Books do furnish a room

I think he may well have done Madeleine. Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan “Many people have died there: some killed by the Sri Lankan Army and the state, some by the Indian Peace Keeping Force, and some by the Tamil separatists, whom you know as the terrorists. Many people, of course, have also lived.” This is a novel set during the civil war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and early 1990s. It concerns Sashi, who is sixteen and her four brothers, charting their progress through the turbulent times of the civil war. The novel won the women’s prize for fiction in 2024. Sashi’s progress towards her goal of becoming a doctor is charted over the years in parallel with the development of the violence and unrest. Although this is fiction, it is very much based on the real events and Ganeshananthan charts the violence from all sides: the Sri Lankan government, the Tamil Tigers and the Indian peacekeepers. Because it is effectively a family saga the impact on the family is at the centre with losses of friends, family and beloved colleagues. The title has some meaning. Ganeshananthan makes the complexities and nuance of the situation clear, all sides have blood on their hands: “I did not wait. Neither did the war. It was with us now. Since Dayalan and Seelan would not tell us, I went out and asked my friends what they had heard or knew, and in that way began to collect information about the new lives people were choosing. Were they responding to the war or were they making it? Boys joined in droves; the ranks of the militant groups swelled. Almost every week now one of our neighbours told Amma about those they knew who were going. People spoke about it more and more freely. Some of the parents were proud. “What did we expect them to do, after all,” said Jega Uncle, Saras Aunty’s husband. His nephew had joined. “After what they did in Colombo, how did they expect us to react?”” Ganeshananthan looks at the space between militarised societies and questions of choice and coercion, In the relationships between the Tamil Tigers and the Tamil population I saw parallels with the IRA and the Catholic population in Northern Ireland. The novel is by no means perfect, but it is very effective and stays in the mind. 8 out of 10 Starting Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

The Haunted Library edited by Tanya Kirk A Tales of the Weird collection about libraries and books, selected by Tanya Kirk who is a librarian at St John’s College in Cambridge. There are stories by S Levett Yeats, M R James, Algernon Blackwood, H D Everett, Mary Webb, Margaret Irwin, Hester Holland, Alfred Noyes, L P Hartley, A N L Munby, Russell Kirk, William Croft Dickinson, Penelope Lively and C J Faraday. The introduction is good and the whole collection is one of the better ones in this series. The stories vary in date from 1895 to 2020. This is an updated version of a 2016 collection curated by the same author. There is one of M R James’s more well-known stories and a quote in the introduction by actor Christopher Lee illustrates their power: “He writes his stories so that we might feel just as if we were reading a newspaper, and his characters seemed at first impression to be the kind you could meet on any street. Then by dint of one phrase or sentence a very different picture would emerge from such an apparently normal situation. To me, that is the very essence of terror.” There are a couple more stories in the Jamesian tradition and a particularly good one by C J Faraday, written in 2020. She is also a fellow of St John’s College. The Mary Webb story is a rather light-hearted pastiche and is also very effective. There is also humour in Penelope Lively’s contribution when a very snobbish woman buys what turns out to be a haunted typewriter and starts to take on traits of the previous owner who was very loud and gauche. Hartley’s story concerns a writer who starts to realise on of his nastier creations may be alive. The structure of this story is unusual and works well. There are a couple of stories about evil books and evil booksellers. I’ll end this with a quote from M R James on writing ghost stories: “On the whole (though not a few instances might be quoted against me) I think that a setting so modern that the ordinary reader can judge of its naturalness for himself is preferable to anything antique. For some degree of actuality is the charm of the best ghost stories: not a very insistent actuality, but one strong enough to allow the reader to identify himself with the patient: while it is almost inevitable that the reader of an antique story should fall into the position of the mere spectator.” 9 out of 10 Starting Bog People: A working class anthology of folk horror edited by Hollie Starling

Songs of the Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell Now must I mend my manners And lay my gruffness by. The earth is making merry, And so, I think, must I. The flowers are out in thousands, Each in a different dress. The woods are green and like to fruit, The earth has donned her grassy fleece, And blackbirds, Jackdaws, magpies, nightingales Shouting each other down in equal praise. This is an examination of lyric poetry (published in 1927), sung and said, sacred and profane between the fourth and thirteenth centuries: the bulk being between the tenth and twelfth centuries. There is a good deal of poetry in this as well as analysis. Many of the wandering scholars were clerics, many were troubadours, also known as goliards. Much of the poetry in here was translated by Waddell herself. The reader is introduced to some obscure poets and lyricists: most of whom I had not heard of. Some of the clerical ones I had heard of: Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard and the later Roman poets like Boethius and Virgil. Some felt familiar: the following reminded my of Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral: O Spring the long-desired, The lover’s hour! O flaming torch of joy, Sap of each flower, All Hail! O jocund company Of many flowers, Of many-coloured light, All hail, And foster our delight! The birds sing out in chorus, O youth, joy is before us, Cold winter has passed on, And the Spring winds are come! On the whole I enjoyed this, particularly the lyrics that related to the natural world, but the whole was fascinating and I learnt a lot. You can tell this is an older publication as one of the original reviewers was C S Lewis. 8 out of 10 Starting The Disinherited by Perez Galdos

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay “There were a dozen clocks piled up on the mantelpiece, ticking furiously, all out of time.” This was pure entertainment for the holiday period with no real thinking required. It’s essentially a heist novel. Many reviewers have compared it with Ocean’s Eleven or at least Ocean’s Eleven meets Downton Abbey. This is set in Edwardian London in 1905/6. The main protagonists are a group of women of the servant classes. Led by a housekeeper, Mrs King. She and others organise what is a heist on a large house in Park Lane. It is planned for the night of a ball and the idea is simply to remove all of the contents of the house and sell them. It involves a lot of planning and a large number of people. The plot follows the planning and the inception of the idea, through the night itself and its aftermath. I suspect other books will follow. It also feels like it could be made into a movie in the Thursday Murder Club mould. It’s also a debut novel. There’s also clearly a backstory that could be written about. This was ok as entertainment and escapism. 6 out of 10 Starting Babel by R F Kuang

The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden “What was joy, anyway. What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact. What did people who spoke of joy know of what it meant, to sleep and dream only of the whistle of planes and knocks at the door and on windows and to wake with a hand at one's throat— one's own hand, at one's own throat. What did they know of not speaking for days, of not having known the touch of another, never having known, of want and of not having felt the press of skin to one's own, and what did they know of a house that only ever emptied out. Of animals dying and fathers dying and mothers dying and finding bullet holes in the barks of trees right below hearts carved around names of people who weren't there and the bloody lip of a sibling and what did what did she know” This won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2025 and was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. It is set in The Netherlands in 1961. The main protagonist is Isabel. She lives alone in the family home, although the home is tentatively owned by her elder brother. Isabel is lonely, obsessed with tidiness and order and apparently very self-enclosed. Essentially the novel tells the story of a period of time where Louis has to leave the country with his work and requests that his girlfriend, Eva, stay in the house: for about a month/six weeks. It's the story of Isabel and Eva’s relationship and how it develops. As there is a queer element to this, it’s not too difficult to work out what happens. However, the novel is multi-layered and there are plenty of twists and turns. The aftermath of the war is a significant aspect part of the novel and the house itself is an important part of this. Much property belonging to the Jewish community was redistributed and that caused complications in later years. Family guilt and hidden scars are a factor. There is lots of hidden history. There are also themes of identity, power, control, class, the silence of queer desire, the risks and benefits of chaos. This is an exploration of human vulnerability and on the whole it works and the prose is good. “What was joy, anyway? What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact.” 7and a half out of 10 Starting The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas

First review of the year Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon “Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.” This isn’t my first Pynchon. I loved Mason and Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49 was ok. This one was published in 1973 and concerns the Second World War and it’s aftermath. Of course, he’s produced another novel in the last year, which I may one day read as well! Going into detail about the plot would take too long. Suffice to say that it focuses on (initially) the production and delivery of V2 rockets by the Germans towards the end of the war. It covers the period from late 1944 to September 1945. The plot is intricate and convoluted. There are many recurring characters, and Pynchon is quite inventive with names (one of the US navy’s ships is called the USS John E Badass: today that piece of satire is uncomfortably close to the truth). The novel goes into the science and engineering behind the rockets as well as their production and the search for the secrets behind them by the various allied powers after the war. Pynchon also uses low and high culture and there are lyrics to many popular songs, some of which are certainly made up. He captures the chaos on the continent after the collapse of Nazi Germany very well. Pynchon does endeavour to shock at times and manages it rather well, although he does have a point to make. Despite all the chaos the rocket and its technology is in the hands of the state-corporatist powers and capitalism has weathered the storm. Pynchon is also interested in ecology and the natural world and is also it seems, a bit of a pessimist as he describes the western economic system: “a system whose only aim is to violate the [natural] Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.” The messiness of the novel just reflects that war is a messy business and the real losers are the ordinary citizens on both sides. It’s a magnificent novel, all 902 pages of it and it is worth the hard work it takes to read it. 9 out of 10 Starting JR by William Gaddis

The first review of the year. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon “Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.” This isn’t my first Pynchon. I loved Mason and Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49 was ok. This one was published in 1973 and concerns the Second World War and it’s aftermath. Of course, he’s produced another novel in the last year, which I may one day read as well! Going into detail about the plot would take too long. Suffice to say that it focuses on (initially) the production and delivery of V2 rockets by the Germans towards the end of the war. It covers the period from late 1944 to September 1945. The plot is intricate and convoluted. There are many recurring characters, and Pynchon is quite inventive with names (one of the US navy’s ships is called the USS John E Badass: today that piece of satire is uncomfortably close to the truth). The novel goes into the science and engineering behind the rockets as well as their production and the search for the secrets behind them by the various allied powers after the war. Pynchon also uses low and high culture and there are lyrics to many popular songs, some of which are certainly made up. He captures the chaos on the continent after the collapse of Nazi Germany very well. Pynchon does endeavour to shock at times and manages it rather well, although he does have a point to make. Despite all the chaos the rocket and its technology is in the hands of the state-corporatist powers and capitalism has weathered the storm. Pynchon is also interested in ecology and the natural world and is also it seems, a bit of a pessimist as he describes the western economic system: “a system whose only aim is to violate the [natural] Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.” The messiness of the novel just reflects that war is a messy business and the real losers are the ordinary citizens on both sides. It’s a magnificent novel, all 902 pages of it and it is worth the hard work it takes to read it. 9 out of 10 Starting JR by William Gaddis

Sunless Solstice edited by Lucy Evans Another set of stories in the British Library Tales of the Weird series. This collection has stories based around the Christmas season and the solstice. There are stories from Frederick Manley, Lettice Galbraith, Elia Wilkinson Peattie, W J Wintle, E Temple Thurston, Hugh Walpole, Margery Lawrence, H Russell Wakefield, Daphne Du Maurier, Murial Spark, Robert Aickman and James Turner. The stories span 1893 to 1974. AS you would expect, some are stronger than others and some of the usual ghost story tropes are present. There is one tale told around a fire by a group of friends (Thurston). A couple are about vengeful wives: the one by Du Maurier (The Apple Tree) is particularly strong. There are mysterious encounters and a séance with a sceptical group of acquaintances. There is some benevolence: the tales by Walpole and Peattie, although even these have an edge. Wintle’s tale involves a vengeful black cat. There is a mountaineering tale (Wakefield), which is chilling in more ways than one. A good read for dark nights and the Christmas season. 7 out of 10 Starting The Haunted Library edited by Tanya Kirk

Common People by Leah Gordon and Stephen Ellcock “Over the course of several centuries, acts of law gradually prohibited forms of subsistence hunting by labelling this illegal poaching, made small scale farming economically unviable, redesignated former peasants as wage-enslaved industrial workers and created a tribe of society’s outriders, labelled vagabonds, who were condemned as soon as they existed. In essence, the rich and powerful took away nearly all forms of livelihood from the majority class of peasants, and then immediately criminalized them for their ensuing poverty.” This is an important book which looks at the history of land rights and enclosure. In 1600 about fifty percent of England was common land. It is now about three percent. This tells the story of that struggle from the point of view of those who lost most. There are over one hundred photos and illustrations and Gordon, who is a photographer (as well as an indie musician from the 80s, and veteran of many protests concerning land and roadbuilding). Gordon and Ellcock look at the history of rebellion against enclosure right up to the present day, covering things as esoteric as the allotment movement. There is a detailed timeline from 1066, including the 1217 Charter of the Forest which established rights of access to the royal forests. In 1452, 1455 and 1493 there were Papal Bulls establishing the Doctrine of Discovery, setting out legal and religious principles which gave rights to European Christian nations the right to colonize lands outside Europe, stating that any non-Christian landowners could not be legitimate owners. In fact it was their Christian duty to seize the lands and convert any residents. Thus establishing a religious and moral justification for Imperialism, as early as the fifteenth century. These Papal Bulls were not revoked until 2023. Land ownership was an alien concept to many indigenous tribes. Up to 1597 there was opposition in parliament against enclosure and there were acts in favour of enclosure and against it. 1597 was the date when the last Act was passed against enclosure. The first general (rather than specific) act of enclosure was in 1621. The opposition to enclosure is documented as is the Civil War period rise of groups like The Levellers and the Diggers. The opposition to enclosure in the fens lasted over 160 years. Enclosure was also made easier by the Reformation. The changes in belief system meant that there were no more holidays for saints days and less days off work. The ruling classes began to see holidays as an excuse for licentiousness in the lower classes. Enclosure changed the nature of the countryside. One early driver was the wool industry as landowners wanted more land on which to graze their sheep. Enclosure was vital for the Industrial Revolution because it produced many homeless workers who could move to towns and to where the industry was developing and could live in poor conditions and be paid a pittance. It also helped to create the notion that there was a rural idyll in the past when land was in common. There are obviously problems with this, but it is easy to see where the idea comes from. Enclosure also contributed to a rise in vagabondage which led directly to the Poor laws and later workhouses. Enclosure is one of the fundamental parts of British history which is too often misunderstood. Leah and Ellcock have done an excellent job here of documenting a basic history. The photographs and illustrations are marvellous. There are also important sections on allotments and the protests of the 1980s and 90s following the effects of Thatcher’s policies. 10 out of 10 Starting Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir

The Voices of Time by J G Ballard “To Powers the sky seemed an endless babel, the time-song of a thousand galaxies overlaying each other in his mind. As he moved slowly towards the centre of the mandala he craned up at the glittering traverse of the Milky Way, searching the confusion of clamouring nebulae and constellations… Like an endless river, so broad that its banks were below the horizons, it flowed steadily towards him, a vast course of time that spread outwards to fill the sky and the universe, enveloping everything within them.” A collection of eight short stories by J G Ballard. The stories were written in the late 50s and early 60s, originally published in 1963. Some have elements of science fiction and there is certainly a strangeness to them. I suppose Kafkaesque is a good way to describe them. The stories are not easy to categorize, but there are elements of how we react to technology and mass media. More than one story has a sense of an outside threat which is not easy to quantify or describe. The first story is dystopian and concerns a neurosurgeon Powers who is overseeing a facility which looks after the many people who have succumbed to a type of sleeping sickness which puts people into a coma, never to wake. He is gradually developing the disease himself. The quality is inevitably variable. One of the better stories is The Garden of Time. An older married couple live in a walled villa and garden. In the garden there grows remarkable crystal flowers. The villa is surrounded by rolling hills. In the distance there can be heard the sound of hordes of people approaching the villa. The sounds appear to be threatening. The couple can pick a crystal flower and the flower pushes the people back. However the garden is running out of flowers and the people get nearer. External threat is a theme in a number of the stories. These stories are interesting and thought provoking. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton “Civilization was a blessing you never truly appreciated until it threatened to collapse around you.” This one weighs in at a mere 1100 pages: there is a second volume, equally long. Hamilton therefore has plenty of space for worldbuilding, characters and description. He makes the aliens suitably alien. I’m not going to detail the plot: that would take a while! Hamilton does play with some ideas about society, capitalism and socialism. As there are many different planets in the Commonwealth there is room for a variety of societies. Hamilton also plays with styles of governance and the cumbersomeness of bureaucracy. He also injects a certain cynical humour: “Wherever you find human misery, you find lawyers, either causing it or making a profit from it.” “That was the trouble with freethinkers, they had overactive imaginations that made them uncertain.” I can anticipate some difficult moral questions coming up in the next one. This is a proper space opera. If you like your sci-fi hefty and complex this may be for you! 9 out of 10 Starting Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Lost in the Garden by Adam Leslie Lost in the Garden “STAY AWAY FROM ALMANBY. Almanby is dangerous. Go anywhere, but don’t go to Almanby. But no one ever specified why. No one thought to impress upon the children exactly what terrible fate would befall them if they did happen to venture across its threshold. It was likely no one actually had any idea. It was simply a fact: Almanby was dangerous. Everyone knew it, even if they couldn’t remember how they knew. But there was certainly no need to question it or look into it any further. All anyone was really sure of was that if you went to Almanby, you’d never come back.” “Don’t walk on the quicksand, don’t touch the powerlines, don’t go off with strangers, don’t play on the farm, don’t go to Almanby.” I’ve read a review of this which described it as psychedelic folk horror, not a bad description. It is strange, odd and haunting and Leslie nods at a number of genres. There is a touch of road trip. The dead walk around the countryside aimlessly and slowly (a nod to the zombie genre). Despite being slow the dead do carry wooden clubs, branches or other blunt instruments and use them on any who they catch, This is very much a rural novel, it features villages rather than cities and towns. The whole landscape feels dreamy and out of focus and this is an alternate Britain, There are shades of The Wicker Man and The Day of the Triffids as well as more modern issues like the Covid pandemic. There are three main characters who decide to travel to Almanby. Rachel says she has to deliver a package, Heather whose boyfriend has gone to Almanby and disappeared and Antonia who is in love with Heather. Some sort of cataclysm has happened and most of the adults are dead: “Only the young survived. They thrived, climbing trees, scavenging food and building fortifications. Childhood called them back; it had prepared them for this moment.” The novel is impossible to date, but, it is very funny. There is also, oddly, a cosiness to it and anyone who knows English villages will relate to the descriptions. The ending is as strange as the rest of the novel. It’s really not like anything else I’ve read. 9 out of 10 Starting The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

The Night Wire edited by Aaron Worth This Tales of the Weird collection from the British Library looks at the development of technologies and their intersection with the weird and supernatural. Hence there are stories about television, wireless, photography, typewriters, railways, telegrams, phonographs, X-rays, film and cinema and some of the more esoteric inventions. This sort of story began, I suppose when the portrait became animated and stepped off the wall in Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and continues through films like the ring when the girl steps out of the television. This collection was written between the 1890s and the 1960s. There are stories by Robert Milne, Marcel Schwob, Charles Crosthwaite, Bernard Capes, Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Onions, Francis Stevens, Stefan Grabinski, H P Lovecraft, Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, H F Arnold, H Russell Wakefield, Louis Golding, Marjorie Bowen, J B Priestley and Mary Treadgold. Some of these have not aged well (the Kipling for example), but others are still effective. The J B Priestley story Uncle Phil on TV still works well as does the last story by Mary Treadgold. The Lovecraft is old-fashioned horror of the Hammer kind. There is an artist who becomes his sculpture and a reflection on the effect of typing on the role of women. 7 out of 10 Starting Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights

An Innkeeper's diary by John Fothergill “Once a man told me, for no good reason on that occasion at least, that I was “no gentleman”, and I was glad to coin the only possible reply to this old cliché by saying, “I make no pretence to being a gentleman so we may continue the discussion on equal terms.” A don-like tu quoque.” The writer of this diary, John Fothergill was the proprietor of the Spreadeagle at Thame in Oxfordshire in the 1920s. This diary runs from1922 to 1930. It is separated by year rather than by day and is basically a series of recollections of people and topics written at the end of the day. Fothergill was an interesting character. He was an art student at The Slade and knew Augustus John and William Rothenstein. In 1898 he opened a gallery in London. He was a close friend of Reginald Turner, Robbie Ross and Oscar Wilde. Wilde gave him an inscribed copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol. As an innkeeper Fothergill was notably irascible and there are certainly shades of Basil Fawlty in his attitude to some of his clientele. He did though gain a national reputation for keeping a good house and for the quality of the food. Many of the 2brightb young things” visited and stayed and Waugh was a regular visitor. It was close enough to Oxford to attract dons and undergraduates. The diary is full of amusing anecdotes and Fothergill’s irritation with the general public. He was undoubtedly a snob and there are stories of him adding to the bill if he didn’t like or approve of someone, although these may be apocryphal. The stories aren’t. Two ladies complained about the cost of garaging their car and were told, “If you care to take it up to your bedroom there will be no charge for the garage.” Jonathon Persse recalls a story his mother told: In the late 1920s she lived for a year in Oxford. Sunday lunch at the Spreadeagle in Thame with undergraduate friends was, no doubt, a good introduction to one aspect of English life for an Australian girl. On one occasion when pudding was ordered, my mother asked for sugar. While she waited for it to be brought, Mr Fothergill approached the table, and saw her untouched plate. ‘Is there something wrong with the pudding, Madam?’ ‘Thank you, but I’m just waiting for some sugar.’ ‘I think you will find it sweet enough.’ ‘Oh, but I like the grit.’ ‘Madam, I shall bring you some sand.’ This is an interesting window into a past time and if you know anything about the Bright Young Things and 1920s culture it may be worth a look. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting Songs of the Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding “Ladies, gentlemen, we're out of here! Your boss is upstairs, and only mildly wounded. Go help him if you have the inclination. You'll also notice the house is on fire. Make of that what you like.” This is a Steampunk novel with pirates, airships, plenty of swashbuckling, revenge betrayal, golems, daemonologists, proper villains, plot twists, a dysfunctional crew and much more. All the elements of a good yarn. It is rather reminiscent of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. There is humour, but it is not out of balance with everything else. All of the crew of the airship which the novel revolves (the Ketty Jay) around have their own significant issues and flaws: “The Ketty Jay was staffed with drunkards and drifters, all of them running from something -- whether it be memories or enemies or the drudgery of land-bound life -- but since Yortland they'd been running in the same direction. United by that common purpose, they'd begun to turn into something resembling a crew. And Frey had begun to turn into something resembling a captain.” Darian Frey, the captain and main protagonist is thankfully likeable. The plot is fast paced: completely unbelievable of course, but then this is steampunk. It’s pure escapism, but none the worse for that. “They were happy, and free, and the endless sky awaited them. It was enough.” 8 out of 10 Starting The House Keepers by Alex Hay

Hayley, I suspect it is the American spelling. I must admit it was better than I was expecting. Roman Lincoln by Michael J Jones This is a history of Roman Lincoln, published in 2002 and updated in 2011. Jones looks at the archaeological and other evidence about Roman Lincoln. There were settlements in the area prior to the Romans as the area has a steep defendable escarpment, a river and pool/lake and fertile land nearby. It became a significant Roman settlement and was one of the places where legionnaires were able to retire. There’s plenty of evidence of the usual industries and public buildings. It was a walled city and some of the walls still survive, indeed an arch survives that is daily used by traffic. There are an awful lot of Roman remains around Lincoln and Jones details what you can see and where. This is an interesting history, especially if you want to learn about Roman settlements. I discovered along the way that the street I live on used to be where the lodgings for centurions was located. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Common People: A Folk History of Land Rights, Enclosure and Resistance by Leah Gordon and Stephen Ellcock

The Wych Elm by Tana French “The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.” The title of this is The Wych Elm, written clearly on my copy. Not sure how it got changed to Witch along the way, because that title gives an entirely misleading impression of what the book is about. There is a variety tree called the Wych Elm. This variety is prone to having a hollow trunk as it ages and that is very relevant to the plot. The narrator is Toby Hennessey who is in his late 20s. He is not likeable, clearly unreliable and his attitude to women stinks. He is also privileged and entitled. This may be why many people did not finish the novel. This is essentially a thriller. Toby’s uncle Hugo lives in a large rambling house (the elm tree is in the garden). Hugo is terminally ill and his family are rallying round. Toby has two cousins, Leon and Susanna. One of Susanna’s children finds a skull in the hollow of the tree and so a police investigation begins. The skeleton belongs to a teenage friend of the three cousins who had disappeared some 12 years earlier. Incidental to this Toby has been the victim of a violent burglary which has left him with a significant head injury with some memory loss. French sets up the plot well and there are plenty of twists and turns. The novel examines the nature of memory and its unreliability, what is luck, and what is culpability. Spending the whole novel in Toby’s head is a trial and if I had been his longsuffering girlfriend Melissa, Toby would have ended up in the Elm as well. Of course there could be a link to Greek Myth here and the Wych Elm could be the entrance to the underworld. French looks at the darker side of human existence. 7 out of 10 Starting The Voices of Time by J G Ballard

The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk “There is no doubt that this secret battle of wits - political chess game played out across the vast geopolitical chessboard of Asia - changed the course of History.” This is a history of the nineteenth century struggle between two imperialist powers, Russia and Britain for ascendancy in Central and East Asia. It was about a number of issues. A number of imperialist powers had coveted India and Russia was one of those. Russia also had expansionist ambitions in relation to the many small states in Central Asia and towards Afghanistan and China. Hopkirk lays out here the various disastrous incursions into Afghanistan by Britain and Russia very clearly. It does make you realise that the twentieth century incursions into Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and the US supported by other NATO powers had not been thought through and no lessons had been learned from the nineteenth century. The phrase The Great Game was inevitably coined by that arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling: “Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.” There are fascinating accounts of explorers and travellers from both sides going into places where Europeans had previously not ventured. There are descriptions of the harsh terrain, the various unpredictable rulers who soon learnt to play the British and Russians off against each other. There was one war in the nineteenth century between the two powers (Crimean War) but there were a number of other occasions where war was close: “It was a shadow war, not fought face to face, but by proxy and by stealth, in the back streets of Kabul, the passes of the Hindu Kush, and the deserts of Central Asia.” Britain’s primary ambition was to hang onto India with the occasional annexation of extra bits of territory (depending on whether the Whigs or Tories were in power). Russian ambitions were clear as well, this from Witte, one of Nicholas II’s ministers: “From the shores of the Pacific, and to the heights of the Himalayas, Russia will not only dominate the affairs of Asia, but those of Europe also.” Of course today many of those Central Asian states now have independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The story of The Great Game may also have lessons for the current situation vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine. I am sure current Russian tacticians are still looking at the way things worked out in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century Russia had a vision and long-term goals, they still do. Hopkirk’s account is interesting and provides insights into nineteenth century imperialism and how it worked (or didn’t work) on the ground. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman

Hunger by Choi Jin Young “If only it were a billion years in the future, I’d leave Earth with your body on my back and we’d be a pair of happy boats. Doesn’t that sound nicer than cannibalism?” A Korean novel, novella to be precise about two lovers, Dam and Gu. They meet at elementary school and their novel charts their lives and relationship. It is told from both points of view. It is a romance, albeit a rather macabre one. At the beginning of the novel Gu dies. He is killed on the street as a result of the debt he inherited from his parents. Gu cannot bear to be parted from him. She takes him home, washes him down and over a period of time eats him. It really doesn’t pay to think of the practicalities of this, that clearly isn’t the point. The novel flashes back to the couple’s history. They live at the lower levels of society and life is difficult. The novel covers a lot of ground, but because of its brevity nothing is covered in any real depth. It emphasises the lack of choices for the working class in Korea. These aren’t Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, there’s more struggle and desperation. It can’t really be called horror despite the cannibalism. “But what do I know, really? Turns out we're as clueless in death as in life. The only difference is the dead don't agonise over the unknown. They know to leave some things alone.” I think the trick is to focus on metaphor, but it didn’t really grab me, although it was interesting. 6 out of 10 Starting Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

Women in Chains by Venetria Patton “Feminism often conjures up idyllic visions of a united sisterhood: however, black feminists such as Hazel Carby and bell hooks, among others, have questioned the existence of a sisterhood of black and white women. Carby states, “Considering the history of the failure of any significant political alliances between black and white women in the nineteenth century, I challenge the impulse in the contemporary women’s movement to discover a lost sisterhood and to reestablish feminist solidarity.”” Venetria Patton writes about black women writers and their responses to slavery, race, gender and motherhood. Patton looks at writers such as Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison Shirley Anne Williams, Pauline Hopkins, Harriet Wilson and Frances Harper. She pulls out recurring themes. Motherhood in particular is an important theme. There are issues related to bringing a child into the world who is destined to be a slave and some writers (Morrison for example) write about women who kill their children to spare them a life of slavery. There is also consideration of sexual relationships between slave owners/overseers and female slaves and the way “mothering” was discouraged, female slaves being regarded as breeders rather than mothers. Patton contrasts attitudes in the nineteenth century with those in the twentieth century. Another aspect of the work is looking at the nineteenth century so called “sentimental novel”. A prime example of this is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. There is a chapter devoted to an analysis of the novel. The work has been criticized for not taking into account Africa and African diaspora values. The analysis is interesting. I had read three of the novels being examined, which helped. It is an important analysis of how slavery, gender and motherhood has been examined by black female writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Roman Lincoln by Michael Jones

Yes Madeleine, she is The reason why by Cecil Woodham-Smith “Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.” Cecil Woodham-Smith was a historian and biographer writing mid twentieth century. She wrote a noted work on the Irish famine of the 1840s and a biography of Florence Nightingale amongst other works. The clue to this one is in the snippet from the Tennyson poem quoted above. Woodham-Smith looks at The Charge of The Light Brigade. She does this by essentially writing the biographies of the two main military commanders involved. They are George Charles Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan (yes, ancestor of that Lord Lucan) and James Brudenell 7th Earl od Cardigan. Woodham-Smith follows their lives and characters. They were brothers-in-law and hated each other: this was to have a significant effect on the course of the battle as Lucan was in theory the senior officer. Two more unpleasant men it would be difficult to find. Cardigan was absolutely convinced that he was always right and was a bully, especially to those he commanded. Lucan was of a similar personality, he had property and land in Ireland and was notorious for his ill-treatment of his tenants. The descriptions of the build up to the battle and the Crimean campaign tell the tale of the losses to cholera and the huge loss of horses (again mainly due to the incompetence of senior officers). What is baffling is that one wonders how the British managed to get and maintain the empire they did with such incompetents in charge. The truth here is that the Russians made an equal number of mistakes so the two sides sort of cancelled each other out. As usual it was the common soldiery on each side who suffered and died. The military descriptions do get somewhat tedious but this certainly illustrates how war was fought in the nineteenth century and how armies were led. 7 out of 10 Starting An Innkeeper's Diary by John Fothergill

Fear in the Blood edited by Mike Ashley "As I stooped to reach it I felt someone pull my dress from behind. I fancied I had caught the train in something, and I turned to disengage it. But the folds were perfectly free, and I returned to my original design of ringing the bell... My first impulse was to examine my dress. Yes! There on the new velvet was the distinct impress of a little hand where the material had been grasped and pulled, just about on a level with my knees" (Florence Marryat). A British Library tales of the weird collection. This collection of weird tales is grouped into six family collections with a total of eighteen stories. The first set is the Marryat family, Frederick and his daughter Florence. The other family groups are Le Fanu, Hawthorne, Dickens, Pangborn and Aitken. There are some stand out stories. These include Fran Nan’s Story by Sarah LeFanu, set in the foot and mouth outbreak in 2000 and by a feminist writer I have recently discovered. Old Fillikin by Joan Aitken is about a boy who is having problems with his Maths teacher, the solution is rather interesting. Wogglebeast by Edgar Pangborn is rather melancholic and sad. The Secret Ones by Mary Danby (great great granddaughter of Charles Dickens) says a good deal about our current issues in relation to asylum seekers and migration: “The husband, the wife and the wife’s sister arrived by boat one fear-grey dawn. Nobody saw them as they sidled down the gangplank and hurried nervously to the shelter of a deserted warehouse. They had been many days without food, hidden and afraid in the lurching hold, huddling for warmth in the relentless dark. And as the sun rose behind the cranes and girders of the quayside, they blinked uncertainly and trembled in the unaccustomed chill of an east wind that sought out their hiding place with no mercy.” “They … were disheartened to find the land of their dreams to be one of hate not plenty.” A powerful story with a shocking ending. As always with these collections the quality varies, but on the whole, this is a good collection. 8 out of 10 Starting Night Wire and other tales of Weird Media

Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann Another venture into Steampunk. This one is a mixture, there are also elements of noir, hardboiled detective, comic book, batman with some nods to Lovecraft and Cthulhu. It is set in 1926 Manhattan. The main character is Gabriel Cross a wealthy playboy type. On the side he has a disguise as a caped vigilante/crimefighter. That’s where the batman element comes in. There is a suitably nasty crime boss called The Roman with numerous deadly henchmen and a few extra tricks up his sleeve. There is, of course a well meaning cop who refuses to be corrupted by The Roman and a sultry night club singer (of course). The international backdrop is that there is a cold war between the US and the British Empire. There are steam and coal-powered cars and rocket powered biplanes. The Ghost uses similarly powered back packs to fly short distances. There are the inevitable tommy guns, but some more creative weaponry as well. There is a plot and there novel moves along at a fast pace. Serious injury doesn’t seem to stop the characters running around a lot. There isn’t much nuance or subtlety and I wonder whether this would have been better off as a comic book. Those in the know say that Mann has got the geography of Manhattan wrong as well. This is essentially pulp fiction with little depth. Entertaining at one level, undemanding and rather flawed. But it has a certain pace and is easy to read. 6 out of 10 Starting Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

I found it a bit slow too France and now I've read it, it's going to the charity shop The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam “Even the air of this country has a story to tell about warfare. It is possible here to lift a piece of bread from a plate and following it back to its origins, collect a dozen stories concerning war-how it affected the hand that pulled it out of the oven, the hand that kneaded the dough, how war impinged upon the field where wheat was grown.” This is set in post 9/11 Afghanistan but also looks back to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. I did struggle with aspects of this, particularly in relation two the characters. There are four main characters. Marcus is British, older and has lived in Afghanistan for many years: Lara is from Russia, looking for information about someone she lost: David is from the Us (and is CIA): Zameen id half British, half Afghani. There are other significant characters who are Afghani; Qatrina, Dunia and Casa, but theses are less well drawn. Most of the nuance comes from the western characters. The perspectives of the characters linked with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban feel rather two-dimensional (that may be the nature of fundamentalism of course) and less interesting. Each of the main characters has a quest and they generally do not manage to complete it due to a variety of circumstances. The language and prose is rich and beautiful, but as you would expect very sad because of the history of the place: “This country was one of the great tragedies of the age. Torn to pieces by the many hands of war, by the various hatreds and failings of the world. Two million deaths over the past quarter-century. Several of the lovers on the walls were on their own because of the obliterating impact of the bullets – nothing but a gash or a terrible ripping away where the corresponding man or woman used to be. A shredded limb, a lost eye.” I feel this should have gripped me more than it did, maybe it’s me. But the main characters didn’t ring true and seemed so unlikely. 6 out of 10 Starting Hunger by Choi Jin-young

Death Under a Little Sky by Stig Abell This is the beginning (I suspect) of a new crime series. Jake Jackson retires from the police force at the grand old age of 38. His uncle has died and left him a property in the country, a house called Little Sky (with attached lake). The house is odd, there is no internet connection or signal for a phone. Some aspects are rather primitive (no washing machine), but there is a massive library with a collection of thrillers and crime books. The novel is about how Jake becomes embroiled in a local mystery and possible murder. Jake works with a local policeman. There is a love interest (inevitably), some rather odd and often surly locals. There is plenty of eccentricity and no shortage of suspects. It is well written and rather predictable at times and probably falls into the category of “cozy crime”. It's easy reading, not at all demanding. Perfect bedtime reading. 7 out of 10 Starting Lost in the Garden by Adam Leslie