Blogtour review - Catherine by Essie Fox

Catherine
Essie Fox
Orenda Books, 12 February 2016
Available as: HB, 287, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB/ PB): 9781917764421

I'm grateful to Orenda for sending me a copy of Catherine to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

It is, I think, 40 odd years since I read Wuthering Heights, in the early 80s when I was doing O level English lit. This wasn't one of our set books, but our teacher was keen to make sure we read much more widely. I remember that the introduction to the edition we read made much of the Brontës' father's "Celtic" ancestry as a factor in their romantic temperament - you don't get criticism like that today.

I tend not to re-read, so my memory of the events in the novel was hazy - ideal, really, for this retelling since it meant I wasn't looking forward for what I knew would come next.  It also meant my sympathies and appreciation of the characters could shift, uninfluenced by the later story, the perfect frame of mind to enjoy this version.

I think it's important to recognise that in the Wuthering Heights universe there are no absolute heroes and villains, and no "likeable" characters. Everyone behaves badly, everyone is worthy of sympathy. In that respect, and others, Catherine isn't a new story, it is proper Wuthering Heights but - and here's the difference - told by Cathy, rather than narrated, in hindsight, by Nelly Dean. Essie Fox uses a rather clever device to make this possible, one consonant I think with the subtext of the original novel and which handily telescopes the 20 or so years period that the story takes to unroll, and gives a real sense of immediacy and, well, jeopardy to the events - in contrast with the hindsight-tinted perspective of the original. (And we're spared Mr Lockwood, who isn't event mentioned by name, just - in one or two places - as "the tenant").

Fox also takes the opportunity of this being Cathy's own story to enlarge on parts that Dean is only passing on from Catherine herself - who Fox makes unreliable, or at least incomplete, in what she tells her maid. This gives some space to develop aspects about which the original book is silent. For example, Heathcliff learns the truth of his background and relates this to Cathy - something that is then a significant motivation for Cathy - but Cathy never tells Nell the details. In that respect, Catherine is therefore a retelling, not the retelling - other authors could make other choices. I do think though that Fox's choices are deeply true to the novel, and in taking over the book's characters, she captures something genuine in their relationships and history that makes this more than simply a glossing of the original. The people you'll meet here are vital, human, and true to Brontë's original.

All this makes Catherine more than simply a retelling, it's a rich story in its own right. There is tragedy here, and room for pity and empathy even with the apparent villains: like Wuthering Heights itself, Catherine is something of a gale of emotion and feeling - longing, lust, hatred, regret, jealousy - and if you're going to enjoy this book you need to be on board for that. It won't suit everyone! In my view, the power of Emily Brontë's original is here in Catherine, undiminished, but this retelling addresses matters which the climate of the mid-19th century could not allow, as well as revisiting aspects where modern sensibilities raise issues, or ask questions, which the original didn't.

Catherine is a grand, sweeping read which takes nothing away from the original novel - it is, as I said, only a retelling, not the retelling, I can imagine alternatives that take different paths, but what a retelling! 

I would recommend.

For more information about Catherine, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Catherine from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones. 

#Review - Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Death at the Sign of the Rook
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday, 22 August 2024
Available as: HB, 336pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857526571

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Death at the Sign of the Rook  to consider for review.

The appearance of a new Jackson Brodie novel is always an event to celebrate and Death at the Sign of the Rook truly lives up to expectations, culminating in a classic country house murder with all the expected ingredients - a retired Major, a vicar, a dowager and, of course, in Brodie himself, the renowned amateur sleuth.

At the same time, it's none of those things. While the murder itself evolves as a kind of play within a play (literally - Burton Makepeace House, cut off by the blizzard, is hosting a murder mystery weekend and we're treated to scenes in which the band of itinerant performers, the literal murderer(s), and all the guests who have assembled for the event, get hilariously confused) it is also commenting on, and being shaped by, events of the early 21st century. 

An aristocratic family on its uppers. 

A soldier injured in Afghanistan and facing a bleak future. 

A vicar who thinks he's gone down the wrong path. 

A middle aged couple anxious to wring every last penny form their mum's estate.

And Brodie himself, surveying it all with a jaundiced eye.

As the husband of a priest, I was particularly taken with the Vicar, Simon, a man whose backstory included the same theological college my son is currently studying at. I was struck by his dilemma, his sense of futility, of a moment of revelation that maybe wasn't - but also by his history which blends an awkward suburban past, a career in the TV industry and that moment of revelation in a York church. I recently read Atkinson's Normal Rules Don't Apply, a book of loosely linked short stories, and recognised Simon as totally belonging in the collection of rackety, slightly loner-y figures encountered there. (I would point out, though, that true vicarly mastery isn't the ability to surreptitiously glance at a watch, as Atkinson suggests. That is too obvious. The thing is to place oneself in a room so that one can easily spot the clock face, a much less obvious action. At least, so my wife tells me, and I never doubt the word of the clergy).

The book struck other chords with me too. Like Ben, the ex-Major, I have a great-uncle who died at Monte Cassino. That probably goes to show more the scale of that battle than anything about Atkinson aiming her writing at me, but I found it a telling detail. I loved Ben, the kind of diffident character who suffers fools gracefully and downplays his problems. He's currently living with his sister and her wife, the former a vet who takes in waifs and strays and has "an abundance of Labradors" (how can you have too many?) Ben might be one of the strays himself, perhaps, but when he steps onto the stage as The major in the denouement he's far from a waif, and equally far from the doddering Major of the Golden Age detective mystery that Atkinson's subverting.

This kind of telling characterisation - knowing, subversive, but still affectionate - is a highlight of Atkinson's books. With Brodie at the centre of the story, it might be tempting to focus on him and have everyone else a supporting character but Atkinson gives plenty of time and space to the others, drawing out their stories and creating fully rounded figures who then behave in fanstastically complex ways. Any could easily carry a book of their own, and I rather hope some will. Which isn't to say that Bodie himself is neglected, quite the opposite. Entering the story via those avaricious siblings who report that their mum's priceless Renaissance painting ("Woman With Weasel") has gone missing, Brodie soon spots that a similar theft has taken place at Burton Makepeace, allowing him to involve a reluctant DC Reggie Chase (hooray!) and to explore the history of an aristocratic family fallen on hard times.

There is simply so much going on in this book, often not directly concerning crimes - while there is a blend of murder and art theft here, in many respects they're almost incidental - but rather, people. And yes, people do sometimes commit crimes, but there are much more interesting things to say about people, and in particular about this bunch of peculiar people who assemble one snowy night to enact a murder...

I'd strongly recommend Death at the Sign of the Rook. I knew I would!

For more information about Death at the Sign of the Rook, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Other Lives of Miss Emily White by AJ Elwood

The Other Lives of Miss Emily White  
AJ Elwood
Titan Books, 11 April 2023
Available as: PB, 317pp,  e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803363707

I'm grateful to Titan Books for sending me a copy of The Other Lives of Miss Emily White to consider for review.

AJ Elwood/ Alison Littlewood is of course a master of suspense whether in a modern or a historical setting, so I was expecting great things from The Other Lives of Miss Emily White, but I have to say this story surpassed even them.

Introduced by Ivy, an elderly woman living alone in the 1920s, the action takes place 60 years before in an unremarkable Yorkshire Victorian girls' school, a slightly down at heel establishment devoted to applying some polish to young ladies so that they can find themselves husbands. The teenage Ivy is a farmer's daughter who's looked down on by her snobbish classmates - and there's a whiff of scandal about her. Children can, of course, be very cruel and while there's little overt bullying here, Ivy is very much a target. She recalls how how poverty brought her to this place and what it means to her to have been wrenched from her happy life and especially from her sister, Daisy.

The arrival of a new teacher, Miss White/ Madam Blanc, brings drama to Miss Dawson's Seminary from the very beginning. Drama, tragedy, and the malign attention of Ivy's peers as they sense a potential victim in the young schoolmistress. So begins a battle of wills, made more confusing and dangerous by apparent sightings of Miss White in places where she's not.

There are secrets here - secrets belonging to Ivy, secrets belonging to Sophia, Miss White's chief tormentor, and secrets belonging to Miss White herself. Secrets, and layers of pretence. The farmers' daughters being made into gentlewomen. The horse, painted with a blaze to resemble his dead predecessor. The solidly English teachers, always called by French names. Perhaps, too, a level of pretence so fundamental that it's subconscious, invisible to those taking part. 

Pretence, and doublings. Around them swirl the currents of emotions of those young ladies, isolated from their families and being moulded into something they're not - the book opens with a chilling prospectus written by Erasmus Darwin, setting out how girls are to be educated. You can sense the  contradictions and the turmoil. Who, exactly, is Miss White? What are her intentions regarding Ivy? What are Ivy's intentions, if it comes to that? Just what is going on? It's a deeply uneasy setting even more a whiff of the supernatural appears...

I felt this story really captured the confusions of late childhood/ early adulthood, an age when reality is malleable and outrageous fancies may be spun into truth. That, and a sense of hauntedness, drive a taut and lingering horror story that will remain with you long after you close the book.

For more information about The Other Lives of Miss Emily White, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Incy Wincy by RJ Dark

Incy Wincy (Mal and Jackie, 2)
RJ Dark
Wavesback, 24 March 2022
Available as: e
Source: Advance copy
ASIN: B09DTM61SN

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance e-copy of Incy Wincy to consider for review.

Last year's A Numbers Game debuted mystery crime newcomer RJ Dark's not-so-cosy series, featuring psychic fraud Malachite Jones and "respected local businessman" Jackie Singh Khattar who solve crimes on the Blade's Edge Estate, a rough district of an unnamed Yorkshire town. In this follow-up, Dark turns to a story that goes deeper into Mal's and Jackie's backgrounds.

After the events of the first book, Jackie has decided that Mal's psychic business needs rebranding as a detective agency. Of course, Mal gets no say in this, and the first he knows is when Jackie has a new sign installed over the shop. Cue a running gag where Mal says, in effect, I don't know, I'm not a detective and Jackie responds by citing the sign.

It's probably fitting, given Jackie's hand in creating the "agency" that its first case involves tracking down one of his mates (the "Spider" to whom the title nods). Spider is ex-army, like Jackie, and it turns out that other members of his squad live nearby and that understanding their past will be key to explaining what has happened to Spider. Similarly, Mal's earlier life as a homeless drug-user will also be relevant, not least in providing him with contacts to work (fairly likely that an ex-squaddie will end up among the street people, right?)

But it's not a straightforward case (which of Mal's cases ever are?) Pretty soon the usual pattern emerges as figures both familiar -  the 'Kray Twins', Trolley Mick, the town's Russian gangsters - and new - a smooth talking American - turn up at Jackie's shop to threaten him if he either won't give up a line of enquiry or won't take a side job. It gets more and more menacing, as Jackie can't be there all the time to defend Mal (and anyway, Jackie has bigger problems of his own). Mal's by no means a helpless victim in all this, he's actually a pretty shrewd and streetwise character, but the degree of peril in this book felt on a different scale to the previous one.

Add in Yorkshire's own racist front, a missing boy and a crop of UFO sightings and there is almost too much here to wrap one's brain round. Almost, I write, because Dark's story zooms along with brio, carrying us with no apparent effort from nasty fight to intriguing clue to dissecting the nature of the society that has produced Blade's Edge. There's some heartfelt, well argued criticism here, Dark comes across as really knowing his stuff. It's  very, very entertaining read, a book with a punchy plot, hard-hitting but humorous dialogue and developed, relatable characters. 

Oh - and there's a climax that had me biting my nails.

I'd strongly recommend - you can buy the e-book here from Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - Mistletoe by Alison Littlewood #NetGalley #MistletoeBook

Mistletoe
Alison Littlewood
Jo Fletcher Books (Quercus), 10 October 2019
HB, e, 304pp

Today marks publication of Alison Littlewood's latest unsettling horror tale, Mistletoe. I'm delighted to be able to join the book's blogtour and grateful to Quercus for a free advance e-copy via Netgalley.

'The night was filled with thoughts of mistletoe, dreams of mistletoe, the touch of it on her skin, the grasping tendrils entangling her limbs...'

I've loved Alison Littlewood's books right back to A Cold Season and here she is again at her icy best, telling the story of a woman alone, out among the snows of a Yorkshire winter, as Christmas approaches. (This book would definitely make an atmospheric Christmas read - or present - if you're looking for one).

Leah, mourning the loss of her son and her husband, has given up her city life - 'The world of cars and buses stinking of diesel, of towering buildings and grey streets, of all-night supermarkets and corner-shops, of anonymous crowds' - and exchanged it for 'a farmhouse, a barn, an apple orchard and a single field'. She's a 'comer-inner', having bought the (dilapidated) holding and intending to spend her time renovating the house, which husband Josh discovered and set his heart on before his death. Whether Leah is trying to forget Josh and son Finn or, somehow, come closer in this place where she'd imagined a new life with them, isn't clear.

Of course Maitland Farm isn't the rural idyll that Leah hoped for. Between a dirty, uncared for house with no working heating, Arctic weather, her haunting memories, a barn full of sinister junk including the creepiest doll outside Stephen King and a sense of wrongness, Leah's hopes are soon driven out by, not fears exactly (that would be simply sorted: back to the city!) but a growing disquiet.

Littlewood is a master at building up tension - escalating things slowly, springing her trap, then stepping back: oh, it wasn't a ghost, it was a neighbour accustomed to crossing the field rather than using the lane.

Or was it?

Here the tension builds credibly on top of Leah's already low, troubled spirits, the reader never being sure whether, when an odd thing happens, it's actually supernatural or born of her love and longing for Josh and Finn (or her lack of sleep). Perhaps it's impossible to disentangle all these? Suppose there are ghosts at Maitland Farm. Wouldn't that open a channel, a possibility, a way to Josh and Finn? So tempting. So very tempting. But at the same time, given the horrors that Leah begins to suspect - the hints she picks up form her neighbours about a dark past and about revenge and ill-luck on the house - what dangers might wait? The story keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, even as it takes a dark turn.

This book is a brilliantly creepy, atmospheric horror story. It wrings every last drop out of the dark side of Christmas: the bitter mistletoe berries, the cold of ancient sacrifice, the short days and above all, perhaps, the pain of being alone at a time of communal cheer and jollity. It is also a story of loss and vulnerability - there is a real sense that in placing herself where she has, Leah opened up to a real and terrible darkness. We begin to see echoes between events in the distant past - events that are impressed in the crumbling stone and barren soil of the farm - and Leah's own life. And the skin of the 21st century seems awfully thin at Maitland Farm ('Here, the past didn't fade to nothing...') with a potential, a dreadful potential, to draw her into its Midwinter dance, perhaps with a seductive hope.

There is also bewitching, lyrical prose here: 'The snow was constantly changing: now rose-tinted or grey, now golden or lavender, made new with every dawn or noon or evening and yet just as cold...' Littlewood vividly describes not only the horrors glimpsed in the shadows but the colour and sound and the bleakness of a hard winter.

It is, simply, a delight to read, a horror story but also a beautiful study of a woman very close to the edge, of friendship, loss and courage. Strongly recommended. (And if you haven't read Littlewood's previous books yet, you must: you have a treat in store. You can thank me later).

For more information about the book, see the publisher's webpage here. For other reviews of Mistletoe, see the blogs in the poster below. You can buy the book from your local bookshop, including via Hive Books which supports high street bookshops, from Blackwell's, Foyles, Waterstones, WH Smith or Amazon (and other places too).

Review - Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

Cover design by Richard Ogle/TW

Big Sky (Jackson Brodie 5)
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday, 18 June 2019
HB, e, audio, 368pp, 11 hours 20min

I bought my copy of this book and listened to the audio version via a subscription service.

It's all Kate's fault. Not Atkinson (though I'[ll come to her in a moment), no I mean Kate of For Winter Nights. I had this on my pile to read over Christmas, but then Kate's review came along and I couldn't leave it till then, but I had blogtour commitments and stuff, so I Audioed it while driving between home and station.

The upshot of which is that I now have NO Atkinson to read over Christmas AND I have to catch up on Jackson Brodie... which actually means I have four Atkinsons to read over Christmas, I think? So perhaps I should be thanking the Kates, actually.

Anyway. Let's frame things right. This is not a crime novel. It doesn't have a detective who, in the teeth of the police, gets to the bottom of things. it doesn't feature a DI who has gone maverick, a cynical pathologist, or a picturesque country setting.

Well, it kind of does. Jackson Brodie is a detective, but he doesn't defy the police and find the truth. He kind of stumbles along, musing on life, and plays his part. There is a DI but she is peripheral, a pair of detective constables are more central but, again, they don't really solve anything. And there is a pathologist but she's a character in a long running TV drama, Collier, and played by Brodie's ex, Julia (whose comments on various things intercut this book). Collier is filmed on the East Coast of Yorkshire so, really, there is a picturesque setting.

But I hold to my view that this isn't crime. While crimes occur in the book - oh so many crimes - and there is even a body found in a garden, the book is not about the process of solving the crimes so much as about people - about women - getting out from under their shadow. No, this is a book about the evil that men do, and I have to say, it didn't make me feel great about being a man.

The background to the story is that a child trafficking and exploitation ring, wound up several years before, is being reinvestigated (by the two DCs, Reggie and Ronnie (I know)). This has caused various guilty parties some concern and arms are being twisted to command silence. At the same time, a human trafficking operation run by three unlovely men is raking in money hand over fist. The book is about those caught up in the two schemes, the women who were scarred by the earlier one, and the women deceived and abused in the second. It makes for very raw, very distressing reading (if you let yourself think about it, that is, which of course you should) and, as I have said, for me, quite shaming reading because really the men in here do not acquire themselves well (mostly - there are exceptions, Jackson himself, of course, a young man named Harry and drag queen Bunny).

I've seen criticism of this book that it ends too soon, that it's not, well, crime-y enough but I think that misses the point. This book is about lives. It's about consequences. About fear and complicity. All of that needs space to develop and - while obviously it can be done - that doesn't require a Mystery, Clues and a Solution. (I'm really not trying to diss crime fiction here, I love it, especially a decent series and this is a series so we have that, I'm just saying, come to this book with the right expectations).

So I loved that, even after the crime-y bit was resolved, the story would down gently, sorting out other threads concerning Jackson, Harry, his stepmum and others, bringing bits of redemption, showing some of the guilty being punished - and others escaping. It's a tense story focussed on unbelievable levels of suffering and betrayal and it felt right to come back up gradually. At least it did to me.

I also don't want to give the impression this book is dark or depressing. Well yes it is dark, in places, the overall impression I took away was its spot-on portrayal of a while gallery of contrasting, alive, real people. The different voices come through so strongly - Julia in the little asides that come in to Jackson's mind all the time (both their appositeness and the fact that he keeps recalling them), the repeated motif of 'Tina [or Christina, or Christina and Fi] running away', Jackson recalling the label of 'Luddite' flung at him by his daughter, Harry's mild teenage angst and his incomprehension of Miss Dangerfield's feelings - which the reader will have spotted as well as the action she has taken, and so much more. Of course the audio version has Jason Isaacs' (who played Brodie in a TV adaptation of Case Histories) who injects life and action into all the voices - coping superbly with the interjections, and range of accents.

As I have said, all this now gives me the wonderful dilemma of when and how I can go back through the previous Jackson Brodies...

The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

Image from http://www.jofletcherbooks.com/

The Hidden People
Alison Littlewood
Jo Fletcher Books, 6 October 2016
HB, 368pp
I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book

I've come to look forward to a new ghost or horror story from Alison Littlewood as an Autumn treat, timed to come alongside the smell of bonfires, falling leaves and of course the darkening evenings. The Hidden People - while set at the height of Summer, indeed, in a place where it is always Summer - doesn't disappoint although it's a departure for Littlewood, being set in the past, the mid Victorian age.

Albie Mirralls is the son of a prosperous family, working at his father's firm in the City. Early in the book we see the two visit the Great Exhibition of 1851 along with Albie's cousin, Lizzie, and her father. A connection is made between the two that endures, albeit sleeping, until after her death a decade later.

When Lizzie is horrifically killed by her husband, who has come to believe that she's a changeling, a fairy, Albie sets off for the Yorkshire village of Halfoak, to investigate...

So the main story begins. It's an ambiguous tale, on several levels. First, what does Albie make of events? He's presented as a great rationalist (introduced, remember, at that most modern and scientific of celebrations) and he confidently scorns the Yorkshire locals and their strange beliefs (for example opening the curtains of his inn room despite the warning from the landlord that it's unlucky to gaze on the full moon: lots of things in this story are said to be unlucky and Albie makes a point of doing most of them). What, then, can there be for him in Halfoak? The husband is imprisoned and will no doubt hang, the funeral is soon arranged (none of the villagers will attend), what more, as  rationalist,  can he do? He surely can't expect that, somehow, Lizzie, that girl he met so briefly, will come back from under Pudding Pye Hill?

This is all the more inexplicable given that Albie has a wife, Helena, who soon arrives from London, clearly feeling somewhat neglected. The relationship doesn't seem to be very healthy. As Albie mopes around, investigating ever stranger and more tangential angles to the 'mystery', Helena begins to get... strange.

The attitude of the villagers is also shifty. They clearly accept and even welcome the eruption of the supernatural into their lives, yet it also drives them to dreadful ends - the murder of Lizzie, the boycott of her funeral - and to a degree they seem to have the same relationship with the modern world: Albie, arriving from London is as much an over-worldly intrusion on their centuries old way of life as the fairies are, or would be if they were real.

This reality of this last is a matter which Littlewood also keeps hidden - there is no out and out splurge of horror or the supernatural here, only things (such as Helena's midnight walks, her strange use of the local dialect, or the cleaning of the house) which are suggestive. I'd go so far as to say that she writes the book in such a manner that neither a purely rationalistic explanation nor a clear supernatural one quite fits. This produces an unease throughout the story, paralleling the odder and odder behaviour of Helena and, especially, Albie. It's clear that there has been more going on in Albie's mind with regard to Lizzie than is healthy for the state of his marriage and I'd suspect it's been going on longer than he admits. (Another way the unease is heightened is through numerous references to clocks and other timepieces, to time lost track of, to the fact that the summer ought to be ending but isn't: most notable, to the church clock with three hands so it can show not only London but local time - what is the time, really? Perhaps we're not in 1862 any more...)

So the horror comes not only from a straightforwardly supernatural threat but from a real sense of unease at what seems to be a relationship fragmenting slowly before our eyes, and the fear of what that might lead to (the book exposes, without being heavy handed, how the belief in child-swapping fairies is helpful in legitimising not only wife but child murder) as well as a loss of hold on time itself, which becomes slippery and inconstant.

All of Littlewood's previous books had some sense of ambiguity, of being between two worlds, but The Hidden People makes it much more perfect, producing a story that's exquisitely unsettling rather than out-and-out Gothic (yet also, clearly at least second cousin to all those tales of mistreated wives shut up or driven to an early grave which were so popular in the period described here).

Strongly recommended.