#Review - The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird by Louisa Morgan

The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird

Louisa Morgan
Orbit, 21 November 2023
Available as: PB, 371pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356516837

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird to consider for review.

I have enjoyed all of Morgan's "witch" novels and I enjoyed Beatrice Bird too. While it's a bit of an outlier in not making overt use of the same witchy mythos, with the supernatural here being less clearly delineated and understood, the theme and tone in very similar and Bird succeeds in giving us both a slightly creepy tale and the account of a woman suffering from controlling, collusive patriarchy. (As to the latter, the position of the women here is in many respects even more constrained than in the earlier, historically based novels where they at least had some freedom of action within an understood domain of their own).

Beatrice is a successful doctor, a therapist practicing in San Francisco among the happenings of the late 60s (there are some drug-related themes) and the downer years of the early 70s. The novel's "present" is 1977, but there are many flashbacks, both to Beatrice's earlier life (as a child, and then to her practice and patients) and to that of Anne Iredale, of whom more in a moment. 

Beatrice has a special skill/ talent/ sense in that she can perceive "ghosts", as she calls them. These aren't chain clanking, sheet-waving spectres, rather they are "hauntings" that express truths about people, emotions such as their sorrow or anger. This talent developed early - Morgan shows us its beginnings in Beatrice's rural childhood - and one would imagine that it would be useful to her in her practice, but in truth she has become more sensitive to these "ghosts" than she can bear, seeing them tag along not only with her patients but in every street and shop too. As the story opens, has retreated to a small island off the US West Coast where there are few people and so, few ghosts. Beatrice does though have her two cows, and is trying to live a peaceful life, supplying milk to the island convent whose sisters, happily, leave her mostly alone.

It's to this island that Anne comes, fleeing domestic abuse. Of course that means she brings with her fear, guilt, and regret, things that Beatrice would rather not have to cope with, especially not personified as her "ghosts", - but also something even nastier, something with a real sense of horror to it. Is it an actual thing, or has Beatrice tipped over and begun losing her mind?

How these two women come to know and trust one another, and build on that trust to address (rather than running away from) their problems is the heart of this book. But first we have to learn what both, especially Anne, have been through, in scenes that some readers may find distressing. These show how Anne falls into the control of a manipulative bully of a man, how she blames herself, and what she is up against more widely - her abuser is a judge, a Big Man in the small world he inhabits and his word dictates her future (she has no friends, having been cut off by her abuser from any support network).

Such behaviour and its indulgence hasn't of course gone away in the 21st century, but by locating her story in the 70s I think Morgan makes the stakes very high, with little public or official awareness of the issue and no support for its victims. Anne gets some help from the Roman Catholic nuns - in passing I have always enjoyed how Morgan's novels, even with their witchy heroines, refuse to subscribe to a binary world where organised religion is simply demonised - but it's only once Anne and Beatrice are able to understand one another that they can both begin to heal and to address the formidable difficulties - no, dangers - that threaten. The supernatural twist to the story means that Beatrice has unusual resources to draw on here, but it doesn't magically resolve everything, that takes human courage, solidarity and not a little cleverness.

Another great, and rather different, book from an author I rely on to give me a fresh view on life.

For more information about The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Bridge by Lauren Beukes

Bridge
Lauren Beukes
Penguin, 17 August 2023 
Available as: HB, PB, 432pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780718182823 (PB): 9781405923750

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with an advance e-copy of Bridge via Netgalley to consider for review.

Bridge is an absolute cracker of a novel from the author of The Shining Girls, Afterland and Broken Monsters. It had great resonance for me as an exploration of bereavement and also raises profound moral questions for its protagonists (at least one of whom doesn't come very well out of that test).

Bridget - Bridge - is the daughter of neuroscientist Jo, who has recently died of cancer. We see Bridge in the numbing coils of bereavement, wishing she'd spent more time with prickly Jo and astonished at what she didn't know about her mum. I felt this was well observed and written with real feeling, my mother having died several months ago it rang absolutely true to me that there could be discoveries in the loved one's paper, online activity and possessions.

My mother wasn't keeping such scary secrets though. Bridge, working with her friend Dom, soon discovers that her mother believed there were alternative versions of her in other worlds and that these could be accessed via a narcotic substance called "dreamworm". Taking us into a domain of obsession and paranoia, Beukes shows how this belief had taken over Jo's life, driving away her family and her lover and leading her to some very dangerous places indeed.

As it does Bridge. Across multiple universes, anything can happen, but it seems certain patterns recur - and Jo (and Bridge) repeatedly come up against Jo's brain cancer, against a stalkery vein of domestic abuse and coercive control, and also against a sinister cult that believes it knows all the answers and must control events at all costs. It's a tense novel, particularly in the way that things slowly - and them more quickly - escalate, Bridge throwing aside caution without realising that's what she is doing.

Fairly dancing along, this is a novel you'll want to read in a sitting, not least to spot the repeating patterns, the clues as to Jo's earlier life and discoveries, and to enjoy how Beukes conveys in her prose the subtly different natures of the various worlds she describes. I'm not sure I can convey just how well she does this, you'll have to read the book - it's almost as though you can breathe the different realies' atmospheres - the textures come right into the mind, almost like you had taken some of that "dreamworm". 

The characters also come over well. From staunch, non binary Dom, determined to back up their friend Bridge but perhaps getting in much, much deeper than they expected, to obsessed ex cop Amber who travels everywhere with her dog, Mr Floof II (Mr Floof I came to a bad end - it happens a lot to dogs in this story) to selfish, messy Caden who has a legend all of his own, Beukes flawlessly inhabits them all, conveying their essence, even evoking sympathy for some pretty nasty people.

Bridge really is, as the subtitle states, a novel of suspense - but also one of big ideas, raising questions not only about our responsibilities to those parallel selves but also to our relatives and friends. Bridge wants to find her mother, but how much harm is she prepared to inflict to do that? How much collateral damage is acceptable?

Also dipping a toe into the sewers of Internet obsession and delusion, with some hilarious scenes in a support group for a non-existent  conditions, Bridge entertains throughout - and ends on a note of genuine uncertainty leading me to hope that a sequel might be in the works.

Strongly recommended.

(CW for domestic violence, abuse and coercive control).

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

#Blogtour #Review - The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone

The Space Between Us
Doug Johnstone
Orenda Books, 2 March 2023
Available as: PB, 276pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781914585449

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for an advance copy of The Space Between Us to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

In his new novel Doug Johnstone - whose most recent works include the Skelfs detective series set at an Edinburgh undertaker's - really doesn't hang about, plunging us right into a fantastical plot with three varied and intriguing protagonists. Told in short chapters with dramatic changes of view, we quickly learn who is who.

Lennox is a lonely teenager living in a children's home. 

Ava is pregnant and trying to escape her coercive, in fact outright abusive, husband. 

Heather has lost her daughter and her husband, she has cancer and, when we first see her, is trying to end her own life.

All are about to have their destinies and lives changed when they encounter first, a strange light in the sky which leaves them hospitalised then miraculously healed, and secondly, a peculiar octopus-like creature washed up on the Edinburgh shoreline and affectionately named Sandy by the three.

In chapters told from their alternate perspectives, and those of a couple of other characters who are drawn in, we follow events during a frantic road trip across Scotland with several different but equally sinister authorities intent on capturing Sandy (I have tagged this review "Men in black") and a furious husband chasing down Ava.  (An interesting juxtaposition). The different viewpoints make for a clever technique - Ava, Lennox and Heather have a lot to come to terms with, both their own variously troubled lives and Sandy's unique nature. Their developing relationships with each other complicate this, and plot shock about. Johnstone's approach allows him, though all this, to both reveal and, at  times, to conceal, just what is happening, allowing the author sometimes to not describe things from the perspective of whoever has the clearest view, preserving ambiguity and building tension.

That ambiguity is at the heart of the story - we know how the scared authorities will react to Sandy, we know that Ava's husband has no good intentions for her, but what we don't know is how the gang will ultimately process what's going, how they will assimilate the incredible moral challenge presented by Sandy's existence and his need. Nor how those on whom whey will depend for help will react.

It all comes down to empathy, to the balance between their fears for their own future and their capacity for love, their ability to go on hoping. 

I don't want to over intellectualise this or make it sound over solemn, because its not. It's the very opposite. The Space Between Us is a thriller about human (and non human) nature, but it's a fun read, morally clear in that you can happily hiss at a couple of the characters and root for the others, (even if at times they do play fast and loose with legal niceties). As a science fiction adventure (that's not really a spoiler) the setup is by no means original - I could draw parallels with at least one well known film and a couple of other recent novels - but Johnstone brings to it his ability to create fresh and lively characters who quickly become very real to his readers. They are people you feel for - full of complexities and quirks and above all very very human. 

Additionally, the Scottish setting gives the whole thing an air of familiarity and localness which makes it all seem very plausible. And who doesn't love a good road trip?

In summary, The Space Between Us is a fresh and enjoyable story which explores some fundamental themes about what it is to be connected - or not. Tears may well have been shed over it... definitely recommended!

For more information about The Space Between Us, see the Orenda Books website here, and also the other steps on the tour, listed in the poster below.

You can buy The Space Between Us from your local bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, WH Smith, Foyles, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - The Path of Thorns by AG Slatter

The Path of Thorns
A G Slatter
Titan Books, 28 June 2022
Available as: PB, 384pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781789094374

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a free advance copy of The Path of Thorns to consider for review.

The 'path of thorns' is, we are told midway through this book, the path a woman inevitably treads in this world: every step forward, you get a thorn in your foot. 

It's certainly the path that Asher Todd has trodden. Todd was brought up by Heloise, a loving mother if one increasingly disturbed as she sank under illness caused, Todd hints, by a life as a courtesan following exile from her wealthy family. Heloise's relationships with her clients have left their mark on Todd, as well. Asher also despises  the academics of Whitebarrow, who preyed on her mother even while refusing to educate Asher in their sciences and magics (men only, I'm afraid). Despite this she has become a skilled self taught witch - but therefore vulnerable to the Church, which persecutes women such as herself. Each step forward, another thorn.

Above all, though, Asher Todd she hates the family that threw her mother out. 

And now she's found them, and come for revenge. 

The background Slatter uses is this book is her 'Sourdough' universe, which has featured in many short stories and in a previous novel, All the Murmuring Bones (to which there are a number of references here). It's a comfortably vague world, pre Modern in some respects - people use horses for transport - with a degree of magic accepted (though that's increasingly being contested by the Church) and society divided between many small, feudal polities, most of which focus on the local (here the Morwood family and their nearest small town, the Tarn). 

While this world is in some respects culturally advanced with, for example, same-sex couples easily accepted and daughters able to inherit an estate such as that of the Morwoods, male privilege and patriarchy still permeates this story with abusive husbands and lovers, double standards in sexual conduct and a clearly male hierarchy in the Church. Asher will have to step carefully through all this (those thorns again!) as she seeks to shape her new home to her own ends.

There are mysteries here to be discovered - from that first presence Asher feels as she approaches the house - a persona to be maintained (posing as a governess may be absolutely in line with the template for a Gothic novel, but it's not work she's ever done before and the kids have sharp eyes) - and obligations that she has taken on in order to get this far. Conflicting obligations, perhaps. All that even before the house, and its inhabitants, begin to work their own magic, manipulating her sympathies in their own battles and struggles.

The Path of Thorns gives its reader a lot to engage with. A sensible, capable and determined protagonist in Asher, who has a pleasing dash of Flora Poste about her, (if Flora could work magic: perhaps rather Mary Poppins though from the books, not the films). Plenty of mystery in the woods and the house itself. A brooding, could-be villain (though, with themes of domestic abuse, this is one you definitely want to watch out for after dark). Some innocent(?) children to be won over but above all, protected - this in a world where kids who play in the river may find water sprites taking an interest...

The story moves at a fair pace, with plenty of jeopardy and some really nasty magic promised. A book I really enjoyed, though be warned - nobody here is innocent, not even Asher herself, and my abiding thought by the end was very much 'families - who needs them?'

For more information about The Path of Thorns, see the Titan website here.