2021/055: The Girl and the Ghost -- Hanna Alkaf

Being Pink’s friend was like dancing on the edge of a precipice; it was fun, and you were on solid ground as long as you didn’t slip, but you worried about that line separating you from the darkness all the time. Being friends with Jing, by contrast, was like . . . just dancing, with a partner who matched your every move. [loc. 777]

Suraya is only a toddler when she inherits a pelesit, a ghost-demon, from her grandmother. When she's five, he makes himself known to her, and she decides that he must have a name. The pelesit, henceforth, is called Pink.

Pink has his work cut out preserving Suraya from the consequences of her own curiosity and adventurous nature. Her mother is emotionally distant, and Suraya runs more or less wild. Life is good for the two of them: but then Suraya goes to school, and Pink has to protect her from bullies and mean girls. Possibly he goes a bit too far: possibly he becomes as much of a bully as the girls he torments. And when Suraya makes friends with Chinese-Malaysian Jing Wei -- who introduces her to the joys of Star Wars -- Pink becomes fearsomely jealous, and Suraya realises she has to seek help, for both their sakes.

I was surprised by just how dark this book was: it would have given me nightmares as a child. It's not so much about threats to Suraya (though there are some) as about the supernatural elements, especially Pink's own history. As Jing Wei tells Suraya, “Have you learned nothing from Star Wars? The only way Luke could defeat Darth Vader was by knowing how he became Darth Vader. When he knew that, he could figure out how to defeat him, by tapping into the person he used to be... So we need to know where ... Pink ... came from.” [loc. 1535] Pink is fearsome, and his love for Suraya borders on obsession, but his origin story is extremely unsettling -- as is the climactic scene where Suraya and Pink face off with the villain.

The Girl and the Ghost, despite being written for a younger audience and set half a world away from the San Diego of The Library of Lost Things, is remarkably similar in some of its themes: a lonely daughter, an awesome best friend, judgmental / hostile schoolmates, a dysfunctional mother who's keeping a dreadful secret, an absent father (Suraya's father is dead). When Suraya tells her mother that "broken mothers raise broken daughters", it felt like a line that could have belonged in either novel (or, of course, in real life). And, as in Namey's novel, it's the telling of secrets that opens up the possibility of healing.

The similarities aren't exact, of course. The Girl and the Ghost also deals with obsessive, toxic friendship, and the importance of setting boundaries. Suraya's friendship with Jing is wholesome, but her codependent relationship with Pink ... well, for both their sakes she has to let go.

Fulfils the 'A Muslim Middle Grade Novel' rubric of the Reading Women 2021 Challenge. Suraya's faith is a part of her life, though it's intermixed with (justified) belief in the creatures of Malaysian folklore.

I liked this a lot, though found it deeply unsettling in parts. “There are good books which are only for adults… but there are no good books which are only for children.” [W H Auden]

2021/054: The Library of Lost Things -- Laura Taylor Namey

I never grasped for ways to be like this woman, but I was all she had. [loc. 234]

Darcy Wells has grown up loving books and reading: they are her comfort and her shield against a mother who's rejected her own literature-student past and now prefers to shop online, filling their apartment with useless tat. Darcy has managed to conceal her mother's hoarding from all but a very few, chief among them her best friend Marisol: but now there is a new manager at the apartment complex, one who wants to inspect the apartment. Darcy is terrified that they'll be evicted. And worse: her grandmother, who has (unbeknownst to Darcy's mother) been supporting them financially, threatens to cease payments when Darcy turns eighteen. Darcy's paycheck from the local bookshop won't cover the bills. And between work, and financial panic, and looking after her mother, she doesn't have the time or the inclination to date. Not even when local heartthrob Asher Fleet, whose promising future as a pilot has been wrecked by a car crash, keeps turning up at the bookshop to flirt with her ...

I loved Darcy and Marisol's friendship -- mutually supportive, fond and funny -- and Darcy's ability to recite, word-perfect, from books she's read years before. And I was really charmed by her discovery of a heavily-annotated copy of Peter Pan that some other young woman seems to have used as journal and diary: Darcy realises that "the poems and scribblings in my new-old Peter Pan had gotten me through more emotional tight spots than [mom's] words ever had". There are other echoes of Peter Pan too: an acorn kiss, and of course a boy who can fly ...

Darcy is a competent young woman negotiating a difficult life and multiple layers of secrets: her own, her mother's, her absent father's, her grandmother's. Only when she finally understands the pain at the root of her mother's hoarding -- and accepts that she too is a kind of hoarder -- can the healing begin.

This was uncomfortably resonant in places: my mother was also something of a hoarder, though in her case I think it was at least partly to do with growing up during wartime. This novel made me wonder if there was more to it: if there was something she had lost, or left behind, or had taken from her ... There were secrets I was only told after my mother's death that might have helped me make sense of things: and maybe there were secrets that nobody living now knows.

Fulfils the 'A Young Adult Novel by a Latinx Author' rubric of the Reading Women 2021 Challenge. The author is Cuban-American, and Marisol is Latinx though Darcy isn't.

2021/053: Fugitive Telemetry -- Martha Wells

...maybe I’m just a robot with enough human neural tissue jammed in my head to make me stupid who should have stayed with the company, guarding contract labor and staring at walls. [loc. 1159]

This novella takes place after Exit Strategy but before Network Effect, so Murderbot is not quite as far along its journey of personhood as it was in the most recent update. The action takes place on Preservation Station, which has a ridiculously low crime rate except for the dead human that has been found in a public area. Murderbot has to work with (ugh) humans, and comply with their stupid rules about not concealing its identity and not accessing private systems. The humans, especially security chief Indah, are no more impressed with this collaboration than is Murderbot. Murderbot is also keeping watch for any signs of the GrayCris corporation, and wondering if the dead human is anything to do with previous conflicts.

Murderbot does seem to be perpetually tense here. (I was becoming exasperated by the increasing parenthetical asides until I reinterpreted them as sub-processes, or perhaps those nagging back-of-the-brain headpigeons that afflict humans.) (That afflict me, anyway.) But the crime gets solved, the interactions are satisfying, there is personal growth for all and a thrilling denouement. Perhaps Murderbot, whose actual murder-mystery experience -- as opposed to dealing with human clients killing or maiming other human clients -- has been confined to its highly-dramatised favourite shows before this, will work with Station Security again some time.

But I miss ART, and I yearn to read about post-Network Effect Murderbot. And the other characters introduced therein ...

2021/052: The Doors of Eden -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

What if – bear with me – a civilization of gigantic immortal spacefaring trilobites didn’t evolve? I know, it seems hardly credible, but imagine, if you will. [p. 71]

Two young women go cryptid-hunting on Bodmin Moor, and find more than they expected. Mal vanishes completely, pursued by Birdmen: Lee is left to mourn her girlfriend and make a living writing about conspiracy theories and blurry photographs. And all the while, she is almost certain that she saw something utterly different from anything alive in the present day. Meanwhile, MI5 operative Julien Sabreur, and his analyst friend Alison Matchell, are investigating an attempt to abduct brilliant mathematician Kay Amal Khan -- an attempt which was foiled, with extreme prejudice. Who's protecting Dr Khan, and is the kidnap attempt merely the work of bigotted white supremacists (Khan is Indian, and trans)? Could it be connected to her work on parallel universes?

Chapters of the novel alternate with essays about alternate Earths where evolution has played out differently. I was charmed by the scenario in which sabre-toothed cats, in cooperation with a souped-up version of the toxoplasmosis parasite ('the little passenger'), rule over a peaceful planet of adoring snacks minions; awed by the space-faring trilobites; moved by the poor pterosaurs... I don't always get along with Tchaikovsky's novels (see Cage of Souls) but The Doors of Eden was great, an immensely fun and pacy technothriller with fascinating alternate prehistories, an ensemble cast of likeable protagonists (including queer, trans, and non-white) and dastardly villains, great locations, and some cinematic action scenes. (The Shard!) It's also quietly philosophical, and often very funny: and I very much appreciated the depiction of Khan, cowed by being forced to present as a man, ebullient as her real self.

Now, where do I find a copy of Other Edens: Speculative Evolution and Intelligence by Professor Ruth Emerson?

Oh, mild vexation: "‘Mr Hinton has the dubious distinction of being the first human being in sixty-five million years to be killed by a dinosaur.'" [p.178] So dinosaurs and humans coexisted?

2021/051: The Boy at the Back of the Class -- Onjali Q Rauf

Sometimes I think everyone likes to believe a lie even when they know it’s a lie because it’s more exciting than the truth. And they especially like to believe it if it’s printed in a newspaper. I know that now. I also know why Mum says politicians are liars and always shouts at them whenever they come on the telly. [p. 18]

One day there's a new kid at school: he doesn't talk, and his rucksack is filthy and falling apart. The narrator, plus friends, decide to befriend Ahmet, who comes from Syria and has arrived in England with nothing. They give him sweets and fruit, wonder about the woman who collects him from school but who clearly isn't a relative, try to protect him from the class bully, help him work on his English, and concoct The Greatest Idea in the World to help Ahmet and his family reunite.

I read this for the 'middle-grade Muslim novel' prompt of the Reading Women Challenge 2021, though ultimately decided it didn't count as Ahmet's religion is barely mentioned. I did find it surprisingly moving, if a little sentimental in places, and also very funny. Some of the humour comes from the children's misconceptions about the world, but our narrator -- who is courageous, stubborn and creative, the child of an Austrian father and an Indonesian mother -- makes plenty of jokes of their own. [spoiler in white text] 'Their' ... We don't learn until the very end that the narrator is a girl. And I didn't learn until today that the author has expressed transphobic views -- which unfortunately has coloured my thinking about this little element of gender obfuscation.

The story is simple and firmly rooted in the real world (though there is an odd absence of computers, the web, smartphones), with various adults behaving badly or holding bigoted views, and others being unexpectedly kind. There's a happy ending, and a delightful letter from the target of the Greatest Idea in the World, and a sensible and sober exploration of the refugee crisis and its impact on children. And there's a good sub-plot about not sinking to the level of the bullies.

2021/050: Ariadne -- Jennifer Saint

I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved. If the gods held me accountable one day for the sins of someone else, if they came for me to punish a man's actions, I would not hide away like Pasiphae. I would wear that coronet of snakes and the world would shrink from me. [loc. 205]

A retelling of the myths of Ariadne and Phaedra, with a decidedly feminist slant and an examination of the underlying oppression and cruelty at the heart of those myths. Ariadne grows up a princess of Crete, knowing from an early age that her mother Pasiphae was the instrument, as well as the victim, of Poseidon's rage at her husband Minos. Maddened with lust, Pasiphae had sex with a bull, conceiving the Minotaur: now her shame is all Greece's amusement and she's withdrawn into herself.

Ariadne knows her father is cruel, and when she sees the flower of Athenian youth brought for her half-brother to slaughter in the Labyrinth, she is determined to help them escape. Besides, their leader Theseus has such fine silken hair, such compelling green eyes ... Ariadne betrays her father and her country and sails away with Theseus -- though without her little sister Phaedra, who wasn't at the appointed meeting place. But soon after, Ariadne awakes alone on the isle of Naxos, abandoned by Theseus. Fortunately the god Dionysus makes his home on the island, and the two become close: their mothers, after all, have both been innocent victims of a god's rage. Ariadne comes to love Dionysus, even when she discovers his powers over life and death. Even when she finds out that he's kept the truth about her sister -- now married to Theseus in Athens -- from her.

And Phaedra, too, has a voice in this narrative: distrustful of men, mourning the sister who Theseus tells her was slain by a serpent sent by Artemis, complicit in the betrayal of her country and yet, somehow, no more important than the gems and gold that Theseus' men looted from Knossos while he fought the beast below.

There are so many variants of the myths that one could select other sources to construct a far kinder narrative than is set out in Ariadne. For instance, I wasn't familiar with the story of what Dionysus did to the Argive women. And I have a lingering fondness for Theseus after reading Mary Renault's marvellous The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea at an impressionable age. But, sadly, the story here is all too credible. Theseus is invested in his own myth: he lies and cheats to achieve lasting fame. He is only too ready to believe the worst of his wife and stepson: I found Phaedra's death, and Theseus' response, horribly convincing. Dionysus, for all his divinity and his gentleness, is still prone to some very human emotions. His language is that of a seducer. "The other gods are not like me ... we have our mothers' stories in common ..." He holds all the power, all the agency, in the relationship: after all, he is a god, and a better one (so he insists) than his more mortal half-brother Perseus. And it's his arrogance, at the end, that sends Ariadne to her death.

Ariadne's fury at the ways in which men and gods have abused women, including her own mother -- including her -- is thoroughly relatable, as is the gradual evolution of her feelings towards Theseus, from youthful infatuation and the hope of being 'a fitting wife for a legendary hero' to the realisation that Theseus, like so many other heroes, will 'measure his glory in female torment'. The unfair ways in which women are victimised, objectified, discarded, are timeless, and Saint brings them to life with empathy and anger: #yesallmen #andallgods.

There were a couple of places where the writing sprawled a little, and I was vexed with the repeated references to the sisters' blonde hair: but on the whole I found this a compelling and fascinating read, though sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes -- with some knowledge of the underlying myths -- deeply melancholy.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free advance review copy, of which this is an honest and personal review.

2021/049: Kalpa Imperial -- Angélica Gorodischer, trans. Ursula Le Guin

There’ve been emperors who dreamed of subjugating the South. There’ve been emperors who tried it, and some thought they’d done it. But with what? I ask, with what? With power, weapons, armies, fire, terror? Useless, all that, completely useless: all power can do is silence people, keep them from singing, arguing, dancing, talking, brawling, making speeches and composing music. [p. 184]

The Empire has always existed. It extends so far that a man can't cross it in a lifetime. The North is, generally, the seat of power: the South is uncivilised, rebellious, perhaps not quite human.

There is no map at the beginning of this book, no glossary or family tree or pronunciation guide or recurring characters, unless you believe (I don't) that the storyteller narrating each of these eleven stories is the same storyteller throughout. There is no magic, except the magic of transforming chaotic reality into coherent, specific narrative.

These are stories about power, about repression, about 'long history' where changes take place over a lifetime, or several lifetimes, or several millennia. It's rooted in the power of storytelling, of the skill of a storyteller in shaping and interpreting events -- and in one story, only one story, affecting them. A fatherless prince, an empress who's risen from poverty to power, a physician who prescribes the drawing of trees, and a story-within-a-story that seems to conflate a version of the Trojan War ('a thousand ships') with Marilyn Monroe (Marillín) as Helen, Kirk Douglas (Kirdaglass) as Paris, and Clark Gable (Clargueibl) as Odysseus ...

Kalpa Imperial (the title references the Hindu/Buddhist term for a single cycle of creation, 4320 million years) is not an easy book to summarise. The stories are connected by their themes, rather than their characters, and the settings range from hunter-gather to industrialisation, though not in an orderly progression. Human nature, though, is universal. The underdog rises, the revolution cannot be silenced, kindness can (but doesn't always) defeat hatred. Art matters more than origin or genealogy.

This was originally published in Argentina in the 1980s, a period of repression and military dictatorship. Perhaps it's a way of talking about the vastness of human history in a young country cobbled together by colonists out of the defeated fragments of indigenous empires: perhaps it's a way of talking about oppression, corruption and the uses of power in an environment where free speech was at a premium.

Fulfils the 'A Book by a South American Author in Translation' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2021. If one is going to read a work of fiction in translation, a work translated from the Spanish by Ursula le Guin surely starts with a huge advantage: and I'm thoroughly convinced that le Guin's humour, warmth and simplicity are in synchrony with Gorodischer's. The two were friends and Gorodischer has spoken (20 Questions with Angélica Gorodischer) of her joy in the collaboration. The prose is glorious and reminiscent, to me, of le Guin's own work: I now want to reread Orsinian Tales ...

One complete story, The End of a Dynasty or The Natural History of Ferrets, on the Small Beer Press site.

Great review here by Jo Walton, with a lengthy quotation from the beginning of the book.