Blood Salt Water
Denise Mina
Orion, 30 July 2015
HB, 304pp
I'm grateful to the publisher for letting me have an advance copy of this book through Netgalley.
You get old, you get scared...
Years ago I went for a day out in Helensburgh with a friend who lived in Glasgow. We got off the train and then walked along an endless A-road, the loch on one side and a steep, forested slope on the other, traffic buzzing by - till we got fed up and went home. We hoped for something - a tearoom, a beach, somewhere to sit - but Helensburgh wasn't ready to oblige.
Denise Mina gets much more out of the place, of course. In this, her 5th DI Alex Morrow novel, the town is conveniently placed - close enough to Glasgow for Morrow to follow her enquiries there, far enough away to be a little... different. There are different gangsters, a different crime - some kind of financial scam, Morrow believes - and a different atmosphere: small time rivalries and family divisions.
Morrow herself is, here, more stable and self assured than in the earlier books, though suffering from "anger management issues" (she's been on a course) and still with her gangster brother causing trouble, even though he's locked away. She and her team are investigating Roxanna Fuentecilla, a mysterious Spanish woman possibly involved in the aformentioned scam. There's rivalry between the Glasgow force and the Met over who should get the seized proceeds - you can almost imagine £ signs in the eyes of the cash-strapped police - so it's unfortunate to say the least when Fuentecilla disappears.
Meanwhile, in the opening pages of the book, a ghastly crime is committed. It's a while before we understand how this links back to Morrow's case: rather, the main impact is to highlight Iain Fraser, small time thug, an awful man in many ways, but it's part of Mina's skill to make you feel for him despite that. Iain's mother is gone, dead while he was away in prison (one of a number of lonely deaths or absences here). She, also, seems to have had a tragic life and as he spirals into chaos following that opening crime Iain hangs on to the first thing she taught him: the best way to remove blood is to use salt water. As with Lady Macbeth, Iain's obsession with his victim and their blood becomes a recurring motif, symbolising his desire to be clean of what he's done ('maybe she wanted him to walk into the salt sea to clean the blood off...') but also his knowledge that he never can be. Already near the edge, he becomes aware over the following days what his crime means and that it has solved nothing, only brought further trouble down on those he loves.
Mina's writing is great: sharp, pacey, knowing, whether describing Morrow grappling with that anger (to her, 'anger was usually just fear with its make-up on' - worth remembering when when we meet Boyd, who seems to be driven by a relentless anger with his cafe, his wife, his child, his dog) or her dealing with a tedious colleague ('She grunted and Thankless took it to mean - really? Do elaborate, you interesting and knowledgeable man') or even surveying the hills ('Morrow was a city child, most familiar with Scottish mountain views from toffee tins, and looking up at the hills still gave her a hankering for caramels'). She is spot on with observation ('She had... far too much make-up for the hour, or indeed any hour, apart from dress-up night at a social club for clowns') and dialogue (a teenager: 'It was,' Marnie agreed 'Like reallycreepy. She's like "HELLO DEAR!") but keeps the story humming along.
The story is less focussed on Morrow and her personal background that some of the previous books, more on her professional life, making her team work, taking account of a father who needs to be away to a son's hospital appointment, dealing with the politics (all those £). The personal stuff is more about Fraser, about unfortunate Boyd and his wife Lucy. Morrow stands to one side, professional, coping: almost as though being rewarded for what she's been through in earlier stories.
It's a tightly wound, compulsive book interweaving Morrow's investigation with the spiralling events in Helensburgh. We can see it all going wrong, but not the cause - that has to wait till almost the last page. Immensely enjoyable, if not always comfortable reading and with an air of galey, salty seaside melancholy. I would thoroughly recommend this book, perhaps for a windy Bank Holiday by the sea.
27 July 2015
20 July 2015
Guest post: Neil White - Where do I get my characters from?
I'm really pleased that Neil White has agreed to write a guest post for the blog.
Raised in West Yorkshire, Neil flunked his exams and spent a few years drifting and dreaming. In his mid-20’s, he returned to education to study law, swapping a dole cheque for a student grant and giving himself a few more years of avoiding gainful employment. Qualifying as a solicitor at 30, he grew bored of that adventure and started to write. Twelve years of poor attempts and rejection slips led to a contract with Avon in 2006, with his first book, Fallen Idols, published in 2007. He published six books with Avon before moving to Sphere in 2012, with the first of the Parker brothers trilogy, Next To Die, published in 2013. He is married with three children and still practises as a criminal lawyer. He spends his spare time reading, watching films, rugby league and lounging.
I asked Neil to where his characters came from - not only the heroes, but the villains too. Over to Neil:
Fundamentally, characters come from my own experiences and are an extension of me in some way. To some extent, readers do something similar.
Take my first series.
I wrote five books featuring a crime reporter, Jack Garrett, and a detective, Laura McGanity. The two characters had equal billing in the plots, and they were always meant to be part of a duo.
In my head, however, I always thought of them as the Jack Garrett books, because he was the character I identified as myself, the one I based on myself. My various editors, however, who were all women, saw them more as the Laura McGanity books, and I presume for the same reason, that they identified with one character more than the other. The two characters had equal billing in the plot but we looked for extensions of ourselves.
Heroes in books (and I refer to heroes meaning both genders, rather than using the term heroines) are of two types: there is the reflection of how we are, and then there is the reflection of how we would like to be.
The first type feature in the books I write, in that they are deliberately ordinary people who get caught up in extraordinary events.
The second type, a reflection of how we would like to be, would be a hero similar to Jack Reacher. He is an extraordinary character, brave and strong and heroic. He is how we would like to imagine ourselves, in the same way that every cop would like to be like Dirty Harry. Except we aren’t like that. We have weaknesses and insecurities, so sometimes we need the first type of hero, the one who is more like us and responds heroically when the situation arises. We can fantasise about that, fool ourselves that we would be so brave.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t crossover. For instance, I’m a fairly laidback person and I don’t seek confrontation. When I write a scene involving one of my heroes having a confrontation, I try to imagine how I would respond if I wasn’t so laidback.
The trilogy I have just completed involves two brothers, Joe and Sam Parker, one a defence lawyer and the other a detective. I chose them as I liked the conflict, that they would pull in different directions. In my head, Joe is the main character, because he’s a criminal lawyer, as I am. Joe says the things I wish I’d said when I’d been in court but hadn’t thought of until later. So when I write for Joe, I think of how I wish I could be when doing my lawyer job; a little more ballsy, a little more confrontational.
Fundamentally, writing characters is just about imagining being them, and I don’t really know the science behind it. I just do what seems obvious: I imagine I am them or am with them. What they might say or how they might react.
The hardest part is making the characters interesting whilst avoiding the clichés. Not every cop has to be divorced, or be an alcoholic, but then again, how interesting is the ordinary guy who lives at the end of the street?
The most important thing is hoping the reader roots for the person in some way. Don’t make your hero too weak but don’t make them too horrible. The character has to be a man or woman the reader wants to succeed, if a hero, or fail badly if a villain.
How do I do that? The honest answer is that I don’t know. I find analysing writing very difficult, because it is just about putting down on the page what comes into my head, and that isn’t something I can force in there.
It is perhaps simply a logical process.
For instance, I wanted Joe Parker, the lawyer, to be single, so that he could be consumed by his job more. For Sam, the detective, he had to be married, as police officers like to do the right thing on the whole, not live on the edges. Once you fix on those notions, other things follow. Joe will hang about in bars because he’s a single professional in a big city. He’ll live in an apartment, not a house. He’ll be a little cynical, a little sardonic, because there’s no one in his life to show him the warmer side to life. Sam will live in a cul-de-sac and have a steadier life, and it will become about protecting his family and being happy in his marriage. He’ll be more content, more settled, wanting to keep Joe from doing anything rash.
Villains are the hardest. What makes them villains? Is the plot because of the villain, or the villain because of the plot?
For instance, some of the villains in my books have been very ordinary, with their blandness their disguise, the mask that hides their obsessions, their fantasies. Others have been more obvious, driven by their need to live off fear.
In Cold Kill, for example, I wanted to base a plot around Dennis Rader, a serial killer from Wichita in Kansas who adopted the title The BTK Killer, because he bound them, tortured them, killed them. What interested me was a particular quirk he had of filling the orifices of his victims with leaves and soil and debris, and the reason for this (read the book to find out). Also, he was thoroughly ordinary, the boring man with the moustache along the street. Once I’d decided I wanted a villain like Dennis Rader, I had to craft a plot around the villain.
Contrast that with Dead Silent, the book that preceded Cold Kill. Jack Garrett was a crime reporter, and I had this notion that the ultimate scoop for a crime reporter would be to locate Lord Lucan. So I based a book around a Lucan-type character, the premise being that the character contacts Jack and says that he will come out of hiding provided that Jack can prove his innocence first.
The point is that the plot and the villain were created by Jack’s character as a crime reporter, not the plot created by the notion of a killer.
One of the main advantages of writing characters, however, is the ability to use real people in them, even get revenge. A lot of my supporting characters are based on people I know, with traits exaggerated, just a way of having some private fun, my own little sneaky shot.
Neil's ninth book, The Domino Killer, is the final book in the Parker brothers trilogy, with the second in the trilogy, The Death Collector, released in paperback in July 2015. His books are translated into French, German, Russian and Polish.
17 July 2015
Review: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
The first thing to say about this book - and it's the first thing you will notice - is that it's long. Massive. An 861 page whopper. If you find that daunting, it's understandable, but let me try and persuade you to try it!
For me, nothing Stephenson writes can be too long. He takes the space he needs for the story, no more: the length isn't due to padding, it lets the characters and plot and themes breathe and develop. Seveneves in particular, though, deserves that length. The second thing to say about Seveneves is that in it, the world ends, and (almost) everybody dies. That's not a spoiler - it is established early on that this is going to happen, and the focus of the story is then the reaction to this. It's like one of John Wyndham's apocalyptic thrillers: there is no possibility of averting what's coming, the point is to work out how the human race can survive it, and how they must adapt to do so. And that is a serious subject that deserves to be treated at length. Here we have a planet full of people knowing that they will soon die, and a small group knowing that they may live. How will that play out? How will those who may be saved react to seeing their loved ones consumed? How will it all affect the surviving human race centuries, even millenia, on?
The threat to Earth is from the destruction of the Moon. Stephenson suggests a couple of mechanisms for this (a singularity left over from the Big Bang, exotic matter, alien action - my money's on the latter) but the "why" isn't important, we just have to take it as given that the Moon fragments into a cloud of enormous rocks. Jostling against one another, these break up into even smaller pieces in a runaway process, which fall to Earth (the "Hard Rain"). This rain of destruction doesn't just destroy directly, but heats the earth, making life impossible. And it lasts 5000 years.
Fortunately, a small group of humans is already. literally, above all this, in the International Space Station. And doubly fortunately, we get a couple of years' warning of what is to happen. So there is a (short) time to prepare - for the combined space science and industrial resources of Earth to design a lifeboat and begin launching people to it. This part of the story is, for me, the most impressive, the science and engineering worked out in credible detail - as well as the inevitable tensions between different schools of thought, different nations, governments and private interests. At its heart - that is at the heart of the story and of the ISS - are two women, Dinah MacQuarie and Ivy Xiao and I enjoyed the way they are portrayed here, the way their friendship is allowed to develop even as the rest of the world tries to frame them as rivals (in an age of social media even the destruction of the Earth and the plans to overcome are an issue of controversy in cyberspace).
The drama, then, in this first section - about one third of the book - is the reaction to the inevitable destruction: saying goodbye to all that has been, to friends, lovers, family, while building something for the future. This comes to a climax in that rain of fire, witnessed by Dinah's father at his remote mining camp in Canada and by Ivy's fiance before his nuclear sub dives beneath the ocean. In between we have the heart rending "Vigil for the End of the World" from Notre Dame in Paris where musicians play continually until the sky, literally, falls in.
And of course there is also selfishness, chicanery and attempts to carry the rivalries and flaws of Old earth into the future. In a grimly credible scene, Ivy is replaced as Commander of the International Space Station because... well, because she's not a man.
Stephenson builds up a lot of momentum with this story which he carries into the next section, where the orphaned human race - several hundred of them - must survive. It's very much a story of space derring-do, with some surprises, especially from the continuing vein of old-Earth politics that has infected the Cloud Ark. At the end, in a scene of almost religious weight and significance, the survivors make plans for the future and choose the fate of their descendants.
There is then a jump - those 5000 years! - to see what the choices came to, with earth being recolonized but humanity, in the meantime, comfortable settled in a space "habitat ring" around the planet. I've seen some reviewers confess to difficulty with this jump, and of course one does then have to pick up new characters, indeed pretty much a new story, the story of Kath Two, an explorer who teams up with a representative cross-section of the human races (the descendants of each of those ancestors) to investigate a mystery on Earth.
For my part, I found this fairly easy at the story level. The new characters are engaging and Stephenson lays enough plot trails in the first two parts of the book to reward the reader for spotting connections and consequences, while back some real surprises about how things turned out (I'll just say that not everything in the future is rosy). My enjoyment was slightly diminished by a nagging feeling that the first two parts had only been written as a set-up for the third, and that the ending just couldn't be substantial enough to justify that. However, in the end I think that Stephenson manages to pitch the later part of the story at just the right level - there is less science and more action in this part, which is mainly set on Earth itself - and delivers a thrilling conclusion. (It was also fun to see some signature features from his earlier books, such as the beneficient secret society that thinks it has an inside track on history, recur. I wonder if he might be setting up a sequel?)
To sum up, this is an excellent, enjoyable read. It's long but by the end you'll wish it was longer.
Seveneves (Borough Press: London, 2015)
ISBN: 978-0-00-813251-4,
861 pages, Hardback.
I bought this book from Wallingford Bookshop.
ISBN: 978-0-00-813251-4,
861 pages, Hardback.
I bought this book from Wallingford Bookshop.
For me, nothing Stephenson writes can be too long. He takes the space he needs for the story, no more: the length isn't due to padding, it lets the characters and plot and themes breathe and develop. Seveneves in particular, though, deserves that length. The second thing to say about Seveneves is that in it, the world ends, and (almost) everybody dies. That's not a spoiler - it is established early on that this is going to happen, and the focus of the story is then the reaction to this. It's like one of John Wyndham's apocalyptic thrillers: there is no possibility of averting what's coming, the point is to work out how the human race can survive it, and how they must adapt to do so. And that is a serious subject that deserves to be treated at length. Here we have a planet full of people knowing that they will soon die, and a small group knowing that they may live. How will that play out? How will those who may be saved react to seeing their loved ones consumed? How will it all affect the surviving human race centuries, even millenia, on?
The threat to Earth is from the destruction of the Moon. Stephenson suggests a couple of mechanisms for this (a singularity left over from the Big Bang, exotic matter, alien action - my money's on the latter) but the "why" isn't important, we just have to take it as given that the Moon fragments into a cloud of enormous rocks. Jostling against one another, these break up into even smaller pieces in a runaway process, which fall to Earth (the "Hard Rain"). This rain of destruction doesn't just destroy directly, but heats the earth, making life impossible. And it lasts 5000 years.
Fortunately, a small group of humans is already. literally, above all this, in the International Space Station. And doubly fortunately, we get a couple of years' warning of what is to happen. So there is a (short) time to prepare - for the combined space science and industrial resources of Earth to design a lifeboat and begin launching people to it. This part of the story is, for me, the most impressive, the science and engineering worked out in credible detail - as well as the inevitable tensions between different schools of thought, different nations, governments and private interests. At its heart - that is at the heart of the story and of the ISS - are two women, Dinah MacQuarie and Ivy Xiao and I enjoyed the way they are portrayed here, the way their friendship is allowed to develop even as the rest of the world tries to frame them as rivals (in an age of social media even the destruction of the Earth and the plans to overcome are an issue of controversy in cyberspace).
The drama, then, in this first section - about one third of the book - is the reaction to the inevitable destruction: saying goodbye to all that has been, to friends, lovers, family, while building something for the future. This comes to a climax in that rain of fire, witnessed by Dinah's father at his remote mining camp in Canada and by Ivy's fiance before his nuclear sub dives beneath the ocean. In between we have the heart rending "Vigil for the End of the World" from Notre Dame in Paris where musicians play continually until the sky, literally, falls in.
And of course there is also selfishness, chicanery and attempts to carry the rivalries and flaws of Old earth into the future. In a grimly credible scene, Ivy is replaced as Commander of the International Space Station because... well, because she's not a man.
Stephenson builds up a lot of momentum with this story which he carries into the next section, where the orphaned human race - several hundred of them - must survive. It's very much a story of space derring-do, with some surprises, especially from the continuing vein of old-Earth politics that has infected the Cloud Ark. At the end, in a scene of almost religious weight and significance, the survivors make plans for the future and choose the fate of their descendants.
There is then a jump - those 5000 years! - to see what the choices came to, with earth being recolonized but humanity, in the meantime, comfortable settled in a space "habitat ring" around the planet. I've seen some reviewers confess to difficulty with this jump, and of course one does then have to pick up new characters, indeed pretty much a new story, the story of Kath Two, an explorer who teams up with a representative cross-section of the human races (the descendants of each of those ancestors) to investigate a mystery on Earth.
For my part, I found this fairly easy at the story level. The new characters are engaging and Stephenson lays enough plot trails in the first two parts of the book to reward the reader for spotting connections and consequences, while back some real surprises about how things turned out (I'll just say that not everything in the future is rosy). My enjoyment was slightly diminished by a nagging feeling that the first two parts had only been written as a set-up for the third, and that the ending just couldn't be substantial enough to justify that. However, in the end I think that Stephenson manages to pitch the later part of the story at just the right level - there is less science and more action in this part, which is mainly set on Earth itself - and delivers a thrilling conclusion. (It was also fun to see some signature features from his earlier books, such as the beneficient secret society that thinks it has an inside track on history, recur. I wonder if he might be setting up a sequel?)
To sum up, this is an excellent, enjoyable read. It's long but by the end you'll wish it was longer.
1 July 2015
Review: The Hunter's Kind by Rebecca Levene
The Hunter's Kind
Rebecca Levene
Hodder & Stoughton, 2 July 2015
HB, 468 pages
I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book through Bookbridgr.
When I discovered that Levene's Smiler's Fair was to have a sequel, I was delighted but a bit nervous. (I should warn you now that there are spoilers below for Smiler's Fair - if you haven't read it, stop now, get a copy and read it. Then come back and carry on... here.)
The titular fair had knitted together a large number of characters as it travelled the lands of the Sun and the Moon, some of them delightful, some horrible, none perfect - or utterly evil - all very human. However, most of them hadn't crossed paths and some - like the boy Eric - had been spirited far away from the main action. I was concerned that it would be difficult to keep up the unity of the story once the Fair ended up in ashes. (I warned you - spoilers!)
I needn't have worried. Levene picks up the story exactly where she left it - in the cooling embers of the Fair - but drives it forward with, if anything, even greater verve and unity than in the first book. And while that was largely an introduction to her characters - Krish, goat herdsman/ missing king turned moon god, Dae Hyo, drunken warrior, Nethmi, a bride who stood up against an abusive husband and killed him, Olufemi, the mage who started it all off, and many others - here... here stuff gets read and they really begin to be. We also get some new characters. There is Cwen, one of the Hunter's hawks. I don't think I can easily convey how amazing Cwen is: she takes nonsense from nobody but is also miles away fro the archetypical "strong female character". There are sister and brother Algar and Alfreda, a pair of itinerant metalworkers who have invented something Very Important... and more.
Mix them up - the lost prince, the mage, the warrior woman. Add some fantasy tropes: the Prophesy, the reawakened gods. Stir. Invert. make something new and different. You can see it happening but, like the best magic, you can't see how it happens. Before the reader's eyes, the characters come alive and shape their world. Krish is supposedly the reincarnation of the god Yron, the Moon, who was vanquished millenia ago by his sister Mizhara, the Sun. His dark creatures haunt the land, his underground servants haunt mines and caverns, killing and eating any humans they find (so metals are scarce and expensive). Cwen and the other Hawks hunt them down without mercy.
Yet despite the evil Krish is a real person, a good person. he hasn't asked for the role of god, has no idea what to make of it and it's not his doing that half the continent wants to destroy him because of it. (The other half wants to destroy him because he happens to be the heir to a great empire, whose king - his father - he's prophesied to kill. But that's not his doing either).
All this was there in Smiler's Fair, but here the consequences start to pile up. The book deals in shades of grey. Both "sides", if there are "sides" here, are trying to do their best: there are no fantasy Dark Lords or White Riders. Though there is plenty of darkness, it is a more human, recognisable darkness. Slavery. Poverty. Religious fanaticism. The slaughter and rape of the Brotherband as they pillage their way across the land. These things aren't just part of the background ("that's just how it is in fantasy"), they raise questions, pose challenges to the characters (especially to Cwen and Krish). What is one to do when one's trusted allies are slavers? What is one to do when calling together forces to win a battle leaves distant villages exposed to the Brotherband?
The book is full of forced, least worst choices, attempts to keep some morality, some light in an ever darker world.
Very much, I think, a book for now. A magnificent, brave book, showing what fantasy can and should be - a mirror to the world, but a dark mirror.
Rebecca Levene
Hodder & Stoughton, 2 July 2015
HB, 468 pages
I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book through Bookbridgr.
When I discovered that Levene's Smiler's Fair was to have a sequel, I was delighted but a bit nervous. (I should warn you now that there are spoilers below for Smiler's Fair - if you haven't read it, stop now, get a copy and read it. Then come back and carry on... here.)
The titular fair had knitted together a large number of characters as it travelled the lands of the Sun and the Moon, some of them delightful, some horrible, none perfect - or utterly evil - all very human. However, most of them hadn't crossed paths and some - like the boy Eric - had been spirited far away from the main action. I was concerned that it would be difficult to keep up the unity of the story once the Fair ended up in ashes. (I warned you - spoilers!)
I needn't have worried. Levene picks up the story exactly where she left it - in the cooling embers of the Fair - but drives it forward with, if anything, even greater verve and unity than in the first book. And while that was largely an introduction to her characters - Krish, goat herdsman/ missing king turned moon god, Dae Hyo, drunken warrior, Nethmi, a bride who stood up against an abusive husband and killed him, Olufemi, the mage who started it all off, and many others - here... here stuff gets read and they really begin to be. We also get some new characters. There is Cwen, one of the Hunter's hawks. I don't think I can easily convey how amazing Cwen is: she takes nonsense from nobody but is also miles away fro the archetypical "strong female character". There are sister and brother Algar and Alfreda, a pair of itinerant metalworkers who have invented something Very Important... and more.
Mix them up - the lost prince, the mage, the warrior woman. Add some fantasy tropes: the Prophesy, the reawakened gods. Stir. Invert. make something new and different. You can see it happening but, like the best magic, you can't see how it happens. Before the reader's eyes, the characters come alive and shape their world. Krish is supposedly the reincarnation of the god Yron, the Moon, who was vanquished millenia ago by his sister Mizhara, the Sun. His dark creatures haunt the land, his underground servants haunt mines and caverns, killing and eating any humans they find (so metals are scarce and expensive). Cwen and the other Hawks hunt them down without mercy.
Yet despite the evil Krish is a real person, a good person. he hasn't asked for the role of god, has no idea what to make of it and it's not his doing that half the continent wants to destroy him because of it. (The other half wants to destroy him because he happens to be the heir to a great empire, whose king - his father - he's prophesied to kill. But that's not his doing either).
All this was there in Smiler's Fair, but here the consequences start to pile up. The book deals in shades of grey. Both "sides", if there are "sides" here, are trying to do their best: there are no fantasy Dark Lords or White Riders. Though there is plenty of darkness, it is a more human, recognisable darkness. Slavery. Poverty. Religious fanaticism. The slaughter and rape of the Brotherband as they pillage their way across the land. These things aren't just part of the background ("that's just how it is in fantasy"), they raise questions, pose challenges to the characters (especially to Cwen and Krish). What is one to do when one's trusted allies are slavers? What is one to do when calling together forces to win a battle leaves distant villages exposed to the Brotherband?
The book is full of forced, least worst choices, attempts to keep some morality, some light in an ever darker world.
Very much, I think, a book for now. A magnificent, brave book, showing what fantasy can and should be - a mirror to the world, but a dark mirror.
28 June 2015
Review: Silma Hill by Iain Maloney
Silma Hill
Iain Maloney
Freight Books, 29 June 2015
PB 254pp
If you pressed me to sum this book up in a few words, I'd say "modern gothic". Or perhaps, to make it absolutely clear, modern Gothick. There is an air about it of one of those tales where monstrous, freak events abound, people are buffeted and baffled and heroes tested.
The story is set in mid 18th century Scotland, somewhere on the west coast. Abdale is a remote village on the banks of a sea loch, set under Silma Hill with its circle of ancient standing stones.
The leading light of the village - or so he would like to think it Burnett, minister of the village. Mr Burnett is the minister of the village. Widowed, he lives with his sixteen year old daughter Fiona, whom he treats like a servant.
Though living in a backwater, Burnett has dreams of scientific glory, wishing to join the "Society" in the "capital" and contribute learned papers. (It's one of the marks of this book that while in one sense the setting is clear, in another, Abdale appears a bit placeless, or timeless, only loosely anchored in history: it's definitely an unusual place in religious terms with a - presumably ancient - cross at the centre of the village, and prayers for the departed). His opportunity comes when old Sangster, digging for peat on Silma Hill, finds an ancient wooded statue: Burnett determines to study this - even after Sangster drops dead and villagers begin to mutter about idolatry.
For me one of the best aspects of the book was the slow burn, the way that events - and accusations - then slowly take hold, gossip spreads, old rivalries and grudges are engaged. Maloney doesn't make it completely clear what is really at the bottom of it all - like that giant armoured head in The Castle of Otranto, the reality may be too big to grasp. Rather it's the reaction that he focusses on, or, I might say the overreaction - while some pretty strange events do take place, I'm not sure there's anything that is actually threatening or harmful. I was also absorbed by the character and contradictions of Burnett - preaching a loving God but beating his daughter; supposedly the voice of religion in his tiny parish while yearning for the scientific world of the "Society", rationalism and the enlightenment; forced by his office to lead the investigation of "witchcraft" which neither he (nor, apparently, any of the others involved) actually believes in.
While Burnett is not an admirable person his self-justifications are understandable and recognisably human, as are the no less ignoble reactions of the villagers at large. So we get denunciations, panic and a spiral of hatred. That part of the story seems more modern than anything (while this book is described as "historical", Maloney doesn't make it read as ye olde tyme speech, he's happy enough to throw in an "okay" or talk about "tuning in" to a conversation - making the whole thing more immediate, even if it might offend purists).
Overall, an enthralling and thought-provoking tale, especially once the story really gets moving. There were a couple of strands that I thought could have been given more detail - for example, the bad blood between Burnett and the local Sheriff, Dawkins, which isn't really explained although it is an important factor in what happens, and the shift in old Mrs Sangster from an almost bardic teller of ancient pagan tales to an accusing denouncer of witchcraft. However these are fairly minor points in the story overall.
Recommended.
Iain Maloney
PB 254pp
If you pressed me to sum this book up in a few words, I'd say "modern gothic". Or perhaps, to make it absolutely clear, modern Gothick. There is an air about it of one of those tales where monstrous, freak events abound, people are buffeted and baffled and heroes tested.
The story is set in mid 18th century Scotland, somewhere on the west coast. Abdale is a remote village on the banks of a sea loch, set under Silma Hill with its circle of ancient standing stones.
The leading light of the village - or so he would like to think it Burnett, minister of the village. Mr Burnett is the minister of the village. Widowed, he lives with his sixteen year old daughter Fiona, whom he treats like a servant.
Though living in a backwater, Burnett has dreams of scientific glory, wishing to join the "Society" in the "capital" and contribute learned papers. (It's one of the marks of this book that while in one sense the setting is clear, in another, Abdale appears a bit placeless, or timeless, only loosely anchored in history: it's definitely an unusual place in religious terms with a - presumably ancient - cross at the centre of the village, and prayers for the departed). His opportunity comes when old Sangster, digging for peat on Silma Hill, finds an ancient wooded statue: Burnett determines to study this - even after Sangster drops dead and villagers begin to mutter about idolatry.
For me one of the best aspects of the book was the slow burn, the way that events - and accusations - then slowly take hold, gossip spreads, old rivalries and grudges are engaged. Maloney doesn't make it completely clear what is really at the bottom of it all - like that giant armoured head in The Castle of Otranto, the reality may be too big to grasp. Rather it's the reaction that he focusses on, or, I might say the overreaction - while some pretty strange events do take place, I'm not sure there's anything that is actually threatening or harmful. I was also absorbed by the character and contradictions of Burnett - preaching a loving God but beating his daughter; supposedly the voice of religion in his tiny parish while yearning for the scientific world of the "Society", rationalism and the enlightenment; forced by his office to lead the investigation of "witchcraft" which neither he (nor, apparently, any of the others involved) actually believes in.
While Burnett is not an admirable person his self-justifications are understandable and recognisably human, as are the no less ignoble reactions of the villagers at large. So we get denunciations, panic and a spiral of hatred. That part of the story seems more modern than anything (while this book is described as "historical", Maloney doesn't make it read as ye olde tyme speech, he's happy enough to throw in an "okay" or talk about "tuning in" to a conversation - making the whole thing more immediate, even if it might offend purists).
Overall, an enthralling and thought-provoking tale, especially once the story really gets moving. There were a couple of strands that I thought could have been given more detail - for example, the bad blood between Burnett and the local Sheriff, Dawkins, which isn't really explained although it is an important factor in what happens, and the shift in old Mrs Sangster from an almost bardic teller of ancient pagan tales to an accusing denouncer of witchcraft. However these are fairly minor points in the story overall.
Recommended.
22 June 2015
Review: The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas
The Seed Collectors
Scarlett Thomas
Canongate, 2 July 2015
Hardback, 417 pages
I'm grateful to the publisher and author for letting me have advance copy of this book . I'd been anticipating it for ages - I think Scarlett Thomas blogged the title at least three years ago.
And the wait was worthwhile. While I would happily read a telephone directory authored by Thomas simply for the writing, "The Seed Collectors" is an extremely absorbing, readable book, funny in places, sad in places (sometimes the same ones). Above all it is perceptive, and deeply human.
The story moves between several different viewpoints, mostly members of the rambling Gardener family: Fleur, her lover Pi, Charlie, a botanist with an imaginative sex life, his colleagues Izzy and Nicola, botanist and filmmaker Clem and Skye Turner, a pop star who has risen from humble origins, alcoholic (but coping... kind of...) Bryony and her troubled daughter. These are distinct voices, but the twists of the plot, and the way the characters interact, means that while sometimes it's clear who is speaking, often it isn't (at least, till you catch the rhythm of the novel and see what she's doing) and there are sections in other voices altogether and parts which read as disembodied commentary (commentary, not narration: for example "Somewhere in the world there is a magical book..." or "Imagine one day... who were you, before you forgot"). These might be fragments of the narratives referred to in the book, or the observations of someone else, not in the story: it isn't clear, but the effect is one of layering, perhaps as in a painting, intensifying the reality of the characters even while distancing the text from them. There are even parts in the voice of a garden robin (I know, I know - but really, it's not twee at all, rather it is intense, conveying a realistic personality without any hint of a pseudo "person". )
The story moves between several different viewpoints, mostly members of the rambling Gardener family: Fleur, her lover Pi, Charlie, a botanist with an imaginative sex life, his colleagues Izzy and Nicola, botanist and filmmaker Clem and Skye Turner, a pop star who has risen from humble origins, alcoholic (but coping... kind of...) Bryony and her troubled daughter. These are distinct voices, but the twists of the plot, and the way the characters interact, means that while sometimes it's clear who is speaking, often it isn't (at least, till you catch the rhythm of the novel and see what she's doing) and there are sections in other voices altogether and parts which read as disembodied commentary (commentary, not narration: for example "Somewhere in the world there is a magical book..." or "Imagine one day... who were you, before you forgot"). These might be fragments of the narratives referred to in the book, or the observations of someone else, not in the story: it isn't clear, but the effect is one of layering, perhaps as in a painting, intensifying the reality of the characters even while distancing the text from them. There are even parts in the voice of a garden robin (I know, I know - but really, it's not twee at all, rather it is intense, conveying a realistic personality without any hint of a pseudo "person". )
It's not all "voices". There are letters and other texts and a (long, long) list of essential characteristics for a girlfriend, written, clearly, by an adolescent male and stuffed with pomposity and misogyny and contradiction - but which is then almost heartstopping when it concludes "44. Understands what it is like to lose mother". That is something Thomas does so well in this book - turning the mood of a passage on a sixpence with writing that is sharp, electric, absolutely on the button, often when observing flailing, failing relationships. Another example is the bald statement that Fleur was no bother as a child to her father - because he didn't admit she was his daughter. Or there the description of Holly, Bryony's awkward daughter, as another of her mother's failed projects.
Thomas will follow a shopping trip, a university seminar or a meal in a restaurant, sometimes digressing for several pages to tell us about walking palm trees, tennis tactics, yoga or the failure mode of the Smartguide tooth cleaning helper. But there's always something there, some bit of distracted thought or compulsive behaviour that illustrates a character better than pages of dialgue would. That, combined with the changing viewpoints, the wide assembly of characters and the uncertainty over who's speaking means there isn't such an obvious plot as in some of Thomas's earlier books. Consequently "The Seed Collectors" has a more diffuse air than they do which may not be to everyone's taste - for myself, I loved it: done well, that kind of digressive, sprawling story just takes root in the mind and grows, almost as thought it weren't actually written at all.
This book is done well: the stems have been pruned and carefully trained. What's presented - however much at times it appears incidental - is essential, giving hints about the characters and about the relationships between them, actual and emotional. And despite what I wrote above, there is plot. I said it was diffuse, and that's how it starts, but it becomes clearer: there's almost something holographic about the book, the whole story runs through every moment but the more of it you read, the sharper it becomes. A great deal does happen in this book and has happened - only it isn't described as it happens. We see instead the impact, the ripples, and like a hologram, when you look at those the right way the events come into focus and jump out at you.
This book is done well: the stems have been pruned and carefully trained. What's presented - however much at times it appears incidental - is essential, giving hints about the characters and about the relationships between them, actual and emotional. And despite what I wrote above, there is plot. I said it was diffuse, and that's how it starts, but it becomes clearer: there's almost something holographic about the book, the whole story runs through every moment but the more of it you read, the sharper it becomes. A great deal does happen in this book and has happened - only it isn't described as it happens. We see instead the impact, the ripples, and like a hologram, when you look at those the right way the events come into focus and jump out at you.
Most immediately, at the start of the book the funeral has just taken place of a central character - Oleander, who established Namaste House, a retreat centre with overtones of Eastern mysticism, which Fleur takes over. Oleander's funeral isn't described, instead we see members of the extended Gardener family afterwards, like fragments of debris after an explosion. Similarly, there has been a bequest of rare (poisonous, exotic, perhaps magical, it's never quite clear) seed pods to family members, but this is never directly stated nor is it explained.until much later. Even then, it's far from clear exactly what was inherited: these seeds may not all be same. The terms of Oleander's will are only heard indirectly from a telephone conversation and so only described at second hand. Oleander herself never features either - instead we're given some sideways insight about her. For example, Pi claims that "Imagine you are a squirrel" is the kind of thing she might have said - but this is immediately followed by the narrator/ commentator (perhaps this is Oleander, somehow?) picking up the sentence and meditating on a squirrel's life. Then there are the references to the "prophet" who lives at Namaste House, and who is clearly an important part of the setup - but it's as though knowledge is assumed: nothing is explained. Thomas is though so good at describing one thing through its impact on another, that pretty soon we think we know what's what. So as we see how Namaste House runs and how Fleur regards it, we're nodding along, thinking, ah yes, the Prophet, just like him, that.
The central, defining event of the book is very much part of this pattern, something that happened years before and which isn't described until a fair way into the story (and then at second hand, and who can you really trust to tell you the truth in a book like this?) when three members of the family vanished searching for those seed pods. This is I think the root of all that happens: children are left coping (badly) with loss, and not knowing what happened, setting of trains of events down (and across) the generations. There's a lot of low self-worth, leading to overeating and compulsive behaviour: drinking, eating, shopping, sex. Grandchildren pick up the vibes and go adrift. But it's all protectively, fiercely, managed in a very English middle-class way - that indirectness again, not stating what's right in front of you but hinting, assuming, coping.
A lot of this seems to fall on Bryony, who is an alcoholic - in a fearfully knowledgeable way, as though the fact that the wine she has waiting for is her is good wine, named wine that cost £30 a bottle, means she is, really, in control - and compulsive shopper (ditto: she knows all the brands, but she has an "e-Bay room" full of stuff she bought and has no use or desire for - shopping is, as Thomas says, like a drug in its effects). Thomas is really good at describing Bryony's relationship with food, her mind an endless fight between the intention to diet and the overwhelming will to eat, crystallised in a stream of thought that's half guilt, half justification, as well as her shopping: "Bryony has taken off and is now moving around the display of handbags like a large tornado moves around the east coast of the USA. She's only about seventy per cent predictable, and could arrive anywhere without warning..."
Bryony is a magnificent creation, sympathetic and horrible at the same time. However, this entire family seems pretty dysfunctional. While a lot of what they're going through might attract the hashtag #firstworldproblems - they're all fairly well off, nobody is homeless or even poor (in contrast with most of Thomas's earlier protagonists) - they seem oddly unfit to actually cope with the pressures of the modern world. Bryony even has trouble working a telephone at one point. Others take refuge in syncretistic mysticism or food faddism (Charlie - when he's not having or imagining weird sex).
Bryony is a magnificent creation, sympathetic and horrible at the same time. However, this entire family seems pretty dysfunctional. While a lot of what they're going through might attract the hashtag #firstworldproblems - they're all fairly well off, nobody is homeless or even poor (in contrast with most of Thomas's earlier protagonists) - they seem oddly unfit to actually cope with the pressures of the modern world. Bryony even has trouble working a telephone at one point. Others take refuge in syncretistic mysticism or food faddism (Charlie - when he's not having or imagining weird sex).
This inability to cope isn't limited to the Gardners. The main non family member who features, Skye Turner, is a pop singer struggling with fame and money who comes into their orbit after having a You-Tubed meltdown on a train. Skye shows symptoms of the same malaise. When she and Fleur take off for the Hebrides (the family has inherited a remote hunting lodge from Oleander) Thomas has a gentle dig at their Ab Fab lifestyle - Skye and Fleur are sitting by the emergency exit, the very worst people imaginable to have control of it, ...these lipsticked, ponytailed disasters...")
So, the Gardeners stumble through their lives, getting a few things right but a lot wrong, learning something - but not everything - about that disappearance. There's a suggestion of an enlightenment there, for some of them, but it's not I think a central thing - when that blessed state is reached (or not) Thomas in effect takes a device that other writers might base a whole story round, picks it up, examines it, then simply puts it to one side and gets on with the book. Like so much else we're left to speculate about what actually happened, based on the impacts. It's nothing like a tidy or happy ending, but it is though very entertaining getting to that untidy ending, and there is some brilliant writing too - I'll just quote one more example: Bryony, standing picking sunflowers for her husband observes that they "stand in the field like a row of Marilyn Monroes..."
That's exactly right, isn't it? Something I never saw before.
So maybe there is some enlightenment in here, after all.
This is, for me, far and away the best book I've read this year, and the best I expect to read for a long time.
So maybe there is some enlightenment in here, after all.
This is, for me, far and away the best book I've read this year, and the best I expect to read for a long time.
13 June 2015
Review: The Vagrant by Peter Newman
The Vagrant
Peter Newman
Harper Voyager 23 April 2105
HB 404 pages
ISBN 9780007593071
This review first appeared in Shiny New Books.
‘The Vagrant is his name’ runs the strapline for this book. ‘He has no other.’
In fact, the titular character is never called ‘The Vagrant’ by anybody else and he doesn’t refer to himself as such, because he never speaks. But it describes him well. He is homeless, outcast, a scavenger. But as this is a fantasy novel, he is not merely wandering – there is a quest to pursue: he must deliver a renowned sword to its keepers. Eight years before, the demon horde rose from another reality and defeated the armies of the Winged Eye. The sword’s owner then fell to the demon leader, the Usurper, and the weapon is, apparently, a key to victory or defeat: both sides now covet it.
If you’re not a reader of fantasy, that may sound like an offputting summary of a stereotype fantasy novel. I hope that I can convince you otherwise, because
this isn’t an ‘ordinary’ fantasy novel. As he strides through the demon-infested wasteland, the Vagrant also has a baby to care for: to feed (he acquires a goat to supply milk), to clean, to entertain and (when she becomes ill) to find medicine for. And there is more, much more. Those who do read fantasy will of course know already that it’s a varied and surprising genre and that the ‘ordinary’ version, while it exists, is paradoxically not representative and that you never really know what to expect – but this book makes that point in spades.
One can only admire both the Vagrant’s determination (how DO you get out of a tricky situation when you can’t draw your sword for fear of dropping Baby and you can’t talk your way out because you can’t talk?) and Newman’s confidence in his storytelling, especially given this is a first novel. Both do, however, pay off as the book moves through a series of ever more perilous, ever more intricate adventures. Luckily (…perhaps…) the wasteland isn’t completely empty. There are shattered towns, and shattered people. Food, shelter and even medicine are available, at a price. But the people are desperate and even more of a threat than the demons. There are dark trades in human flesh. There is collaboration with the occupiers. Everywhere, the struggle for survival taints the spirit as the demon-stuff taints the body.
These demons aren’t just scaly monsters from the Abyss, they are formed from an essence, an undifferentiated, fluid contagion that flows through and transforms things, bringing mutations to humans and animals and sometimes congealing dead (or living) bodies to create a new being. Such are the Uncivil, the Usurper, the Half-Alive, the Hammer and the feared Knights of Jade and Ash. The descriptions of some of the fully demonic – dark souls cloaked in vestments made of reanimated, fused human bodies – are vivid and truly horrifying and the transformed humans no less disturbing.
It is a strength of the book that all the creatures that the Vagrant he meets –demon, corrupted human or wretched survivor – are fully rounded and, often sympathetic, even the ‘monsters’. The Vagrant himself senses this. As he travels among these wretched folk, he seeks to retain his own humanity and can’t but try to help – defending a village here, freeing a group of prisoners there, paying for food he recovers from a band of marauders who stole it from him. When he cannot help, and has to abandon to death a woman who aided him, he rages (and Newman is adroit at showing, not telling, you this, even without speech). The tone and setting reminded me somewhat of a Western: the Man With No Name comes into town, standing up against the outlaws and improbably rallying the townsfolk – but always risks losing his way, becoming one of his enemies.
And like the best Westerns, the book doesn’t deal in black and white. There are no rescuers. When we eventually meet the remnants of the force the demons overcame, the Seraph Knights of the Winged Eye, they’re an aloof, arrogant and entitled lot, obsessed with ‘purity’ and expunging the demon taint, even if it means killing those who carry it. At one level, there isn’t much to choose between the demon army and the Winged Eye, indeed in some respects the demons themselves are more sympathetic, more capable of change and possibly redemption. Some offer (dubious) compromise and try to make a reality of the new mixed world created by their eruption from the Breach. In contrast, the Winged Eye shelter behind their force barrier, maintaining their purity and waiting for the magic sword that will save them (but rather scorning the ragged man who carries it).
While most of the action of the story takes place in the present there is a series of flashbacks, describing how the demons came into the world and who, and what, the Vagrant is. I generally don’t like too much flashback but these episodes are integrated well and there are not too many of them. My only (slight) criticism of the book would be that there is a slight jarring between these events purportedly having begun eight years before, and the descriptions of the wasteland and its people which seem to suggest a much longer period of decay and decline. But that’s to nitpick. It’s a compelling and vivid world, peopled by well rounded and sometimes tragic characters (I’d defy anyone not to cry over the fate of one, in particular, of the Vagrant’s band).
Newman explores prejudice and redemption, the need for compassion set against the drive for survival, even the treatment of refugees (regarded by one side as at best useless mouths, by the other as a source of body parts and slaves). The choice to make his central character voiceless seems risky to begin with, but pays off brilliantly in this intelligent, readable and absorbing novel.
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