Books do furnish a room

Promethean Horrors: Classic stories of mad science edited by Mike Ashley This is another in the British Library Tales of the Weird series. This one concerns a particular trope, a favourite of horror and supernatural writers: the scientist who really just doesn’t know when to stop. A key figure in tales of the gothic. Of course this all started with the Faust story, selling one’s soul to the devil for unlimited knowledge. There’s no Faust here but there are stories from Mary Shelley, E T A Hoffmann, Hawthorne, Poe, Stevenson, L T Meade, Nesbit, Auguste Villiers de L’isle-Adam, Lovecraft and George Langelaan. The oldest story dates back to around 1815 and the most modern is from the 1950s. That is The Fly which has spawned a number of films. Some of these border on alchemy, especially the Shelley, which looks at the search for eternal youth. There are body snatchers, experiments with what happens to a mind immediately after the guillotine, heightened senses, contacting the beyond and more. Again they are a mixed bunch, but on the whole they are well worth reading and it was good to read The Fly, after having seen the films. 7 out of 10 Starting From the depths and other strange tales of the sea.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett “She hadn't realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.” I liked this a bit better than I expected, especially given the comparisons to Larsen’s Passing. Even the phrase “multi-generational saga” didn’t entirely put me off. It moves from the 1940s to the 1990s and is centred on twins Stella and Desiree. They are raised in a fictional Louisiana town (Mallard) which was set up after the end of slavery for light skinned blacks. They are both light skinned but that doesn’t stop their father being lynched and their mother cleaning for local white families. At sixteen they run away to New Orleans. They end up separating and Stella lives her life passing as white and loses touch with the rest of her family. “In New Orleans, Stella split in two. She didn’t notice it at first because she’d been two people her whole life: she was herself and she was Desiree. The twins, beautiful and rare, were never called the girls, only the twins, as if it were a formal title. She’d always thought of herself as part of this pair, but in New Orleans she splintered into a new woman altogether.” Desiree does not and eventually returns to her home town. The novel continues to follow the fortunes of their children: each has a daughter. The novel also addresses issues like domestic abuse, secret keeping, transphobia, racial identity and bigotry as well as the old trope of twins. It’s written in the omniscient voice and moves between the characters. It was also good to have a trans character behaving like a normal human being and just a part of a bigger story. “The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.” This has been described as a historical novel and I suppose it is. Despite the fact I have been alive for a large part of the time period of the novel: now I do feel old!! The dialogue flows well and it is well written, with good momentum. A brief summary of this doesn’t do it justice because it’s quite complex in terms of plot and character. It’s really about how people change and how they stay the same. The TV rights have been bought by HBO. “That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone. That was what had captured her in the charm shop, all those years ago. Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.” 7 out of 10 Starting The Wild Geese by Bridget Boland

The Others of Edenwell by Verity Holloway I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It doesn’t seem to have had the hype that some others in this genre have had, but on the whole it’s better. It is more a historical novel with a gothic/horror edge to it. It is set in 1917 in Norfolk in the First World War. The setting is what was known as a Hydropathic (water therapy) in the Norfolk Breckland. The main protagonist is Alfred Ferry (Freddie), seventeen year old son of the grounds keeper. He has a heart condition and so cannot be called up. He also is able to communicate with birds, especially the rooks, magpies and jackdaws in the woods around the Hydropathic. There is a presence stalking the woods: that’s the horror part. It’s not obvious and develops slowly over the novel. There is also a mixed selection of staff and residents. Into this comes Eustace Moncrieff, also seventeen, sent by an overprotective mother. Eustace and Freddie develop a relationship. Into the equation come wounded soldiers for recuperation. It’s actually a lot better than I’ve made it sound. The scene setting and characterisation are very good. There is a bit of unobtrusive romance (M/M), the tension is developed well and builds over the novel. The relationship to the war is complex for all the characters. There is a bit of art, archaeology, poetry as well as a well told story. 9 out of 10 Starting Swastika Nights by Katherine Burdekin

Essex Dogs by Dan Jones Dan Jones is a historian who writes about the Middle Ages; he’s written a book on the Crusades amongst others. He has also been discovered by TV and has fronted a few history programmes. However to give you an example of his current oeuvre he is currently presently Sex: A bonkers history for SKY with Amanda Holden!! Enough said. This is set in 1346 during the Hundred Years War and involves an English army landing in Normandy in the weeks prior to the battle of Crecy. The novel follows a group of men from Essex known as the Essex Dogs. There is a great deal of earthy Anglo-Saxon language often interlinked with some rather colourful religious imagery. So not for the easily offended. Jones had the idea for a novel about a group of men at war. The story goes that Jones was having dinner with George R R Martin when the idea took shape. So are there shades of Game of Thrones? Especially as Game of Thrones has also been compared to The Hundred Years War. Well, there are some comparisons, but this doesn’t have complexity or the range. I struggled with the characterisation. The plot took care of itself as there was a series of historical events to hang it on. Some of the characterisation is over the top. At times it felt a bit like a cross between Blackadder, Robin Hood’s merry man and a bunch of English lads drinking in Ibiza. With plenty of fighting and gore thrown in. Jones said he wanted to create a medieval Saving Private Ryan; he hasn’t. There is plenty of humour and action., but it wasn’t for me. 4 and a half out of 10 Starting Promethean Horrors: Classic stories of mad science

The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore “I wish freely to embrace the deliciousness of sin. To sin with abandon is, after all, the only prerogative of the damned.” “Witch is just their nasty word for anyone who makes things happen, who moves the story along”. “No-one actually wishes to see a woman hung, her skirts soaking with wee and throat’s blood frothing on sackcloth. It is a horrible thing. Not amusing anymore. Or do they?” This is a historical novel, based on actual events. It is set in the Essex village of Manningtree during the early 1640s (1643-1647), the time of the Civil War. As a result there are a limited number of men in the village: they are fighting and dying in the Civil War. One man who is there is Matthew Hopkins, remembered by history by his nickname, “Witchfinder General”. The novel focuses on a group of women in and near the village. The novel also feels remarkably modern. A situation where society is destabilised and women face violence. Those who do not conform are scapegoated and persecuted. “When women think alone, they think evil” The characterisation is very good. Hopkins in particular is believable and the place of Puritanism is also central. It reminded me a little of Miller’s The Crucible, which of course was an attack on McCarthyism, but this was written by a woman. Witch hunts have been seen as the end of medieval superstition as the Enlightenment begins, but it has been argued they are actually part of modernisation along with enclosure, the growth of workhouses and so on. There was also a new conception of the role of women which did not fit with the older “wise women” and medieval thought patterns. Again Puritanism was part of this. Blakemore started as a poet and her prose is very good: her descriptions spot on. Especially in relation to the sight, sounds and smells of everyday life: “the air is sour with the smack of horse-dung and sweet with the smells of cooking lard and onions.” Sometimes though the words do carry the author away a little: “While marching orders and tactical directives deliquesce on the brumal winds, the pyrotechnics of imminent apocalypse shimmer just as rosily on the ice-bound horizon as they ever did.” Despite the occasional bit of wordiness I think this is one of the better books in this genre. It works as a historical novel and as a piece of gothic. It reiterates the nature of male violence which is showing no signs of going away. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins

The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman “She and Christopher and the baby went into shifts and coils and clouds, round and round in the same spot. There he was, her father, he came in the door and she didn’t know he was coming. She gave a loud cry to him. He was very tall and he breathed the stream where they had made the dam at the Devil’s Hole.” Another Virago Modern Classic. This is a novel about a woman (Marthe) who has a breakdown following the birth of her child: “post-partum psychosis”. It describes her time in the institution into which she is admitted and her interactions with staff and other internees. Coleman is writing of what she knows. She spent two months in an institution following the birth of her own child. “The window was closed and the bars went up and down on the outside. She could hear the wind sliding the snow off the roof. An avalanche of snow gathered and fell and buried the sun beneath. There were six bars to the back of her bed.” Coleman provides a picture of the daily routines and interactions between different sections of the institution and looks at some of the idiosyncrasies of the other inmates. There is a sense of enclosure of being fenced in and of helplessness: “She stared at the shining room white with sunlight. Can’t I stay here a little while? I’m sorry, said Dr Halloway, but this room is busy all the time. We had an operation for appendicitis here this morning and we’re expecting a delivery tonight.She was wheeled back, past the man, past the billiard table, down the dark hall, past the piano and into the Day Room. Can’t I stay in the Day Room? She begged, just to look at that flower pot? I will be good, O I will be good.” Coleman wrote a great deal, but this was her only novel. She does document the effects of physical confinement rather well. At the time (1930) it was certainly experimental. It is another exploration of the “madwoman”, but this time not from Victorian literature, rather modernist. As it can be described as a modernist novel, it has an element of experimentation and uses stream of consciousness to some extent. Coleman uses punctuation (or more particularly lack of it) to make the reader feel like they are in Marthe’s head. Marte’s relationship with her body changes throughout the novel as she becomes more at ease with it. There is an awful lot of bathing in the novel as well and its nature seems to chart the trajectory of the illness: “Marthe danced lifting her legs and leaning to the spray. Brunmark bent to the turning of her bright nickel spigots, leaned to hold the hose that rushed at Marthe’s spinal column, played it up and down the middle of her back, holding her out and erect like a stone majesty. Brunmark’s cap fell to one side and she shifted her feet to the changing of the waters. Dance dance Brunmark, throw away your cap and dance. Come out from under your stiff legs and float about the spray.” There is a sort of movement in the nature of the way Marthe moves throughout the novel as well. One of the lessons of the novel is the importance of persistence as a way of being empowered and fighting back. It’s an interesting novel, the whole is a little disjointed and for me felt a little too short, but it’s worth looking at. 7 out of 10 Starting The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell “time runs only one way.” This is the first novel I have read by Maggie O’Farrell. This has been popular and prize winning. It came out at the beginning of lockdown and I suspect it was a lockdown read for many. It is the story of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet (aka Hamlet, variations on the same name) who died at the age of eleven. Little is known about Shakespeare’s life and those around him. This gives O’Farrell plenty of scope for a fictional account. It is clear that a good deal of research has gone into this. Hamnet’s cause of death is unknown, but O’Farrell makes it a plague death. Interestingly the main character in the novel is Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife (I know it’s recorded as Anne, but O’Farrell likes to flip things around a bit). He says very little and is generally referred to the Latin Tutor, the father or her husband. Agnes is pretty much what was known as a “wise woman”, having a sort of second sight. This feels like a bit of a plot device to me: “She fears her foresight; she does. She remembers with ice-cold clarity the image she had of two figures at the foot of the bed where she will meet her end. She now knows that it’s possible, more than possible, that one of her children will die, because children do, all the time. But she will not have it. She will not. She will fill this child, these children, with life. She will place herself between them and the door leading out, and she will stand there, teeth bared, blocking the way. She will defend her three babes against all that lies beyond this world. She will not rest, not sleep, until she knows they are safe. She will push back, fight against, undo the foresight she has always had, about having two children. She will. She knows she can.” The novel is written in the present tense. It is a novel about grief and loss (inevitably). It is also very descriptive, and O’Farrell piles on the words. Here is an example, a description of a forest: “a restless, verdant, inconstant sight: the wind caresses, ruffles, disturbs the mass of leaves; each tree answers to the weather’s ministrations at a slightly different tempo from its neighbour, bending and shuddering and tossing its branches, as if trying to get away from the air, from the very soil that nourishes it”. All very lovely, but after a while it begins to grate. The novel does pick up a bit after Hamnet’s demise. However there are a few irritations. A number of people have pointed this out, O’Farrell uses her adjectives in threes. Once you know this you can’t unknow it. The quote above has three examples and here is another quote: “The smell, the sight, the colour took her back to a bed soaked red and a room of carnage, of violence, of appalling crimson.” Here’s another one: “The hawking, honey-producing, ale-trading priest will marry them early the next day, in a ceremony arranged quickly, furtively, secretively.” There are adjectives every bloody where! The plot device with the flea also irritated me. I can understand why this is loved, but not by me. However if you ever need an adjective or two there are loads to choose from here. 5 out of 10 Starting The Others of Edenwell by Verity Holloway

Old Mali and the boy by D R Sherman A brief novella, part of a bulk buy of old penguins. This was originally published in 1964. It is set in the India of the Raj, where Sherman was born. It is about a twelve year old boy living with his mother in India and their gardener Mali. Mali is old and meant to be wise. As you may guess it is about the impulsiveness of youth learning from the wisdom of age. It also reinforces stereotypes and is very masculine. Apparently it was also intended for children to read. I hated this. The book starts with a brutal example of corporal punishment inflicted on the boy by his headmaster. It follows with a prolonged description of a bear slowly dying in a metal trap. It also includes the shooting of a monkey with an arrow: another slow vividly described death and poor old Mali also ends up in a metal trap. That’s all in about one hundred pages, along with “homespun wisdom” about growing up and becoming a man. There are shades of Kipling and Hemingway as well in the subject matter. Truly awful 1 out of 10 Starting Essex Dogs by Dan Jones

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry Pastiche Victoriana written by two writers. Chris Brookmyre and his partner Marisa Haetzman. Haetzman has a medical background and there is a fair amount of medical stuff in the novel related to anaesthesia and childbirth. This is set in Edinburgh in 1847 and is a sort of detective (not the police type). Someone is killing young women who want an abortion (which is illegal). It does take about half the book for the two protagonists to work this out, by which time the reader will also have worked out who did it. It’s pretty obvious. The protagonists are Will Raven, an apprentice to James Simpson who is a well-known and respected gynaecologist who specialises in midwifery and Sarah a housemaid in the household. Or as The Guardian puts it a sort of cosplay Mulder and Scully (that made me laugh). There is a good deal about the place of women: ‘Sarah occasionally amused herself by dwelling on the notion of herself as a student: what her days would have been like and which subjects she might have liked to study. She had an interest in botany and horticulture, as well as in the traditional healing arts, inherited from her family background. Any time spent in the professor’s study caused her to marvel at all of the myriad disciplines and fields of knowledge one might explore, and the idea of spending whole years doing precisely that seemed heavenly. However, this was a distraction that came at a price, for although it was pleasant to indulge such fantasies, they also forced her to confront the harsh truth. She had not the means to attend university nor any prospect of ever acquiring them. Being female was also an obstacle that she could not easily overcome.’ There are lots of red herrings, nicely packaged and fairly obvious, some nicely villainous villains, a fair amount of comment about the place of women and the inequalities, some early photography and a colourful underworld. There are lots of loose ends, but they are all neatly tied up by the end, sometimes in rather unlikely ways. But then this is the first of a series and so things had to be set up. This is entertaining as far as it goes. The plot revolves around the increasing use of things like ether and chloroform and the means of abortion for the lower orders. I think a good deal of research went into the medical side of things and quite a few of the characters were actual historical persons; Simpson for example and the two photographers. It is certainly formulaic, but seems to be pretty popular. Although it didn’t quite convince me. 6 out of 10 Starting Old Mali and the Boy by D R Sherman

Whigs and Hunters by E P Thompson “We appear to glimpse a declining gentry and yeoman class confronted by incomers with greater command of money and influence, and with a ruthlessness in the use of both” Another offering from one of my favourite historians E P Thompson. This study looks at the origins and effects of The Black Act of 1723, one of the most oppressive pieces of legislation ever passed by the British parliament, massively increasing the number of offences for which the death penalty was prescribed. The background is worth mentioning. Following the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Britain now had a German King from Hanover. There was still strong feeling for the Stuart lineage who had been displaced in 1688 and there had been a Jacobite rebellion in 1715. Jacobite feeling was common, especially in the Catholic community and there were ongoing fears of rebellion. The economic disaster of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 was still close and its effects still being felt. The prime ministerial system was just beginning and Sir Robert Walpole had assumed office in 1721 and was now busily accumulating power and protecting the guilty (his nickname being “Mr Skreenmaster General”) who had benefitted from the collapse. His hold on power was still a little shaky and needed bolstering. Enclosure was proceeding as it had been for many years, removing ancient rights and customs and causing distress and displacement. It was consequently a time of flux. The Act was a reaction to what was felt to be an increase in lawlessness, mainly in and around the forests. The name Black Act derives from the blacking of the face that poachers used for night time activities to avoid detection. This goes back to the medieval and probably Saxon period so it was not new. The death penalty was now imposable for blacking the face, breaking the heads of fish ponds (to steal the fish), the poaching of deer (especially from Royal parks), the damaging of cattle and horses, the removal of wood from the forests, the damaging of duck ponds, cutting trees, setting fire to hayricks or barns, poaching hares. In fact there were over one hundred new capital offences. The lawlessness that it was meant to counter had complex roots often linked to the removal of previous rights in relation to the land and forest. It involved a number of levels of society from ordinary working folk, to tradespeople to minor members of the gentry and even clergy. For the authorities the fear of Jacobinism was ever present (even when there was no evidence for it). As Thompson points out the legislation was “an astonishing example of legislative overkill” and indicates that crime was now more something done to things rather than people. The use-rights over land were pre-capitalist and had to go to enable the rural economy to “modernise”. The Act also removed the need for an awkward trial. If someone was accused of offences covered by the Act by sworn statements of credible witnesses, he would become a “proclaimed man”. At that point if he failed to surrender himself after a proclamation was read in two market towns on two market days and affixed on some public place, he could be deemed guilty and sentenced to death without further trial. It was a time of change, old manor houses were being replaced by new more stately homes and more formal gardens and Thompson analyses the Act and its working out in some detail going through court and assize records. It’s not an easy read but it’s a proper history book and I found it well worth the effort. 9 out of 10 Starting Prize for the Fire by Rilla Askew

Mortal Echoes: Encounters with the end edited by Greg Buzwell ” ‘You’re not really dying, are you?’ asked Amanda. “I have the doctor’s permission to live till Tuesday,” said Laura. ” Another short story collection from the British library Tales of the Weird series. These stories are about encounters with death and the end: about being alive and the transitory nature of existence. There is, as the series suggests the weird as well as the supernatural. The series does pick out some of the more obscure writers: but this one includes some very well-known writers indeed. There is Dickens (The Signal Man), Le Fanu, Poe (The Masque of the Red Death), H G Wells, Graham Greene, Daphne Du Maurier (very good twist at the end), Saki, Nathanial Hawthorne, May Sinclair, Marjorie Bowen, Ambrose Bierce amongst others. There are some interesting ones. The H G Wells looks at the changes in anaesthesia: chloroform and ether and near death experiences. The Dickens is a traditional ghost story. Bierce writes a civil war story about an execution. The May Sinclair story is the one which is probably the most chilling. It imagines what hell might be like and it is linked to ex friends/lovers. The last tale by Charlie Fish (the one writer still alive) is called Death by Scrabble and it is very funny. There is also a story by Donald Barthelme, which might seem surprising. It is also rather short, very funny and decidedly macabre. Aikman’s Your Tiny Hand is Frozen uses the telephone as the central prop. This is a good collection of tales. 9 out of 10 Starting The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins ““Imogen,” he said with forced patience, “you have plenty of occupations of your own, and you don’t care to do the things that give a great deal of pleasure to me – when I have time to do them. You don’t want to fish or shoot and you can’t drive my car, which would be a help to me sometimes. Am I to understand that you object to my having the companionship of another woman who can do these things?”” “Are you sure you know what men fall in love with?” Another Virago! The title is obviously a reference to one of Aesop’s Fables. It was published in the early 1950s and is set around that time. Elizabeth Jenkins (who died in 2010 at 105) wrote a few novels, this being the best known. She is better known for writing biographies (a couple on Elizabeth I, Jane Austen, the Princes in the Tower and King Arthur amongst others) and for co-founding the Jane Austen society. This is an emotionally complex novel, claustrophobic and it doesn’t go for the easy and obvious at the end. This is about betrayal: a love triangle if you will. Evelyn is a barrister aged 52. He is married to Imogen who is 37 and conventionally beautiful. They have a son. Gavin who is 12 and the image of his father. One of their neighbours is Blanche Silcox, who is the same age as Evelyn and not conventionally beautiful. When I say neighbour, this is the countryside with large houses, so we are thinking a couple of miles. As Hilary Mantel says in her introduction, marriage is akin to warfare and Evelyn is generally assertive and likes his own way whilst Imogen is generally pliant. There are some well-developed minor characters, who do contribute to the whole. The premise is simple Evelyn begins to spend more time with Blanche, they begin an affair and eventually move in together. This is the 1950s in rural England and so everything is gradual and conventions have to be noted. It is interesting to work out who is the tortoise and who is the hare: by the end it isn’t entirely obvious. The plot is fairly flimsy in itself, it’s what Jenkins makes of it. “Imogen went into the house. From the end window of her bedroom she looked out on the drive, a yellow gravelled circus surrounded by evergreens. The gate was pushed back against a box hedge, and standing with one hand on it, Evelyn was talking to Blanche Silcox, a neighbour who lived behind the hanger. She was on the way to the post in the village, it seemed, for she held several envelopes in her leather-gauntleted hand. The tweed suit, expensive but of singular cut, increased the breadth of her middle-aged figure. She appeared kind and unassuming, which made it the more strange that her hats should be so very intimidating.” This is a tale of domestic disharmony which isn’t formulaic. The male lead in this really is not likeable, but there is nuance to his character as well. I did enjoy this and Jenkins reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor and her novels. 8 out of 10 Starting The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman

I am enjoying the series Madeleine The Raj: an eyewitness history edited by Roger Hudson This is a Folio Society collection of eyewitness accounts and descriptions of being in India from 1600 to 1947. The excerpts are from all levels ordinary soldiers and civilians to those at higher levels including Curzon, various assorted Trevelyan’s, Macaulay, Emily Eden, the Wellesley’s to name a few. The accounts cover a great deal. The obvious battles and skirmishes, food, servants, religions, daily habits, poverty, relations between local notables and the British, the first war of independence (in some gruesome detail), issues between the Crown and the East India Company, wildlife and hunting, leisure pursuits, the weather, politics, crime, cultural issues, marital relationships, amorous relationships and much more. Imperialism in India had a profound effect on Britain, or on certain parts of it, especially the wealthier South and Midlands. One of the commentators in the collection says everyone in the country knew someone who used to serve in India. I would dispute that. I was brought up in a steel town. I did not know anyone who was in India. I did know people who were ordinary soldiers in the First World War, especially The Somme and heard their stories. However when I was training to be a priest (part of my murky past before I discovered atheism) I was on placement near Birmingham and there I met a rather old colonial civil servant: tiger skins and all. It left a rather bad taste. This is an interesting collection. Quite a few of those who did contribute didn’t want to be there, a few even thought we shouldn’t be there (not many). There are some interesting quotes along the way. Here is Edmund Burke talking about the East India Company: “Animated with all the avarice of age and the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another: wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of the native but an endless hopeless prospect of new flights of prey and passage.” This quote is from General Sir Charles Napier in 1842 at the town of Alore, from his tent overlooking the encampment where his army was camped: “Why is all this? Why am I, a miserable wretch supreme here? At my word all this mass obeys – multitudes superior to me in bodily and mental gifts! A little wretched experience in the art of killing, of disobedience to God, is all the superiority that I, their commander, can boast of! “ There is lots in here over the centuries to illustrate imperialism at work. Of course it is all from one side and I need a corrective of accounts from the victims of imperialism. There’s some horrific stuff in here, especially around 1857. There is way too little known by those in this country of what colonialism really meant; this certainly goes some way to remedy that, but it only scratches the surface. 7 out of 10 Starting The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T E Lawrence

Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch Second in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. The premise is still the same, PC Peter Grant is a Met police officer and apprentice magician (the premise is of magic, easily accepted but otherwise society as it is). This second episode is set mainly in Soho and revolves around Jazz clubs and the underbelly of Soho. It’s slick and well written. The Potter links are obvious and as Aaronovitch has said himself: "suppose Harry Potter had gone to a comprehensive school rather than Hogwarts," Grant is state educated, from a council estate and is of mixed parentage. This one follows pretty much straight on from the first. As with the first Aaronovitch makes good use of his knowledge of London and the sense of humour continues as well: “The important thing about Camden Market is that nobody planned it. Before London swallowed it whole, Camden Town was the fork in the road best known for a coaching inn called the Mother Red Cap. It served as a last-chance stop for beer, highway robbery and gonorrhoea before heading north into the wilds of Middlesex.” Discussing a book about magic found in a victim’s flat: ““Assuming he was a practitioner,” I said. Nightingale tapped his butter knife on the plastic-wrapped copy of the Principia Artes Magicis. “Nobody carries this book by accident,” he said. “Besides, I recognize the other library mark. It’s from my old school.” “Hogwarts?” I asked. “I really wish you wouldn’t call it that,” he said.” The catchphrase from the cover sums it up, “Magic and murder to a Jazz beat”. There are plenty of obscure Jazz references for those into that sort of thing. Of course London itself is a significant character as in writers like Dickens, Conan Doyle and even Moorcock in The Whispering Swarm and the idea of a secret London persists in them all. There are plenty of the usual tropes and a certain amount of predictability, but it sent me off to sleep well enough. 7 out of 10 Starting Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Grand Union by Zadie Smith A collection of nineteen short stories. I have read some Zadie Smith before and quite enjoyed On Beauty and White Teeth. However this collection of short stories completely left me cold. There’s stuff about social media and society and the settings vary from London to New York and into Europe. There is no particular theme and I found them very difficult to relate to. There was one exception, Kelso deconstructed. It is about the 1959 murder of Kelso Cochrane a 32 year old black Antiguan man in the Notting Hill area of London. It plays around a bit with the facts but highlights a racist murder that went unsolved (there’s a tradition of that in the UK). The aftermath of the murder led to the setting up of the Notting Hill Carnival. The stories go nowhere and feel artificially clever. I expect they will soon be on university literature syllabus’s being analysed and studied. I suppose these stories reminded me how much better her novels are. I just didn’t relate to these. 3 out of 10 Starting The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany “Very few suspect the existence of this city. It is as if not only the media but the laws of perspective themselves have redesigned knowledge and perception to pass it by. Rumor says there is practically no power here. Neither television cameras nor on-the-spot broadcasts function: that such a catastrophe as this should be opaque, and therefore dull, to the electric nation! It is a city of inner discordances and retinal distortions.” This is a tour de force, Very long, experimental (structurally and linguistically) and not science fiction in the Star Wars, Star Trek or Doctor Who sense at all. It is set in a Midwestern US city called Bellona after some sort of disaster. There appear to be two moons and plenty of apparent anarchy. The main character is the kid (or Kid or Kidd, even he doesn’t know). The reader follows kid around Bellona. There appears to be no formal structure to society and as one resident says: “You know, here… you’re free. No laws, to break or to follow. Do anything you want. Which does funny things to you. Very quickly, surprisingly quickly, you become… exactly who you are.” Kid, as it happens is a poet, a bit of a wanderer: what might be called a flaneur. There is plenty of communal living and gangs of youth. There’s also lots of sex in many combinations, singly and in groups: gay, bi, hetero. The fabric of reality has pretty much disappeared and so have all the fault lines between people, so pretty much anything goes and reality itself isn’t really knowable: “You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city, you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes.” This is a challenging book and seems to be loved and hated in equal measure. Harlan Ellison said of it: “An unrelenting bore of a literary exercise afflicted with elephantiasis, anemia of ideas, and malnutrition of plot.” But then I’m not a fan of his either! This is indeed complex and full of ideas, often thought provoking. Like Finnegan’s Wake there is an unclosed closing sentence. Delany has said it is a circular text which could be entered at a number of places. It is a world in itself. There are plenty of issues to discuss: sex and race for starters. The writing can be uneven, but it’s a great book. “There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.” 9 out of 10 Starting Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Thanks willoyd, I'll watch out for those. The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford “The oak branch is my golden bough, offering immediate safe conduct from one world to another. It transports me to a particular day and tree, and then on to other oaks and their places, some of these known personally, others vicariously through things I have been told, or through poems and stories, photographs and paintings. Sometimes it will take me full circle, from heroes to local histories, tales of magic and metamorphosis, panegyrics and protests, fables of planting and felling, and on through forests of wood carvings, masts, musical instruments, and furniture, until I am back in the same room, surrounded by familiar things. They are never quite the same.” Seventeen chapters, each on a different tree, you might say this was a root and branch analysis of some of the more well-known trees (sorry, I couldn’t resist: not one of mine, I borrowed it). There is a great variety of information here; lots of history, poetry and literature, a bit of life cycle, some myth and folklore, some description of what the wood is used for and some personal reflections. It is also pretty Eurocentric. There are some excellent illustrations, especially the woodcuts. Many things stand out, one id the sheer age of some species. Yew trees can reach five thousand years, oaks well over a thousand. Olives too, there are thousand year old olive groves in Greece and one olive tree in Portugal is nearly three thousand years old. Yet apples rarely reach a hundred years and usually only thirty. Cypress for melancholy, Yew for death, Rowan for protection from spirits/magic, oak as a national emblem (for about fifteen countries). There’s lots of information, arranged and illustrated well. The scope is mainly European. The links to poetry, literature and folklore are fascinating and provide a cultural history. There is a lot to be learnt. Yews were planted in Churchyards because they were poisonous and kept the local cattle from eating the grass on holy ground. The Rowan because of its protective powers was made into walking sticks for older people and small sailing boats. Rowan berries were made into necklaces for babies. Elm was used for making lavatory seats. Informative and enjoyable. 8 out of 10 s Starting Mortal Echoes: Encounters with the end edited by Greg Buzwell

Incomparable World by S I Martin This is part of the Black Britain Writing Back series that Bernadine Evaristo put together. The collection is designed to highlight a variety of black British writers and to help reconfigure black British literary history. Martin is a teacher, historian and author. His writings are to address the lack of black British history. As well as his academic writing he also does walking tours entitled “500 years of black London”. This is a novel set in 1780s London (It was written in 1996). It is a little known fact that there was a significant black population in London especially at the time. After the Revolutionary Wars in the 1770s a number of black slaves who fought with the British had to leave the US. Some went to Nova Scotia, a few to Brazil, some to Africa and quite a few to Britain. Martin has imagined the lives of a group of them, based on what is actually known mixed with some story telling. As one reviewer says: “It’s a fascinating and conflicted take on what it means to be Black in Britain, a racist country that nonetheless lets you make it home.” The topography of London feels correct as does the slang that is used. Some of the descriptions feel as though they could have happened at any point in London’s history: “The noise from the crowd didn’t quite drown out the noise from the massive alehouse. Bass-heavy music…rattled the glass and ancient timbers of the Bull Inn. And the waiting throng, though packed solid, somehow moved in time to the music in a weld of hips, elbows and anxious-happy faces” Martin manages to combine a meditation on race and class with an adventure story, a thriller with a bit of romance. It shouldn’t be good, but it is and is in the tradition of novels like Tom Jones. Evaristo says about this series: “Our ambition is to correct historic bias in British publishing and bring a wealth of lost writing back into circulation. While many of us continue to lobby for the publishing industry to become more inclusive and representative of our society, this project looks back to the past in order to resurrect texts that will help reconfigure black British literary history… My aim is to present a body of work that illustrates a variety of preoccupations and genres that offer important and diverse black British perspectives. I am very excited to introduce these books to new readers who will discover their riches.” This novel is part of that and deserves to be better known. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Independent People by Halldor Laxness

Thanks Willoyd Misunderstanding in Moscow by Simone De Beauvoir “She kept from him certain moods, some regrets, some little worries; doubtless he too had his own little secrets. But, by and large, there was nothing that they did not know about each other.” “It would be fine, he often thought, if the past were a landscape in which one could wander at will, discovering little by little how routes meander and double back.” A rather brief novella from De Beauvoir, set in 1960s Moscow and written in the mid-1960s. It is about a married couple, Nicole and Andre. They have both just retired and are in their early 60s (it is nice to have protagonists about my age!!). They are in Moscow to visit Andre’s daughter Macha who is showing them round. Both are left leaning and possibly based on Sartre and De Beauvoir who were about the same age at the time and were regular visitors to Moscow. Their relationship is a longstanding one and both have had affairs in the past. It’s about the ties that bind people together and pull them apart. There is a fair amount becoming accustomed to growing older and the adjustments that need to be made: “When you are young, with an illusory eternity in front of you, you jump to the end of the road in one leap; later, you do not have the strength to surpass what have been called the incidental casualties of history, and you consider them to be appallingly high. He had counted on history to justify his life: he was not counting on it any longer.” It is a portrait of a couple who have entrenched habits between them. Sex has disappeared and is no longer there as a way of making up. Both are realising that they are no longer objects of desire to the young. It’s the usual growing old stuff. De Beauvoir also adds some of the debates taking place on the left at the time in relation to the Soviet Union in the talks between Andre and Macha. The descriptions of Moscow and the way of life are also fascinating: “The railway station, painted in garish green: Muscovite green….Gorky Street. The Peking Hotel: a modest, tiered wedding cake when you compared it with the gigantic, ornate buildings allegedly inspired by the Kremlin, with which the city was bristling. Nicole remembered everything. And as soon as she got out of the car she recognised the smell of Moscow, an even stronger smell of diesel fumes than in 1963, doubtless because there were far more vehicles, especially trucks and van.” The misunderstanding itself is really about a series of little misunderstandings that accumulate and some long standing tensions and niggles, and of course communication is at the centre of it. There are mutual fears with illuminating asides, but it is something minor which sets off a significant disruption. De Beauvoir shows a depth of understanding, but as this is so short there is no space or time to really explore what is going on. De Beauvoir is very good at showing both sides though. Inevitably there’s a bit of existential angst: “She was stricken with anguish: the anguish of existing . . . Alone like a rock in the middle of the desert, but condemned to be aware of her useless presence” It’s an interesting and very brief exploration of relationships and aging, which I appreciated because it’s a while since I read any De Beauvoir. 8 out of 10 Starting The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert This novel weaves together prose, myth, folklore, poetry, history as well as past present and future. Gilbert has focussed on a particular aspect of English folklore Herne the Hunter. The mythology around Herne has lots of strands. It usually focuses on the Great North Wood which was counter-intuitively just South of London. Herne is mentioned in Shakespeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor. He is variously a ghost of a poacher, the ghost of a keeper, a part resurrected favourite huntsman of Richard II now with fully attached antlers like a stag. Generally Herne is a mischief maker, Lord of Misrule, spirit of the forest and leader of the Great Hunt (going back to Norse mythology). He (not always a he in this novel) is a trickster. The stories here start in 1392 and move through the ages by year ending in 2073. In each Herne plays a role, usually subversive, using humans as foils and playthings. Herne is male, female and sometimes animal. Herne shape shifts throughout the ages as does Gilbert’s prose and the snatches of poetry, to fit the era. The novel is in three sections. The first is Enchantment and runs until the 1700s when Herne is powerful, the second is Disenchantment as the woods diminish and Herne’s role changes. The last section is Re-enchantment with three tales set later this century. There are recurring characters to be spotted, including some of the river spirits of the tributaries of the Thames. Gilbert acknowledges that she had great fun researching this: “the chapters are interspersed with chants, or songs. Some of these are extant verses, from traditional wassails (‘Anon’ crops up more than once) to a poem by Blake or a lyric by Henry VIII. Mixed in with those recognisable old verses are chants I wrote myself and attributed to fictional authors. To me, reading a list of common names for fungi or mosses that runs into the thousands of terms is an exquisite pleasure: the density, the repetition, the sheer delight of names such as ‘sweet poisonpie’ just floors me. The same happened when I dredged up all the street names in post codes that were once covered by the wood, and isolated those that mentioned forests, trees, or geological features. Such beauty, in simple lists, I wanted to share, but I spent a great deal of time organising them into rhythms and forms, following those of medieval lullabies or carols. I attributed these to authors other than myself as a form of mischief – I wanted the reader to wonder where this odd little thing had come from.” The novel provides an intersection between myth, folklore, history and humanity and ecology. All in all this was great fun with some pertinent points being made about progress and our treatment of the planet. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Misunderstanding in Moscow by Simone De Beauvoir

Begars Abbey by V L Valentine Another heavy slice of gothic with a slight variation. It is set in the 1950s. !954 to be precise. Sam lives in Brooklyn with her mother and is in her 20s. When her mother dies she discovers that her mother has kept secrets. She has a family in Britain, well a grandmother living in a crumbling old ruin of a country house built on the site of a medieval convent. Sam treks over to Yorkshire: it’s close to York and there meets mystery and intrigue (surprise, surprise!). Her grandmother has had a series of strokes and is entirely dependent on others. There are a small number of servants, some of whom are decidedly elderly. There are also a couple of brothers (solicitors) who sort of manage affairs and there are plenty of mysteries. Not least of which is why Sam’s mother told her nothing of all this. Adding it all up there are secret passages leading to who knows where, creaking corridors, ghosts, apparitions, oubliettes, ghostly whisperings, diaries with more mysteries. It’s all set over the Christmas and New Year period and there is lots of snow and cold. There’s nothing new here. It’s put together ok with some effective descriptions and it does what it says on the tin. There’s ghosts, gothic and spookiness a rather nasty old aristocrat in the family history. It isn’t memorable and the ending doesn’t really go anywhere. 5 out of 10 Starting The long long life of trees by Fiona Stafford

Yes, Hayley I have a few of these ready for the autumn and darker nights. One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, briar, limber lock Three geese in a flock One flew East One flew West And one flew over the cuckoo's nest This was published in 1962 and is set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital. It is a critique of psychiatry which appeared around the same time as Laing, Foucault and Szasz were putting their thoughts on paper about mental health treatments and Goffman was writing Asylums. There is a story that Kesey wrote much of this whilst taking LSD. Kesey had taken drugs like LSD and mescaline as part of Project MKUltra and he also worked as an orderly in a mental health facility. The plot and the cast list are pretty well known, especially as a result of the 1975 film with Jack Nicholson playing Randle Patrick McMurphy, the loose cannon on the mental health ward, feigning mental illness to avoid prison. It is, of course narrated by Chief Bromden, a half Native-American inmate who is feigning being deaf and dumb. Kesey has valid points to make about the pointless brutality of the mental health institutions and treatments of the time, but I think they are better made elsewhere. What struck me most was the racism and misogyny of the whole thing. Critic Marcis Falk makes the point well: “The novel/play, never once challenges the completely inhuman sexist structure of society, nor does it make any attempt to overthrow sexist or racist stereotypes. The only blacks in the play are stupid and malicious hospital orderlies. And the only right-on women in the play are mindless 'ladies of the night'. Nurse Ratched is a woman because Ken Kesey hates and fears women.” The problem is that Kesey is trying to present a single male taking on the system and being the only one, alone against the world. Like Alan Ladd in Shane, Gary Cooper in High Noon or Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. McMurphy has all the quips, all the good lines. There is a messianic element to McMurphy and Kesey drops in lots of references to Christ’s passion for good measure, which I found entirely unconvincing. The problem is the antagonists are female or black. The white doctors seem to have little power. This particular matriarchy is oppressive to the egos and libidos of the poor oppressed white males and they must therefore buck the system and gain their revenge. There is no nuance, no exploration of the roles of the orderlies or the nurse. Very overrated. 3 out of 10 Starting Stalingrad by Vassily Grossman

Weird Woods edited by John Miller At the moment the British Library are publishing a series of books collectively titled Tales of the Weird. There are over thirty of them at the moment and they are thematic. Some are collections of stories by one author others have themes like this one. There are a couple of Christmas volumes, a polar one, one on women writers, one based on Churches (inevitably called Holy Ghosts), several on the seas and coastlines, some on science and so on. This one has stories related to the forests of Britain. There are twelve stories from a variety of writers including M R James, Algernon Blackwood, Marjorie Bowen, Edith Nesbit, Walter de la Mare and Mary Webb among others. As the introduction says: “Woods play an important and recurring role in horror, fantasy, the gothic and the weird. They are places in which strange things happen, where you often can’t see where you are or what is around you. Supernatural creatures thrive in the thickets. Trees reach into underworlds of earth, myth and magic. Forests are full of ghosts.” ‘’These are the aspects of our experience of nature that cannot be offset; the history of a place cannot be traded off against the history of another place; you can’t erase the history of one location and just put some more history somewhere else. Weird woods are singular places with very specific energies.’’ Inevitably some of the stories are stronger than others. The M R James is one of his lesser known ones. I found the one by Arthur Machen interesting, I’ve not read anything by him before: ““Come with me to Wales. I think you would like me place.’’ Charnock accepted; he knew that Blantyre lived in scenes of complete isolation in a remote valley, among the hills haunted by many a mysterious legend, the setting of some of the oldest tales of Europe, and this disturbed him, for he was very sensitive to the influences of the past; yet for Blantyre’s sake he went. It was October; the strangest month in the year, Blantyre always said, culminating in the awful vigil of the last day which has some mystic meaning now lost.’’ The De la Mare is interesting and may be a reflection on Imperialism. They are not all about the supernatural, but try to unsettle and unnerve. The Webb story has a strong feminist undertone and links the land and what grows in it to passion and history. An interesting collection overall and good for chilly winter nights. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting the Long. Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo “Words not only mattered but they were power. Words were muti. Words were weapons. Words were magic. Words were church. Words were wealth. Words were life.” There are going to be inevitable comparisons with Animal Farm and terms like Orwellian are going to be bandied about. It is a satire on the last forty or so years of history in Zimbabwe, here renamed Jidada. All of the characters are animals of varying sorts and varieties: horses, pigs, cats, dogs, donkeys, goats, geese, ducks, peacocks, crocodiles, hens and possibly more. I may have missed a few. It tells the story of a totalitarian regime ruled by “the old horse” and his downfall. This leads to the birth of hope until there is again despair and disillusion. As the song by The Who goes: “Meet the new boss: same as the old boss” Social media now plays a role and there is a very perceptive comment on queueing: “Standing on hind legs, the back leaning against a wall, tail curled or tucked between the legs. Sitting on the pavement. Squatting. Holding on to walls. Sleeping queues. Sleeping pressed together like hot loaves of bread in queues. Sleeping standing with one eye open in queues.” Bulawayo ties in African folklore into the tale and so you have an interesting juxtaposition of the old and the new. The novel is in very small sections and this made it easy to read and to put down and come back to. The language is almost a performance in itself, consider this description of the initial reactions to the fall of the dictator and the arrival of a new regime: “The new Dispensation was such a show bird that very soon other parrots learned the strange new song that now seemed to always be in Jidada’s airs. It felt to the birds like another popular fad not to be left out of, and so in no time crows were cawing New Dispensation, owls were hooting New Dispensation, sparrows were chirping New Dispensation, canaries were singing New Dispensation, doves were cooing New Dispensation, hornbills and other birds were calling New Dispensation, and the cicadas were droning New Dispensation, bees were buzzing New Dispensation, crickets and grasshoppers and other insects were chirping New Dispensation so that Jidada’s hedges and trees and air and skies and even the jungles outside Jidada were all New Dispensation New Dispensation New Dispensation, yes, tholukuthi New Dispensation everywhere and New Dispensation all the time.” Before tying this too closely to Animal Farm, we need to remember that much African folklore tells stories about animals as well. It’s sometimes difficult to follow and can meander a little; but it is a sharp and well-aimed satire. Like the list of government posts: “Minister of Order, Minister of the Revolution, Minister of Propaganda, Minister of Things, Minister of Disinformation, Minister of Corruption, Minister of Homophobic Affairs, and Minister of Looting” The variety of narrative voices works as well and this is certainly worth reading. 8 out of 10 Starting Incomparable World by S I Martin

Thanks Madeleine The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington “People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.” Very unconventional and a product of surrealism. Carrington herself was also rather unconventional. I was aware she had spent much of her time in Mexico. I hadn’t realised she escaped there, following a period in an asylum in Madrid and her family’s plan to move her to an asylum in South Africa. The protagonist is 92 and it makes a change to have an older main character with a great deal of life in her. The best summation of the book I am borrowing from the back: “After coming into possession of a hearing trumpet, 92-year-old Marian Leatherby discovers her son's plans to send her to a nursing home. But this is no ordinary place.... Here there are strange rituals, orgiastic nuns, levitating abbesses, animalistic humans, humanistic animals, a search for the Holy Grail, and a plan to escape to Lapland and knit a tent” There is much more than this including an apocalypse and a nuclear winter. It is a sort of feminist fable as well. It’s idiosyncratic with a strong sense of the absurd. And yet it is also domestic at the same time. Marian’s description of herself: “Here I must say that all my senses are by no means impaired by age. My sight is still excellent although I use spectacles for reading, when I read, which I practically never do. True, rheumatics have bent my skeleton somewhat. This does not prevent me taking a walk in clement weather and sweeping my room once a week, on Thursday, a form of exercise which is both useful and edifying. Here I may add that I consider that I am still a useful member of society and I believe still capable of being pleasant and amusing when the occasion seems fit.” The novel starts rather sedately and goes into apocalypse mode towards the end. Marian’s friend Carmella always adds interest as when she finds out Marian is to go into a care home run by a Christian group: “‘The Well of Light Brotherhood,’ said Carmella, ‘is obviously something extremely sinister. Not I suppose a company for grinding old ladies into breakfast cereal, but something morally sinister. It sounds terrible. I must think of something to save you from the jaws of the Well of Light.’ This seemed to amuse her for no reason at all and she chuckled although I could see she was quite upset. ‘They will not allow me to take the cats you think?’ ‘No cats,’ said Carmella. ‘Institutions, in fact, are not allowed to like anything. They don’t have time.’ ‘What shall I do?’ I said. ‘It seems a pity to commit suicide when I have lived for ninety-two years and really haven’t understood anything.’ ‘You might escape to Lapland,’ said Carmella.” Some of the off the cuff remarks are amusing as well: “At times I had thought of writing poetry myself but getting words to rhyme with each other is difficult, like trying to drive a herd of turkeys and kangaroos down a crowded thoroughfare and keep them neatly together without looking in shop windows.” Olga Tokarczuk in the Paris Review describes the novel as having open-endedness and wild metaphysics. The Hearing Trumpet defies easy classification, but it goes in distinctly surprising directions which makes it worth reading. 8 out of 10 Starting Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert