2015 Reading Challenge

Tags

Books, New Year's Resolutions, Reading Challenge

Okay…………so having finished one challenge for 2014………I elected to read 104 books and review them – you won’t find the evidence on here, as some of my 104 turned out to be damp squibs, wallpaper or turkeys, in my far-from-humble.

Regular droppers by on here know that only the adored make these pages. The hall of shamed damp wallpaper turkeys, not to mention the adored, all surfaced on Amazon UK

Anyway, having finished that one, which I picked up from The Mad Reviewer I’m up for other mountains to climb. Incidentally Carrie of The Mad Reviewer did allow her reading marathoners to pick their distance. Is it any surprise I went for the long haul, the veritable book mountain?? And I wouldn’t be surprised if she does another in 2015…keep watching that space

Anyway, I digress (sort of), because I found another book related challenge which set some guided benchmarks, and thought it would be fun to try. I guess I could up the ante for myself, if it looks too easy, by ensuring that every one read had to make the blog, which would mean that if I picked a turkey for myself in a category, i would just have to read more of that kind till I found one which made the grade. Just as long as it’s not the over 500 pages one; I think I need to get that right from the off; not to mention the trilogy.

And………to make it even more difficult, I shan’t allow myself to have re-reads (that would be a really easy way of doing it) Them’s my rules for me!

Anyway thank you to The Book Lover’s Musings

Anyone else doing any book related challenges?

(And, thank you to Popsugar whoever they may be, I’ve seen a number of bloggers who have picked this one up and intend to run with it)

Happy New Year’s Eve/New Year, one and all

Advertisement

Emmi Itäranta – Memory of Water

Tags

Book Review, Dystopia, Emmi Itäranta, Finnish Literature, Memory of Water

Poetry, melancholy, Nordic mists and Chinese tea, in a dry, dystopian landscape

Finnish author Emmi Itäranta astonishingly wrote her first novel, a delicate, dystopian Sci-Fi outing, simultaneously in Finnish and English. Born in Finland the author is resident in the UK. Memory of Water won one Finnish literary prize and was nominated for another.

We are beyond ‘The Twilight century’ (our own) Mankind’s wasteful, indifferent attitudes to its own species and to the planet we share with other species, has resulted in the climate changes from which there is no real return. There has been the melting of the icecaps, the warming of the planet, and most of the landlocked freshwater has gone. Much of the land is given over to huge landfill containing the unrecycleable wastes of this century and the one before – plastics, electronics, consumer junk, which there is no longer the power to use.

Potable water comes, strictly quota controlled, from desalination plants. Hoarding, iillegally tapping into this water supply, and possessing more water than the agreed quota is a capital offence.

China has become the dominant world power, ‘New Qian’. World culture is now Chinese culture, and the world is a Chinese empire

Set in ‘the Scandinavian Union’, Memory of Water’s narrator and protagonist is 17 year old Noria. She is the daughter of a tea master, himself part of a long lineage of tea-masters:

Tea-masters are the watchers of water, but first and foremost we are its servants

In some sense, Noria’s lineage makes her a traditionalist, and an observer and adherent to older duties and customs than those imposed by political decree. The tradition is one of interior discipline and reflection

Noria and her childhood friend Sanja, a skilful inventor and repairer of those long ago obsolete pieces of junk found in landfill from ‘The Twilight Century’ become in some sense, unwittingly, unwillingly, the guardians of human, peer, connection, set against the hierarchical connections of dictatorship and its apparatchiks.

I was fascinated by way this story was told, the creation of the world, and the often quiet, lyrical language. Characterisation was excellent, and Noria and Sanja, their friendship and its challenges, beautifully handled

Past-world tea masters knew stories that have mostly been forgotten………………….The story tells that water has a consciousness, that it carries in its memory everything that’s ever happened in this world, from the time before humans until this moment, which draws itself in its memory even as it passes. Water understands the movements of the world, it knows when it is sought and where it is needed…………Not everything in the world belongs to people. Tea and water do not belong to tea masters, but tea masters belong to tea and water

Itäranta’s interest in sci-fi and dystopian literature is impeccably on the side of reflective, imaginative thinking, and geopolitical awareness, rather than blazing light-sabres and intergalactic derring-do. Writers and books she recommends as her inspirers or books to inspire others include Ursula K Le Guin, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984.

I received this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK

Memory of Water Amazon UK
Memory of Water Amazon USA

Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia and a whole bunch of Roses by any other………..

Tags

Christmas, Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings

To old bloggy friends, to new bloggy friends, to all of you and all of yours, in however you celebrate and whatever you celebrate at this time…………may it be filled with wonders and delight.

Not to mention a book or 2000

Now it may indeed be corn, but it is corn of great tune………….

All together now…

But for those needing to crunch a 

or allergic to even the most tuneful

here is an antidote

I hope you all enjoy!

Ransom Riggs – Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

Tags

Book Review, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs, Young Adult Fiction

Not just a book for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs quirky, spooky, YA lit-fic horror crossover, set in Wales, is a sure-fire delight – with this adult, never mind the YAYAs!

Riggs is/was an avid collector of strange photos from long gone times, and began, particularly to be fascinated by faded, peculiar photos of children. Probably they were attempts at trick photography techniques, with the photographer playing around with exposure, framing, shutter time and the like, but he had amassed a steady collection of these from various flea markets and vintage sales, as the afterword to my copy, where an interview with Riggs is included, explains.

So, the photographs and the development of a fabulous story to link them, developed. The central character in this book, 16 year old Jacob, is shown some of these photos by his Polish Jewish grandfather, and then discovers more, and the people and meaning behind them.

Jacob is in many ways a typical adolescent of his kind. Gifted, (though not really initially understanding in what way) intelligent, introspective, a loner, not quite the son his controlling parents might wish for, he is nevertheless extremely close to his grandfather, Abraham, who appears to be retreating into senility, with paranoid stories of monsters. Following his grandfather’s death, which damages and fractures Jacob, he becomes determined to try and track down and discover more of Abraham’s past as a young boy, leaving his native Poland as the Nazis moved in, and arriving as part of a kindertransport at a school on a remote island off the coast of Wales; that is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

How Peculiar those children were, not to mention the Peculiarities of Miss Peregrine herself, and how Jacob (first person narrative) discovers his own connection to all this is a wonderful journey. It is extremely well-written, twisty, turny, mind-mangling and with some genuine shocks which do not feel gratuitous. And it has also a lightness of touch, Jacob has a self-deprecating, self-mocking sense of humour and is a fine companion for the reader.

And those photos (which made me choose to get the real, rather than eread, version) are most weird and wonderful

Although personally I felt that the inevitable fight between the goodies and the baddiesat the end was a bit clichéd, I am aware that such battles are needed, but this was the one section of the book where Riggs did not quite sustain his absolute originality for me, and also, the one area of the book where I realised I was not the intended audience.

Terrific page-turner.

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children Amazon UK
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children Amazon USA

A little previous, but books of my year……………

Tags

Book Review, Books of The Year, Reading, Soapbox

Someone in my on-line book club suggested we compile a Top Ten list of the fiction, and the non-fiction books we read this year – and re-reads counted too, if the re-read was this year. This gave me much happy thinking time, though I was pleased that we were satisfied with just the two lists, rather than ranking WITHIN those lists, else the arguments with myself and the shufflings up and down could have taken me into daffodil time next year. All, being books I loved, were reviewed on here, follow the links for those gushy, enthusing reviews

So, in no particular preference order but more or less the ‘as I read and reviewed’ order here are, Ta Daa………..The Fictions

1) The Wall. Marlen Haushofer. This has nothing to do with Pink Floyd, though it was also made into a film!

Marlen Haushofer was an Austrian author who wrote this rather extraordinary post-apocalypse book in the 60s, later made into an equally wonderful movie, prompting the welcome reissue of the book.  It has been mis-described as an eco-feminist Utopian novel. Eco-feminist it may well be, but some people have a remarkable idea of Utopia, is all I can say!

2) Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. This is a chiller/thriller set in the far far North. And how I love books with a setting in the freezing cold of Nordic isolation. Beautifully written, Madness, class and utter isolation and things which can’t be named, set in the 30s. Genuinely terrifying, a one for the short days as long as there isn’t a power failure!

3) Night Film Marisha Pessl What to say! Donna Tartt’s michievous younger sister (not really, but that is what her writing is like) She has Tartt’s intelligence, but is infinitely more playful. Here are noir god games and solving a mystery all hooked in with indie film making

4) Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See is a beautifully written book, with some ‘magical realism’ touches, set in the second world war in Paris and Berlin The central character is a young blind French girl, and a rather gentle young boy in Germany who is swept up by the Nazi machine, into being part of the invading army. The story is told in alternate chapters by the two protagonists, and is wondrous, heart wrenching and stunning

5) The Magus John Fowles I have been reading and re-reading this every 5 or 10 years. This year was one of those years, as reading the Pessl sent me enjoyably back to it. Iconic book, hugely influential. A literary page-turner, I recognised its influence in the Pessl book. Yes it has the flaws of the time, a rather patriarchal elitism but Fowles a novelist who was absolutely extending the literary form, whilst creating a page turner. This was also made into a film. A dreadful one.

6) Bodies of Light Sarah Moss. I’d read her earlier Night Waking, with some reservations, but she had fallen off my radar, till a book club member  raved about this one. Which grabbed me without any reservations. Indeed it sent me on to further Moss reads. Stunning. Feminism and much more 1850s-1880s and the fierce women who fought for us to get education

7) The Visitors Rebecca Mascull This might almost be my favourite of the year because it took me so by surprise. Nearly missed it as the dust-jacket makes it look a bit marshmallow. Anything but. Set mainly in Kent and South Africa, at the time of the Boer war, the central character is a wonderfully fierce deaf-blind girl, and how. I’m chomping at the bit for Mascull’s second book to come out in 2015. With this book, she joins the ranks of writers whom I find myself on literary crusade for. I was so impressed by Mascull that offered the chance to interview her by the publsiher, I jumped

8) The Bone Clocks David Mitchell Not his best, but I can never pass a Mitchell book by, and he always leaves me thinking hard. Some real pyrotechnics, a mash-up of times, places, genres and some absolutely stonking writing A writer who seems to have a whole army of voices inside him. A huge novel in scope, style and genre-bending. Some of the sections miss the mark, but others are extraordinary. He hits the bulls-eye so unerringly that the fact that sometimes he clumsily breaks things is forgiveable

9) The Narrow Road To The Deep North Richard Flanagan The Booker this year, and one of those lacerating reads about war – this time Australian POWs in Japanese camps, and the building of the Burma railway, but there is much more to it than that, despite the real horror there is a huge sense of humanity and tenderness rolling through it. Curiously, though I have no stomach at all for the inventions of gore, I continue compelled to read books about the evidence of our atrocities. Writers making us look into the mirror of who we are, for good and ill.

10) This is Life Dan Rhodes As a complete break to my preferred diet of heavy lit fic, this is a delightful bubble, set in the art and performance world in Paris. it’s some kind of romantic fantasy, fabulously written, audacious, utterly joyful and good-humoured and I grinned, smiled and laughed my way through it, which makes a change from weeping my way through a book!

Non-Fiction
I was fairly shocked to see that I hadn’t read that much non fiction this year – and a lot of the books I had read (or re-read) were biographies or autobiographies, particularly – most of which were written by fiction writers. Even so, I did have to work hard to whittle down to 10 specials. I think the autobio subject matter reflects the fact that I am inveterately curious about individual stories, and the way one life can illuminate many. I need to be grabbed by the warmth and immediacy of heart, and the felt sense of in-the-gut truth, as well as the wrestles and weighings up and judgement of mind. So, reflections and stories written by writers, about aspects of their own lives are more likely to engage me than a more academic and distanced study. It also probably illustrates that though i have been through academia, I lack the intellectual rigour of academia, and remain greedy for the subjectivity of individual story

1) To The River Olivia Laing A combination of nature writing (which I love) and writing about literature (which I also love!) Laing walked the length of the River Ouse (where Virginia Woolf drowned herself) there is a lot about Woolf, and other writers and artists with a connection to the area, but also the history, geography and culture of those connected to where the river runs. And as with my love of the immediate story of the author within the subject (providing you resonate to the authorial voice) I like Laing’s relationship to her subjects

2 A Spy Among Friends Ben Macintyre This is the closest I get, in this list, to conventional biography, where the author does not engage in relationship with his subject matter but tells a story (Kim Philby’s) via traditional journalistic research, whilst standing outside the subject (which of course we can never completely do, as the writer/researcher of course arranges material and writes from their own subjectivity

3) Foreign Correspondence Geraldine Brooks Brooks is an Australian author who sets out to discover the penpals she had corresponded with from the 60s, some 30 years later. Lots about history and culture across the world. Its a bit of a detective investigation into her own past, and the lives of those penpals. Full of individual life stories.

5) My Salinger Year Joanne Smith Rakoff. Rakoff worked in an old fashioned literary agent’s – Salinger’s agent and this is a lovely meander around the changing face of publishing, a great book for someone who loves reading about writing, publishing, and all things bookie.

6) Listening to Scent – An Olfactory Journey Jennifer Peace Rhind Okay, a brilliant book about an area I specialise in, lots of stuff about chemistry and developing olfactory skills. I was delighted to find a book which taught me a huge amount of new information in an area I think I know quite a lot about! Probably not so compelling for wider audiences though

7) The Spirit In Aromatherapy Gill Farrar-Halls. Another ‘with my professional hat on’ This time, it’s actually more about the nature of the therapeutic relationship than anything else, even though the title says its about the oils. She’s been a Buddhist most of her life, and there’s a lot of very pertinent stuff about how that has profound effects on how the client/therapist relationship cab be handled. I do like books written from a Buddhist perspective which are not overtly ‘about’ Buddhism

8) Limonov Emmanuel Carrere Back to the territory I normally keep for fiction – disturbing ambiguity. Limonov is an extremely complex,Russian political activist, criminal and writer, often deeply unattractive in some of his actions and ideologies. Carrere is a campaigning French journalist, of Russian ancestry, and uses Limonov’s life to explore Russia in the twentieth century – and also approaches his subject matter from a Buddhist perspective. It’s not a traditional biography, since the writer inserts his own autobiography into the mix

9) How to be a Heroine Samantha Ellis Wonderfully witty account by Ellis, a playwright, of the fictional women who shaped her. It’s another book about reading, the power of literature and would make a great book club read, as you can’t help arguing with Ellis about YOUR favourite heroines which she missed out!

10) Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee (this was a re-read) In some ways reading the Olivia Laing sent me back to Lee, who also later set out on an epic walk, this is about the Gloucestershire he left, and is one of those wonderful books where the connection to ‘what it means to be English’ is passionate and beautiful, a sense of landscape and culture, a recording of ways of life and community  which were already dying when Lee recorded them, in the 30s. A pride and ownership of the roots to time and place, without jingoism

So…………did any of these make your ‘best reads of the year’ lists? And, as pertinently, will any of them have a chance of making your 2015 lists!

Patrick Hamilton – Hangover Square

Tags

1930s, Book Review, Hangover Square, London setting, Patrick Hamilton, Psychological Thriller

A subtle, tragi-comic tale of a good man undone by adoration, ‘in darkest Earl’s Court’

Patrick Hamilton is a not-quite-forgotten, admired author, who specialised in getting inside the heads of those who were disaffected, on-the-margins, or even, dangerously psychopathic – he was a stage and film writer, as well as author, and responsible for the highly charged, tightly wound, thrillers of sinister psychopathology, Gaslight, and Rope

Hangover Square was one of his most iconic novels. Set primarily in London on the very edge of, and then just at the start of, the Second World War, this follows the fortunes (pretty well unstoppably downwards) of George Harvey Bone, a not quite impoverished, weak willed man with a severe drinking problem, some undiagnosed dissociative mental health problems, and a dangerous 2 year infatuation with a hard, vicious untalented actress.

Bone is an unlikely subject to capture a reader’s compassionate interest, yet he does, because despite the fact that he is someone of a definite wasted life, a bit of a bumbling, naïve and pathetic character, he is nevertheless like a lost and vulnerable puppy, possessed of great sweetness of temperament, despite his irritating flaccidity of purpose

Netta, the object of his adoration, is a beautiful and completely amoral woman, without any charm, wit, intelligence, talent or likeability. Her one asset is her extraordinary beauty, which is clearly barely even skin-deep. Whereas Bone is a marshmallow, ineffectual, likeable drunk, Netta, and her closest crony, louche, spiteful Peter, are hard, aggressive, deeply unpleasant drunks.

The trajectory of the story is George Bone’s worsening mental health problems, and the hopeless infatuation with Netta, who is completely uninterested in George, in any way, except as someone to sponge money from, and exploit.

This should be an unbearably depressing book, but instead, there is a kind of gentle humour in George, a puppyish enthusiasm and a potential for excitement and joy which carries the reader along, despite the awareness of the grim background of war on the horizon, the predictable and nasty leanings towards Fascist sympathies espoused by Netta and Peter, and George’s inability to free himself from the nest of vipers he can, in some ways, clearly see.

Netta. Nets. Netta. A perfectly commonplace name. In fact, if it did not happen to belong to her, and if he did not happen to adore her, a dull, if not rather stupid and revolting name. Entirely unromantic – spinsterish, mean – like Ethel, or Minnie. But because it was hers look what had gone and happened to it! He could not utter it, whisper it, think of it without intoxication, without dizziness, without anguish. It was incredibly, inconceivably lovely – as incredibly and inconceivably lovely as herself. It was unthinkable that she could have been called anything else. It was loaded, overloaded with voluptuous yet subtle intimations of her personality. Netta. The tangled net of her hair – the dark net – the brunette. The net in which he was caught – netted. Nettles. The wicked poison-nettles from which had been brewed the potion which was in his blood. Stinging nettles. She stung and wounded him with words from her red mouth. Nets. Fishing-nets. Mermaid’s nets. Bewitchment. Syrens – the unearthly beauty of the sea. Nets. Nest. To nestle. To nestle against her. Rest. Breast. In her net. Netta. You could go on like that for ever – all the way back to London.

Perhaps Hamilton’s ability to make us feel George from the inside, and care about him, too, comes in part from what must have been a certain self-identification in the writer, as Hamilton himself had a disastrous relationship with alcohol, child of an alcoholic father, he died in 1962 of liver cirrhosis. He was a writer who definitely identified with the underdog, the marginalised, and the powerless in society.

Hangover Square was made into a much altered film, setting it in London at the turn of the twentieth century (hence, completely losing the political background which is an integral part of the book’s darkness) and making George Bone into a composer/musician. Effectually, a much more romantic melodrama, more Hollywood, more clichéd. Hamilton wisely did not buy into the hackneyed cliché of the tortured artist in his book. George Bone a much more everyday, genteel, impoverished, distinctly ordinary person. Weak, but essentially decent.

J.B. Priestley in his introduction to the the Penguin Classics edition of Hangover Square, describes Hamilton as one of the best ‘minor novelists’ writing in the interwar and beyond years. And lest that seems like damning with faint praise, it is I think fair, admiring praise.

However………I should caution anyone who gets this edition, with the Priestley introduction to AVOID reading that introduction if you have never read Hangover Square, as foolishly, in the closing paragraph of his otherwise pertinent and interesting introduction, he reveals one of the major spoilers. (I was re-reading, so not a problem)

Hangover Square Amazon UK
Hangover Square Amazon USA

Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen – The Rabbit Back Literature Society

Tags

Book Review, Finnish Literature, Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

A most weird, wondrous, playful, dark and fantastical tale. Beware of writers bearing gifts.

Finnish writer Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen has written a creepily seductive, thought provoking, alluring and wickedly mischievous book, which might have special appeal for writers, since writers, aspiring and world famous, and the nature of fiction itself, is the subject matter.

Books have started to mysteriously change in Rabbit Back, a small town in Finland. Rabbit Back is also home to a world famous children’s writer, Laura White, who writes children’s’ books about a dark and mysteriously peopled world. Inevitably, being a world famous Finnish children’s’ author writing about invented, strange creatures which have a fascination for adults as well as children, there are obvious possible parallels that Tove Jansson may have been the initial inspiration for Jaaskelainen.

Laura White, it transpires, gathered around her a group of children, with the aim of grooming them into becoming writers. All are now grown, and famous authors in their own right.

However…there was a dark mystery behind Laura White’s creation of the Rabbit Back Literature Society, and its small, select recruited members. And the group also have an arcane, and somewhat deadly practice – The Game, which has evolved over the years, and exists for a set purpose of furthering the craft, practice and ritual of writing itself.

Kullevos, Curse by Akseli Gallen- Kallela (1865-1931) Inspired by the Kalevala, Karelian and Finnish national epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot Wiki Commons

The membership of the society has been restricted to 9, for many decades. Until a young teacher, with a recently published story, is invited by White to become the tenth member. Ella Milana, as well as becoming the newest member of the Society, is a keen literary researcher, and has discovered the strange changes appearing in classic texts.

Milana has agendas of her own to pursue when something cataclysmic happens at the party which secretive, revered, Laura White gives, to introduce Milana as the tenth member, to the other nine, and to the wider, glittering celebrity world who accord White some kind of literary goddess status.

And this is Finland, where a belief in dark elementals may be more widespread. Snow, and the Far North, do weird and wonderful things to imagination

Forging of The Sampo by
Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Wiki Commons.

So, we have some strange conglomerate of a David Lynch Twin Peaks type clever weirdness, a crime investigation, an arcane, cultish group of highly intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious-in-the-pursuit-of-their-craft writers, Folkloric background, and a wonderful, wickedly dark and playful imagination. Not to mention a clear love of literature, and its power, and many reflections on just why writers write, who they are, how they do it, and how and why we read.

Everybody comes to the library naked. That’s why they come here-to dress themselves in books

It’s a joy. It’s a gem. It’s dark, spooky, not completely explained by reason. And I want more from Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen. There seem to be a couple of short stories translated into English, but not, at the moment, any second novel. Keep writing Pasi Ilmari, keep writing.

The translation must also be commended (I assume, not knowing Finnish!) because I had no sense of the clunky, as happens when translation is done by those who are too literal, and miss some kind of ‘writerly sensibilities. So I hope translator Lola M. Rogers is also making sure that Pasi Ilmari is steadily working on another book.

Reality was a game board for all of humanity to play on, formed from all human interaction. You could in principle make it up out of anything you wished, provided you all agreed on it. But it was easiest if everyone used square pieces, because they would all fit together and form a seamless whole

The Rabbit Back Literature Society Amazon UK
The Rabbit Back Literature Society Amazon USA

Lynn Shepherd – The Pierced Heart

Tags

Book Review, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Gothic Novel, Literary pastiche, Lynn Shepherd, The Pierced Heart

Finally, alluring, disciplined, properly disturbing Gothic. Shepherd does The Undead proud!

I am not, by any means, a fan of the vampire genre, which seems to have drowned in a sea of its own overdone gore.

However………….when a writer whose work I admire happens to write a book which features the pointy teethed, sanguinary creatures, that might well draw me in. The writer, not the genre.

Lynn Shepherd is a writer with a wonderful feel for nineteenth century literary fiction, primarily using classics of that period, as springboards to twist and skew and refocus, into detective novels. Her first, Murder at Mansfield Park, made a brilliant reversal of class and fortune out of Fanny Price, an Austen heroine who seemed far more pliant and submissive than most of Austen’s bright, intelligent women.

Her second, Tom All Alone’s (published in the States as The Solitary House) forayed into Bleak House.

Her third was a slight departure. Her central character, private detective Charles Maddox investigates events in the household of the Shelley/Godwin families. I found this third book more troubling, as she made free with the lives of real people, inventing unpleasantness around them. A Treacherous Likeness Like her second, this had another title in the States, as A Fatal Likeness

With her fourth, she returns to the territory of an original classic text, and writing something which her imagination takes her into a kind of parallel course with.

One of the several versions Johann Heinrich Fuseli painted of his iconic The Nightmare. Wki Commons

Having already stated I do not find the vampire genre appealing, I must also say I avoid ‘pastiches’ like the plague, because generally the original does the whatever so much better. The exception, is where something is written which is substantially different, substantially true to itself, and where acquaintance with the original can only delight and enhance reading of the new work – which, however, could PROPERLY be enjoyed on its own substantial merits, without any prior knowledge of ‘the original.

And, I must say, that knowing Shepherd had used the Bram Stoker novel, and her love of nineteenth century literature, and her understanding of place, time, culture and language of the period, and a kind of ability to inhabit the world of the original, I bought this book (not available as a download) eagerly, knowing I would not be disappointed.

And I wasn’t, I absolutely wasn’t. It becomes the fourth ‘vampire’ book I can read – and re-read – Stoker himself, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, Marcus Sedgewick’s rather more scientific imagining A Love Like Blood and now, what Shepherd has done.

Her research into historical events (The Great Exhibition, scientific investigations, thinking, and inventions) not to mention her inhabitation of Stoker’s text, is prodigious – but lightly handled. I was swept up feverishly turning pages, and it was only in the pauses between reading that I thought about that research, that plotting, that characterisation, those little embroiders of the text that are sly nods to the original.

Louis Haghe Painting. Crystal Palace – Queen Victoria Opens the Great Exhibition, 1851. Wiki Commons

Inevitably, there IS gore (well, it is within the subject matter) and, yes, it is rather shocking and horrid, but, she really doesn’t luridly indulge the X-rated aspects. And the violence is also plausible, (sadly) in its manner

It’s quite a short book – 233 pages, and is – magnificent.

What I particularly love, love with Shepherd, is her delectable, precise use of language, her structure is beautifully measured, there is a real craft here, which does remind me so much of the more formal language of nineteenth century literature

I found it hard to believe so great a tempest could be coming, seeing the white mares’tails high in the pearly blue sky and the wide sweep of sea barely rippling in the breeze, but the man had some knowledge that I did not possess, for by sunset the clouds had amassed into great heaving battlements of every colour –red, violet, orange, and green, flaming at the west in the dying sun, and darkening behind us as the storm gathered pace. We could see far ahead in the distance, the lights of the little town my father told me was our destination, and as the wind began to rise the captain rigged the ship as high as he dared, desperate to outrun the storm and make port before nightfall. But there was no time. There was a moment of deathly stillness, when the wind seemed to die in the sails………I could hear sea-birds wailing like lost spirits above our heads

Yes, that is right, it’s the arrival, in an unholy storm, by sea, to Whitby

There are several stories going on here. Charles Maddox, like Jonathan Harker, visits the ‘Dracula character’ in his castle home in the Austro-Hungarian empire. And the bulk of the novel is written through the voice of the omnipotent author, describing Maddox’s thoughts and actions.

1797 Robertson Phantasmagoria Capuchine Chapel Paris. Wiki Commons

There is also a parallel story involving ‘Lucy’ the daughter of a kind of stage magician, performing magical acts, and capitalising on the growing success and fashion for spiritualism, in the wake of the American Fox Sisters. Lucy’s story is told in her journal, and is in the first person (from which you can deduce, Lucy’s is the arrival in the storm)

Fox Sisters, Wiki Commons

There is also the omnipotent authorial voice revealing herself to be the self-conscious writer of this book, occasionally making mentions of scientific and social advances which will come in time. This is not in any way intrusive (well, not to me, anyway) and adds another layer, reminding us that this is a referential piece, springing from an established literary heritage, and that writing itself has a history, and that there are cultural fashions in writing.

Shepherd is playful, and she plays well; I like the way she teased me into actively thinking about what I was reading, even whilst my heart was in my mouth and I was being swept along by the ‘what-next, what-next’ of narrative. I needed to be slowed down, to appreciate the detail

There is an afterword, which also explains how her springboard for this book was not only Bram Stoker’s text, but some real history. And I was pleased to note that no REAL persons were harmed in the telling of this story

There is, also a genuine shocker of a climax. One which is ultimately most satisfying

Curiously, as mentioned, this book is not available as digital download in the UK (though Statesiders can get it in this format) It was also not released as an ARC ahead of publication either for NetGalley, UK, or in Vine, UK. Sadly, I suspect Shepherd and her publishers have kept things very low profile indeed over here, following a rather injudicious comment Shepherd made about another author some time earlier this year or last, which attracted loyal fans of the other author out in droves to negative vote on all her previous works. She is a very fine writer, and I hope will be able to recover the growing appreciation she had had from readers, prior to her foolish outburst.

The Pierced Heart Amazon UK
The Pierced Heart Amazon USA

Giles Waterfield – The Hound In The Left-Hand Corner : A Novel

Tags

Book Review, Giles Waterfield, Humour, Satire, The Art World, The Hound In The Left-Hand Corner

A waspish, witty romp Behind The Scenes At The Museum

This is a lovely comedy piece set within the Art and Culture World.

It is a Very Important Day at the BRIT Museum, where a sumptuous new exhibition is to be launched. Major deals are also being made by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, a Property Magnate desperate for a peerage.

The star piece of the exhibition is a little known work by Gainsborough, which comes with a mysterious curse, and an equally mysterious history

Battle lines are set out between high art and high finance, high art and populism, academia and stylistic sound-bites.

He worries about the Nowness of Now. Such a depressing concept, he reflects, his lip rising with an academic’s disdain. Absurd name, too. Nowness will be a celebration of Britain today `reflecting the volcanic dynamism inherent in the twenty-first century’. This breathy tag sometimes runs through his head as he struggles with leaden directives from his paymasters in government.

Think a combination of the slap-stick, magical, sexually confusing world of Midsummer Night’s Dream, combined with the wit and social setting of a P.G. Wodehouse novel

Add a touch of histrionics with a very prestigious catering company and a chef desperate to become the latest TV Chef God, a smidgeon of sadism from the Museum’s Head Of Security with more than a yen to run the Museum like a Police State, and several sets of potentially confused lovers.

And then there is the alarming prospect of an invasion of 400 escaped lobsters. Not to mention the possibility of near death by drowning in raspberry coulis.

And a dog whose tail just can’t make up its mind which way to point

Mr and Mrs William Hallett. And of course their dog. by Thomas Gainsborough.

This is a delightful piece of puffery, which nonetheless says some very pertinent things about a society structured on spin, where neither the bread nor the circuses are that much to be celebrated. And where the course of true love never runs smooth……except, sometimes.

The novel fairly zips along, taking place on Midsummer’s day 2001, and lasting for 288 pages, with short, fairly bite sized chapters. I read most of it smiling happily and every now and again breaking out into snorts, barks, and yaps of laughter (well, that hound does feature rather importantly)

The Hound In The Left-Hand Corner Amazon UK
The Hound In The Left-Hand Corner Amazon USA

Michael Russell – The City Of Strangers

Tags

Book Review, Michael Russell, Political thriller, Second World War, The City of Strangers

The City of Strangers is the second novel of a political/crime thriller series, featuring an intelligent, complex, member of the Garda, Stefan Gillespie, his family, and various professional colleagues in Ireland, during the lead up, and later, within, the period of the Second World War.

The City of Shadows, the first novel, felt like a breath of fresh air, combining a crime novel moving beyond the merely domestic, set in the context of a volatile history, geography, and cataclysmic change looming on the horizon. This was Dublin, in 1934, and the background was the inexorable rise of Nazi ideology abroad. The possibility of war was looming. Ireland had been through some great changes, and there were those who thought that there was mileage in the dangerous adage that ‘my enemy’s enemy’ (Britain, the idea of a coming war with Germany) might make some kind of friend.

It is now 1939. That war has indeed started, and Britain needs America, currently neutral, as is Ireland, to come into that war.

Back in Ireland, a woman has been brutally murdered, and her son, gone to America as part of Michael MacLiammóir’s company performing a play by Shaw, needs bringing back to trial. Meanwhile, no one in the high-ups wants this bad publicity on the eve of the prestigious World Trade Fair, happening in New York, as each country is of course engaged in splendid PR for itself.

Trylon and Perisphere 1939 New York World’s Fair, Commons

Gillespie is the man to send, both for his discretion and his ability to keep a clear and intelligent head.

But there is a lot more, of greater complexity, going on. Many German Americans and Irish Americans want to keep America out of the war. Roosevelt is edging closer to entering that war. There are various Irish Nationalist Groupings who are forming connections with German Nationalists. Some Americans of Ethiopian origins are also interested in the European war possibly leading to an end to the domination of the British empire in Africa. Some in the Catholic Church see Germany as a saviour against Communism. And there are some even stranger bedfellows, with some mobsters very much on the side of the angels, working against a growing anti-semitism, fostered by the various reactionary alignments.

There is a wonderfully twisting, tense storyline going on, as Gillespie tries to make sense of what he seems to have stumbled into, and discovers the many layers of subterfuge going on. Espionage, political machinations, shady alliances, this is a real page turner.

Okay, there may have been one too many ‘saved from a terrible fate in the nick of time by the arrival of the cavalry’ (and the uniform the cavalry was wearing, was at times remarkably unexpected) but the author must be forgiven, since he doesn’t betray character.

And, at the end, I was absolutely delighted to discover that it very much looks as if there will be more, as the war bites deeper, and, no doubt, machinations in high places from those with a variety of reasons for wanting alliances to be made, or broken, continue

The City Of Strangers Amazon UK
The City Of Strangers Amazon USA