2023/146: The Brutal Telling — Louise Penny

This case didn’t begin with the blow to the head. It started years ago, with another sort of blow. Something happened to our murderer, something we might consider insignificant, trivial even, but was devastating to him. An event, a snub, an argument that most people would shrug off. Murderers don’t. [loc. 1497]

This is a tricky novel to review: it's sixth fifth in the series that began with Still Life, which I liked very much, but I haven't read the intervening volumes, so there is quite a bit of missing context. I also understand, from reviews I sought out after being perplexed by the conclusion of The Brutal Telling, that said conclusion is not actually a conclusion: some aspects, at least, of the case continue in the next book.

Gamache is urbane and compassionate as ever; some of the people of Three Pines have become his friends, while others -- including Marc and Dominique, new owners of the old Hadley house which they hope to turn into a luxury hotel and spa -- are newcomers, slowly being assessed and assimilated by the village. Clara the artist is moving up in the world: when she's offered a career-changing exhibition by an unpleasant individual, she's forced to decide whether her conscience trumps her ambition. There is (of course) a dead body, which has unaccountably appeared in the bistro. There is a convoluted plot involving references to various Charlottes (which I am not altogether convinced held together) and a man -- well, several men -- haunted by secrets that can't be revealed.

And a gut-punch of a revelation as to the murderer's identity.

Delightfully atmospheric, with intriguing and likeable characters and complex social networks. I think I will attempt to read this series in order, and return to this novel in its proper place in the sequence.

2023/145: Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh

“They’re people,” she said. “The majo. You know they’re people.”
“So what?”
“This isn’t justice. This is just the same thing over and over.”[loc. 3729]

Kyr (short for Valkyr) is a warbreed, genetically engineered to be a warrior. She, and a couple of thousand other humans, inhabit Gaea Station, continuing the fight against the alien Majoda confederation who destroyed Earth and murdered fourteen billion people. Gaea Station is no place for rest or recreation, or love, or friendship. Kyr is desperate for approval from Admiral Jole, who she calls 'uncle', and she adores her brother Magnus, whose scores are the best in Gaea's history. (They don't talk about their traitor sister Ursa, who fled to the colony planet Chyrosothemis.) She isn't interested in 'sex things' or kissing. She tries to look after the Sparrow mess -- the only female group in their age cohort: eight teenaged girls -- pushing them to be the best they can be. She doesn't need them to like her.

Which is a good thing, because Kyr is deeply unlikeable for the first few chapters of the novel. She's been thoroughly indoctrinated, raised as a child soldier, growing up in an environment where sexism and homophobia are rife, violence is valorised and 'population targets' legitimise reproductive rape. Kyr's fine with that. She loathes the aliens, the majo: her life is dedicated to vengeance for the murdered billions of humanity.

Then the Sparrows' assignments arrive, and Kyr finds that she is not, after all, to be a warrior. Worse: her brother has been sent on a suicide mission. Obviously someone somewhere has made a mistake, because Kyr is certain that she's destined for greater things. She's the pinnacle of Gaean humanity, the ultimate weapon against the majo. It's time for Kyr to break the rules, and to enlist the help of genius Systems tech Avi to bring her brother home.

Kyr has a great deal to learn, about herself and about the universe, about the majo and their mysterious Wisdom -- a powerful AI that can, perhaps, alter reality -- and about the people (human and otherwise) who she encounters in the course of her journey. She comes to realise that perhaps the majoda (a blanket term for several species of alien) were right to regard humans as aggressive, territorial and a threat to other intelligent life. She even, to some extent, begins to understand and accept her own emotional responses. She's still a monster in some respects, but she's capable of change.

Some Desperate Glory is told wholly from Kyr's point of view (though the 'Kyr' or 'Val' viewpoint character is not, due to alternate timelines, always exactly the same person), and it's a testament to Tesh's writing that Kyr is a compelling character throughout, capable of compassion as well as courage, willing (eventually) to accept that much of what she was raised to believe is wrong. Sticking to her viewpoint, though, does mean that we only see the other characters through her somewhat blinkered vision: her messmates, in particular Cleo and Lisabel, are depicted wholly through their relationships to Kyr, as is Avi (who's in love with Magnus). Surprisingly, the healthiest relationship in the novel may be that between Kyr and Yiso, a majo. An alien. (I liked Yiso a lot.)

There were points at which I found Kyr's lack of emotional intelligence -- and basic observation skills -- frustrating, and I'd have liked more clarity about the role of the older generation of Gaean's in the conflict before the destruction of Earth. I also felt that making the villain a sexual predator, on top of their other crimes, was excessive. But I loved Some Desperate Glory, and Kyr's self-discovery, and the hope of redemption and deradicalisation. This is a very different work to Tesh's previous fantasy duology, Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country, but told with as much flair, invention and detail. More science fantasy than hard SF: more social SF (Le Guin's term, mentioned by the author in her afterword) than either.

PS: Hurrah for British authors! I laughed aloud at this, purportedly from Federation and Other Problems: An Introduction to Human Political Thought, 3rd ed.: "The fact that some important decisions (such as, for example, the initial declaration of war against the majoda) are left to mass plebiscite should not be taken as evidence of democratic rule. Humans themselves will cynically point out that no popular vote is ever taken unless those in power already know what the answer will be."

2023/144: No One's Home — D M Pulley

This house is bad for men, for boys. They all die here. Almost every single one. And the women go mad. Did you know that?” [loc. 3219]

Myron and Margot Spielman, with their teenaged son Hunter, move from Boston to an historic mansion that's rumoured to be haunted. Rawlingswood has a history of murder, suicide and ruin: its walls and closets are graffiti'd with words and phrases like 'welcome to hell house', 'murder' and 'dead girl'. There are mysterious sounds, lights that switch themselves on, a sense of something watching ... The Spielmans have their own secrets, from a malpractice suit against Myron to the 'hot yoga' videos Margot produces: and all three are haunted by the memory of Allison, Hunter's sister, who died young.

The house's reputation is not undeserved. The narrative switches between the Spielmans and four families who previously lived in the house - the Rawlings family, who built the house, from 1922 to 1931, the Bells between 1936 and 1972, the Klussmans from 1972 to 1990, and the Martins from 1990 to 2016. In each case, there's a tragedy; in each case, we slowly begin to understand that it's not what it seems. But there's an ancient horror here that dates back to before the first brick was laid ...

The blurb, beginning 'for fans of The Haunting of Hill House', lured me in, but to be honest I found this rather disappointing and nothing like as scary as Shirley Jackson's novel. Because I was expecting (and hoping for) supernatural horror, I didn't find the story especially satisfying: indeed, it was sad rather than unnerving. A positive ending, though.

Still thinking about the title. Is it 'no one is at home' or 'this is not anyone's home'? Either interpretation shifts the ambience of the book.

2023/143: The Stargazer's Embassy — Eleanor Lerman

Maybe I had a limited imagination; that quality had been necessary for me to cultivate in order to survive. That's what the music and headphones and books and TV were for: to limit what I did not wish to see, what I did not want to know. [p. 248]

The novel begins in 1990, in New York: Julia Glazer works as a cleaner, keeping her head down, going from work to home to work again. One evening, though, she decides to head to the river to watch a meteor shower. There, she meets John, who's a psychiatrist and former lecturer, a Pulitzer Prize winner. They fall in love well before Julia discovers that his area of interest is 'experiencers' -- people who have, or believe they have, experienced alien abductions. Julia is extremely unhappy with this development: she grew up with a mother who was obsessed with aliens. And Julia happens to know that they are real, and that they seem to be stalking Julia herself.

This is a slow, cerebral novel, focussed more on Julia's interior life and her anger towards her mother than on the aliens themselves. She moves passively through her life, refusing the aliens at every turn: refusing to interact with them, refusing to discuss them with others, refusing to think about what happened to her mother and to herself. Refusing to consider that the tattoo on her wrist, of five stars -- which is also the logo of the Stargazer's Embassy, her stepfather's bar in upstate New York -- might mark her as different.

Then everything changes: and the novel picks up ten years later, when reports of alien abductions are few and far between. Did Julia -- who's returned to her work as a cleaner, who has no friends and no close relationships, who's doing her best not to think about what she calls the things --have something to do with that? And have the aliens really, finally, given up on her, or do they have unresolved issues?

The Stargazer's Embassy is a world away from conventional 'alien abduction' novels. These aliens are unsettling, but not especially monstrous; their agenda remains, for the most part, mysterious; they are badly-dressed, having no understanding of fashion or costume, and some of them have a taste for Jack Daniels. They remember Julia's mother, and they are scared of Julia: but she is not scared of them.

Lerman's prose is full of vivid imagery -- 'The sky was streaky, blue on blue on blue, displaying a small moon ... rising as slowly as if it wasn’t sure it was really supposed to appear tonight' [p. 13] -- and she structures this story, with its deliberately isolated and introspective protagonist, with confidence and care. That said, I didn't find it as enjoyable as Still Alive or Satellite Street. At least on first reading: on a reread, I could appreciate the pacing and the few interactions that Julia allows herself.

2023/142: The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou — Eleni Kyriacou

‘The English don’t like hanging anyone any more. They think it makes them look uncivilised, to the rest of the world. And as for hanging women, well that’s even more unpopular.’
Zina frowns. ‘Not even foreign ones?’ she asks.
Eva doesn’t speak for a few moments... [loc. 1458]

Zina Pavlou speaks very little English. She has come from Cyprus to stay with her son Michalis and his wife Hedy, caring for their children and working as an unpaid housekeeper, but Hedy wasn't happy with the arrangement. Now Hedy is dead, Zina is awaiting trial for her murder, and her family seem to have abandoned her: she has brothers, sisters and nephews, but none visit during her imprisonment. Her son (who was the translator when Zina was first arrested) believes her guilty of the murder and will have nothing to do with her. Eva Georgiou, the translator appointed by the police, is Zina's only hope, and her only friend: but Eva doesn't know if she can, or should, believe Zina's protestations of innocence

This is a powerful novel: it's about the ways in which Zina (old, unattractive, unloved, of low social class and minimal education -- and foreign) is dismissed by most of the men involved in her case, about her lack of agency -- not just in London, but back in Cyprus -- and her disintegrating grasp of the truth about what happened on the night of Hedy's death. 'She’s told the truth throughout, she wants to say, and really doesn’t know how Hedy died, or what happened that evening all those months ago. She is almost certain she had nothing to do with it.' [loc. 3964]. Eva has made a British life for herself: she speaks and writes English, has a career, and is 'respectable': but she still lacks the privilege of even a working-class Englishman. She's paid less than a man doing the same job would be, she's regarded as fair game by unscrupulous journalists, and she's struggling to understand why she's so invested in Zina's case.

This novel is based on the story of Hella Dorothea Christofis (née Bleicher), who was murdered by her mother-in-law, Styllou Pantopiou Christofi, in London in 1954. Eleni Kyriacou's afterword describes the facts that inspired the story, and it's harrowing reading. 'Seven months after Styllou’s execution, there was a huge public outcry when Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of her abusive lover, David Blakely. In his autobiography, the executioner to both women, Albert Pierrepoint, noted the lack of press interest in Styllou’s fate. He said, ‘One wonders if it was because she was middle-aged, unattractive and foreign?’ [loc. 5141]. In The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou (hmm, why plural 'Acts'?) it's clear that Zina is suffering from some form of mental illness. Even today, though, this is not always recognised or treated as a mitigating circumstance. Kyriacou's evocation of the early 1950s post-war British society with all its prejudice and inequality is vivid and bleak. And I grew up closer to that time than to 2023...

Fulfils the ‘Script font on spine’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 09 NOV 2023.

2023/141: The Mars House — Natasha Pulley

January had a bizarre out-of-body moment where a detached part of his brain said: You’re very cold, it’s Monday, and a senator is arguing about you with a mammoth. On Mars. [loc. 4929]

I loved The Mars House instantly and unreasonably: but's far too soon for a proper review, so I'll just say that the footnotes feature Farringdon dock, formerly Farringdon Station; varying pronunciations of 'Mx'; Mori and Daughter, a shop on Filigree Street; bathroom terminology in Mandarin; The Clangers; mammoth jokes; and Shuppiluliuma, a cat named after a Hittite king who coincidentally appeared in my recent read 1177BC: the Year Civilisation Collapsed.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review which'll be appearing nearer UK publication date (19th March 2024).

2023/140: The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights — various authors

My bells tinkled and rang. The pine needles pattered across the floor. If I squinted, I could just see the blue edge of her, dancing in a fury, whirling with her hands out, breathing her spite against the walls. The plaster bubbled and split. ['Banished', Elizabeth Macneal: loc. 1925]

A follow-up to last year's The Haunting Season, this collection features twelve stories by contemporary authors working in the Gothic / historical / fantastical / weird milieu: the settings are historical and mostly British, though Catriona Ward's 'Jenkin' is set in Maine, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson's 'Inferno' takes place in late eighteenth-century Italy. Despite the subtitle, not all of the stories feature ghosts. Andrew Michael Hurley's 'The Old Play' centres on a drama that is traditionally performed on New Year's Eve: this year Committee have made some improvements, which they don't explain to the actor playing the role of the Beggar. He's haunted, true, but it's by the memory of war, of Dresden and Hamburg burning. 'Widow's Walk', by Susan Stokes-Chapman, is a slowly-clarifying story about vengeance -- as, in a very different key, is 'A Double Thread' by Imogen Hermes Gowar. And Natasha Pulley's thoroughly unnerving 'The Salt Miracles', set on a remote Scottish island where pilgrims can be cured (if they don't simply vanish) centres on an angel rather than a ghost, though perhaps not the sort of angel one might expect in a winter-themed anthology.

No two stories are alike, even when they share a theme or a setting (such as Victorian spiritualism, which is the focus of both 'Host' by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Jess Kid's 'Ada Lark': two very different perspectives). Some feel very much in the classic understated mode; others are nightmarish Gothic horrors. And the authors' voices are distinctive, each with its own flavour. 'Host' has tempted me to read Hargrave's longer fiction; 'The Salt Miracles' confirms my crush on Pulley's prose; 'Jenkin', by Catriona Ward, is as chilling as any of her novels. Those are probably my favourites right now, but there isn't a weak story in the collection.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this honest review. UK publication date is 19th October 2023.