A Book Blog 2025 by Books do Furnish a Room

[Books do furnish a room]

And here is the first review of 2025

Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux

“Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.”

I have been reading this for quite some time (it feels like about seventeen years). There was a time when big slightly obscure books like this: hefty, complex and thoroughly postmodern: were attractive and I added several to my tbr list. This was one of those.

It is the heartwarming tale of Alaric Darconville: 29 years old, failed monk, descendant of a noble family, orphan at 14, aspiring writer, Catholic (ish), now new English professor at Quinsy College, Quinsyburg, Virginia. He falls in love with one of his students (yes, Theroux does go there) Isabel Rawsthorne an eighteen year old freshman. A love affair starts, which grows into a possible marriage and then crashes and burns. This all takes 700 pages.

There is a cat, called Spellvexit, who for me was the most interesting character. He (or she) has the right idea and disappears about two-thirds of the way through.

There are some points to make. The language is one, the breadth and erudition. There are words here that I had never heard of and some were certainly made up. I picked an average page (67) and here are some that stand out: pornofornocacophagomaniacal, prottoglottological, quiddling, not to mention submembral subsections. On the same page we also have reference to “pygmies” as well as the following about a female church organist:

“she’d long since become convinced that maidenhead and godhead were indivisible”

Yes it’s smut Jim, but not as we know it.

Another word that crops up is

Lopadotemachoselacogaleokranioleipsano-drimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossypho-phattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoisiraiobaphetrago-nopterygn. Make of that what you will.

There is a breathtaking amount of misogyny here. True, all the main male characters are not at all likeable and I am sure there is an element of satire. Another quote will illustrate:

“Suddenly, political sucksters and realistic insectivores, shoving to the front, puffed up their stomachs and blew lies out of their fingers! A parade was formed! It was now an assembly on the arch, an enthusiastic troop of dunces, pasquil-makers, populist scribblers and lick-penny poets, anti-intellectual hacks, modernistic rubbishmongers, anonymuncules of prose and anacreontic water-bibbers all screaming nonce-words and squealing filthy ditties. They shouted scurrilities! They pronounced words backwards! They tumbled along waggling codpieces, shaking hogs' bladders, and bugling from the fundament! Some sang, shrill, purposely mispronouncing words, snarping at the language to mock it while thumping each other with huge rubber phalluses and roaring out farts! They snapped pens in half and turned somersaults with quills in their ears to make each other laugh, lest they speak and then finally came to the lip of a monstrously large hole, a crater-like opening miles wide, which, pushing and shoving, they circled in an obscene dance while dressed in hoods with long earpieces and shaking firebrands, clackers, and discordant bells! A bonfire was then lit under a huge pole, and on that pole a huge banner, to hysterical applause, was suddenly unfurled and upon it, upsidedown, were written the words: "In The End Was Wordlessness."”

There is a great deal like this.

The structure contains songs, letters, litanies, pages coloured in black, a misogynists library, lots of quotes, an explicitur (see it’s catching) about murder (more specifically linked how to kill Isabel with rather too much detail), poetry and much more.

Most of the reviews I have read are very positive, worshipful even. Apparently it’s in the tradition of learned wit and works like Tristam Shandy.

I found it tedious and unpleasant. 

4 out of 10

Starting Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

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Kraken by China Mieville

“We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but able still to love. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us.

This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.”

Set in London, but not quite as we know it. It is a London of myth, magic, cults and mysterious powerful forces. It all revolves around a giant squid (the Kraken of the title) which is stolen from the natural history museum. Billy Harrow is a cephalopod specialist at the museum and the novel revolves around him. The whole thing is rather surreal and Mieville, as ever bombards the reader with all kinds of concepts and ideas.
The amount of squid and tentacles here do indicate that Mieville has read Lovecraft and is playing with the Cthulhu corpus and doing all sorts of weird things with it:
“He was back in the water, not braving but frowning, synchronised swimming, not swimming but sinking, toward the godsquid he knew was there, tentacular fleshscape and the moon-sized eye that he never saw but knew, as if the core of the fudgeing planet was not searing metal but mollusc, as if what we fall toward when we fall, what the apple was heading for when Newton's head got in the way, was kraken.”
There are lots of flights of fancy here that go in many different directions. Mieville goes beyond Lovecraft and there are elements of Moorcock, Moore and Gaiman. This in some ways is much more fun than Mieville usually is. The heroes are suitably bumbling and the villains suitably villainous. There are plenty of plot twists and by-ways and lots of fun with religious fundamentalism in a roundabout way. There is a police unit called the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit (FSRCU). The language is playful too. I am not sure squidnapping is a word!
Mieville has made it clear that this is a comedy and that he is poking fun at the fantasy genre. He is also sending up religion in general as well. It’s all good fun and enjoyable.

““Someone came in all Starfleet badges today. Not on my shift, sadly.'

'Fascist,' Leon had said. 'Why are you so prejudiced against nerds?'

'Please,' Billy said. 'That would be a bit self-hating, wouldn't it?'

'Yeah, but you pass. You're like, you're in deep cover,' Leon said. 'You can sneak out of the nerd ghetto and hide the badge and bring back food and clothes and word of the outside world.””

 

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Greek Lessons by Han Kang

[lunababymoonchild]

I loved it

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A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

“If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.”

This is a sort of rough guide to science told in the form of a history of the universe, a history of earth and a history of life. Bryson covers the history of science: the theories, debates and speculations about all that he covers from the beginning of the universe onwards. There is a caveat or two. It was written over twenty years ago so it is bound to be out of date and there is so much in here that there are bound to be a few errors. There’s lots about atomic particles and a great deal about life and how it developed.

It's an interesting read and is laced with Bryson’s trademark humour:

“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”

“In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.”

There are also lots of interesting anecdotes as well. It’s informative without being over complex, but you do have to get on with Bryson’s breezy style.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Katherine Swynford by Alison Weir

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Greek Lessons by Han Kang

“It's a common belief that blind or partially sighted people will pick up on sounds first and foremost, but that isn't the case with me. The first thing I perceive is time. I sense it as a slow, cruel current of enormous mass passing constantly through my body to gradually overcome me.”
My first novel by Nobel prize winner Han Kang. It is a portrait of two middle-aged characters, one of whom is losing his sight. She also has her problems, finding herself struggling to speak. She decides to learn ancient Greek and the language teacher is the one losing his sight. It is set in Germany and South Korea. There is prose, poetry, philosophy and linguistics. There is a fair amount of Plato’s theory of forms floating about as well. It is often delivered in small chunks and reads easily. Kang does have a very good eye for detail, here she describes her language instructor:
"The man standing by the blackboard looks to be in his mid to late thirties. He is slight, with eyebrows like bold accents over his eyes and a deep groove at the base of his nose. A faint smile of restrained emotion plays around his mouth...The woman gazes up at the scar that runs in a slender pale curve from the edge of his left eyelid to the edge of his mouth. When she'd seen it in their first lesson, she'd thought of it as marking where tears had once flowed."
The novel explores whether two damaged people can find some solace in each other. Of course nothing is ever simple and straightforward! Kang alternates between the two narrators and sometimes they seem to merge into each other. They also look back over their lives. A sense of sadness hangs over it all and there is plenty of pondering existential questions. I did enjoy this and the writing is good, well-translated I think. I also think it will lead me towards some of her other books. 

8 out of 10

Starting The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

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Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

“Even without a mouth, the woman can scream, she said. Even without a stomach, one can go hungry. And even in death, one can lust for life.”

Set in Trinidad and written by Trinidadian author Kevin Jared Hosein, this has been described as Trinidadian Gothic. I am not sure this is entirely accurate. It is set in the 1940s and concerns the lives of a group of families. It is a time when the American occupation has ended and colonial rule is coming to an end.

The geographical area covered is limited. There is a house on a hill with a farm where the owners live in some luxury. It overlooks Bell village. Further down is The Barrack, an old building of wood, corrugated iron and tin, half falling down. It is divided into rooms with a family in each room and some communal areas. It is where the poorest live. Hosein writes about the characters that populate these places, but he also captures the flavour of the natural world and the creatures that share the area. Hosein does use some vernacular, but this works well.

Hosein uses the myths, fables, parables and oral traditions of Trinidad. As he says:

“I often say that Trinidad writes itself. Many stories I write are drawn from actual people, communities or events. We are a theatrical kind—people of entertainment. Revenge, salvation, and madness continue to be three thematic sources of entertainment and dramatic intrigue in our oral traditions. At the same time, I am interested in up-ending expectations of these themes. I’m drawn to thinking about moments that cause humans to react in the most seemingly inexplicable ways, and how madness can be relative to scenario and time.”

The themes of hunger, desire, ambition, religion (particularly Hindu), life and death, betrayal, lust and love and petty officialdom.

This is a memorable novel and a good way to start the new year. I have always loved Caribbean literature and this just confirms that.

9 out of 10

Starting River Spirit by Leila Aboulela

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Thank you dizzybee, that's much appreciated.

Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

This is the sequel to The Ashes of London. A historical novel, set just after the first one finishes and just after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It is a fairly standard murder mystery, but it is very well plotted. There are plenty of twists and layers and one or two things which take it away from the conventional. This outing revolves around the work of the Fire Court. The Fire Court was set up to decide on the complexities of who owned what and who could rebuild what after the fire: particularly in the case of freehold and leasehold. It is a bit of a slow burn, but that isn’t a complaint.

As previously Marwood’s side of things is told in the first person and Catherine’s in the third. I enjoyed the immersion in the seventeenth century and it didn’t tax the brain too much, which was what I needed post surgery.

6 out of 10

Starting The Camomile by Catherine Carswell

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Into the London fog edited by Elizabeth Dearnley (British Library Tales of the Weird series)

“The ghost story was also a hugely popular form for Victorian women writers, enabling them to discuss gender dynamics, sexuality, the constraints of domestic life and other taboo topics. The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of increasing activity for women’s rights movements and wider debate about women’s role in public life, with many of these issues explored under the guise of supernatural fiction.”

The title of this gives it away. This British Library collection contains stories set in London and in particular the fog which London is geographically prone to (less these days since the Clean Air Act). In this volume there are contributions from Elizabeth Bowen, Lettice Galbraith, Violet Hunt, Rhoda Broughton, Thomas Burke, Virginia Woolf, Claude Mackay, Arthur Machen, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Sam Selvon, Edith Nesbit, Charlotte Riddell, E F Benson and one anonymous. They range in time between 1868 and 1957.

Four of the contributions are not fictional. These are an excerpt from Claude McKay’s autobiography, an anonymous account of the urban myth of Spring-Heeled Jack, a piece by Virginia Woolf called Street Haunting and Thomas Burke’s memories of London during the First World War when the streets were unlit. The introduction by Dearnley is well worth reading as the quote above indicates. Galbraith’s story In the Séance Room shows how this female society subverts the male gaze and brings a man to account. There are also a couple of contributions from black Londoners.

Lowndes’s story is set in Whitechapel and was written in 1910. It progressed into a novel, probably the first covering the Ripper murders. A couple take in a lodger who seems initially ideal, however things take a turn.

Woolf reflects on the possibilities involved in walking the early evening streets:

‘’No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil. But there are circumstances in which it can become supremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner.’’

‘’The hour should be the evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful. We are not then taunted as in the summer by the longing for shade and solitude and sweet airs from the hayfields. The evening hour, too, gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves.’’

 

This is a good collection one of the better ones in this series.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Evil Roots, also in the Tales of the Weird series

 

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The Camomile by Catherine Carswell

“Don’t you agree that there must be something radically wrong with a civilisation, society, theory of life – call it what you like – in which a hard-working serious young woman like myself cannot obtain, without enormous difficulty, expense, or infliction of pain on others, a quiet, clean, pleasant room in which she can work, dream her dreams, write out her thoughts, and keep her few treasures in peace?”

This is a plea by a female writer for a room of her own to write in 1922, six/seven years before Woolf’s similar request. Ellen Carstairs is an orphan who lives with her brother and her Aunt Harry (who is an evangelical Christian). Ellen has studied music in Frankfurt and has now returned to her native Glasgow where the novel is set. It is an epistolary novel, Ellen writes a daily journal which she sends to her friend Ruby. Ellen gives piano lessons to help with the finances and has several female friends in her social circle who appear to be looking for husbands. Ellen is less passionate about music than she is about writing. She finds a small room to rent where she can have some peace to do her writing, away from her household.

Ellen is observant and finds that she also doesn’t fit easily into what society expects her to be:

“Why should Mrs B., when she gives me solemn advice about bedlinen, or shows me the crochet she is doing for Madge’s toilet-covers, either bore me savagely or make me want to shriek with laughter? Are not these the people I have grown up among? Why should their thoughts be so unfamiliar, even grotesque, to me?”

Ellen struggles with some of the things her female circle of friends see as expected. Ellen does find a few friends; an elderly ex-priest and scholar she nicknames Don John, who supports her aspiration to write and gives advice:

“Of my writing he said “I see. It is like the camomile – the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.” And when I asked him who had said that, he smiled again and said, “An observant fat man called Falstaff.””

She does fall in love with the brother of a friend who seems to be ok and not too oppressive. He is in the Indian civil service, and she will be expected to go and live there. Typically, Ellen realises there are problems and Duncan is somewhat inconsistent:

“What, for instance, does Duncan want of me as his wife? He wants me to be womanly, but not to go too far even in that direction … likes me to be what he calls au fait with books and questions of the day, but always to skim the surface lightly … he hopes I shall be a good housewife and mother but without being too much taken up with domestic details as this “makes many married women such bores.” Somehow one feels one is being made into a kind of shop window that the admiring world may be shown what a modern woman can be like, until in time what one really is, is quite lost sight of, even by oneself.”

One of the undertones of the novel is mental health and this has parallels with Carswell’s own life. There is a suicide prior to the start of the novel and one of the peripheral characters is admitted to an asylum. Ellen’s own mental health appears to deteriorate after she becomes engaged:

“Will anyone ever be able to explain why on some days, though one may feel quite cheerful and even happy, one sees a world without any magic in its outlines and colours? With me, when such days have followed one another in a fairly long succession – say for a week on end – I begin to wonder if this may not be the true and normal vision of life?”

Ellen navigates the waters of convention and this is an interesting novel. There is a virago edition and the British Library has recently republished it in their women writers series. I enjoyed this.

8 out of 10

Starting Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

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Owen Glendower by John Cowper Powys

An immense historical novel (over 900 pages). My first encounter with Powys since the 1980s. John Cowper Powys was one of eleven siblings, all of whom were talented and creative. I have long been an admirer of his brother Theodore’s work. Powys identified as an anarchist, anti-fascist, anti-Stalinist. He mainly spent his working life teaching and taught in the US for over thirty years. He moved in creative circles and appeared for the defence when Joyce’s Ulysses was the subject of an obscenity trial. He moved to Corwen in Wales and this was where he wrote this novel, the first of two set in Wales. This one is about Glyndwr’s rebellion against Henry IV in the early fifteenth century.

The novel runs from about 1400 to 1416. The characterisation here is complex and pretty good; the reader gets a strong sense of even the minor characters. We follow the story mostly through the main character Rhisiart ab Owen, a cousin of Glyndwr (as Powys refers to Owen in the novel), goes to Wales from Oxford where he becomes clerk to Owen. There is a fairly loose relationship to the known historical facts, this is very much not a history. We do not know when Glyndwr died, probably between 1415 and 1417. Powys fills in the gaps.

This isn’t a historical chronicle, but over half the characters have some basis in historical fact. Powys through his characters creates multiple realities, even as far as a radical in the Peasants Revolt tradition, as well as clerics and military types. The female characters are also strong. We see events through the views of a whole chain of people. But the character of Owen stands at the centre of it all. He has charisma and force of personality, but there are other traits: a certain sentimentality and kind-heartedness, indecisiveness at times, paternalistic, manipulative and cruel at times. Powys has created an interesting and multi-faceted character and we follow him through early successes and to the stresses when things don’t go so well.

Powys is clearly sympathetic to Glyndwr, in terms of supporting liberation struggle. However his anarchist side does show as Powys clearly is very wary of nationalism and princely power: the hero myth is certainly deconstructed:

“As long as you destroy you will succeed. But try to build up again what you’ve torn, what you’ve burnt, what you’ve ravaged – and then will be the end!”

This was written during the rise of fascism and the struggle against it. I could also suggest it was read against a backdrop of a similar rise of fascism.

9 out of 10 

Starting The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

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Germinal by Emile Zola

“It was the red vision of the revolution, which would one day inevitably carry them all away, on some bloody evening at the end of the century. Yes, some evening the people, unbridled at last, would thus gallop along the roads, making the blood of the middle-class flow, parading severed heads and sprinkling gold from disembowelled coffers. The women would yell, the men would have those wolf-like jaws open to bite. Yes, the same rags, the same thunder of great sabots, the same terrible troop, with dirty skins and tainted breath, sweeping away the old world beneath an overflowing flood of barbarians.”

One of the novels in Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart series (the thirteenth to be precise). The title is a reference to a month in the French Republican Calendar. It is set in a mining district in Northern France and likes at the rather grim lives of the miners and their families, contrasting it with the lives of the owners and managers. It has been regarded as Zola’s masterpiece, and I can see why. Zola spent some time down a mine as part of his research for the book.

The protagonist is Etienne Lantier, also a character in L’Assomoir. He is young, idealistic and naïve. He travels to the mining area looking for work, finds it in the mine and stays initially at an inn and then with a local family. Zola provides some graphic descriptions of life and working conditions down the mines. His portrait of the poverty of mining families, the struggle for food (and a good deal about the nature of the food), the relationships (surprisingly frank for the time) and the politics. Lantier is a socialist and is looking for the revolution and for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The centrepieces of the book are a strike and a miner’s strike. It’s grim and brutal stuff, but it’s effective.

The whole is allegorical. The miners are animals and down the mine they are very much described in the same way as the pit ponies. The process of mining is dehumanising and dehumanising treatment and conditions have their consequences.

“They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.”

It is a classic novel of working class struggle against injustice.

9 out of 10

Starting The Foundling by Stacy Halls

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Evil Roots edited by Daisy Butcher

This particular collection by the British Library is subtitled Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic. Yes, we are talking plants. There are fourteen tales in the collection and the authors are Hawthorne, Conan Doyle, Wells, M R James, Edith Nesbit, Emma Vane, Lucy Hooper, Edmond Nolcini, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ambrose Bierce, Howard Garris, H C McNiele, Abraham Merritt and William Hope Hodgson. They range from 1844 to 1935. There are vines, tendrils, poisons, orchids, parasites, tentacles, fungi, venus fly traps and a fair amount of cannibalism and bloodletting.

Most reflect the concerns of the times and the later ones start to reflect the science fiction tropes of the 1920s and 1930s. But most definitely no Triffids and not an Ent in sight! There are reactions to Darwinism and colonialism and lots of pretty outrageous plants. Genetics and grafting also make appearances. Some are better than others. I didn’t enjoy the Conan Doyle much, but the Gilman was good. There are a few killer lies as well:

“The plant had turned cannibal and eaten the man who had grown it!” 

All in all an ok collection.

7 out of 10

Starting another in the Tales of the Weird series: Queens of the Abyss

 

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Katherine Swynford by Alison Weir

“This obsession with death and suffering revealed itself in literature, poetry, art, and particularly in sculpture, with the appearance of cadaver tombs with an effigy of the deceased in life above, and another depicting his or her rotting corpse below—a grisly reminder of the end of all flesh.”

This isn’t a novel, but actually a straightforward and well researched biography. Katherine is one of those women who played a significant role in medieval British history but is now much less remembered. She was the mistress and eventually third wife of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III. John of Gaunt and his father founded the Lancastrian side of the Wars of the Roses. The list of Katherine’s ancestors is impressive (or not depending on your sensibilities).

The list includes all the English royal family from Henry V onwards (present royals included), the Tudors were direct descendants, the Scottish royal family from James II, the Spanish and Portuguese royal families, Diana Princess of Wales, assorted US presidents (including Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, FDR and the Bushes), Winston Churchill, Tennyson and Bertrand Russell.

There are a significant number of gaps in her life, including an accurate date of birth, but Weir does well with what she has. It can feel a little pedestrian at times, but it is informative. Weir also uses sources like Froissant and Thomas of Walsingham. There are plenty of lists and dates and Weir paints a pretty good picture. There is a fair amount of speculation as well though. This isn’t scholarly history, but it is a solid biography.

She is buried in Lincoln Cathedral, very close to where I live and I often walk past the house where she lived in the 1380s and 1390s, so there is a local connection for me.

There are a few interesting lines to follow. Katherine was born on the continent and was perceived as being foreign, which caused a good deal of resentment at the height of her notoriety. Immigration still an issue in the fourteenth century!!

I enjoyed the local connections. It was also interesting to be reminded what lengths the wealthy went to live rapaciously and to save their souls as well!

7 and a half out of 10

Starting The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley

[France]

 There's a lot of girls of my generation who first fell in love with historical fiction by reading Katherine by Anya Seton. Gosh that was a wonderful book and one I'd never go back to in case it fell short of my memories.

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I haven't read the Seton yet, but I intend to.

River Spirit by Leila Aboulela

“Instead, the silky water. She had missed it. Carrying heavy pots of water from the river was no longer one of her chores; Salha deemed it too strenuous and unfitting. Oh, how she missed it and could never feel settled in a town where people could not feast their eyes on the moving blue or set sail or eat fish. Her merchant, her river—she yearned for them both.”

This is a novel about the Mahdist uprising in Sudan in the late nineteenth century. Aboulela was born in Sudan and it’s about time I read more of her work; it’s been a while since I read Minaret. She takes a look at British and Turkish Imperialism as well as some of the outworkings of religion when it becomes extreme and cruel.

Aboulela puts women at the centre of the novel and we have a number of narrative voices, seven in all (there are some men as well), although not that of the Mahdi, our interactions with him are through the main characters. The novel follows the rise of the Mahdi, from its small beginnings and the reasons for it:

“the Mahdi has coalesced the nation’s sense of injustice.”

The strongest character is Akuany, later renamed ZamZam when she is a slave and Aboulela describes how she found her in the Sudan archive at Durham University in a bill of sale and petition for a runaway slave. One of the male characters paints her and the painting and its subsequent history play a part in illustrating the way womanhood is perceived.

Aboulela looks at the way the Mahdi attracted the level of fanaticism and loyalty that he did with the character of Musa, one of the Mahdi’s followers:  

“the Mahdi was now my family and my home; I lived for him and no one else. My wife and newborn daughter were indeed my responsibility, but they did not distract me from him.”

For me the differing perspectives helped to hold the narrative together. It sheds light on a part of Imperial history that is not so well known. It is set at the time of that most Imperialist of films (and novel) The Four Feathers. The author doesn’t paint any of the characters as one-dimensional and I really enjoyed this.

8 out of 10

Starting The Glassblower's Breath by Sunetra Gupta

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Queens of the Abyss edited by Mike Ashley

“It is too often accepted that during the 19th and early 20th centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake—but this is far from the truth.”

Another weird collection by the British Library. This time it is a collection of female authors. There are stories from Mary Braddon, Marie Corelli, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Alicia Ramsey, Edith Nesbit, May Sinclair, Marjorie Bowen, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Greye La Spina, Sophie Wenzel Ellis, G G Pendarves, Lady Eleanor Smith, Margaret St Clair, Jessie Douglas Kerruish, Leonora Carrington and Mary Elizabeth Counselman. These were primarily written in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. The editor has deliberately chosen lesser known stories. They aren’t entirely supernatural, some are just eerie and have a psychological element.

There were some new authors to me. Greye La Spina for example who apparently wrote some early werewolf stories. Some were weaker in my opinion, Burnett’s contribution didn’t have much impact. Ellis’s story, set on a Caribbean island, predates Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and is a study in obsession and science and genetics gone wrong.

It's not the strongest of the collections, but there are some good short stories here and some suitably creepy ones as well.

7 out of 10

Starting The Platform Edge edited by Mike Ashley in the Tales of the Weird series

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The Glassblowers Breath by Sunetra Gupta

At the moment I am reading books on my shelf that have been there some years and need moving on to make space. This is one of those. This experiment has not been going too well (D’Arconville’s Cat to name but one).

This one didn’t fare too well either. It is a stream of consciousness novel that takes place in a day. Yes there are shades of Mrs Dalloway as it takes place whilst she walks around London (and has ex with a man she has met in a rather dubious hotel; possibly not so Mrs Dalloway). When I tell you that the first sentence is 101 words you will get a sense of what you are in for (before you ask I didn’t count them, someone else did that).

There is a good deal of recalling the past and plenty of fantasy. The prose and imagery is lush and sometimes borders on the grotesque. One of the characters, Dan is a butcher whose job involves boneless bulk butchery. You may not want details of this, however you get them. Another significant character (who is also wandering around London all day) likes to masturbate whilst thinking about Post-Impressionism, Neo-Plasticism and the Lyapunov Function (I don’t know what that is and didn’t feel the urge to look it up).

It is beautifully written and I am sure it is loved by some, but just not by me!

4 out of 10

Starting A Passage to England by Nirad Chaudhuri

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Orientalism by Edward Said

“Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

This book has been on my to be read list pretty much since it was published (yes I am that old!). It has been much criticized, argued over and dissected since then; and much misunderstood. Said wrote an afterword almost twenty years later for s subsequent edition and my copy has the afterword, which is helpful as Said is able to address some of the criticism. Some of the criticism of Said is directly related to the Isreal/Palestinian conflict which still continues. Bernard Lewis argues Said was part of a Nazi-linked antisemitic conspiracy who depicted Western scholars as evil (Said was Palestinian and had firm views about the conflict). I am going to resist diving into all the debates, as whole books have been written about that.

It is useful to note that Said’s main focus in on the Middle East rather than the Indian subcontinent and on Islam rather than Hinduism or Buddhism. He examines the approaches of French and British (and some German) scholars from the late eighteenth century onwards. Pretty much from the time Napoleon invaded Egypt, looking at their interpretations and arguments. Said’s own approach owes a good deal to Foucault and Gramsci. He firmly ties western approaches to the East to Imperialism and the arguments made by the British and French that they were a civilising and positive influence:

 

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”

My understanding of the origins of modern Orientalism, its nineteenth century roots, is limited, particularly in relation to French scholarship. Consequently I did find this work illuminating. I know scholarship has moved on, as has the interface with Islam, but Said does cover a great deal of ground. There is plenty to dispute and disagree with, but the primary argument about how Western Europe has approached the Middle East still holds and is especially pertinent with the recent escalation in the conflict in Palestine.

In an odd sort of way it feels like I have absorbed some of the arguments in this book over the years. Some of this feels a little dated but, for me Said was on the right side of history, whatever the flaws in Orientalism.

 

“I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long."

8 out of 10

Starting Modernism's Middle East by Joanna Grant

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

“You well know that if a lie is repeated often enough, in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary, even the most level-headed of men start to believe in it. Falsehood easily becomes accepted truth.”

This is the first of a trilogy of historical novels set in sixteenth century France during the religious wars. The novel starts in 1562 and is set in Carcassonne in the Languedoc region, where a number of Mosse’s previous novels have been set.

It is a family chronicle that starts in 1562, I suspect we are heading towards the St Bartholomew’s day massacre in one of the trilogy (not this one). It is also a love story, inevitably we have a Catholic and a Huguenot to make it more interesting. There are a few mysteries and a significant cast of characters and no doubt a few strands to take onto the next in the series. The story shifts between Carcassonne, Toulouse and Puivert. There is plenty of betrayal, passion, murder, love and treachery. And of course there is the religious divide with a priceless relic thrown ion for good measure.

It is well written and well constructed. Mosse manages not to over-simplify and go with the Catholic bad Protestant good line, there is some nuance. This was ok. There were some niggles. Mosse does have a habit of asking rhetorical questions, quite a lot of them. I suspect it is meant to add to the suspense, but it can be an irritation.

7 out of 10

Starting Sovereign by C J Sansom

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The Platform Edge edited by Mike Ashley

‘’Our love affair with trains – especially steam trains – is matched by our fear of them. Who amongst us has not, at one time or another, been ultra-cautious about standing too close to the edge of the platform as the train thunders in, or has hurried over a level-crossing just in case the train might appear at any second, or has found themselves alone in the labyrinth of the tunnels underground leading to a possibly deserted station. And who has not wondered who will sit next to them in a carriage, especially the older carriages where you could be trapped in a compartment.’’

This may be one for the trainspotters: a collection of ghost/weird stories which focuses on trains: above and under the ground. Ashley has managed to find a number of more obscure writers as well as the usual suspects. There are stories from W G Kelly, L G Moberly, Victor Whitechurch, Huan Mee, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Zoe Dana Underhill, Perceval Landon, Edgar Wallace, Dinah Castle, T G Jackson, Rosemary Timperley, E F Benson, A J Deutsch, Michael Vincent, R Chetwynd-Hayes, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ramsey Campbell and one anonymous.

There are some very effective stories; a piece of classic 1950s science fiction with a different dimension and the usual ghostly trains and premonitions of disaster. The last story is set on a ghost train in a run-down funfair and works very well. There’s also a locked room story and disconnected communication devices which suddenly start to work.

As I said, the usual suspects with a couple that stand out. Another solid collection.  

7 out of 10

Starting 1599 by Joseph Shapiro

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A Passage to England by Nirad Chaudhuri 

Nirad Chaudhuri was an Indian writer, scholar and jack of all trades who visited England for the first time in 1955 at the age of fifty-seven. This book is a collection of essays which are reflections on his impressions and thoughts. He also spent a week in Rome and a couple of weeks in Paris was well as a few weeks in England. The book is split into four parts. There is a section on geography, weather, the surroundings, towns, cities and countryside. The second part concerns the people he encountered. The third part addresses cultural life and the last part is about politics, the welfare state and political issues.

It is not long after Partition and Chaudhuri is aware of the struggle for independence and the resultant changes and does think about responses:

‘My notion of what is proper and honest between Englishmen and Indians to-day is clear-cut and decisive. I feel that the only course of conduct permissible to either side in their political and public relations at the present moment is an honourable taciturnity.’

Chaudhuri was steeped in English poetry, prose and history and wanted to see the art and architecture for himself, through Indian eyes. He makes some interesting comments about the nature of the light. It hadn’t occurred to him the in England the light would be different because the sun doesn’t get quite as high as it is further away from the Equator. He also notes some differences in behaviour: class rears its head as always. He also notes that crowds in England were much quieter than those in India:

“The eternal silence of these infinite crowds frightens me.”

There is one very telling anecdote which still holds true today and it relates to the decrease in general knowledge about religion and history:

“An incident at Canterbury made me aware of this. A party of visitors, clearly English, were being taken round the cathedral by a clergyman. In the very church of Thomas à Becket he was having to explain to them who Thomas was, and yet just in front of them I saw the steps which had been worn down by the pilgrims who had gone up in double rows on their knees to the shrine. These men and women had even to be told who the Black Prince was. I, who had learned about both in a jungle of East Bengal before I was twelve, was deeply shocked in my historical consciousness. I asked some of my friends in dismay if a knowledge of history was disappearing among them. They said that there was a good deal of ignorance of even the elementary facts of English history. Afterwards I realised that it was not a question of that alone. They had lost touch with religion, and had never trodden the Pilgrims’ Way. They were falling from the civilized state for having acquired, not forbidden knowledge, but forbidden ignorance.”

I do wonder what he would have made of the situation today, which is much worse.

Chaudhuri seems to focus mainly on the middle and upper classes and on higher culture. He didn’t visit more working-class entertainments or smoky pubs.

Chaudhuri writes really well and his command of English is good. One might question how he can come to such decided conclusions after such a short visit. What is interesting is that Chaudhuri’s knowledge about England was all from books and he has to contrast that with what he actually sees and experiences. He has his beliefs and theories which he has to check against the reality he experiences.

On the whole it’s a mixed bag and Chaudhuri makes some interesting points, especially about how the English see their own history, but it does feel rather dated.

6 and a half out of 10

Starting The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs by Damon Galgut

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The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley

“Those who crusade not for God in themselves but against the devil in others, never succeed in leaving the world better, but leave it as it was or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was before the crusade began.”

This is a semi-factual account of a small slice of the witch craze that swept Europe in the Renaissance era. It concerns events in the town of Loudun where in 1634 a parish priest Urban Grandier was tortured, put on trial and burnt for sorcery/witchcraft; allegedly a whole convent of nuns were possessed by devils because of him. There were numerous exorcisms, some of them public and Huxley went through a good deal of the contemporary accounts, reports and diaries from the time. Huxley also draws on modern psychology (Freud et al) and on his own experiences with mysticism and Eastern religion to explain what happens. He also uses a number of mental health tropes. This was written in the early 1950s so the spectre of the horrors of the Second World War is in the background.

Huxley also looks at some of the political comings and goings in the background. Grandier always denied the charges, but what he had done was top alienate a number of local dignitaries by his rather amorous behaviour and numerous seductions. There is a wider background and some of the impetus also came from Richelieu. As one reviewer has perceptively subtitled it:

“Politically motivated witch-hunts and how to avoid them”

The narrative is secondary to Huxley’s analysis and there is a good deal of analysis and speculation. Speculation around motive is always tricky at such a distance.

It is a fascinating account but there are a couple of issues. It is difficult to provide a good analysis without a much broader look at society and the historical setting. There is also the question about how the speculations concerning mental health and “mass hysteria” are handled. Inevitably they are handled within the limitations of the time.

“The untutored egotist merely wants what he wants. Give him a religious education, and it becomes obvious to him, it becomes axiomatic, that what he wants is what God wants, that his cause is the cause of whatever he may happen to regard as the True Church and that any compromise is a metaphysical Munich, an appeasement of Radical Evil.”

7 out of 10

Starting San Miguel by T C Boyle

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1599 by James Shapiro

“Shakespeare didn’t conceive of his tragedy in Aristotelian terms—that is, as a tragedy of the fall of a flawed great man—but rather as a collision of deeply held and irreconcilable principles, embodied in characters who are destroyed when these principles collide.”

This is a close look at one year in Shakespeare’s life. That year is 1599. It was the year the Globe theatre was built. Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It and wrote the first draft of Hamlet. There was a threat of another Armada from Spain. A significant army sent to Ireland to subdue a rebellion, which ended up being a disaster and led to the downfall of one of Elizabeth’s favourites, Essex. The censors were busy and Elizabeth was aging and becoming a little unpredictable. At this point Britain didn’t have an Empire and wasn’t involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade. It was the year the East India Company was founded with many prominent people investing. Apparently, Shakespeare wasn’t among them; he preferred to invest at home, in malt. Obviously, Shakespeare liked his beer!!

Shapiro analyses each of the plays, setting it in the context of what was happening and how current events related to what he was writing. It is literary criticism and is pretty good. Shakespeare wasn’t writing in a vacuum and although there are Shakespeare scholars who do not believe in setting Shakespeare in his context, but Shapiro shows how important this context was in understanding the plays Shakespeare was writing. It’s a fascinating read and well worth checking out.

8 out of 10

Starting The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

 

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Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

“Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.”

Published in 1991 and covering the years 1943 to 1963. Cloudstreet is the story of two working class families sharing the same large house. Two couples and a combined nine children. Two families with different approaches to life. Since its publication it has consistently been described as one of the great Australian novels. Winton creates a varied group of characters with all their human faults, including one with an Acquired Brain Injury: Sansom (known as Fish):

“It’s like Fish is stuck somewhere. Not the way all the living are stuck in time and space; he’s in another stuckness altogether. Like he’s half in and half out. You can only imagine and still fail to grab at how it must be. Even the dead fail to know and that’s what hurts the most.”

It's small things on a grand scale and has been described (by the Guardian) as picaresque and that is quite an apt description. It’s been turned into a play, an opera and been adapted for radio and television.

The themes are as you would expect; love, loss, gambling, alcohol, raising children, luck (good and bad), disability, eating disorders, work, unemployment: basically life. Winton creates strong characters, especially strong women. It’s a good story, rather haunting and poignant with a powerful ending. It turns the mundane ordinary lives of the two families into a powerful novel.

“Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.”

8 and a half out of ten

Starting Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd.

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Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

“Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.”

This has been sat on my shelves for over a decade. Periodically I would pick it up and realise it was 650 pages long and was about teenage boys attending an all boys school in Dublin and think to myself; 650 pages in the company of teenage boys, no thanks! I finally realised that with that attitude the thing would be on the shelves when they carried me out in a box. So time to read it and move it on.

The title is pretty much the plot. Daniel “Skippy” Juster aged 14 dies on the first page in a donut shop with some of his friends. The rest of the novels looks at the build up to the event and the possible causes. It also follows what happens afterwards. There is a wide range of characters: various assorted teenage boys with the usual obsessions and unsavoury habits. There is a girls school next door and we get a glimpse of some of the girls, often through the eyes of the boys. Then there are the teachers. This being a Catholic school, some of them are priests.

I spent the first three hundred pages or so hating this. It did pick up in the second half and Murray does know how to use humour: so much so that wiki even wheels out the tragicomic word. Inevitably, this being a Catholic school, there are a couple of paedophiles about. Both are found out, no police of course, they are moved on elsewhere. Most of the adults are rather unpleasant.

There are explorations of various teenage obsessions including drugs and gaming. There is inevitably a school bully:

 

“Ignoring is what you are supposed to do with bullies, so they get bored and leave you alone. But the problem in school is that they don't get bored, because whatever else there is to do is more boring still.”

 

As one reviewer on GR (the much missed Bonnie) says, “Skippy Dies is an eager to please puppy”. The author throws an awful lot at this: string theory, anorexia, the ill-effects of drugs, bullying, adultery, abuse, computer gaming, a good deal of sexual innuendo (well, a great deal actually) and a school with a few similarities with Hogwarts (no wands, well not that sort anyway).

I know lots of people love this. I didn’t, but by the end I didn’t hate it as much as I was expecting to.

 

“Life makes fools of us all sooner or later. But keep your sense of humour and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, it's our own expectations that crush us."

6 out of 10

Starting Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse