Sadie Jones – The Uninvited Guests

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Book Review, Sadie Jones, The Uninvited Guests, Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction

Hay Fever meets Saki and M.R.James

This was a most clever, witty and also unsettling read. Reminding me at times of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, where an upper middle class family, self-obsessed and selfish – but undoubtedly charming – if they want to be – and witty, invite a house-party of weekend guests to be an audience and entertainment for them. Sadie Jones has injected a more consciously spiteful, and even brutal, cast to the family, which points towards Saki as an influence. One of the central characters is even called Clovis, a deadly, sharp, bored, cruel but entertainingly gorgeous young man.

The invited guests are gathered to celebrate the eldest daughter’s birthday, and include several likely young men, who might or might not bring money to our family, if marriage were to result – and money they certainly need, to save their house from being sold. There is also a self-effacing young woman who might provide a love interest for Clovis.

The small group of staff/servants (one of whom is not quite so simply described) are inevitably rushed off their feet, and there is a certain amount of above and below stairs contrast.

However, the nub of the story is the injection of the disquieting M.R.James element. A train crash bring an expanding group of uninvited guests, who are disconcerting to our family because they are of a different class, and also, for other intangible reasons.

Jones has managed to weave together a comedy of manners, set in the first decade of the 20th century, with something teetering on the edge of a horror or ghost story. Brittle wit and sharply glacial characterisation is undercut with a whiff of the diabolic and the sinister. Her overall direction is towards the sunny uplands of playful comedy, but the opening of this family’s can of worms, and a nod to the satanic, works well, and creates a very enjoyable read

The Uninvited Guests Amazon UK
The Uninvited Guests Amazon USA

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Karen Engelmann – The Stockholm Octavo

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Alternative History, Book Review, Karen Engelmann, The Stockholm Octavo, Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction

An Infinity of Eightfold Delight

Gustavo III, Rey de Suecia 1777 by Roslin

This is a most wonderful, darkly glittering interlocking puzzle of a historical novel, set in Sweden on the edge of, and then into, the French Revolution. Taking some real events – the factions between liberalism and conservatism in Sweden and France, and the assassination attempt on King Gustave III of Sweden, Author Karen Engelmann creates such a complex, tricksy, cleverly interlocking plot that I believed more to be ‘true’ than was the case. Her weaving of politics, necromancy, sacred geometry, card playing, the Masonic Order, herbal remedies, the arts of calligraphy, fan-making and fan-using are so deliciously and believably constructed that I was quite surprised, on finishing the book, to discover that so many of the major characters didn’t exist. Searches did show that some similar characters must have been springboards for Engelmann’s creativity. For example, King Gustave did consult a celebrated medium, several times, who also made, by all accounts, accurate predictions for other members of the Swedish Royal family. She just wasn’t the powerful Mrs Sofia Sparrow of THIS novel.

In many ways, this book reminded me in its complexity and ability to steep the reader into another age, and a Nordic country, and into the arts, of Music & Silence. Any appreciative comparison with Tremain, from me, is high praise! And also, in the hinted at interlocking, occult world view of some of Lindsay Clarke’s alchemically focused novels, most specifically The Chymical Wedding (Picador Books)

And there are some beautiful woodcut type illustrations of the cards early in the text.

I finished this book with a big sigh of pleasure – and also sorrow. Pleasure in a wonderful piece of story-telling, and a satisfying ending true to the spirit of the book, sorrow that I HAD finished the book. ‘This’ world looks a good deal flatter than the intricate – but dark, beauty of The Stockholm Octavo.And the fans – well I can see them clearly in my minds eye, and want one!

Reclining Lady with a Fan, Eleuterio Pagliani, Wiki Commons

The Wiki picture is from a later period but conveys the opulence and decadence well!

The Stockholm Octavo Amazon UK
The Stockholm Octavo Amazon USA

A.K. Benedict – The Beauty of Murder

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A.K. Benedict, Book Review, Crime Fiction, Oxbridge setting, The Beauty of Murder, Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction

Surprisingly seductive

In theory, this had quite a lot to recommend itself to me, with its Cambridge setting, its focus on the dark goings on within academia, its central character a metaphysician, and plenty of ethical and moral debates in store, coupled with a curious time-travelling murderer, so lots of history too. A sort of weird squiff of Shardlake and Donna Tartt perhaps.

So I settled down with enjoyment, only to start tutting and sighing extremely quickly. Benedict is a good writer, creates interesting character quickly, crafts the language well – BUT Benedict is also a clever wordsmith, a bit too fond of her own clever, witty word plays – attempting to hide this as her central character’s foibles, but it is fairly clear it is Benedict herself who is a little indulgent with her word plays:

“Well, that’s not very erotic”
“No, but it is erratic”

“Satnam is a minimalist, with a spreadsheet for his bedsheets”

I could feel my ire beginning to rise at the spectacle of someone being self-consciously witty for 400 pages.

And then, quite suddenly and quickly, the book got its claws into me. Our central character is weird, a little damaged, a bit gawky, believable – and at sea. A parallel story unfolds as murders and corpses begin to puzzle our hero. The police team enters on the scene – and our central cop is a female, struggling to come to terms with her diagnosis of breast cancer and the choices to be made. (This is not a spoiler, it is very quickly introduced)

We have a Northerner at large with a slight Northern chip on his shoulders and a sad past as the central character, trying to make sense of himself in an elite intellectual hothouse, and a female detective battling the glass ceiling and a diagnosis.

Clare College Bridge, Cambridge (Andrew Sharpe)

Into the mix strolls a very weird time travelling serial killer (as he would) If you accept the premise – and Killigan, our metaphysician, by trade has to question everything about reality, so it becomes easier for the reader to accept Benedict’s fantasy – particularly as she is so very good at describing the worlds, (mainly 1635 Cambridge and 2012 Cambridge) so very well.Throw in a whole handful of excellently constructed red herrings, a breaking-the-mould quirky librarian and love interest, and, yes, eventually Benedict’s wordplays, and I was eagerly waiting to get back to find out what happens next and resenting interruptions to my reading. Not to mention, the teaser that this could even be the first part of a series….Perhaps not, but Benedict is rather playful!

 

I originally received this as an ARC through the Amazon Vine programme, UK
The Beauty of Murder Amazon USA
The Beauty of Murder Amazon USA

Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus

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Book Review, Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus, Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree

Even my casual acquaintances recognise there is a more than a strong whiff of a predilection towards the fantastical and whimsical in my nature, so a book which more than nods to this providing it is well written will have me curious, though I must also say that with a very few exceptions the Fantasy Genre as a whole is one I quickly pass by. Night Circus is fantastical; Night Circus is whimsical: Night Circus is well written

There is nothing i can say about Erin Morgenstern’s creative, inventive first novel that other hugely appreciative reviewers have not already said, but nonetheless feel a need to add my appreciation of this fantastical, immersive book to the rest of the songs of praise and delight.

If you like the darkly glittering world of the magic realism of adult myth and magic a la Angela Carter, chances are this first book (alas, there are no more to read, as yet!) by Erin Morgenstern will snap you into its beautifully formed world and not let go.

As I read this period late Victorian story with shifting time scales and locations, a story of two rival magicians, one working from the outside in, and one from the inside out, to dislocate reality, I was reminded of Carter, of Prospero’s fantastic island (one magician is indeed called Prospero the Enchanter – though his daughter firmly resists being called Miranda), but also, increasingly of the fantastical, dreamy, yet perfectly physicalised world of Coleridge’s poetic fragment.

This is a world to wonder at, delight in, and even more, to yearn to find. Morgenstern describes the physical world of the circus in precise and sumptuous detail, so it feels as if it must be real.

Her story, in many ways, is a simple one – two professional opponents engaged in a game and conflict against each other, stopping at nothing to win. However, the opponents are magicians, disguising what they do as ‘stage magic’ and illusion, though in fact, this is glittering magick – think Christopher Priest The Prestige, though with a feminine, more sensual and delicate sensibility. Not so much steam-punk more sensual fin de siecle decadence and artistry – a sort of Arts and Crafts delight in the stuff of the material world, the costumes, the clocks, the perfumes. Another pointer might be The Stockholm Octavo – since Morgenstern, like Karen Engelmann, has an artist’s, sensual feel for the look and material heft, colour and taste of her world. This is also a love story, and a story which dislocates the reader’s sense of time and place, making us as convinced of this world which shimmers in and out of time and space, as are the fictional characters who visit the circus.

I had one criticism of Morgenstern – she  spoiled my love of reading fiction for a while – the brilliant creation of her Night Circus world seeped into reality, and I stayed still half in habitation of it, so was unable to surrender to another author’s imagination. I envy anyone about to start reading this book!

For myself, all I can do is don the black and white, add a small dash of red to my clothing, and hope to be spotted by a fellow reveur who may tell me where the night circus is next due. Magical!

Commons, Flicr – group of reveurs, clearly in the know

The Night Circus Amazon UK
The Night Circus Amazon USA