#Blogtour #Review - Violet by SJI Holliday

Violet
SJI Holliday
Orenda Books, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 231pp

Today, I'm rounding off the blogtour for Violet, the tense new psychological thriller by SJI Holliday whose previous book The Lingering told of supernatural horror among a cultish group living in an abandoned asylum (and to which there's a bit of a callback here). I'm grateful to Orenda Books for a free copy of Violet for review and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part.

This is a story of two young women. Violet walked out on her boyfriend Sam, leaving him in Vietnam and travelling to Beijing to find something better (but losing half her luggage en route). It seems Sam just wasn't the man she thought he was...

Carrie set out on the holiday of a lifetime - but without her best friend Laura, who was going to come with her. Laura had an unfortunate accident back in Edinburgh involving drink, cobblestones and high heels and is currently immobilised as a result. So Laura has spare tickets for a rail trip back through Mongolia and Siberia to Moscow.

When the two meet in a Beijing hotel lobby, where Violet is stranded having just missed the opening hours of the booking office it therefore sounds like fate. The two go off and get drunk, and their problems are solved. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, as you can imagine, quite a lot. Once these two apparently straightforward women are thrown together in a small sleeping compartment, it becomes clear that they both have complicated histories. And complicated secrets. The themes of strangers on a train, of the claustrophobic, isolated space of the sleeping car, the endless days crossing a bleak landscape, may seem very well worn - but Holliday is here now to inject new life and menace into them.

The story is told mostly from Violet's perspective, but interspersed by emails between Carrie and her family and friends. We soon begin to see that there's something... off... about Violet. She has, we are told, had 'many looks' and it may be time to try a new one. This feels a bit more like a fashion choice. Hearing Violet's internal monologue, we're aware of her latching on to Carrie. Carrie could be what Violet needs, muses Violet (even as she obsessively stalks her ex on Facebook). But Violet has to be careful. Just what is her game? Is she sponging off Carrie? Certainly Violet (still missing her luggage) ends up wearing items of Carrie's clothing which Carrie can't remember lending her. But they are drinking rather a lot so perhaps things get missed...

So it continues until the two stop off in Mongolia for shopping, an encounter with wild horses and, eventually, an allegedly indigenous religious ceremony that seems to be a cover for consumption of potent mushrooms leadings to an experience we are never, quite, told the details of. Whatever, it seems to reset the relationship between Violet and Carrie (and to put Carrie's behaviour in a rather different light).

After this, things get complicated between the two and the enclosed atmosphere of the train even more chaffing. There's nowhere to go. There's a dependency between the women but at the same time a hostility. Is it a case of grifter and mark? Seducer and seduced? Are they both playing each other, using one another? Jealousy also rears its head. Different levels, different layers of need, of abuse, of deceit, surface. If this were a film there would be many scenes of uneasy silence, of watching, of glances intercepted. It gets

really

really

REALLY

intense, the journey being soaked in an atmosphere of palpable menace and, yes, even of evil. We don't really have a clue what is going on - Holliday reveals things slowly and you have to put together little clues (it's as much about what you don't see happening as what you do). We do know, sort of, where it will end up - the book opens with a short prologue - or rather we think we do, but I will warn you: trust nothing and no-one here. Like her characters, Holliday has many secrets and the book keeps springing them to the very end.

It is a great, tense read which I burned through in a single day. Whether describing Violet's and Carrie's raucous progress across Asia, their fractious relationship, the shifty groups of young men who wait in station car parks and seedy markets or the dubious pleasures of tourist hotels and packaged experiences, Holliday's eye is always sharp and you'll feel as though you are right there. Violet and Carrie also feel real - horrible at times, but real - and as their history emerges you'll feel sympathy for both, if at times limited sympathy.

Recommended.

For more information about Violet, see the Orenda Books website.

You can buy the book from your local bookshop, or online from Hive Books (which supports local shops), from Blackwell's, WH Smith, Foyles, Waterstones or Amazon.

As you can see from the tour poster below, there have been some superb reviews of Violet so far in the tour, and I'd urge you to dip in and sample some of them.

The Sunday Times/ University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award - Shadow Panel result! #YoungWriterAwardShadow

Well, I've got some news...

Over the past month, with four other bloggers - Anne Cater of Random Things Though My Letterbox, Linda Hill of Linda's Book Bag, Clare Reynolds of Years Of Reading Selfishly and Phoebe Williams, The Brixton Bookworm - I have been reading and reviewing the nominated books for The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. We are the Shadow Panel, assembled to give a bloggy view on the shortlist. before the judges proper announce the official winner.

I found the standard of each dauntingly high, and they are also very different books.

Last Thursday, the shadow panellists met to decide our winner. It was all done in the offices of FMcM Associates, which - to make things even more bookish - turns out to be near King's Cross Station, through a REALLY small, scruffy door set in a larger gate - and then through a hidden yard and up a ladder. All very Harry Potter.

We were hosted by the incredibly efficient and friendly Robert Greer, who made sure tea, coffee and biscuits flowed, and we were kept on task by Houman Barekat whose main aim was I think to ensure we did, actually, choose a single winner (no Booker shenanigans here, thank you very much). He excelled at this - as well as keeping us to time and on task (put a group of bloggers together unmoderated and you know what'll happen).

But - despite the biscuits and Houman's gentle guidance - it was, as I have said, HARD. The books on the shortlist are ALL GOOD.

VERY GOOD. Here, as a reminder, they are - in the order we discussed them, that is, alphabetically by author.

The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (Penned in the Margins) has been described as "an extraordinary debut from a young British-Jamaican poet. The Perseverance is a book of loss, language and praise. One of the most crucial new voices to emerge from Britain, Raymond Antrobus explores the d/Deaf experience, the death of his father and the failure to communicate. Ranging across history, time zones and continents, The Perseverance operates in the in betweens of dual heritages, of form and expression emerging to show us what it means to exist, and to flourish."

I reviewed The Perseverance here. It is a fascinating and enlightening collection of poems with a very strong voice throughout, staking a claim against ensure and marginalisation. It deserves to be widely read.

You can buy The Perseverance from your local bookshop, from Hive Books, Waterstones or Amazon.

salt slow by Julie Armfield (Picador) is a "brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, [in which] Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge. Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones.

The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely."

These are stories that centre young women's experiences, that take the time to express their feelings, indeed to personify those feelings. They have an eerie sense of being at the same time in the mundane world and also somewhere quite different - with the combination being totally compatible, totally to be expected, something to be lived with and through. Taken together this is a strong collection, and a joy to read.

My review of salt slow is here. You can buy salt slow from your local bookshop, from Hive Books, Waterstones or Amazon.




Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (fleet) is "A bold debut novel exploring the nuances and the spaces between ourselves and our bodies, told through the shards collected by our own stubborn archivist. When your mother considers another country home, it’s hard to know where you belong. When the people you live among can’t pronounce your name, it’s hard to know exactly who you are. And when your body no longer feels like your own, it’s hard to understand your place in the world. This is a novel of growing up between cultures, of finding your space within them and of learning to live in a traumatized body. Our stubborn archivist tells her story through history, through family conversations, through the eyes of her mother, her grandmother and her aunt and slowly she begins to emerge into the world, defining her own sense of identity."

I found the book's playfulness with form a joy to read, perfectly matching the subject and themes by depicting the gaps and crossovers between languages, cultures and experiences. It documents some dark experiences and times, as well as the joy of family life lived well, and made excellent reading.

My review is here. You can buy Stubborn Archivist from your local bookshop, from Hive Books, Waterstones or Amazon.

The fourth book on the shortlist was Testament by Kim Sherwood (riverrun), introduced thus: 'The letter was in the Blue Room - her grandfather’s painting studio, where Eva spent the happier days of her childhood. After his death, she is the one responsible for his legacy - a legacy threatened by the letter she finds. It is from the Jewish Museum in Berlin. They have found the testimony her grandfather gave after surviving the labour camps in Austria. And, since he was one of Britain’s greatest twentieth century artists, they want to exhibit it. But Joseph Silk - leaving behind József Zyyad - remade himself long ago. As Eva begins to uncover the truth, she understands the trauma, and the lies, that have haunted her family. She will unravel what happened to József and his brother, who came to England as refugees. One never spoke of his past - the other couldn’t let it go. Their story - and that of the woman they both loved - is in her hands. Revealing it would change her grandfather’s hard- won identity. But it could also change the tide of history. This testament can lend words to wordless grief, and teach her how to live."

For me, Testament is a book that beautifully masters what it is trying to say, shows what has been and what the consequences can be. I loved the characters in this book, their flaws and their struggles, and felt that it truly honoured those who suffered and those who inherited aspects of that suffering. It's also a book which has, because it must have, warnings for us, warning not to forget, warnings to be on guard, to keep watch.

My review is here. You can buy Testament from your local bookshop, from Hive Books, Waterstones or Amazon.

So - how could we compare these books? There were so many differences and similarities. A book of poems, focusing very strongly on identity and family. Short stories making visible and real the dislocations and tensions of modern life. A novel about family and belonging and not belonging, often veering into the poetic and also based firmly in identity. A novel about family lost and regained, survival and consequences and, again, identity lost, captured, remoulded.

The only way, we felt, was to take them as books. How far did each achieve what it set out to do? Did it make sense to compare it to other books of the same type or was it too distinctive for that to work? What did we think about the language? We all had different reading experiences and focusses and this was useful in putting the books in context.  We had also read each others' reviews and sometimes found that another panel member our own feelings into words better than we could ourselves. So we gave our views, in turn, on each book, after which Houman summed up. Then, we had a general discussion after which we voted on the winner.

The books are, as I have said, all of a very high standard and any one of them would have been a worthy winner, but at the end of our fiendish judging process we decided that the winning book for the 2019 Sunday Times/ University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award would be...

#Review - salt slow by Julia Armfield #YoungWriterAwardShadow

Cover design by Ami Smithson,
Picador Art Department

salt slow
Julia Armfield
Picador, 30 May 2019
HB, e, 193pp

This is my final review as part of shadow judging the The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. I am part of the Shadow Panel which will make its own choice from the shortlist for the award.

The four shortlisted books are Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet/ Little, Brown), Testament by Kim Sherwood (riverrun), The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (Penned in the Margins) and salt slow by Julia Armfield (Picador).

About the Author

Julia Armfield lives and works in London. She is a fiction writer and occasional playwright with a Masters in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. Her work has been published in Lighthouse, Analog Magazine, Neon Magazine and The Stockholm Review. She was commended in the Moth Short Story Prize 2017, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Prize 2018 and is the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018.

About the Book

In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge. Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones.

The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely.

My Review

salt slow is a collection of Armfield's short stories, mostly with a fantastical element. There are nine stories in all, which in varying ways make a metaphor, an inner condition or aspect of being real. That might mean losing the ability to sleep when that sleep takes physical form and steps away, incarnating a Valkyrie-like feminine force as a rock group on tour or expressing the tension and mourning of one's parents breaking up by taking on the nature of a wolf. They're stories that centre young women's experiences, that take the time to express their feelings, indeed to personify those feelings.

Every one of the stories is a joy to read. My favourite was Formerly Feral which begins 'When the woman who lived across the road adopted a wold and brought it to live with her...' It just gets - beautifully, richly - stranger from there. The words 'adopted' and 'live with' mean a bit more than they sound. The wolf is treated as a daughter, dressed and bathed. At the same time there's no twee anthropomorphism, the narrator quotes handbooks and articles which advise against wold-ownership and the book makes a lot of its animalism, from the smell to the biting. At the same time it explores the affinity between the narrator, whose parents have split, and the animal, blurring the boundaries between the two and finding unexpected common ground. I just loved this story.

Mantis is a closely observed story of a young woman in adolescence, her experiences at school, her
hopes and fears and thoughts about life, boys and her body - framed as a concern over having bad skin. All sorts of applications and treatments are tried, and family history evoked: the (never named) narrator's family is invoked, it's a genetic thing, and we hear about her grandmother (a 'party girl'). Is that genetic as well? Is that why the references to a grandfather are so enigmatic ('Your Granddad wasn't around by that time'). I thought I could see the fantastical premise that was coming, but it's a tribute to the power of Armfield's writing that even as it looms she keeps a balance between the believable, psychologically right feeling of her narrator and the ultimate destination of the story. It all fits together.

In The Great Awake, Janey narrates a worldwide change, as one by one, city-dwellers lose their Sleep. That is, a part of them steps away. The Sleeps are like silent, annoying houseguests who lurk, never speaking, rearranging one's books or studying the rugs or bickering with each other - but their visibility, their separateness, denies their (what? Owners?) the ability to sleep at all. It doesn't happen to everyone, not at once, and those who are missed begin to feel left out. Like a milder version of a John Wyndham catastrophe, Armfield draws out the implications of having the Sleeps around, the 24 hour society that forms, the dilemmas and betrayals that results, and the personal impact.

The Collectables is... kind of a horror story. A group of women, graduate students, sharing a house, order pizza and decry the men who have, in various ways, treated them badly. But, they admit, those men all had some good features. Isn't it a pity you can't take just those things and put them together in a single man? Given the crossover here between yearning emotional truth and the real, that poses a challenge which one of the women takes up.

Stop Your Women's Ears with Wax is - as the title suggests - somewhat myth influenced. Mona is a filmmaker attached with an all-women band on tour. As the coach slogs from Manchester to Liverpool, over the sea to Ireland, to York, to London, a strangeness sets in. Gruesome events happen in the tour's wake, and the group's female fans rampage. Details blur - Mona's not sure how she joined the tour - and anyone who crosses them suffers misfortunes. Again in this story Armfield holds the mundane and the mythic in balance, crossing glimpses of the strange with streetlights and motorway services at 2am.

In Granite, men are fragile, hard to love because they 'are not built to withstand the same internal pressures'. Nevertheless, Maggie fall for one - late, and she never thought it would happen. Will she be careful enough with him? Can she? I think this story beatifically exposes the fragility and delicacy of a relationship, despite (or because of) it being all-consuming, and the helplessness one faces in the faces of the the world, of others outside who will impress their own presuppositions on it.

Smack does a similar thing. It has less of the fantastical about it than many of the stories here - the sudden stranding of thousands of jellyfish aside, but that is a real thing that happens - as it focusses on Nicola. Following divorce, she has holed up in her ex's beach house - literally, she's locked herself in with food and plans to withstand a siege. With nothing to do - the power has been cut off - she explores the relationship and where it went wrong.

In Cassandra After, the narrator's girlfriend returns to her one night... from the grave. ('Mt mother had always told me it was better not to answer the door between midnight and three am') Peeling skin and with holes in her, she engages in polite conversation and we see in capsule a history of the relationship. The tone of the story is exquisitely calibrated, the narrator not so much shocked or scared as embarrassed.

salt slow, the titular story off the collection is a little different from most of the rest in that it takes place in a visibly strange, deranged world. The lather stories feature disturbances, fantasy elements, in a normal, rational world (and one of Armfield's accomplishments is to keep this sense of "normality" even as weird things go on) but in salt slow, the world itself has turned strange. We are in some kind of post-apocalyptic setting where the world is flooded and a man and woman survive in a boat, scavenging what they can from the water (iffy, because the saline appears to be dying) or fro other survivors. Again though there is that talent for preserving some kind of normality between thew two, which here seems to mean avoiding the big questions: What has happened? What do we do? As things get stranger and stranger though there must - we think - come a point when that can't be maintained...

Taken together this is a strong collection of stories. They have an eerie sense of being at the same time in the mundane world and also somewhere quite different - with the combination being totally compatible, totally to be expected, something to be lived with and through.

A very enjoyable book.

Review - Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri

Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

Realm of Ash (The Books of Ambha, 2)
Tasha Suri
Orbit, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 454pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance copy of Realm of Ash to consider for review.

Realm of Ash follows on from Empire of Sand, published last year although - and I found this rather welcome - it doesn't just take forward the story of Mehr, who was central to the earlier book. Instead it follows the life of Mehr's sister Arwa, skipping forward a number of years.

While Mehr chose to follow her Amrithi ancestry in defiance of the ruling Empire of Ambha, a desire that led her into the hands of the centuries-old spiritual leader known as the Maha, Arwa, we find, instead sought to suppress her heritage, trying to become an obedient, honourable member of Ambhan society.

We thus get quite a different perspective from that in Empire of Sand. Instead of rebellion and outright repression, Arwa's story is one of internal struggle, of self disgust at her Amrithi blood and - coaxed by her father's new wife - of her attempts to be "better" than that blood. As the book opens, Arwa is a widow, travelling to a distant hermitage to regroup after a horrific experience. Yet she's got no plans for rebellion or escape. Yes, Mehr has secrets, but they're about self-preservation and keeping those around her safe, rather than defiance. That makes, perhaps, for a slower start to a book than if this was all about rebellion and opposition. An introspective, more nuanced start, rather than one of blazing action (although that does come!).

It also makes this a fascinating and convincing study of an oppressed woman. Arwa's culture, her birthright, has been traduced and stripped from her, leaving only the ways of the invader. Her people are persecuted and her sister dead. Arwa is anxious to "pass", to earn a little bit of respect, of regard - something made harder, in a deeply patriarchal society, by her widowhood.

Try as she might, she is still, though, an outsider, a stranger and is reduced, eventually, to offering her very blood to nurture the Empire that enslaves her. All is not well for the Empire, after the events of Empire of Sand, though it has not fallen overnight - and again Suri departs a bit from the template of heroic fantasy by portraying this decay and the dangers it presents. The wounded beast may be a greater threat than the monster was when intact: following the Maha's death, and the misfortunes that arose for the Empire and its people, there are heresy hunts, military campaigns against the indigenous people, and power struggles at Court. 'Court has talons' as one character tells Arwa - and indeed, she is soon plunged into a heady whirl of politics, forbidden magic and suspicion.

I really enjoyed how Suri portrays Arwa, a woman wracked by internal conflict and fear who cannot, must not, allow anyone to see what she's going through. The story of someone who sets out to uphold an Empire may not sound as sexy as a tale of rebels and revolutionaries but please believe me, Tasha Suri weaves a taut, exciting narrative. It's never more so than when Arwa, or the born-the-wrong-side-of-the-sheets prince, Zahir, for whom she's obliged to work, seems to be close to removing the curse that is on Ambha. Will all Mehr's sacrifices be undone by her own people's inherited magic?

So - an evil. oppressive Empire but seen from the inside, with real passion, real determination yoked to its preservation because - in these disordered times - people are suffering, starving, dying and they need help. There is genuine moral conflict and tension here as a submerged heritage fights with the imperative to earn respect and honour, and an urge to maintain the familiar, even if that brings risks.

The book has brilliantly realised characters, a morally complex setup, a wonderfully constructed society based on Mughal India - and also a dash of romance (tricky, given the hierarchical and sexist constraints of that society). And of course, also magic, the sometimes glimpsed, sometimes felt twilight of the daiva with whom the Amrithi share a history.

I loved Empire of Sand. I adored Realm of Ash. Frankly, I just can't wait to see what Tasha Suri brings us next.

For more about Realm of Ash, see the publisher's website here.

#Review The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus #YoungWriterAwardShadow

Cover design by Daniel Benneworth-Gray

The Perseverance
Raymond Antrobus
Penned in the Margins, 1 October 2018
PB, 91pp

This is my third (of four) reviews as part of shadow judging the The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. I am part of the Shadow Panel which will make its own choice from the shortlist for the award.

The four shortlisted books are Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet/ Little, Brown), Testament by Kim Sherwood (riverrun), The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (Penned in the Margins) and salt slow by Julia Armfield (Picador).

About the Author

Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Complete Works III and Jerwood Compton Poetry. He is one of the world’s first recipients of an MA in Spoken Word Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. Raymond is a founding member of Chill Pill and Keats House Poets Forum. He has had multiple residencies in deaf and hearing schools around London, as well as Pupil Referral Units. In 2018 he was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Award by the Poetry Society (judged by Ocean Vuong). The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins, 2018), was a Poetry Book Society Choice, the winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Ted Hughes Award, and was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

About the Book

"An extraordinary debut from a young British-Jamaican poet, The Perseverance is a book of loss, language and praise. One of the most crucial new voices to emerge from Britain, Raymond Antrobus explores the d/Deaf experience, the death of his father and the failure to communicate. Ranging across history, time zones and continents, The Perseverance operates in the in betweens of dual heritages, of form and expression emerging to show us what it means to exist, and to flourish."


My Review

The Perseverance (named, Antrobus explains in a note, after the London pub where his father used to drink) is a collection of twenty nine poems. In form they range from traditional poems to paragraphs of poetic text to scattered, bare words. There is a dense, angry reversal of a Ted Hughes poem written after Hughes had visited a Deaf school, Hughes' words blocked out in a commentary on his thoughts about the Deaf pupils (look to the next poem, After Reading 'Deaf School' by the Mississippi River for specifics: it refers back scathingly to Hughes' poem and makes a connection with the way French settlers usurped and overwrote the language and land of the indigenous people of the Mississippi region).

In places the verse is supplemented by sign, very sparing, but enough to remind those who don't sign of the other side of the language divide. In others, Antrobus seeks to reproduce the experience of hearing, or speaking, as a Deaf person - the first poem, Echo, begins with the whistling of his ear amps 'as if singing/ to Echo, Goddess of noise' and goes on to recount his  own attempts as a child to pronounce his family name 'as 'Antrob' (he doesn't hear 'bus'). Echo is a kind of introduction, leading to the moment that Antrobus's Deafness is identified and hinting at some of the themes of this book - for example family.

Family is central here, especially Antrobus's relationship with is father and his father's history. It is, I think ambivalent, as shown in The Perseverance where his father disappears into the pub for a drink (or drinks) eventually popping out to give his sone 50p. This is a particularly beautiful poem, as well as being particularly sad. Other poems explore Antrobus's father's illness and dementia as well as his father's Jamaican heritage and the impact on him: half English, half Jamaican. And family remain back in Jamaica too.

It's a very keenly observed book, a sharpened book in some places, skewering particular injustices such as the killing of a Black Deaf man by US police (Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris: the 'two guns' referring to the ASL sign for 'Alive') or Antrobus's treatment by US border officials (Miami Airport - a poem where the words literally sublime, turning into a cloud of fragments which both conveys how they may come over to a Deaf person and also shows up the unfairness, the fractured logic and weird presuppositions of a basically racist worldview. Sorry, that sounds very pompous. Just read the poem!)

As well as being inspired by contemporary events and themes Antrobus also looks at Deaf people in history - finding stories for example in Dickens. Doctor Marigold Re-evaluated doesn't give Dickens the same treatment as Ted Hughes but it does very elegantly point up the able-ism of the original story. One of the things about this book that is so impressive is the range of material covered, and the amount of information it imparts - for example, The Shame of Mabel Gardiner Hubbards, who was Deaf and married Alexander Graham Bell.

This is a fascinating and enlightening collection of poems with a very strong voice throughout, staking a claim against ensure and marginalisation. It deserves to be widely read.

#Blogtour #Review - Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver

Nothing Important Happened Today
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 287pp

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for a free advance copy of Nothing Important Happened Today and to Anne for inviting me to take part in the blogtour, which I am joining today.

I should give a content warning that this book, and consequences try review, deal with themes of suicide.

Well.

For once, I'm genuinely unsure what to say.

This is a thriller different to any other I've read before. I'm really not exaggerating there. It has me speechless. Nothing I have read before is like this

One evening, as trains bear commuters home from London, nine strangers walk out onto Chelsea Bridge. Attaching nooses to the structure, they place them round their necks, and jump.

Nine deaths, nine strangers - and a manifesto from the "People of Choice". A cult is born.

But why did they die? How was the whole thing arranged? And what happens next? Important questions...

This is high concept material already, but Carver's handling of the story then takes things to an even stranger place. We don't follow the investigation, see how the police track down... something or someone, whoever or whatever caused this. We don't have a detailed examination of one or two of the victims. Instead we get short, intense vignettes of the nine and their lives before. We see the tiny tragedies, the miscommunications, self-absorption, the fatigue, the disappointments of the Lovers, the Poet, the Doctor, the Ungrateful and so on (where do these names come from?)

And Young Levant.

Almost unbearable at times, Carver's clear, simple prose illuminates what are ordinary lives, ordinary failings, ordinary lapses, which - when some obscure switch is turned - become despairing lives, hopeless failings, unforgivable lapses. We see that switch click, but we don't see where it came from, what happened. It is VERY dark, very sad, and we spend a lot of time in the heads of what seem very disagreeable people. Not disagreeable because they are contemplating killing themselves - as becomes clear, most of this group actually want to live (whereby hangs much of the mystery...) Not disagreeable because they are lavishly, epically BAD people. No, disagreeable because they are rather ordinary, rather normal, rather - uncomfortably - like you. Or no, that's not fair, I don't know what you're like.

Rather like me. Irritatingly so. A bit out of it, a bit lazy. There. In a scary, inescapable way, Carver has skewered me on his page. And see where that leads...

Around the story of the Nine (and later, the Two, and then, the Twenty) he then gives us musings on,  clinical, cold instruction in, and discussion of, how to be a mass murderer and not get discovered. And on how to establish a successful cult (and on the intersection of the two).

Again, this can get really grim. There are discussions of murders - Dahmer, Manson, Shipman, Bradey - and how their killings began and what exposed them. There are discussions of cults and how they started and grew, and how their leaders took ordinary people (like me!) and influenced them.

As you might expect these parts can also be hard to read. This is about real murders of real people. I have always shied away from "True Crime" for this very reason - in fiction, however grim, one has the consolation of knowing that at least it's all made up, and the dashy, flashy nature of crime fiction with its hero DIs helps establish that distance, even when (especially when) it gets all noir on you. Here, there isn't that distance. And Carver has clearly thought about his stuff here. There are philosophies and practicalities: the cult leader should have a Number Two who will take the fall when it all comes down. the serial killer should, through, work alone. And so on.

It's a mark, I think, of how good Carver's writing is that he engages despite this dark, grim material. And how he does. Phrases like "unputdownable" and "page-turner" are thrown around too lightly today, but they are really apt here. This is a book that, once started, you have to finish. It's a bit like getting into a very grubby bath which has rather unpleasant things floating in it but basically you have no choice.

An unforgettable book. It is scary to think what Carver could do if he turned his talents to bad. For my part, I'll watch out for crisp white envelopes in the post and put any I do receive straight in the fire...

The Nothing Important Happened Today blogtour continues with a star studded cult, sorry, cast of bloggers as you can see below. For more information about the book, see the publisher's webpage here.

You can buy it from your local independent bookshop, or from Hive Books who support Indies, as well as from Blackwell's, Foyles, Waterstones, WH Smith or Amazon, to name only a few.

#Blogtour #Review - The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North

Design by Steve Panton

The Pursuit of William Abbey
Claire North
Orbit, 14 November
HB, e, 420pp

I'm grateful to Orbit and especially to Nazia Khatun for a free advance reading copy of The Pursuit of William Abbey to consider for review and to Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

A new book by Claire North is always a very special event in my reading calendar, and William Abbey didn't disappoint.

In something of the same vein as the Flying Dutchman, this is a tale of a man cursed after an act of selfishness. William Abbey is a mediocre doctor in 19th century Africa, banished to the colonies after falling for the wrong girl. The sin that curses him is that, when he comes face to face with the lawless racket that is Empire, he is indifferent to an act of savagery. No more and no less indifferent than countless others - but it's Abbey who doesn't act at a particular moment when a boy, Langa, is lynched, Abbey who refuses to help him as he lies dying, and Abbey who Langa's mother curses. I took him as emblematic, perhaps, of the "nothing to do with me" attitude to colonialism and historical crimes.

Under the curse, Abbey suffers a strange, dual fate: everyone he loves is doomed to a terrible death, unless he outruns Langa's spirit. As the spirit comes closer, Abbey is able to read the truths in men's (and women's) hearts. When Langa is really close, Abbey can't help but proclaim those truths. When Langa reaches him, someone dies.

So the endless chase begins.

Langa is not quick, but he is relentless, crossing land and sea, mountain and desert. Abbey has no special resources save his ability to discern truths - but in a fevered world, building up to the Great War, this may be a sought after skill. Or it may be one that will just get William Abbey into an even worse heap of trouble.

Langa comes, he comes...

I loved this story. It is not a pleasant read: North doesn't spare us the realities of colonialism or war, or indeed of the grinding, chaotic lives of the poor (for example, the brutalities of the British in India or the hatreds and prejudices that set new immigrants to the USA against each other, instead of the system that keeps them all poor). More prosaically, Abbey isn't a sympathetic character or one it's easy to spend time in the head of. And Abbey's ability - his curse - perhaps his blessing - allows him, requires him, to tap into streams of truth variously banal, tragic, desperate and revealing. It is, if you will, an all-areas tour of 19th century politics and society. And that means, of course, our politics and society because we are not different people now, are we?

Here are revolutionaries and spies. Thieves and shamans. The poor and the very, very rich. Lovers and blackmailers. Ordinary people clinging on, and people whose way of life is being erased. North's imagination, demonstrated in her peopling of the book, is simply astounding as is her gradual, layer-by-layer portrayal of Abbey himself - presenting not only the naive young man who travels to Africa to be cursed, but the older, cynical operator after decades on the run. And, of course, the gradual process that turns one into the other.

It's a story, I think, of an awakening morality, a gathering empathy as Abbey goes from despair and a desire to be "cured" of his shadow - to "apologise", be "forgiven" and receive some kind of proxy absolution - to a deep appreciation of the ways of the world and a recognition of his part in it, not only in the death of Langa but in the system that produced that death. Meeting other bearers of the same terrible burden, he understands that some see it as a a blessing and actually seek it out.

The morality here is complex. North wants to show, I think, that merely feeling shame, regret, horror, at atrocity is not enough. Distancing oneself from vile events is not enough. (If Twitter had been invented in Abbey's time, I suspect his early travels would have been accompanied by a #NotAllEnglishmen hashtag...) But the search for an alternative is hard. Early on, Abbey hooks up with those who may be able to explain his condition, even cure it. But Langa still comes. Attempts to promote justice and the cause of the "people" don't go far. Sidetracking into personal revenge leads Abbey to the situation framed by the opening of the book, with him as a doctor in the First World War, meeting Sister Ellis, a young nurse at a field hospital - and it's her who, perhaps, brings some moral sense back to Abbey. Ellis herself is fascinating, a woman of humble origins who, like Abbey, fell for the wrong person and who's basically conned her way into the aristocratic club of the Nightingale nurses. Her background gives her, perhaps, a perspective that Abbey - for all his truth telling - has missed. But will it be enough to save him (whatever that means)?

This is a blistering book, a magnificent read, a book with real moral heart, burning with anger and freighted with inconvenient truths. It's a book that will continue to burn away in your mind long after you finish it, that will follow you, steadily, relentlessly, even if you try to leave it behind.

Very, very strongly recommended, and up there with North's best writing.

For more information about the book, see the Orbit website here.

Follow the tour at the blogs on the poster below!

And you can buy the book from your local bookshop, from Hive Books, which supports high street bookshops, from Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon .

#Review - Testament by Kim Sherwood #YoungWriterAwardShadow

Cover design by Andrew Smith

Testament
Kim Sherwood
riverrun, 12 July 2018
PB, 455pp

This is my second (of four) reviews as part of shadow judging the The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. I am part of the Shadow Panel which will make its own choice from the shortlist for the award.

The four shortlisted books are Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet/ Little, Brown), Testament by Kim Sherwood (riverrun), The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (Penned in the Margins) and salt slow by Julia Armfield (Picador).

About the Author

Kim Sherwood was born in Camden in 1989 and lives in Bath. She studied Creative Writing at UEA and is now Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England. Her pieces have appeared in Mslexia, Lighthouse, and Going Down Swinging. Kim began researching and writing Testament, her first novel, after her grandfather, the actor George Baker, passed away and her grandmother began to talk about her experiences as a Holocaust Survivor for the first time. It won the 2016 Bath Novel Award, was longlisted for the 2019 Desmond Elliot Prize and shortlisted for the 2019 Author’s Club Best First Novel Award.

About the Book

'The letter was in the Blue Room - her grandfather’s painting studio, where Eva spent the happier days of her childhood. After his death, she is the one responsible for his legacy - a legacy threatened by the letter she finds. It is from the Jewish Museum in Berlin. They have found the testimony her grandfather gave after surviving the labour camps in Austria. And, since he was one of Britain’s greatest twentieth century artists, they want to exhibit it. But Joseph Silk - leaving behind József Zyyad - remade himself long ago. As Eva begins to uncover the truth, she understands the trauma, and the lies, that have haunted her family. She will unravel what happened to József and his brother, who came to England as refugees. One never spoke of his past - the other couldn’t let it go. Their story - and that of the woman they both loved - is in her hands. Revealing it would change her grandfather’s hard- won identity. But it could also change the tide of history. This testament can lend words to wordless grief, and teach her how to live."

My review

Testament is one of those books which begins with a story that seems small, personal and intimate and then, almost without you realising, blossoms, expands and acquires wider resonance, deeper relevance and added meaning. While still remaining, in a sense, small, personal and intimate.

Eva is devoted to her elderly grandfather, artist Joseph Silk (Jószef Zyyad to some), who, as a young man, survived the horrors of wartime Hungary. As a Jew, he was enslaved, tortured, marched from camp to camp in the dying days of the war and lost his parents and sister, afterwards making a life for himself in England. Silk's (as he is generally referred to) choice was then to turn his back on the past, on the family he lost, the country that is no longer his own, the house he grew up in, everything from before. he certainly never wanted to tale part in reunions, contribute his testimony to museums, or to explore what was lost.

Granddaughter Eva, close to Silk and feeling herself rejected by her father John, is keen to protect Silk's legacy and reputation but most of all perhaps, his privacy. Approached by curators, journalists and art historians who want something of this eminent figure, this eminent survivor, she asks herself what Silk would want - and then closes down, even as she's dealing with the sale of his house and studio and the need to decide what should happen to everything, to decide how Silk should be marked in the world (even the text for a gravestone is impossible to settle). Inevitably that can't, in the end, hold, and Eva embarks reluctantly on a search for the truth, her easy trust in and love for Silk eroded by the discovery that he told her lies, lies, lies.

This is then a story about survival. While we are shown episodes from the Holocaust - those affecting Jószef, his brother László, and a young woman Zuzka - and these are very grim, the story is necessarily  selective there (I don't think what we told is by any means the worst that happened) and really focusses, I think, on what happened after, when the three young survivors are brought to England, to the Lake District of all places. We see, slowly, the dilemma they face.

The need for safety and security. The alienness of this damp land, a country of grey streets and chilly attics. The ambivalence of the English who haven't suffered as Jószef, László and Zuzka have but who are the victors, the owners, in their own country, of the war, as it were. (And among whom there is still prejudice - anti Jewish, anti foreigner).

But also, rejection by a Hungary that joined in the Nazi purges and doesn't want them now, offers nothing, no family, no restored home, no life. (In the modern parts of this book, that's paralleled by the scary resurge in Hungary of the far Right with its attempts to airbrush history).

The three survivors find, in the end, different responses to this dilemma. I'm not going to say any more about what they are because Eva's discovery of all this is an important part of the story, for her and for her father - but none of them come without cost. And we see that while John. and Eva may be second and third generation survivors, they are still survivors and the ripples of what happened to a father and a grandfather spread out to affect subsequent generations.

It's a cleverly written book, balancing an account of what happened in the 1940s and after - which, we need to keep remembering, can't be known to Eva because she hasn't been told things, she's been lied to, the witnesses are dead - with one set in the present day, taking in Eva's mourning silk, her doubts about herself and her father, her excitement at discovering Berlin and Budapest and in them, a couple of young men. Despite the aspects of the book that expose suffering and death, there is a great sense of life in Testament, not only in the modern parts but in the lives of the young refugees in Ambleside or the Jewish community in London (on the cusp of moving from the East End to North London).

Testament is a book that beautifully masters what it is trying to say, shows what has been and what the consequences can be. I loved the characters in this book, their flaws and their struggles, and felt that it truly honoured those who suffered and those who inherited aspects of that suffering.

It's also a book which has, because it must have, warnings for us, warning not to forget, warnings to be on guard, to keep watch.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here

#Review - One Christmas Night by Hayley Webster

One Christmas Night
Hayley Webster
Trapeze, 14 November 2019
PB, 304pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance e-copy of One Christmas Night via NetGalley to consider for review. (I should admit, before I start, that while I don't know Hayley Webster, I do follow her on Twitter where she is unfailing interesting. If you don't follow her, you should.)

In One Christmas Night, we visit Newbury Street, shortly before the Great Day itself. With some prescience, Webster points to 'a Vote Green diamond sticker in the front window from the last election' - so we're bang up to date in 2019!

The residents are preparing, whether in the private houses, the subdivided flats, or the social accommodation of Victory House. Christmas may be an occasion for spending and cosnpicouous consumption, but it is a great leveller, rich and poor alike sharing in the nostalgia, the sentiment, the customs. Christmas Eve sees the annual Festive Feel Good at the Mariner pub hosted as ever by Sue and Larry. Fridges are full of turkey, trimmings and veg, and the presents are ready, mostly hidden in the cupboard under the stairs. At the Stop Shop, softened Easy Peelers are being sorted from the stock and last minute gifts bought.

Everything is nearly ready.

But of course (because otherwise there wouldn't be a story) not everyone is happy, not all is well.

A thief is at large, preying on all those tempting presents (and even on the food). We meet this person in the first pages, hiding in the shadows and avoiding the CCTV, and we see the grief they cause, the sense of violation of both homes and the season. Who would do a thing like that? It could be anyone, and it seems likely to be a local, someone well known to all the victims. Even though it's Christmas, Detective Constables Crane and Ado are on the job and on the lookout for the perpetrator.

Elsewhere, Frank mourns his wife. It has been a tumultuous year: he lost his Allie - and then fell for Jen, married to his best friend Craig. There are kids too, and it's all a mess.

Craig has his own secrets as well. And there's an elderly couple, Len and Wendy Finch, who are living on the edge of destitution - before things take a turn for the (even) worse.

A young woman mourns her lost daughter and takes out a record of Turandot which she plays every year, only on this day, remembering.

A husband browbeats and belittles his wife.

Two brothers are at odds with each other.

Joanie Blake misses her mum ('How can her mum just be gone...?') It will be the first Christmas without her, and everything must be done right.

Webster skilfully weaves together all these stories, and more, punctuating her tale with Lucy Crane's investigation and multiple appearances by a cat who, after the best tradition of cats, shows up at every house in the street. I was impressed by the depth and personality Webster gives her characters - whether or not they take centre stage, these feel like real people you might bump into in the shop or the pub. Above all, perhaps, this applies to Joanie and her girlfriend Irma, who are at the centre of things, Joanie is one of those people who - despite her own troubles - seems to hold up the entire community. She invites the lost, the lonely, to her Christmas table. She challenges a racist scallywag in the shop ('How dare this angry man, in his Budweiser T-shirt, leather jacket and Timberland boots call out a stranger in this way. How dare everyone stay silent while he does it?'). She is there when she is needed. And Irma, a stalwart behind the bar at the Mariner, whose anxious, haunted past is gradually revealed through the course of the story.

Not everyone is goodhearted, of course. Webster's less pleasant characters are just as well depicted, whether that racist, Euan, the ubiquitous thief (apart from their anonymous appearance at the beginning of the book, we know they're  stalking through the pages somewhere, we just don't know we are seeing them. And the trail of loss they leave behind, which almost everyone is having to deal with, is almost a personality in itself with a cumulative effect that's most chilling.

There are others - the nasty young man who whispers tales to the police, causing no end of trouble for... someone. Or that controlling husband (I won't say who it is, you need to let the picture build up). And there are some other dark themes here. A girl who was in care and whose foster mum failed at just the moment she needed a little love. Exploitation, racism and greed.

No, it's not all soft focus and angel choirs (in fact there are no angel chords). But Hayley Webster's empathy and understanding of character, and her writing are simply brilliant ('The sun was a stamp of approval, low, gold with rewards', 'Wendy sees the grin on the girl's face... The start of love when the flame's first lit'). There's a temptation to call a book like this "feel good", like the Mariner's festive event, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think One Christmas Night does something more.

At the darkest time of year, you can't shut out that dark. You can't ignore it. You can't karaoke it away (even by '...singing "Santa Baby" in the most unsexy voice that's ever been used for any song since there were songs'). You can't eat it away, present it away or tinsel it away. You have to face it, invite it in. But once invited in, offered warmth, food and a place at the table, it might become less terrible.

That's what One Christmas Night does - it acknowledges the darkness (and such darkness) but shows that it does not, in the end, have the last word. There is courage here, generosity of spirit, solidarity. And that, to me, is the most Christmassy message of all.

I'd strongly recommend this book - and I think it's not just for Christmas.

For more information about One Christmas Night, see the publisher's website here.

#Review Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler #YoungWriterAwardShadow

Jacket design by Nico Taylor

Stubborn Archivist
Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Fleet/ Little Brown, 21 February 2019
HB, 362pp

This is the first of four reviews I'm doing as part of shadow judging the The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. I am part of the Shadow Panel which will make its own choice from the shortlist for the award.

The four shortlisted books are Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet/ Little, Brown), Testament by Kim Sherwood (riverrun), The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (Penned in the Margins) and salt slow by Julia Armfield (Picador).

About the author

Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a British Brazilian novelist from South London. Stubborn Archivist, published in 2019 in the UK and USA, is her first novel. It was called ’stunning’ by Olivia Laing, ‘visceral and elegant’ by Claire-Louise Bennett and ‘breathtakingly written’ by Nikesh Shukla. Yara was named one of The Observer’s nine ‘hottest-tipped’ debut novelists of 2019 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Yara is also a trustee of Latin American Women’s Aid, an organisation that runs the only two refuges in Europe for and by Latin American women. She’s writing her second novel now, for which she received the John C Lawrence Award from the Society of Authors towards research in Brazil.

About the book

"A bold debut novel exploring the nuances and the spaces between ourselves and our bodies, told through the shards collected by our own stubborn archivist. When your mother considers another country home, it’s hard to know where you belong. When the people you live among can’t pronounce your name, it’s hard to know exactly who you are. And when your body no longer feels like your own, it’s hard to understand your place in the world. This is a novel of growing up between cultures, of finding your space within them and of learning to live in a traumatized body. Our stubborn archivist tells her story through history, through family conversations, through the eyes of her mother, her grandmother and her aunt and slowly she begins to emerge into the world, defining her own sense of identity."

My review

Stubborn Archivist is a novel exploring the experiences and identity of a young woman of Brazilian-English heritage. Born in London to a Brazilian mother and an English father, she, the archivist of the title (which is I think an allusion to her role in observing her family) narrates her early life (borrowing from family stories) and her memories of travelling to Brazil for family reunions at Christmas. We see her growing up in early 00s London, leaving for university, making and falling out of friendships and always, always, returning to Brazil.

It's all beautifully, even poetically portrayed but it's impossible to convey that with a carefully selected quote or two because - and this is the first thing I need to say about Stubborn Archivist  - the book is (for me) very experimental in its structure (or perhaps, rather, in its form?) Rodrigues Fowler delights in space, allowing her text almost to dance against the blankness - a handful of worlds will be emphasised by being printed alone at the top of a page, or bleeding down the side

one

by

one

She enthusiastically jumbles her sentences in places or runs words together, creating something much more like the patterns and rhythms of thoughts and feelings than conventional text.

There are pages with a block of text at the top and nothing after. There are words which morph into one another down the page, stretching meanings into sounds and sounds into meaning and playing to the rhythms of language (something very important in this book where there is a running point about people not being able to pronounce the Archivist's name: 'What's your name? He repeated the syl-la-bles.').

Now I thought I couldn't do with this sort of thing (trying to describe it, I realise I've probably made it seem very pretentious) and I worried, when I opened Stubborn Archivist, that it would be a barrier for me. But I found it all actually worked very well and far from being a barrier, it opened up the world of the Archivist and her family, removing the sense of distance that can be created by prose (however polished, perhaps especially if polished) and giving the book a much less formal air that complements its subjects and themes very well.

The book works on you at a different level than plot, sentences and logic, whispering through its convolved text to tell you about its themes - growing up, origins, belonging, not belonging. We are given scenes in the Archivist's life. There are events in her childhood both from her own perspective and as passed on to her by her family, for example the first visit of her Brazilian grandparents - her beloved Vovô and Vovó - to her parents' small London flat when she's a baby. We see the little surprises, the accommodations, as English and Brazilian cultures encounter one another and the ways in which they merge, jostle and accept each other, lubricated, as it were, by familial love (and with some effort, at times).

That basic picture endures as the Archivist grows up, the story taking in joyous, illicit teenage evenings out in London with her friend Jade, experiences with boys, and her exploration of her family's past. There is both acceptance and rejection of those different underlying cultures (the latter when a friendship founders as the friend wants to visit Brazil but can't shed her preconceptions), a romance that peters out, symbolised by the boyfriend wanting to impose his views over hairstyle, and, a recurring theme, the question (from both Brazilans and English) "But when did you move to London?"

It's perhaps symbolised most by the layered descriptions of the flight between England and Brazil. As a child (the first being beyond memory). As a teenager, doing it alone for the first time. As a seasoned traveller, who knows just what to pack and how, where to sit, how to make the flight work for her. And I haste, for a funeral. These layers build up, both distinct and, somehow, existing together, illuminating each other so that it's almost as if several different women are making the trip together.

In the same way, events bleed out of one context and into another and some of those more poetic renderings intercut, playing with worlds, morphing them from English to Portuguese, almost singing names and phrases. There are the different challenges laid down to the reality of this Anglo-Brazilian woman - not only the "When did you move...?" but the assumptions about her and the two sides of her family. An employer (a media organisation) seems to see her as "their Brazilian" and sets her to researching cosmetic surgery or gang violence. But at the same time, working in the staff restaurant, is Tiago, a much more interesting subject of research...

This is a book that's impossible to summarise. There are so many threads. It looks back to Brazilian politics in the 90s, with police brutality and disappearances. It takes in something that happened to the protagonist, which has left her, at some level, traumatised and uneasy, possibly with physical consequences - whatever happened is hinted at and explored here but rarely confronted, although it does seem to come to a resolution. And that stands for much of this book in a way - all those layers, those different version of the same woman, lend the story a sense of completion so that the story isn't happening in front of us, as it were, more being documented - a kind of coolness in the perspective which contrasts with the closeness from the textual style.

It was a book I found easy to read, easy to take big gulps of, so to speak, a story and a life that really grabbed attention, told with great verve and compelling attention tuition from the reader. Truly a magnificent read and I book that I think I'll go back to, one with a great deal more to give on rereading.

For more information about Stubborn Archivist see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman

The Secret Chapter (Invisible Library, 6)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 336pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance e- copy of this book via NetGalley.

I've loved Cogman's Invisible Library series from the start. As an avid reader, the idea of a pan-dimensional Library staffed by kick-ass librarian-spies who play a valiant role in keeping the forces of chaos at bay across multiple words is just compelling. And Cogman's hero, Irene - a cross between book-lover and ruthless assassin - is wonderful. I think I've lost a bit of my heart to her.

So a new instalment is an eagerly awaited event, and I devoured this one once I got it on my e-reader. It's essentially a heist story - Irene and Kai have to team up with a pretty shady bunch (a gambler, a master thief, an IT guru, a scorching driver...) to steal... an object - not a book this time - from a tightly controlled museum. The team consists of both Fae and Dragons, and there are trust issues besides - some of them haven't even heard of the Truce! - so lots of scope for misunderstandings and mistakes, and it seems to fall to Irene to hold things together.

In this book Cogman is deliberately bouncing her story off classic heist tropes, walking a narrow path between, on the one hand, taking them too seriously and, on the other, just sending them up. So we have the Casino Scene (Irene done up in a little black dress and playing the gambler's moll), the crime boss's Island Base (complete with shark tank), the Getaway, the Shakedown, and many more. They're all handled deftly, dramatic and tense but just a little bit knowing - reflecting the fact that Cogman's Fae are creatures who by their nature aspire to fulfil archetypes, the more successful ones drawing others into their stories. They're opposed to the dragons, who stand for Order and Stability but - as gradually becomes clear in The Secret Chapter - not always in a way that leaves much scope for the freedom of the individual.

Amidst the almost nonstop action, this book begins to tease out such those underlying strains in Cogman's universe (Libraryverse?) revealing some new rivalries and teasing ethical dilemmas (Irene, worrying, reflects that nobody - Fae, Dragons or even the Library itself with its cheerful disregard of others' property - really possesses any moral high ground). We learn more about Irene's family (annoying, but dear to her) and - perhaps - glimpse the well-guarded history of the Dragons themselves.

And besides that we have Cogman's trademark wit ('An attempt by vampires to take over the Conservative party in Great Britain', 'The United Kingdom... did attempt to leave the European Union last year, but apparently that was prompted by demonic interference...') and some sharp writing ('as elegant as mathematics and as perfect as frost', 'Paranoia raised flags in Irene's mind and threw up fortifications'). It makes for a book that is simply a joy to read - deeply atmospheric where it should be, properly exciting when anything's going on as it generally is, and tender too. This is a series that shows absolutely no sign of losing pace, and I'm already impatient for the next.

Only two things I regretted.

First, not enough Vale.

Need. More. Vale.

Secondly - Genevieve, just what did you think you were putting Irene through in that scene towards the end? Doesn't she deserve a bit of dignity? I was almost shocked. Honestly.

For more about The Secret Chapter, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas

Oligarchy
Scarlett Thomas
Canongate, 7 November 2019
HB, 224pp

I was really pleased to be able to attend this book's launch on 4 November - see below the author reading from it and sharing anecdotes about touring schools to promote her children's books, which this is NOT one of - and I'm grateful to Canongate for a free advance e-copy of Oligarchy via Netgalley, to consider for review. (Quotes below come from that copy, and may not reflect the final text).

'Sometimes she also prays for peace, and joy, and to be thin. Sometimes she even prays for the villagers, that they might become thin too.'

The thing - one of many things - I like about Scarlett Thomas's books is that they always give something unexpected. There is no "just" to them. They are all recognisably hers, but they are also all very different and they all confound one's assumptions.

Scarlett Thomas and Francis Bickmore

So Oligarchy is a book about a group of schoolgirls, with a mystery element, but little detection - and at the same time it's a book about the pressures modern society imposes on young women - and at the same time, a book about friendship and abuse. It's also funny, sad and truthful.

As I started the book - with Russian oligarch's daughter Natalya ('but at home they call her Natasha') coming to a scuzzy English boarding school in the Midlands - I thought it might take a fantastic turn. The village boys howl like dogs outside the school gates at night. This is not a metaphor, but it's not pursued (which boys? why?)  There's also a distinctly gothic twist in the girls' mythology of the school, involving a drowning Princess, a Sultan and a diamond. The story hovers behind the action,  inspiring various events and being embroidered in various ways but as with those howling boys there is no "official" explanation.

Later, with deaths occurring, and an interesting sounding detective (DI Amaryllis Archer, in her jeans and high-heeled boots) appearing on the scene, I wondered about the mystery element - but while it's there and is, eventually, resolved (kind of) that's not central either at least not in detail.

Central, rather, are the lives of the girls and the caustic, pressured expectations on them in modern society. Tash, arriving from Russia, the recently discovered daughter of an oligarch who has plucked her from obscurity and stored her away for safekeeping, is our way into the group, whose members deform almost before our eyes under the weight of those expectations. There is Bianca ('She doesn't tell anyone about the sadness and the failure and the light inside her that is a bright white colour but is never bright or white enough'). Tiffanie, who plans her funeral 'which will have a botanical theme' and who is 'too lazy, too French and frankly too fucking cool to learn English pronunciation' and whose usage of 'Ange' for English 'ing' becomes a meme among the girls. There is Becky 'with the bad hair', the would-be Head Girl.

Thomas's eye for character here is so sharp, getting right inside (Tash's Aunt Sonya 'looks like money rather than sex or love') and it's the way her ensemble of memorable, real people - most of them young women - reacts to the stresses on them that makes this book come alive and forms the gothic heart of the novel (with the oft-quoted story of Princess Augusta the topping, perhaps). There's an atmosphere of confinement, or abandonment, to this group in their strange school and of a breakdown of their sense of identity as they try to be - something. All manner of fake science, folk wisdom and wishful thinking swill around concerning what one should and should not eat, what one should be and not be. The the urge to thinness becomes almost a contagion in itself, with its own heroes and victims.

There is no restraint, no voice of reason, and a palpable sense of the girls being alone - this seems to be a singularly ill-run school where there is no help, typified by an episode where a vomiting bug has broken out and they are simply left alone, in a dormitory, to wait it out - but also very much exposed to the ill winds of social media, to the expectations of teaches, gym trainers and shifty DJs in provincial basement nightclubs. The paradoxes of teenage life - of innocence and experience ('at fifteen you have to practice everything you plan to do') - are played out here as in countless other novels, but with I think a rare sharpness of observation and deftness of portrayal ('Suze likes drinking in a pub called the Marionette ("drinking in" not "going to")')

Behind all this there are Tash's memories of home, of her mother, her boyfriend. Behind it are her doubts about her place in England, her place in the world, above all, about her place in her father's orbit. Having 'found' her he is elusive. Aunt Sonya seems to have been given the job of looking after Tash. Possibly her father wants to marry her off to the son of a business associate (there's a strange episode where she's helicoptered out to a party in a remote castle, but like many scenes in this book Thomas gives only glimpses of this, returning to it, though, several times to draw out different aspects). The run-down, dangerous feeling school doesn't feel like a good place to be trying to resolve these issues, without support or guidance - but maybe the slightly fantastical, out of this world bubble universe, the intense relationship and teenage concerns are a good balance for those family concerns?

Oligarchy is a fascinating, provoking, book, a deeply human book and I think shows Thomas on top form. I strongly recommend it.

For more about the book, see the publisher's website here.