Books do furnish a room

We are not Numbers edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey This is a remarkable collection of brief pieces of writing by some of those caught up in the genocide in Gaza. The writings are from 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 202, 2022, and 2023/2024, before and after October the 7th. Some of the writers are now dead, probably more now than when it was published in early 2025. There are dedications to five of the dead in the front of the book. There are short individual pieces and some poetry. The writers are all young, under thirty, many of them in their teens. They write about everyday life: education, family, friends, love, children; the usual stuff of everyday life. However lived under unusual circumstances and under constant threat. One of the editors Ahmed Alnaouq explains it: "I was depressed, it was after the 2014 war, and I lost my brother. I was asked to write about him, and I saw writing as a way to pin down all my emotions. I also wanted to challenge the way the Western media writes about us." Alnaouq also lost twenty one members of his family in 2023. This extract is from Ismail Abu-Aitah: “The next thing I remember is waking up in Shifa hospital (Gaza City). Confused, I asked about Mom, Dad and the rest of my family. The doctors said they were ok, and the relief of knowing they were safe was all that mattered to me: I could handle my own pain. Shrapnel had lacerated my entire body, and I had suffered a severe concussion. The doctors took X-rays, cleaned and stitched my wounds, and put me to bed for rest. Meanwhile, I briefly saw my third brother, Mahmood, who was also hospitalised for treatment. He was discharged quickly, but I stayed due to my head trauma. At noon in the first full day in the hospital, a few of my friends visited. I was in tremendous pain and couldn’t move. Yet I was happy because I felt I had somehow taken a hit for my family, sparing their lives. But after a short while, one of my friends broke the news. Despite my uncles’ hesitancy to tell me they had decided that I deserved to know: an air strike which had targeted our neighbour’s house had badly damaged my own home and killed five of my family members: my mom Jamila, my dad Ibrahim, my two brothers Mohammed and Ahmed, and my four year old nephew Adham. Ten other family members were wounded. Everything went black.” There are shafts of hope as well and some of those who write have left Gaza over the years for education and jobs. There is an ordinariness of life and an extraordinariness of trying to live amidst death and destruction. Many of those who write have been moved up to a dozen times during the war. These accounts have impact and are very moving. They shed light on the death, destruction and genocide being wreaked on Gaza at the moment. They have power because they show the very ordinary aspirations of Gazans in impossible circumstances. 10 out of 10 Starting Domination by Alice Roberts

Eerie East Anglia edited by Edward Parnell Another British Library Tales of the Weird collection, this time focussing on a particular area. In this instance East Anglia covers Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Also included are parts of Cambridgeshire and South Lincolnshire (the Fennish part). There are seventeen stories in total. Two are by M R James, including one of his more famous stories “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad”. There are also stories by R H Benson, E F Benson (brothers), E G Swain, Gerald Bullett, Ingulphus, H R Wakefield, F M Major, Marjorie Bowen, Frederick Cowles, R H Malden, Robert Aickman, John Gordon, Penelope Fitzgerald, Matthew Holness and Daisy Johnson. Some of the stories are quite recent and the Daisy Johnson story is from her collection Fen. The topography of the area feeds into the stories. The flat, wet landscape of the fens and the Norfolk Broads. Isolated sand dunes and a certain bleakness. There’s a lot of history as well and one story has links to druidic influences. M R James’s influence is strong and the understatedness of both his pieces stand out. Generally these are fairly rural tales and some good ones are included. Apart from James, the stories by Bowen, Swain, Wakefield and Fitzgerald are also good. 8 out of 10 Starting Medusa by E H Visiak

What a carve up by Jonathan Coe “Well, there'll be an outcry, of course, but then it'll die down and something else will come along for people to get annoyed about. The important thing is that we save ourselves a lot of money, and meanwhile a whole generation of children from working-class or low-income families will be eating nothing but crisps and chocolate every day. Which means, in the end, that they'll grow up physically weaker and mentally slower.' Dorothy raised an eyebrow at this assertion. 'Oh, yes,' he assured her. 'A diet high in sugars lead to retarded brain growth. Our chaps have proved it.' He smiled. 'As every general knows, the secret of winning any war is to demoralize the enemy'.” This is another novel that’s been on my shelves for over twenty years, so time to read it and move it on to the charity shop. It is a satire on Thatcher’s Britain and 1980s Britain, written in the mid 1990s. It is also loosely based on the 1961 British comedy horror spoof of the same name starring Shirley Eaton (who is frequently referenced in the novel) and assorted British comedy actors (Sid James et al). The last section of the novel is loosely based on the plot of the film (if you know the film that might raise an eyebrow or two). As in the film the satire is based on a wealthy family in Yorkshire who live in and old country house. Coe provides a family tree and writes the story from the 1950s, but mainly in the 1980s and early 1990s. The improbably awful family are being researched by a struggling writer being paid by one of the saner members of a family (so sane she is being kept in an asylum). “I hate these people, how evil they are, how much they’ve spoiled everything with their vested interests and their influence and their privilege and their stranglehold on all the centres of power.” This is essentially a comedic novel with lots of slapstick and in jokes. The satire is funny in parts and often hits the mark. It is perhaps a book that should be given to all Apprentice contestants, but they might miss the oh so blatant satire. There are several narrative voices, the timeline is all over the place and there are several narrative styles. Oh and another film that is referenced is Theatre of Blood, a classic British horror film. Coe really doesn’t like his characters. 7 out of 10 Starting The Rape of the Rose by Glynn Hughes

Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow The first in a series of historical novels about the Roman Empire. This one is set in 42 BCE, just after the start of the reign of Claudius. It starts in Germania and continues with the invasion of Britain. This is more about the daily lives of common soldiers and there are two principal characters: a centurion called Macro and his Optio (second in command) Cato. Cato is very inexperienced, a former slave from Rome, he was in an aristocratic household. Unlike Macro, he can read and write. The novel and series is also very much about their relationship. There are plenty of twists, turns and subplots. The minor characters are well developed and several are historical, including future emperors Vespasian and Vitellius. This is obviously a formula that works for Scarrow as the series has now reached well over twenty titles. It was entertaining and not too taxing, so a good last thing at night read. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting Heartstone by C J Sansom

Misspent Youth by Peter Hamilton This is a prequel to Hamilton’s Commonwealth novels. Set in the relatively near future: around 2040 (written in 2002). It is one of his less well reviewed novels as he recognises: "I could see why it didn't appeal to a lot of people. It was an unpleasant story about unpleasant people. With hindsight, it was never going to be as popular as my other works." At times this reads like a Jilly Cooper “bonkbuster”. The internet has developed into the dataverse where everything is free and available. Copyright has disappeared and the music and publishing industries have collapsed. Jeff Baker developed a revolutionary way of storing data and then didn’t patent it, so the technology was free. He therefore becomes something of an icon. At the start of the novel he undergoes a new, experimental and very expensive rejuvenation process. He is 78, but wakes up with the body of a 20 year old and testosterone to go with it. His 18 year old son Tim finds this difficult to cope with, especially when dad starts to sleep with various of his college friends. The political backdrop is a much more integrated European Union and a very isolationist US. There are separatist movements in most European countries and the beginnings of civil unrest. This is the backdrop, but there are way too many hormones and it’s more like Love Island than sci-fi, but apparently one or two of the characters are referenced later in the series. 6 out of 10 Starting Slow Horses by Mick Herron

France: the prequels and sequels are all worth reading, Lonesome Dove is the best of the four novels. Doomed Romances: Strange tales of Romantic Love Another in the Tales of the weird series, this one is about doomed romances. There are stories by Mary Shelley, Wilkie Collins, Ella D’Arcy, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Alice Perrin, Marjorie Bowen, Angela Carter, Nalo Hopkinson, Tracy Fahey, V. Castro, Kalamu Ya Salaam and a novella by Sheridan Le Fanu. All the stories are by women apart from the novella by Le Fanu. The novella is a pre Dracula vampire story: more specifically a lesbian vampire story. There are a few more modern stories in this collection. Nalo Hopkinson retells the Bluebeard myth mixed with Caribbean folklore. Bowen provides a deal with the devil story and Shelley’s contribution is a slice of pure gothic. The last story, Dancehall Devil is brief and atmospheric and may put you off meeting people at dances! There are the usual things you associate with romance: obsession, helplessness, death and patriarchy. The doomed part of the title does give it away though! Angela Carter gives a different slant to the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. The Le Fanu novella is responsible for at least three Hammer House of Horror films. It's an interesting mix and very much not your average Mills and Boon. 8 out of 10 Starting Eerie East Anglia from the Tales of the Weird series

Women and the Piano by Susan Tomes This is a history of women and the piano. Tomes (a well-known pianist) tells the story via a brief biography of fifty different female pianists. They are in Chronological birth order from 1744 to 1949. They are mostly classical pianists but Tomes includes six jazz pianists as well. This pretty much starts with the development of the piano. There is context and background to the history of women and the piano and at the close of the book some reflections and perspectives for the future. I must admit of the fifty pianists covered I had heard of less than half of them. There are the obvious ones like Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann. There are some interesting asides: Winnaretta Singer had affairs with Romaine Brooks, Virginia Woolf, Violet Trefusis and Ethel Smyth among others. I hadn’t heard of Nadia Boulanger. As well as being a concert pianist she was a composer, conductor and teacher. Those she taught included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, George Gershwin, Quincy Jones, Philip Glass and Daniel Barenboim to name a few. Barenboim recalls her giving him advice: “You know how to feel the emotions of music, and you also know how to analyse music. Now your task is to bring the two together. You must learn how to feel the structure of the music, and you must know how to analyse the emotions.” Many of the women were composers as well as pianists and they are all interesting. Much of their music is unknown, although slowly becoming better known. I found this a fascinating read and learnt a lot. 8 out of 10 Starting We are not Numbers by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey

The Guest Cat Takashi Hiraide “Having played to her heart's content, Chibi { the cat} would come inside and rest for a while. When she began to sleep on the sofa--like a talisman curled gently in the shape of a comma and dug up from a prehistoric archaeological site--a deep sense of happiness arrived, as if the house itself had dreamed this scene.” This novella is about an emotionally distant married couple who each find some warmth and comfort in their relationship with a neighbour’s cat, each in their own different ways. There are a number of twists and subtleties and a few cats as well. Hiraide is a poet and it is obvious from the writing style. It’s also fairly philosophical and there are musings on Machiavelli (those of you with cats may relate to that!), fate, loss and mortality. Life is fragile and fleeting. Hiraide follows a traditional Japanese 4 part story structure: Introduction, development, twist and resolution. The whole is atmospheric and of course there are cats. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb A bit of pure fantasy. I haven’t read any Hobb for many years. This is the first of a trilogy. The world-building is quite good and there are some interesting concepts played with. There are links to a previous trilogy in the same world, although chronologically after this one. This is written from several points of view and that actually makes the experience better. Hobb isn’t particularly nice to her characters and often the antagonists seem to be irredeemably bad. However it did feel like there was balance. This was entertaining and undemanding and there are pirates! Now I am retired I have time for reading this sort of thing. 7 out of 10 Starting Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley “nationalism will always produce at least one war each generation. It has done in the past, and I suppose we can rely on it to do the same in the future.” This is a 1939 novel from Huxley, set in the Hollywood area of California. It centres round an aging Millionaire named Jo Stoyte who is loosely based on William Randolph Hearst. There is a mixed bunch of characters including an Englishman cataloguing some rare books and papers. The actors also include Dr Obispo and his assistant Peter who are researching the aging process. Mr Propter lives nearby and is a friend of Jo’s from childhood. He has a particular philosophy of life which he shares with anyone who will listen, and those who don’t want to as well. Then there is Virginia, a young woman who is abused by two of the men. As always Huxley spends a good deal of time philosophising and this can be trying, even if you agree with some of it (like the quote above). A flavour of the aforesaid philosophising: “.. every individual is called on to display not only unsleeping good will but also unsleeping intelligence. And this is not all. For, if individuality is not absolute, if personalities are illusory figments of a self-will disastrously blind to the reality of a more-than-personal consciousness, of which it is the limitation and denial, then all of every human being's efforts must be directed, in the last resort, to the actualisation of that more-than-personal consciousness. So that even intelligence is not sufficient as an adjunct to good will; there must also be the recollection which seeks to transform and transcend intelligence.” And so on. This inevitably means there is very little plot. Incidentally the best way to extend your age and get great longevity is to eat carp innards. Not one of his best. 5 out of 10 Starting The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal

The Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry “Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.” This is the fourth novel chronologically in the Lonesome Dove sequence by McMurtry. This follows the characters from Lonesome Dove (those that survived). It is some years later and Woodrow Call is pretty much an old man. The premise is fairly straightforward. A young outlaw is robbing trains and the train company wants him caught. Call is hired to deal with the outlaw. The setting is still south Texas and northern Mexico. We meet the few remaining members of Call’s group from Lonesome Dove. The strongest characters in this are the women, two in particular and they add much more depth and nuance to the novel. It does chart the end of the Old West (this is the 1890s) and times are changing, the world moving on. It is a stand alone novel , but it does help to read Lonesome Dove as there are some storyline links that follow on. The terrain covered is vast, and there is a certain level of coincidence and people keep running across each other. Despite this, it is a well written and constructed novel, almost as good as Lonesome Dove, 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Misspent Youth by Peter Hamilton

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq This is a collection of twelve short stories written in the Kannada language. It won the International Booker this year (2025). The translation is by Deepa Bhasthi. There is a translators note at the end which is illuminating: "The Kannada language, as is the case with many languages that have been in use for over a thousand years, has a rich and vibrant tradition of oral storytelling. This lineage is visible in Banu’s stories as well, where she regularly mixes her tenses, trails off, interjects an observation or a soliloquy in the middle of a dialogue and so on, as if she is sitting across from you" Banu Mushtaq is an Indian writer from the state of Karnataka. The stories range from 1990 to 2023. The stories portray the lives of women as wives, mothers and daughters in different levels of society. The patriarchy does not come out of this well and Mushtaq covers child marriage, domestic violence, financial abuse, alcoholism betrayal and much more. Mushtaq consistently criticises the caste and class system. These are stories from the home and kitchens and often away from men. Many of the sentiments are relatable: “There is no end to the woes mothers face come summer vacation.” There is a fair amount about the daily practice of Islam and how like religion generally it is bent towards what men want and need. This is a good set of stories focussed on the mundane and everyday lives of people and the dramas in them. 8 out of 10 Starting The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

I haven't seen the TV series, I suspect it could be better than the book. The Cuckoo's Lea by Michael Warren This is a history of birds and place, a sort of ornithological history. A look at how birds can be found in place names. Warren is an English teacher and amateur ornithologist (definitely one up from a trainspotter). You can tell a great deal from place names. For example any place name with Cran in it is linked to Cranes. There were no cranes in the UK for many years although they are making a comeback now. Warren covers owls, raptors, corvids, marsh birds, seabirds, cuckoos. A good many Norse and Saxon placenames have links to birds and Warren goes through many of these. He describes his own searches around the country in fair and foul weather. Warren goes through a lot of medieval charter information which is also fascinating. It involves close contact with the landscape and the distinctive characteristics of an area; he quotes Hoskins fairly frequently too. There with also some fun with place names too, the meaning of Calders in Cheshire being cold arse, but more pertinent to the topic Yaxley (cuckoo clearing), Ousden (owl valley), Cabourne (jackdaw stream), Finmere (woodpecker pool) and Wroxton (buzzard stone). This is a beautifully written book which draws the reader in to the links between the landscape and its occupants and their history. The section on nightingales is wonderful. Well worth reading and has a place in looking at the ecological history of Britain. 9 out of 10 Starting Women and the Piano by Susan Tomes

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid “You can't control another person. It doesn't matter how much you love them. You can't love someone back to health and you can't hate someone back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn't mean they will change their mind.” There has been a massive amount of hype around this: book and adaptation of it. It is set mainly in the 1970s (with bits in the 60s and 2012). It follows a rock band over a few years as they become internationally famous. The initial band, The Six are joined by Daisy Jones. Daisy comes from wealth and is uninhibited, she also takes most substances known at the time. The novel follows the making of an album which becomes very big and how the whole thing comes crashing down. The novel is written from multiple points of view: all the band members, some wives and girlfriends, record company bods and some of those in the studio. This does make it feel a little disjointed. There are no prizes for guessing that there are lots of similarities with the well-documented making of the Fleetwood Mac album Rumours. There are plenty of differences as well, but that’s the template and the reader knows from the beginning that it's not going to end particularly well. There are plenty of over-used tropes and rock cliches. It’s all a bit hectic and well … rock and roll. I found it flimsy and cliched, but very easy to read. There is even a section at the end where you can read the lyrics of the aforesaid album. 5 out of 10 Starting Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow

Out of the Past: Tales of Haunting History Another in the Tales of the Weird series from the British Library, number 47 to be precise. This volume is about historical tales and there are stories from Marjorie Bowen (two), Vernon Lee, M P Shiel, Vincent O’Sullivan, Bernard Capes, Frederick Cowles, Sheila Hodgson and the editor Aaron Worth also adds a couple of his own stories. The stories settings range from the fifteenth century Italy to nineteenth century France via Civil War era Britain. This is not the strongest of the collections in this series. There’s plenty of murder and revenge and weirdish stuff. There is a novella included: Verschoyle’s House by Vincent O’Sullivan. Set during the Civil war and as far as I could ascertain, somewhat incomprehensible. Most of these are run of the mill but Sheila Hodgson’s is better than the rest. M R James wrote an essay called “Stories I have tried to write” containing various scenarios for stories. Hodgson wrote radio plays and used some of the scenarios to produce radio plays and eventually short stories. The story in this collection (Come, Follow!) is the best of this rather mundane collection. 5 out of 10 Starting Doomed Romances edited by Joanna Parsons

The Hotel by Daisy Johnson ‘’I’ve never been to the Fens before. I’m surprised by the colour of the earth which looks as if darkness itself has slipped from the sky and filled the ground.’’ This is a collection of short stories, all linked and all the same length: all set in a hotel in the Fens in England. The hotel is built on cursed ground and there is a story that takes place before it is built and the stories continue until its demolition. I am already a fan of Daisy Johnson and this just confirmed my appreciation, although it is quite a slim offering. The themes involve women being trapped in one way or another. People react to the hotel in different ways. This was originally a radio collection, broadcast late night during the Covid lockdown. It’s folk horror at its best. The hotel has a level of sentience, and each person experiences it in a different way, especially in room 63. There is a phrase variation that runs through it: “I’ll see you soon” Everything returns. 9 out of 10 Starting After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley

1421 by Gavin Menzies Gavin Menzies was a British submariner who during his retirement wrote this detailed and heavily researched book. It contends that in the early 1420s a large Chinese fleet went on voyages of exploration. During these voyages he argues they went to Australia, New Zealand, the Antarctic, the Americas (North and South, rounding Cape Horn they visited the Caribbean, The Azores, North America and Greenland. He spends the book providing lots of detail and what he argues is evidence to show that this was the case: including map evidence, DNA evidence, plant evidence, animal evidence and some written records. There are lots of jumps and assumptions. He claims that Henry VIII had maps in his collections that showed Australia, over 200 years before Cook. He also claims that the Portuguese had access to information from the Chinese and had been to the Caribbean in the early 1500s. This thesis has been pretty much trashed by all proper historians of the era, mainly because it is claimed that there is no evidence for it. This is pretty much a spat in the history community. What struck me is when someone comes up with a thesis like this that is not Eurocentric there is enormous upset. Having read it I cannot say how much is true, but it is good to have some challenges to the Columbus brigade. 5 out of 10 Starting What a Carve Up by Jonathon Coe

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shenan Karunatilaka “All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair. Many get luck, and many get misery. Many are born to homes with books, many grow up in the swamps of war. In the end, all becomes dust. All stories conclude with a fade to black.” This won the Booker Prize. It is set in Sri Lanka in 1989/1990 and concerns the civil war ongoing at that time. The protagonist is Maali Almeida, a war photographer who is prone to gambling and is gay, mainly in the closet, but not entirely. He has died and has discovered there is indeed an afterlife. His death was related to his work, his photos of atrocities. Karunatilaka considers the usual questions about the afterlife: “You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse.” “The afterlife is a tax office and everyone wants their rebate.” Maali discovers he has seven moons to put his affairs in order. For him this means trying to enable his friends to find the negatives of his photos which will show the brutality of the war. There is a large cast of diverse and interesting characters. An index of all these characters in at the back (of my copy) and would have been very useful if I had found it before I had finished reading it. Many of the characters are already dead and these interact as well as the live ones. Karunatilaka, when describing the afterlife, seems to have decided on the more versions of the afterlife the merrier. I thinks there are elements of afterlife from most of the world religions all mixed up. There are flashbacks throughout the novel to Maali’s life and loves, so a picture is gradually built up. The afterlife and this life have certain similarities and people tend to do similar things. The people Maali meets are local to him and Sri Lanka. And we discover animals have souls too. Maali’s life was complicated and so the novel is a bit of a wild ride. It dips into a number of genres: murder/mystery, ghost story, political satire, historical novel, queer love story. Ultimately it’s a Sri Lankan civil war novel, but it’s certainly worth reading. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

Mad World by Paula Byrne This is a biography of Evelyn Waugh, mainly a literary biography, looking at what was behind what he wrote, and especially Brideshead Revisited. This is an informative biography with some serious faults. Waugh was middle class, but spent a good deal of his literary time writing about the aristocracy and the upper classes. He was at Oxford at the time of the “Bright Young Things” and the reaction to the Great War. Waugh was also bisexual and had a number of male lovers whilst at Oxford. He tended to have intense friendships with the women in his life. The Mad in the title refers to Madresfield Court a country house near Malvern in Worcestershire. It was the model for Brideshead. It was the home of the Lygon family. Hugh Lygon was at Oxford with Waugh and was the primary model for Sebastian Flyte. Waugh became a regular visitor at Madresfield and he got to know the three Lygon sisters very well. He maintained correspondence and lifelong friendships with them all. The plot of Brideshead is all here: the disgrace of the Lygon’s father, Earl Beauchamp; in the novel for a mistress, in real life because of predilection for young men, whom he used to hire as footmen, butlers and chauffeurs, purely for their looks and willingness to be sexual partners. He was forced to live abroad in the 1930s: it’s all in the novel. Byrne charts Waugh’s literary journey quite effectively. Waugh was partially a satirist and could be very acerbic. There is no doubt that Waugh does manage to capture the end of an era and the end of the great country houses with dozens of staff. Waugh was converted to Catholicism in the 1930s and that is a theme in the latter part of the novel. It’s a tour through the upper echelons of society in the 1920s and 30s, but there are issues. Byrne clearly documents that there are many instances of the men involved having sexual partners who were very young; early and mid-teens, very young men, indeed children. If there is a villain in this for Byrne, it is Lady Beauchamp. She was very religious and ended up separated from her husband, most of the children staying with him at the house. This seems rather unfair of Byrne as she manages to stay entirely non-judgemental about the use of underage sexual partners. There are also inaccuracies. Noel Coward would have been surprised to find himself described as a Catholic (he wasn’t) and the index and source notes are pretty much useless. If you are not enamoured of the British upper classes, then there is a good chance you will find this tedious. Reading this you may also begin to think that Waugh was something of a parasite who partially lived through others. I don’t think there is a great deal of new information here. It is a good analysis of Brideshead Revisited though. 5 out of 10 Starting Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively “Helen,’ said Mr Harrison, with a sigh, ‘we all know that living with James can be very trying. But it does help to develop a resistance to some of his more flagrant lines of deception.” This is a brief novella, written in the early 1970s and set in 1971. It is effectively for early teens are slightly below, but is often read by adults as well. The protagonist is a ten year old boy called James. He and his family (parents and sister) move into a very old cottage in an Oxfordshire village. James’[s bedroom is in the attic room. James soon discovers his room appears to be haunted, spreading to the rest of the house and later the village. The ghost is not in the form of an apparition, but moves things around and eventually begins to write things in odd places. The writing is florid and in seventeenth century style and Kempe advertises himself: “Sorcerie, Astrologie, Geomancie, Alchemie, Recoverie of Goodes Lost, Physicke”. James discovers that the ghost is Thomes Kempe, which lived in the cottage in the seventeenth century. What the reader knows is that the builders renovating the cottage found a sealed bottle in the walls, which they inadvertently break: this starts it all. As things move around the house, things break and James’s bedroom is trashed. The grown ups in the novel are sensible and James tends to get blamed for all the damage. Lively does write ten-year-old boy rather well (I used to be one, allegedly). It’s all a bit of an idyll. The grown ups are sensible and grounded, village life is comfortable and James and his friends are able to wander around the village and countryside at will. The only real nastiness comes from the ghost. It feels like projection of society’s ills somewhere else. It’s a bit flimsy and this is pretty much a comfort read, if you like this sort of thing. 6 out of 10

Yes France, I really enjoyed it. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald “A word of advice. If, as a young man, student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.” This is a historical novel based on a true story, set in the 1790s in Germany with the background of the French Revolution. It is based on the life of the poet Novalis, otherwise known as Friedrich von Hardenburg. He died young at the age of 29 in 1801. This is a character study and there are many minor characters. Many of the characters are historical and even Goethe pops up and one point. It is the story of Friedrich falling in love with a twelve year old girl, Sophie, (yes there are shades of Lolita) and charts their courtship over three years. The Blue Flower of the title is mentioned in the beginning of the book in a book Novalis is writing as an object of longing for a young man. It acts as a motif throughout. It is a more subtle novel than Lolita, but perhaps less complex and there is no consummation: Sophie is a child and an innocent. The book does capture the atmosphere of the German Romanticism of this period, along with the strict Protestantism of part of society. It is a brief novel and received critical acclaim and is generally thought to be one of Fitzgerald’s better novels. “Mathematics is human reason itself in a form everyone can recognise. Why should poetry, reason and religion not be higher forms of Mathematics? All that is needed is a grammar of their common language.” I must admit I wasn’t inspired or impressed by this. The writing is certainly good and there is a bleakness to it, especially when one knows the events that immediately follow the end of the novel, but, for me it lacked something. 5 out of 10 Starting The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively

It is good Luna The Cautious Travellers Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks “Our names will be remembered,” he had said to the engineer. Isn’t that what everyone wanted? To not be forgotten. To be more than a line in a ledger, the sum total of your life adding up to little more than the strength you wasted to make other men rich.” This is a historical fantasy novel in the steampunk tradition. I have been reading it as later this month Lincoln has its annual Steampunk festival. It’s an interesting and colourful affair. The inspiration comes from the 19th century, from steam engines, retro-futuristic technology, airships, mechanical computers, and much more. People dress flamboyantly and appropriately (actually mostly inappropriately) and it’s good fun. This novel is set on a steam train in the 1890s. It is a journey from Beijing to Moscow. There is a huge wasteland between the two where nature has started doing very odd and interesting things, indeed dangerous things. The train is well protected with specialist defences and equipment. This is the story of the journey and the people on the train. The characterisation is good. There is a forces of order and oppression versus a chaotic wildness. It is worked out in interesting way and I was entertained. Brooks does play with some interesting ideas about the powers of nature and wildness. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry

Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold This is Hallie Rubenhold’s follow up to The Five where she examined the lives of the five victims of Jack the Ripper, looking at them rather than at the focuses of the “Ripperologists” She has done the same here for the press sensation of the murder of Belle Elmore by her husband Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. This is the one where there were messages to a ship crossing the Atlantic via telegraph. Rubenhold takes a lot at all the myths and spin about the case and reconstructs what we do know, with the focus being on what we do know and the women involved: Belle Elmore and Ethel de Neve. This is historical true crime at its very best. The research is detailed and meticulous. The backstory for each character gives clarity to what occurred and the role of the popular press is examined. As with her previous book Rubenhold challenges the perspective that have been current with a focus on the women who were the “victims” and secondary characters. There were obstacles and difficulties as Rubenhold points out: “What of their stories were concocted, omitted or hidden to save face, and how much was embellished by journalists who serialized their interviews, is uncertain. At different times, each family member offers a different set of narratives at variance with what others have said. The Neaves frequently contradict each other and their daughters, while Nina contradicts Ethel and Ethel regularly contradicts herself.” Rubenhold also looks at all the evidence about the murder and updates the modern findings in relation to DNA etc, with some interesting conclusions. Belle Elmore, Crippen’s wife is the centre of the book and it is interesting to see how her reputation was besmirched over the years, so that by the 1930s many were saying that she almost deserved to be murdered, with a good deal of sympathy going to Crippen. Dorothy L Sayers described Belle Elmore thus: “noisy, over-vitalised, animal, seductive and intolerable” Others wrote in a similar way, it very much felt as though they are arguing that she deserved it! This is a very detailed account with some loose ends left at the end, but as with Rubenhold’s book on Jack the Ripper, it puts the women involved firmly at the centre. 9 out of 10 Starting The Cuckoo's Lea by Michael Warren

The Undying Monster by Jessie Kerruish “There is nothing more harrowing than a deadly hush with the feel of a great noise around it” This volume in the Tales of the Weird series is a novel from the 1920s. The novelist, Jessie Kerruish was deaf and lived with her sister once her parents had died, and they cared for each other. This, I think, is one of the earliest occult detective story to have a female protagonist, in the form of luna Bartendale. This is actually a fascinating novel. It concerns an upper class family who suffer from a centuries old curse, where periodically family members and sometimes those close to them will die horribly in the local woods at certain times with certain weather conditions. Those who survive often commit suicide. In this generation the family consists of Oliver and his sister Swanhild. The curse runs through the male line. Kerruish, pretty much throws all of the tropes at this: vampirism, lycanthropy, runes, symbols, ancient burial sites, hidden rooms, clues in Churches, a seventeenth century warlock, codes, old books, buried artifacts, hypnosis, fourth and fifth dimensions and much more. It’s set in Sussex and there are also mentions of Wagner and William Morris. It turns out that the curse goes back to the bronze age and to Scandinavia, so we have lots of old Norse gods as well. Despite all the contents Kerruish manages to pull off keeping the whole thing pretty much in order. This is also an exploration of the sinister side of masculinity and the role of the upper classes/lord of the manor. This works well on the whole and as you can imagine there is an old black and white film of it somewhere. 7 out of 10 Starting Out of the Past: Tales of Haunting History

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky “Then she thought she’d got it. They were, indeed, seen. The enemy, a tyranny that operated at a universal scale, had been forced to give them this bespoke fate. They were not just another civilization to be ground to dust without even registering. They had mattered, even if it ended here.” This is the third part of a science fiction trilogy. I’ve actually managed to finish a trilogy, and a space opera at that. I am not going to try and explain the plot because that would mean explaining all three books and life is just too short. Tchaikovsky is creative in his use of scientific concepts and variety of species and their various ways of living and cultures. He captures well the differing human factions which are quite as you would expect. As with the previous books there are multiple points of view and Tchaikovsky manages to tie up a fair number of the loose ends and there are the usual twists and turns as you would expect. Over the three books the character development is good and the science is not too over the top or complex. All in all this was entertaining. 8 out of 10 Starting Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb