes, in such a short space of time, have a devastating effect on the people of Elizabeth. Everybody knows somebody who's died, either on the ground or in one of the planes. And everyone has to keep on keeping on, to work or go to school, to begin or maintain or terminate relationships, to keep or tell secrets or to have their secrets discovered. As much as anything else, this is a closely-observed and compassionate study of small-town life in Fifties America.

Despite the triple tragedy and the ongoing Korean War, despite the threat of the draft hanging over young men and the smaller heartbreaks of teenaged life (cheating boyfriends, pregnancy scares, eating disorders, handed-down clothes), this was an immensely uplifting novel. The framing narrative, of an older Miri attending a commemoration of the crashes, settles everything into perspective, but doesn't overshadow the clarity and honesty of that winter's events. I'm now quite tempted to reread Margaret, just to see if the warmth I remember from that is comparable to the emotional ambience of In The Unlikely Event.

2023/079: The Lost World — Michael Crichton

“This island,” Malcolm said, “is Hammond’s dirty little secret. It’s the dark side of his park.” [p. 143]

I actually wanted to read the first novel in the series, Jurassic Park, but it's unaccountably unavailable as an ebook. Instead, I went with The Lost World, the second in the series: I only vaguely recall the film.

I find I have very little to say about The Lost World. It's competently written, with occasional flashes of lyricism (mostly in the dialogue of rock-star chaotician Ian Malcolm); it discusses some of the arguments about the ethics of bringing extinct animals back to life; it has two 'adorable' children, who stow away on a super-dangerous expedition but prove their worth; it is quite cinematic whilst still being oddly boring about dinosaurs. One of the high points was the characters' realisation that the genetically-engineered dinosaurs don't behave like their fossilised counterparts because they don't have the instincts or the social environment. There must be better novels about dinosaurs out there: recommendations welcome!

Fulfils the ‘Chapters have cliffhangers’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/078: Satellite Street — Eleanor Lerman

He felt like the bright world outside was moving away from him and he wanted it back. He wanted it so badly he could feel rage growing inside him, a terrible, overwhelming rage about what was being taken from him and how deeply he already felt its loss. He felt like he was growing weak, like all the strength and will he had left were being drained away while he was allowed one last glimpse of life before he was shoved into darkness where he would remain forever, lost and broken and alone. [loc. 1706]

Paul Marden is 62 years old: he endures chronic pain after an unidentified infection, and -- no longer able to work as a lecturer in media and communications -- he lives in a Long Island beachside development called Skyview, a product of the 1950s when being able to view rocket launches a thousand miles away at Cape Canaverel was deemed a selling point. Hurricane Sandy devastated the area, and Paul's house is one of the few remaining inhabited dwellings on Satellite Street. One night, stomping back (like Godzilla, he thinks) from a movie showing, he's offered a lift by a woman he almost recognises. She's Lelee, formerly Paul's schoolmate Arthur Connors, and a side-effect of her transition has been the ability to tune into the voices of the dead.

That would be an awesome novel if it went no further: but Satellite Street, while remaining focussed on the friendship between Paul and Lelee, also explores Paul's relationship with his dementia-afflicted father, and Lelee's quest for justice on behalf of the ghost of a popular DJ, Happy Howie, who was hounded out of his job by accusations of pedophilia. His accuser, a former stage magician and professional sceptic known as the Great Osvaldo, threatens to ruin Lelee in a similar way. But, acting on information received via Lelee, Paul finds himself uniquely positioned to redeem Howie's reputation and muster some serious legal firepower.

This was an absolute delight: kindness, hope, friendship, love -- and the dark sides of all of those, too. Lerman is an award-winning poet and can make the simplest sentence into something arresting. I especially liked her depiction of Paul's hopelessness in the face of his disability, and the ways in which Lelee and her (very real) mediumship broaden his horizons and show him that there is more to life than a slow painful descent to death. Past and present, death and the afterlife, despair and survival: and near the end of the novel they sit in Paul's back yard, watching a rocket go up from Cape Canaverel, and I felt as though I was sharing their perfect, transitory happiness.

2023/077: Witch King — Martha Wells

“Do you have to do that to people to live?”
“No,” Kai told her. “I did it because I wanted to. And bad people taste better than good ones.”[loc. 199]

I think this might have been a case of 'right book, wrong time': I loved the preview but just didn't connect with the full novel. Kai, the eponymous protagonist, has been dead, but now someone is sniffing around his tomb -- an elaborate construction designed to prevent him from resurrecting -- in the hope of harnessing Kai's power for himself. Kai and his dear friend Ziede deal with the incursion, re-enter the world, and try to work out just who was responsible for Kai's death, and what can be done about the depradations of the Hierarchs.

I liked the characters and the worldbuilding; was constantly tantalised by the chapters focussed on Kai's past (he's a demon, an immortal chthonic serpentine being from the underearth, who's inhabited -- by invitation -- a number of mortal bodies); found myself losing track of who was who and why Kai or Ziede cared about them... The problem, I suspect, was my inability to concentrate rather than the book itself. I'll certainly give it another try at some point.

I note that the long list of dramatis personae appears at the front of the novel, which must be super-vexing for audiobook listeners: I'm not sure that it adds much value, since I didn't find myself referring to it very often. The important relationships were clear in the text, and the plethora of minor characters and allegiances had little relevance for much of the story.

Fulfils the ‘Chapters have cliffhangers’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.