A Book Blog 2024 by Books do Furnish a Room

[Books do furnish a room]

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“Yes, the universe was built on a certain common logic that could be expressed by numbers, but those numbers themselves were an arbitrary construct that was culturally specific.”

This is the second in the Final Architecture trilogy and is another slice of space opera, following many of the characters from the first novel, centred again on Idris Telemmier. Again the crew of the salvage ship The Vulture God are heavily involved. There are a mixture of species and the interactions and misunderstandings are well handled. The series revolves around the concept of unspace, which is how spaceships get around the universe. The primary threat to all species are the Architects who are moon sized and destroy planets (earth included). This instalment uncovers the reason why this is happening. It is definitely setting the scene for the final part, but Tchaikovsky adds detail and depth to the concepts he has introduced.

There is thought behind this and one reviewer has compared the structure of the novel to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness because of the use of the concept of negation which is central to Tchaikovsky’s idea of unspace. I did find that interesting and can see the point of the comparison.

Tchaikovsky plays with a lot of ideas. Central is an examination of diaspora. The earth has been destroyed and humans scatter all over the known universe taking wildly divergent intellectual directions as well. He also looks at cloning and disability over the series as well.

The series is written from multiple points of view and it works pretty well. It’s entertaining without being empty and mindless.

“The conspiracy theorist’s dream, the cabal of the mighty getting together to obliterate the bulk of humanity just so they could be kings of what remained”

8 out of 10

Starting The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

[Books do furnish a room]

Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites edited by Katy Soar

“There was no sleep for him that night; he fancied he had seen the stone – which, as you know, was a couple of fields away – as large as life, as if it were on watch outside his window. “

“as new religion ousts the old it tenants the latter’s temples,”

 This particular incarnation of the Tales of the Weird series focuses on standing stones, stone circles, dolmens and burial sites. The editor, Katy Soar is an archaeologist (this does help I think) and her introduction is good. There are fifteen stories in all (ranging from 1893 to 2018). There are stories from Sarban, E F Benson, Jasper John, H R Wakefield, Algernon Blackwood, Stuart Strauss, Frederick Cowles, Arthur Machen, Mary Williams, J H Pearce, A L Rowse, Nigel Kneale (Of Quatermass fame), L T C Rolt, Lisa Tuttle and Elsa Wallace.

These are generally good with assorted druids, ritual sacrifice, vengeful stones, some sentient rocks and plenty more. Stonehenge, although referenced in a few only stars in one of them. Blackwood’s contribution, The Tarn of Sacrifice, is pretty good: written in 1921 it concerns a survivor of The Somme, walking in The Lake District and reflects on the dead and disabled and the protagonist’s loss of faith and looking back on a much older faith. The more modern stories are also very good. One is even concerns motor racing. A circuit is extended and now goes through an ancient stone circle: this doesn’t go well. The power of the land and the past resonate throughout.

8 out of 10

Starting One thousand and one Ghosts by Alexandre Dumas

[Books do furnish a room]

Earthly Creatures by Stevie Davies

The latest novel from Stevie Davies, in my opinion one of the best living writers and one who is certainly not well enough known. This latest novel is set in Germany during the war covering the years 1941 to 1946.

The main protagonist is Magdelena Arber who lives in Lubeck. She lives with her father Max, her Aunt Ebba and cousin Clem and is nineteen years old. Her father is a child of the Enlightenment and quotes Diderot and Voltaire. He has spent time in Dachau in 1933 for his views. Magda finds herself torn between which she is taught at school and in the Nazi youth groups and the views of her father: as does her cousin Clem. Magda is called to serve the Fatherland and is sent to East Prussia to be a teacher, whilst Clem has to join the army and is sent to the Eastern Front. In 1941 East Prussia is something of a rural idyll. Magda lives with her senior teacher Ruth and Ruth’s children Julia and Flora (who has a disability). The rural idyll is not all it seems, given the presence of the Gestapo, party officials, and conscientious party members who are not averse to reporting those not following party rules. As time goes on the war encroaches more and more.

This is a powerful exploration of living in a climate of fear. How does one manage the internal conflicts? How does one survive in a hostile and paranoid environment. It looks at courage and what it takes to stand up to a hostile and evil authority. It also looks at how the Nazis looked at disability. Davies looks at opposites and contrasts and how ideas that are inhuman develop and gain traction in ordinary lives. Remembering Voltaire’s famous dictum:

“Truly, those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities”

This is an excellent historical novel which examines how women fare in war; how some resist evil and some accommodate it. The characterisation is good and the reader does become invested in the characters. There are plenty of parallels with what is happening today and yet again women and children are casualties.

10 out of 10

Starting Sea Change by Alix Nathan

[Books do furnish a room]

Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson

This work by Virginia Nicholson covers the period from 1900 to 1939. This is a sort of history of The Bohemian sensibility in Britain. Nicholson has some antecedents in this area being the daughter of Quentin Bell, granddaughter of Vanessa Bell and great niece of Virginia Woolf.

This is arranged in a thematic way so there are chapters on money and poverty, love and sex, children, clothes, design furniture and interiors, food, housework, travel and being nomadic and friendships. There are an awful lot of people to reference and Nicholson also provides a brief potted biography of most of the major players in the book in an appendix (this was the most useful part of the book).

Some reviewers have noted that the approach used is a bit like the Laundry list method of history and it does drag a little at times. There’s an awful lot about Augustus John’s love life and eccentricities and Nicholson has a distinctive style:

"not just painters and poets, but... vegetarian nature-lovers living in caravans, poseurs in velvet jackets drinking absinthe in the Café Royal, earnest lesbians in men's suits and monocles, kohl-eyed beauties in chiffon and emeralds".

The approach to facts is rather scattergun, but there are lots of interesting snippets. I think what I trying to say is that it doesn’t read very well and can become rather tedious.

6 out of 10

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

[Books do furnish a room]

Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson

This work by Virginia Nicholson covers the period from 1900 to 1939. This is a sort of history of The Bohemian sensibility in Britain. Nicholson has some antecedents in this area being the daughter of Quentin Bell, granddaughter of Vanessa Bell and great niece of Virginia Woolf.

This is arranged in a thematic way so there are chapters on money and poverty, love and sex, children, clothes, design furniture and interiors, food, housework, travel and being nomadic and friendships. There are an awful lot of people to reference and Nicholson also provides a brief potted biography of most of the major players in the book in an appendix (this was the most useful part of the book).

Some reviewers have noted that the approach used is a bit like the Laundry list method of history and it does drag a little at times. There’s an awful lot about Augustus John’s love life and eccentricities and Nicholson has a distinctive style:

"not just painters and poets, but... vegetarian nature-lovers living in caravans, poseurs in velvet jackets drinking absinthe in the Café Royal, earnest lesbians in men's suits and monocles, kohl-eyed beauties in chiffon and emeralds".

The approach to facts is rather scattergun, but there are lots of interesting snippets. I think what I trying to say is that it doesn’t read very well and can become rather tedious.

6 out of 10

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

[Books do furnish a room]

The Binding by Bridget Collins

“Memories,’ she said, at last. ‘Not people, Emmett. We take memories and bind them. Whatever people can’t bear to remember. Whatever they can’t live with. We take those memories and put them where they can’t do any harm. That’s all books are”

This is an odd one, on the surface a historical novel, in what feels like the eighteenth or nineteenth century, some sort of faux Victorian era. What makes it odd is books, which perform a very different function and the role of bookbinders is vital. Put simply if there is something that you need to forget, you go to a bookbinder and recount the memories you want to lose and the binder binds them into a book. You leave no longer recalling the aforesaid memories. The book is bound and kept safe, but if you should find the book and read it or if the book is burnt, the memories return, often catastrophically. Bookbinding is a calling and it seems you are born to it. Feeling are mixed about bookbinders and they are often treated with suspicion and hostility. Although there has to be consent to be bound, obviously if you are a servant that is a moot point.

The implications of this concept are broad, obviously no more PTSD. Female servants who have been abused by the man of the house can be bound as many times as needed. It seems to be a way to exploit and abuse as well as to remove painful memories: a way to maintain the status quo. There is also, of course, an illicit market in books.

I’m not going to detail the plot, although the queer romance came as a bit of a surprise. However the world-building is virtually non-existent which makes a significant part of the plot incoherent. Most of the story is a bit mundane and pastoral (more Lawrence or Hardy) and the magical part doesn’t seem linked to anything and consequently can’t go anywhere. There’s no real explanation of how learning or development happens without learning and books. I have no objection to fantasy, but I do expect some level of coherence in the world building. There is no sense of how binding works, and the whole thing is full of antagonists, barely a protagonist in sight. There is the kernel of a good idea here but it doesn’t go anywhere.

3 out of 10

Starting Now we shall be entirely free by Andrew Miller

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Thousand and One Ghosts

“The pride of those who cannot edify lies in destruction”

A series of linked stories by Dumas Pere, originally published in 1846 and set in around 1830. They are linked by an unnamed narrator (who is actually Dumas himself). It is essentially stories told around a dinner table. Guests each tell a spooky story. It is all triggered by an incident at the beginning of the book. The narrator passes a man with blood on his hands walking into a town, he follows:

"...I saw coming towards me, from the direction of the church, a man who looked so strange that I came to a halt, and instinctively cocked both barrels of my rifle, impelled by a mere sense of self-preservation.

But the man - pale, his hair sticking up, his eyes popping out, his clothes in disarray and his hands spattered with blood - passed by me without seeing me. His stare was both fixed and lifeless. He was rushing ahead with the unstoppable momentum of a body bouncing uncontrollably down the steep sides of a mountain, and yet his breathless panting indicated more panic than fatigue."

 The man hands himself in to the town mayor, confessing to murdering his wife. He has decapitated her with a sword as he thought she was being unfaithful. When he picked up the head it bit him and then spoke to him claiming innocence. This so unnerved him that he confessed to the deed.

Meeting later a group of local worthies and Dumas tell stories that are in some way related and revolve around death. A number of them have some political background and relate to the French Revolution. There was at the time some consideration about the guillotine as an instrument of execution and there was a debate about how long consciousness lasted after decapitation and if a head could speak/move the lips/blink and so on. Some of the earlier stories explore this. All of the stories look at the line between life and death. The last one is set in Moldova and concerns vampirism, another topic that was being discussed at the time. All the tales are gothic and rather gloomy and this is rather an oddity, but I did enjoy it and it suits the season.

7 out of 10

Starting Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles edited by Emily Alder

[Books do furnish a room]

Sea Change by Alix Nathan

A rather unusual historical novel set during the Napoleonic Wars, starting in 1802 and continuing until 1815. The beginning is based on an actual incident, a ballooning accident. Here there is a balloon trip with two men and a woman. The woman is Sarah Battle. The balloon crashes into the sea. The men are rescued, but the woman is feared drowned. We move to a split narrative. Sarah is picked up in the sea off East Anglia, almost drowned. She is unable to walk or communicate and is presumed to be an attempted suicide. She is taken in by the Rev Snead a hellfire and damnation preacher and is cared for by his wife Hester. Rev Snead, assuming she is an attempted suicide wants to show her off as an example of God’s wrath towards sinners. She finds an ally in Hester. Sarah’s daughter Eve is a child when the accident happens and the second narrative strand follows her as she grows up.

The novel takes us through some of the events and issues of the time: Nelson’s funeral, a frost fair on the Thames, Luddites, freethinking and radicals.

The story flows well and heads towards what seems to be an obvious conclusion. The ending is a bit abrupt and the novel would have benefitted from being a bit longer. There were interesting aspects to this, brief explorations of radicalism and Luddites, but not enough to completely rescue it.

6 out of 10

Starting Ironopolis by Glen James Brown

[Books do furnish a room]

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

“They say the Lord's Day is a day of rest, but those who preach this generally are not women.”

I bought this in a remainders shop for about a pound over a decade ago, so I thought it was about time to move it on. It is a historical novel set in the 1650s and 1660s, mostly on Martha’s Vineyard. It revolves around a single historical event. In 1665 Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk Became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. From that piece of information Brooks has built a whole backstory. It is narrated by Bethia Mayfield, who lives in Great Harbour on Martha’s Vineyard, daughter of a local minister. The predominant flavour of religion is Puritan. Caleb and Bethia meet when Bethia is twelve and become friends, learning about each others lives and cultures. I won’t go through the plot as there are twists and turns.

There is a dual focus. The first is the relationship with Native American tribes and the ongoing attempts to convert them to Christianity and “civilise” them. The second is the role of women and this is seen through the eyes of the narrator, Bethia and her struggles. Bethia’s thinking seems a little too modern at times and her story does rather take over the book. Caleb feels very much like a minor character. It’s also over romanticised and the switch to looking back at the end of the novel didn’t work for me.

Brooks can tell a story, but this is much more about the Puritan community than Caleb and his crossing.

“Only one god. Strange, that you English, who gather about you so many things, are content with one only.”

5 and a half out of 10

Starting A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

[Books do furnish a room]

London Characters and Crooks by Henry Mayhew

“The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street-sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. "So-old again," roars one. "Chestnuts all'ot, a penny a score," bawls another. "An 'aypenny a skin, blacking," squeaks a boy. "Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy– bu-u-uy!" cries the butcher. “Half-Quire of paper for a penny," bellows the street stationer. "An 'aypenny a lot ing-uns." “Twopence a pound grapes." “Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters." “Who'll buy a bonnet for fourpence?" “Pick 'em out cheap here! three pair for a halfpenny, bootlaces." “Now's your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot." “Here's ha'p‘orths," shouts the perambulating confectioner. "Come and look at 'em! here's toasters!" bellows one with a Yarmouth bloater stuck on a toasting fork. "Penny a lot, fine russets," calls the apple woman: and so the Babel goes on.”

The author Henry Mayhew is an interesting character. He was the thirteenth of seventeen children. He was sent to Westminster School but ran away to sea. He did a variety of things, but was mainly a journalist, co-founding Punch. He perpetually struggled with money and was often in debt, avoiding creditors. He mixed in Christian Socialist circles and is best remembered for his extensive research into the London poor, done over many years. This is a version of the research. There are lots of interviews and transcripts of conversations, so your hear the voices of those interviewed.

Mayhew speaks to the many and varied people who worked, entertained and begged on the streets. He talked to those who picked pockets, robbed houses, sold their bodies. There are many children interviewed, often living on the streets in rags and selling what they could and their voices are heartbreaking. Almost everything is sold on the streets, including many types of animals. There are scavengers who collect and sell what they can. This includes those who collected animal excrement (used in tanneries), those who went into sewers to scavenge, rag collectors, Mud-larks (those who scavenged on the banks of the Thames) and pure-finders (collectors of human excrement). Mayhew also interviews chimney sweeps, dock workers, crossing sweepers, transport workers and watermen. There are several chapters on the varieties of street entertainers.

There is a great deal of information captured here and it is striking how close so many of them are to complete penury and starvation. They tell tales of abusive childhoods, the dangers of the streets and deaths from starvation and sheer poverty. This is a good antidote to those who hark back to Victorian values and want us to return there. The capital of the Empire was built on and relied on poverty and oppression. We owe a debt of gratitude to Mayhew for recording London life at the bottom of the pyramid in such detail. 

8 out of 10

Starting The Source of the Nile by Richard Burton

[Books do furnish a room]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”

An unremittingly violent book, full of antagonists with barely a protagonist in sight. The novel hangs on the character of “the kid”, at the beginning only fourteen. There are a few actual historical characters present. The kid joins a loose group of men paid by the Mexican government to collect the scalps of Apaches. The leader of the gang is John Glanton. Another significant character is an enigmatic one called The Judge, surname Holden. Both of these characters are historical as is the actions of their gang. There is basically a timeline of what they did, mainly to  villagers and Native Americans. This is set in the 1840s

There is a record of the violence written by a participant years later. McCarthy used My Confessions by Samuel Chamberlain as a reference point. McCarthy bears witness to all the horror and violence and the novel is dripping with it. This is in marked contrast with traditional romanticised notions of the West and the glories of Manifest Destiny: films like How the West was Won, any of hundreds of westerns churned out by Hollywood. This is the true face of Imperialism. No one has a monopoly on bloodshed here, but only one side is fighting for survival. The beauty of the landscape is a sharp contrast. It’s also worth remembering this was published whilst Reagan was President.

There are lots of literary references and The Judge has been compared to Captain Ahab. That sort of thing apart this is a powerful counterpoint to traditional versions of the west and the move westwards.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Holy Island by L J Ross

[Books do furnish a room]

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

“But here, in the tide country, transformation is the rule of life: rivers stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in days. In other places forests take centuries, even millennia, to regenerate; but mangroves can recolonize a denuded island in ten to fifteen years. Could it be the very rhythms of the earth were quickened here so that they unfolded at an accelerated pace?”

My novel by Ghosh, and this was ok, so it won’t be the last. In the Bay of Bengal there is a large group of small islands called the Sundarbans and the novel is set there. It follows Piya, a marine biologist there to study the Irrawaddy dolphin. She is American and of Bengali Indian descent. She meets Kanai Dutt, a businessman from Kolkata and a bit of a playboy. He is visiting relatives in the area. Fokir is a local fisherman whose boat Piya hires. Ghosh weaves a novel around their interactions and a good array of minor characters with a tropical storm at the end to liven things up.

 

“Who are we? We are the dispossessed. How strange it was to hear this plaintive cry wafting across the water. It seemed at that moment not to be a shout of defiance but rather a question being addressed to the very heavens, not just for themselves but on behalf of a bewildered humankind. Who, indeed, are we? Where do we belong? And as I listened to the sound of those syllables, it was as if I were hearing the deepest uncertainties of my heart being spoken to the rivers and the tides. Who was I? Where did I belong? In Calcutta or in the tide country? In India or across the border? In prose or in poetry?”

Ghosh creates patterns and interconnectedness, all is linked. There is a present and past narrative line and they link together. There are no simplistic or easy answers here and this is a decent novel. So I will read more Ghosh in the future.

8 out of 10

Starting The Hawthorn Goddess by Glyn Hughes

 

 

[Books do furnish a room]

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

“I remember being taught all about how Japan was created by the gods, for instance. How we as a nation were divine and supreme. We had to memorize the text book word for word. Some things aren’t such a loss, perhaps.’ “But Jim, things aren’t as simple as that. You clearly don’t understand how such things worked. Things aren’t nearly as simple as you presume. We devoted ourselves to ensuring that proper qualities were handed down, that children grew up with the correct attitude to their country, to their fellows. There was a spirit in Japan once, it bound us all together. Just imagine what it must be like being a young boy today. He’s taught no values at school — except perhaps that he should selfishly demand whatever he wants out of life. He goes home and finds his parents fighting because his mother refuses to vote for his father’s party. What a state of affairs.”

This is Ishiguro’s rather enigmatic first novel. The novel concerns Etsuko, a middle aged Japanese woman living in England. She has lost her eldest daughter to suicide. There are two timelines. The present with Etsuko’s youngest daughter Nicki. The past in Nagasaki after the war when Etsuko was pregnant with her older daughter. In this timeline she recalls a friend named Sachiko and her daughter Mariko. The reader eventually works out that there are distinct similarities between Etsuko’s story and Sachiko’s.

There are several themes running through the novel. One is the nature of memory and its possible unreliability:

“Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here.”

This links to how peace is made with the past. The title (pale view of hills) suggests something of the nature of subjectivity of what we recall and how we recall it.

There is very little plot and nothing much happens, but it is beautifully written and Ishiguro has an eye for detail. It is at times a little too enigmatic, but worth the effort.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Kraken by China Mieville

[Books do furnish a room]

Our Haunted Shores edited by Emily Alder

“The sea that night sang rather than chanted; all along the far-running shore a rising tide dropped thick foam, and the waves, white-crested, came steadily in with the swing of a deliberate purpose.”

Another offering from Tales of the Weird. The stories range from the 1780s until the 1930s. There are a few poems, including one from Christina Rossetti. There are twenty authors contained in the anthology, including three anonymous ones. There are offerings from Bram Stoker, Charlotte Riddell, Arthur Machen, E F Benson, Hugh Walpole, Lord Dunsany, H G Wells, Algernon Blackwood, Francis Prevost, James Bowker, Frances Hodgson Burnett, H D Lowry, Charlotte Smith, Sophia Morrison, Robert Sneddon and Mary Robinson. These stories do focus more on the shoreline, beaches and shallows rather than seas and oceans.

There is plenty of myth and folklore present, along with tropes about the sea containing the dead, not to mention lighthouses and loads of shingle. There is a little humour from Bram Stoker with a tourist who insists on wearing full highland dress, even on the beach. Blackwood’s effort is suitably strange.

It’s a varied group of stories, suitably odd at times, not the best in the series, but by no means the worst.

6 out of 10

Starting Cheer the Sick by Verity Holloway

[Books do furnish a room]

And Now We Shall be Entirely Free

This is a historical novel set in the Napoleonic wars, more specifically during the Peninsular Wars and the retreat from Corunna. During the retreat atrocities are committed by British soldiers. Captain John Lacroix was part of the retreat. He arrives home in Somerset with health compromised and has to recuperate. Meanwhile back in Portugal two people are asked with finding Lacroix. They are Corporal Calley, an Englishman and a Spanish Officer, Medina. They don’t have to bring him back to Portugal. As Lacroix recovers he decides to go to the Scottish Highlands as part of his recovery.

In the highlands and islands Lacroix (travelling as a Mr Lovell) meets a group of people living a little unconventionally and falls in love with one of the women. Calley and Medina start to look for Lacroix and follow him. Thereby hangs the tale.

This covers a number of subjects: the nature of war, justice, culpability, freethinking, cultural difference, sea travel, amongst other things. Miller adds in heightened vulnerability. Lacroix has impaired hearing from the war and his love interest Emily is going blind because of cataracts. There are two distinct narrative lines, Lacroix and his pursuers and they don’t converge until the end.

There are flaws: the ending is very much a damp squib and Miller tries to cover way too much ground. It’s nicely written and some of the historical parts are interesting, but it was a relief to finish it.

6 out of 10

Starting The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

[Books do furnish a room]

The Hawthorn Goddess by Glynn Hughes

My first novel by Glynn Hughes. It is set in Yorkshire (Calderdale to be precise) in the eighteenth century in a weaving village. It is towards the end of the eighteenth century and the French Revolution is taking place, new and radical ideas are rising. Religion is disputed between the established Church and various assorted dissenters and Methodists.

There is an old English saying which goes “It’s grim up North”, and this is very much a “grim up North” novel. The hawthorn goddess of the novel is Anne Wylde, the daughter of a mason. Hughes himself referred to the novel as a fable, a mythic version of the ongoing battle between nature and human culture.

Ann is odd and uncomfortable, she is often persecuted by local villagers who perceive her to be a witch, the Hawthorn goddess. Anne symbolises nature and her treatment is something of a reflection of how we treat nature. Anne is a wild spirit and people fear her.

There is a sense that those who persecute Anne are the ones who never go anywhere and are intensely local and parochial. There is a culture of solidarity, but that leads to a suspicion of outsiders and those who are different. The positive characters are the ones who read and who have a sense of the wider world.

The novel explores the rise of mechanisation, the growth of factories and the decline of weaving in local cottages as family units. There are vivid descriptions of the poverty and brutality of the times and we see the very beginnings of the Luddites.

Ann has dreams and aspirations and she finds a connection with the son of the local mill owner who writes poetry and has a sense of nature. The question is, of course will he be able to overcome his innate prejudices and upbringing?

Hughes does highlight very well the tensions which arose as a result of industrialisation and the human casualties of it, even if I found the romance part a bit irritating!

8 out of 10

Starting A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

[Books do furnish a room]

The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

“Many of these advances took place under the rule of one of India’s most celebrated dynasties, the Guptas, who presided over large swathes of the Gangetic plain of north India from the early fourth to the late sixth century ce. This was a moment of supreme self-confidence in Indian civilisation, when its arts, philosophy and learning were most widely admired.”

Dalrymple is here looking at the history and influence of India (or the Indosphere, the term Dalrymple uses) up to about the thirteenth century. He explodes a few myths and explains some basic historical facts we should all know. For example the enormous amount of trade between India and the Roman Empire. Literally tons of Roman coinage has been found in India and luxury goods from India found their way to the rich in Rome (cloth, spices, pepper, jewellery, ivory, hardwoods, oils and glass). Ideas also moved as India was also a religious and philosophical superpower. Dalrymple charts how Buddhist ideas affected Greek and Roman thought. Buddhist monks certainly reached Europe and were most likely around in the Middle East throughout the Roman period.

The spread of scientific ideas was equally important: many of our most basic mathematical and astronomical ideas come from India: the decimal system, algebra, trigonometry, the algorithm, modern number systems, even chess all come from India. Eventually all of these ideas reached even the backward Christian Europe, often via Moorish Spain or the Arab civilisations of the Middle East.

Dalrymple explodes the myth of the Silk Road between China and the West as well:

“The existence of the ‘Silk Road’ is not based on a single shred of historical or material evidence. There was never any such ‘road’ or even a route in the organisational sense, there was no free movement of goods between China and the West until the Mongol Empire in the Middle Ages, silk was by no means the main commodity in trade with the East and there is not a single ancient historical record, neither Chinese nor classical, that even hints at the existence of such a road. The arrival of silk in the West was more the result of a series of accidents than organised trade. Chinese monopoly and protectionism of sericulture is largely myth. Despite technology existing in ancient China far in advance of anything in the West, most of it did not reach the West until the Middle Ages (usually via the Mongols) when much of it was already up to a thousand years old. Both ancient Rome and China had only the haziest notions of each other’s existence and even less interest, and the little relationship that did exist between East and West in the broadest sense was usually one-sided, with the stimulus coming mainly from the Chinese. The greatest value of the Silk Road to history is as a lesson – and an important one at that – at how quickly and how thoroughly a myth can become enshrined as unquestioned academic fact.”

There is a great deal in here and it is an excellent book which debunks a number of myths we have in the West, illustrating how much the West is influenced by the Indosphere.

9 and a half out of 10

Starting Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

[Books do furnish a room]

Ironopolis by Gen James Brown

“What ‘trade’ is there? Since I was a lass, the forges have been privatised, consolidated, chopped up, sold off. Why make steel here if it’s cheaper to ship from China? Everybody is being made redundant – tens of thousands of people. Whole communities. Ironopolis is falling.” 

A novel of place, in this case Teesside. There is an old saying which goes “It’s grim up North” and this is a rather bleak novel. It is set on a run down council estate (the fictional Burns estate in Middlesborough), with the emphasis on run down. The local industry was iron and steel and petrochemicals. These industries are in severe decline and many thousands have been made redundant. This is set over a couple of generations and it charts the decline of these industries alongside the decline of the council estate and its gradual demolition.

The novel is a series of linked stories with the same characters recurring in each one, sometimes younger, sometimes older. There are different formats. One is epistolary, there is a prison diary, an academic essay and some straightforward storytelling. Alan Barr pulls the whole thing together. He is a shy and awkward man (although we see his childhood as well) who has never quite come to terms with his father Vincent: a bully who has haunted the estate for decades.

There is an added folklore element as well. Peg Powler is the spirit of the river Tees. Most rivers in the UK (and I suspect the rest of the world) have them. She is a water witch who lures children (and sometimes adults) into the water and to a wet and cold demise. She is a strand running through all of the stories.

This is an urban wasteland with a great cast of characters. There is brutality and cruelty in this sort of estate (there is at least one in most towns and cities in the UK). The gritty realism part is obvious, but there is also a bleak humour as well. The scenes where some birds of prey are taken into an older persons home for the residents to handle has a touch of comic genius to it.

The regeneration of the estate, which is going on throughout much of the novel, is the type that breaks up communities and gradually destroys them, exposing the loyalties and antagonisms that make up most communities.

This is a really good read and an excellent novel, it is I suppose a state of the nation novel.

9 out of 10

Starting Orientalism by Edward Said 

[Books do furnish a room]

Cheer The Sick by Verity Holloway

A collection of sixteen short stories. This is very good. In these stories Holloway explores sickness, health, disability, mortality, mental health, power and control, dystopia, hauntings and much more. There stories are unsettling, subversive, weird and there are often unspoken undercurrents. Appropriately it was published on Halloween.

I found the stories really interesting. Cremating Imelda (yes literally) is a take on obesity, there is humour and it is really quite unusual.

The Forlorn Hope is an alternative history set in the Napoleonic Wars, but it is women who do the fighting, not the men. A Little Star is set in an opium den where a customer’s reality becomes muddled. Don’t you know Mrs Kelly, one of my favourites has a couple of very effective twists in it; set during the First World War it charts a young man’s debut as a drag artist. Something Borrowed follows a man whose father has died and left the family house to a military organisation rather than his son. There is a touch of faery about it, but the Bronski Beat poster really gives it away. Bernie is something of modern folk tale, which focusses on mental health. Bernie stands at the same bus stop in Cambridge all day and people make assumptions, but he is not what he seems. A modern myth. The Subtle Feast is gothic and historical with added Highwaymen, press gangs and the recklessness of youth which may not end well, but a turn in the story makes for a powerful ending: sad, odd and mystical.

There’s much more, but this is good.

9 and a half out of 10

Starting Orbital by Samantha Harvey

[Books do furnish a room]

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

“And in time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s of a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by the instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through.”

Here I am with another Booker Prize winner and here I am again wondering why. Not that this was a bad book, somewhat tedious perhaps with lots of musings and ramblings if you like that sort of thing. It is semi-philosophical and meditative.

The premise is a simple one. The setting is the International Space Station and the protagonists are the six astronauts on it. There are two Russians, an Italian, an American and one each from Japan and the UK. It is a day in the life of novel (well, novella actually). There are sixteen chapters, each one is linked to an orbit of the earth.

There is an awful lot of descriptions of the earth and its beauty, weather and the general sense of being in space.

“And in time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines but that it’s of a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by the instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through.”

There’s a good deal like the above, it’s a little trite and a little profound at the same time. It’s a bit of a geography lesson courtesy of google earth possibly. There are lots of lists too. As you may have noticed from the quotes Harvey has a great love for commas and is not so enamoured of the full stop. I haven’t read James yet, but it would have to be pretty bad to lose against this one.

5 out of 10

Starting Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

[Books do furnish a room]

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

“The weak shouldn't have to fear the powerful, and the powerful shouldn't be simply allowed to take what they wanted without consequence. Power should be a burden, not a shield. It should be used to everybody's betterment, not merely for the person who wielded it.”

This is an oddity, it is set in the 1630s, so it fits historical novel. There is a detective involved (I know it’s the 1630s, but a certain suspension of ordinary rules is required. It’s mostly set on a ship, an Indiaman to be precise. The initial location is what was known as Batavia, now Java, the Dutch East Indies. There is a journey from Batavia to Amsterdam with all the key players on the ship. There is a mystery (well several actually), a murder or two, a spot of Holmes and Watson, a mysterious cargo, suspicious clerics, treasure, a shipwreck, a mutinous crew, lots of mixed identities, a bit of piracy, a navigational aid, secret compartments, there is even potentially a demon (possibly, possibly not) haunting the ship who has been conjured by one of the passengers, some elements of horror. There is also a whiff of romance (unfortunate, but it’s not too intrusive until near the end).

Throw all of this together and much more with a myriad of twists and turns. It probably Shouldn’t work, but in an odd sort of way it does, well partially. It is very inventive and entertaining in an undemanding way.

7 out of 10

Starting Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

[Books do furnish a room]

Deadly Dolls edited by Elizabeth Dearnley (Tales of the Weird series)

“The doll wasn't lying on the floor of the cage, but was standing against the padlocked door. And as the curtains parted it turned its face sharply towards me”

Another collection from the Tales of the Weird series. This time it’s about toys: mainly dolls and dolls houses. There is a broad range of stories ranging date wise from1817 to 2022. There are a couple of very recent stories. This time the tales are grouped in themes: Dancing Dolls, Troublesome Toys, Doll Lovers, Possessing Puppets, Fashion Dolls and Doll Houses. There are two or three stories in each grouping.

The list of writers is also impressive; Jerome K Jerome. Joan Aitken, E T A Hoffmann, Brian Aldiss, Vernon Lee, Dapne Du Maurier, Adele Geras, Angela Carter, Ysabelle Cheung, Agatha Christie, Frederick Smith, M R James, Camilla Grudova and Robert Aickman.

Most of the stories are pretty strong and there are no really weak ones. The Dolls House stories are both effective (One of M R James’s better outings). The dummy coming to life tales also work. There is dystopia, dance, a creepy dolls hospital and much more and they’re all a bit more subtle than Chucky!

The role of dolls as transitional objects is also explored and the introduction references Freud’s “The uncanny”. The editor, Elizabeth Dearnley points out that the invention/development of the porcelain in Victorian times did a good deal to encourage this sort of story. Although corn dolls related to harvest rituals, go back centuries. Actually the introduction is very good and examines the overlap and origins of the words idol and doll and of course clay models to curse or cure go back to Mesopotamia over four thousand years ago.

This is a good collection if you enjoy this sort of story.

9 out of 10 

Starting Chill Tidings: Dark Tales of the Christmas Season

[Books do furnish a room]

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

I am going to assume the plot of Rebecca is pretty well known and anyone who has seen the Hitchcock film will know it anyway. I am also writing this after surgery yesterday, so it may be even more incoherent than usual!

The novel was what I expected. There is a stream of consciousness aspect to it and a gothic edge. There are also faint echoes of Jane Eyre, Du Maurier was a Bronte fan.

It’s beautifully written with plenty of suspense, but ultimately at the heart of this is that it’s ok to shoot your wife, make it look like a suicide and continue to cover it up. We see everything through the eyes of the narrator, Maxim’s second wife. We don’t really know how reliable the narrator really is. It’s her word on it all. We are dealing with upper class wastrels here lounging languidly all day with little to do but check the menus and keep the servants busy. Du Maurier weaves a spell that surrounds Manderley:

“The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows borne, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed. The flowers that died would bloom again another year, the same birds build their nests, the same trees blossom. That old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, and the bees would come, and crickets, the herons build their nests in the deep dark woods. The butterflies would dance their merry jug across the lawns, and spiders spin foggy webs, and small startled rabbits who had no business to come trespassing poke their faces through the crowded shrubs. There would be lilac, and honeysuckle still, and the white magnolia buds unfolding slow and tight beneath the dining-room window. No one would ever hurt Manderley. It would lie always in its hollow like an enchanted thing, guarded by the woods, safe, secure, while the sea broke and ran and came again in the little shingle bays below.”

It's haunting and attractive, but ultimately empty.

6 out of 10

Starting Germinal by Zola

 

 

[Books do furnish a room]

Chill Tidings in the Tales of the Weird series

“The tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve was firmly established by the Victorian period. Its origins are in the early Christian belief that souls in purgatory were most active on the day before a holy day, and thus more likely to intrude into our world.”

A seasonal anthology from the British Library with winter and Christmas tales, the second in Tales of the Weird series on Christmas. The stories range from 1868 to 1955 and include contributions from Charlotte Riddell, Marjorie Bowen, Hume Nesbit, L P Hartley, Algernon Blackwood, Louisa Baldwin, Frank R Stockton, H P Lovecraft, Elizabeth Bowen, Andrew Caldecott, Rosemary Timperley and Jerome K Jerome.

The Jerome K Jerome Novella is one of the better contributions, especially as it is a parody/pastiche of Dickens’s ghost stories.

The editor, Tanya Kirk, explores the reasons behind the origins ofthe popularity of ghost stories in the nineteenth century. It was a time of rapid change, industrialisation and scientific progress. As always stories were a way of making sense of things.

As well as the excellent parody by Jerome there are other good contributions. The Crown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen is suitably creepy. Burrage’s Fourth Wall is also rather good. Timperley exploits the trop of being lonely at Christmas in an interesting way. I wasn’t a fan of Lovecraft’s contribution, but all in all this is a decent collection.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Into the Darkening Fog in the tales of the weird series