Review: The Calling by Philip Caveney

The Calling
Philip Caveney
Fledgling Press, Edinburgh 2016
PB, 235pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a copy of this book to review.

A boy wakes up on a train to Edinburgh.He is shocked to discover that no idea who he is or how he came to be on the train - and once off it, he finds himself immersed in the chaos of the Edinburgh Fringe. After a day of wandering the crowded streets, he falls asleep and is woken by the sound of bells tolling midnight - only to discover that is the night of The Calling - a magical yearly event when all the statues of the city come alive...

We don't learn the boy's name for some time, nor what led to him being on the train. Given the name Ed (short for "Ed Fest") he has to make friends among the statues and work out how to get home - and get himself out of the trouble he's in.

The statues are all duplicates of their originals - whether these were real people or creatures or imaginary ones (even fantastic, speculative creations like the Gormleys or the giraffe-like Dreaming Spires). They all have the prejudices and quirks that implies, and there's a lot of fun in, for example, the rivalry between the statues of Charles II and that of Queen Victoria. Edinburgh has a lot of statues, but sensibly, Caveney limits himself to a dozen or so of them (though this means we never get to meet John Knox which is a shame: perhaps he couldn't get out of New College) which makes things easier to manage.

The idea of statues coming alive - even for one night only - is definitely a creepy one and coping with it is a real challenge for Ed. They don't like the "softies" and don't want their secret revealed so  Charlie - or King Charles II to give him the correct title - wants to have Ed executed, leading to some thrilling adventures in which the boy is aided by Sherlock Holmes. Caveney uses the opportunity to explain who many of the historical figures were, including James Clerk Maxwell, Prince Albert and William Wallace. I think this is an excellent way to introduce some fascinating historical characters and events and to explain why these were commemorated. (He also has Queen Victoria point out the injustice that few of the statues are of women). There is even a map so that the reader can find them: a good way to explore Edinburgh, I think (and bring the statues alive in a different sense!)

Behind all this there is, of course, the mystery of Ed's memory loss and this is where Sherlock really comes into his own, the book illustrating, again, some of Holmes' ways of solving crimes and of working out what had happened. And of course it's useful to have seven foot bronze statue with you when the bad guys start firing arrows...

All in all a fun book, conveying the atmosphere of Edinburgh during the Festival in an unusual and entertaining way. It would be a good companion if you're visiting the city with children and want a bit more than the guidebooks offer, perhaps as a break from Festival-going or a way to structure a wander round. Ed is a resourceful hero who isn't above putting even the most crusty old statue in their place, but he learns a great deal in the course of his adventure.

Teenage Reading Record(1)

Through various house moves and clearouts I have thrown away most of the school exercise books I ever had, but I still have a few, including this one. It was an English Lit. book when I was in my 5th year (5JM means 5th year, and my form tutor was Miss J Moss) of secondary school. I think this is now called year 11(?) (I was in a group that did English Language O level in 4th year - a year early - then Literature the following year, doing the course in one year instead of two. The others hated us for being swots...)

I'm finding it interesting going through this, trying to remember what I read and why, and I thought I'd share it here.

As well as using this for essays and written work (the first item is dates 6/2/84 and sets out work to be completed on Henry IV Part One - including a list of insults in the play!) I began recording the books I'd read. I think we must have been asked to do this, there's no way that I would have written something in a school book that hadn't bee sanctioned by the teacher - I wasn't that sort of child!

Anyway, I carried on using it for that purpose for years after, at least until 1992 (the last date, although the list of books read goes on for some time after that). I think I may have got less meticulous about writing them all down towards the end, and then I stopped, and didn't really start tracking my reading again till I began Amazon reviewing around 2000 (but it was several years till I began reviewing everything).

I thought it might be interesting to look at what I was reading 33 years ago.

Here are the first two pages

Given that the dates start in September 83, I think I've started by going back and listing books I'd previously read - supporting this, I'm sure some of these books were on a reading list given to us earlier by our then English teacher, Mrs Allinson. Our Man in Havana and White Gold Wielder were on that list. (In passing it only struck me later that she must have been something of a SFF fan, recommending Stephen Donaldson, as well as Asimov (I, Robot - although that's not on here).

The marginal note on the second page - "Xmas '83" - reminds me of what seems in memory of days and days spent eating chocolate oranges and reading through the books I'd been given, many of them I think off that same list (although the ones I remember most clearly, the John Buchan Richard Hannay books, aren't there, so perhaps that was '82 not '83...)

There are other books on here I found for myself: the Father Brown stories, Hornblower. I had already discovered Orwell (which is why by this stage I was reading his biography) and at the same time PG Wodehouse. I think that I, Claudius was on that reading list (I wish I could find it!) as was The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Pincher Martin was in the school library and I was encouraged to read that by one of the teachers who helped with the library - I have to say this is the first time I can remember I had that "there's ten hours of my life I'll never get back" feeling. I was probably too young for it, but it put me off Golding for life (I wasn't really impressed by Lord of the Flies either, but it was at least more readable).

Don Camillo was on TV around that time in a BBC adaptation, which is why I read that. What is Dungeons and Dragons? speaks for itself and all the Shakespeare was, I think, an attempt to put the play we were studying in context (I don't think I got too much out of it: it wasn't really meant to be read, was it, but performed?)

Review: Melissa by Jonathan Taylor

Melissa
Jonathan Taylor
Salt, 2015
PB, 261pp

I'm grateful to have received a copy of this book for review.

Melissa is a brilliant read, although by no means always an easy one. Emotionally - and it is above all, I think, an emotional book - it is raw, the hurt of the main characters almost bleeding off each page. They are all - Harry the father, Lizzie the mother, Serena the sister and daughter - living through a nightmare of grief and guilt after the death from leukaemia of seven year old Melissa Comb, lover of spiders, Harry and Lizzie's daughter, and Serena's younger sister.

As Melissa dies, a strange acoustic phenomenon envelopes the street where she lives, a discordant and alarming noise that evolves into something like - but not identical to - Elgarian music. The "Spark Close Phenomenon" attracts attention and the Close is plagued thereafter by cranks, New-Agers, neuro-musicologists, musico-neurologists, journalists, hawkers and gawpers whose presence is a continued theme in the book. The irony of the Phenomenon is that it wasn't shared by the Comb family. While others experience a presence, a Thing, the Combs know only absence, a nothing - as concrete an illustration of the "Stop All The Clocks" paradox on the death of a loved one as you can ask for: surely the world must end, bowed by the weight of one's grief? But of course it won't. Harry sees this directly: if only, he thinks, there were an end, as with a piece of music. But life will insist on carrying on.

Harry, lost in grief, tries to make an end whether by walking out of his job, locking the piano so Serena can't play it any more, or just sitting:

She glared down at him, and he didn't say anything, didn't answer. Instead, he stared straight ahead, at a blank TV screen. For a few seconds, there was a silence between them - a silence which could have ended with his turning round, breaking down, sobbing with her; a silence which could have ended in his quietly taking her hand; a silence which could at least have ended with mutual rage.

But it turned out to be a silence which ended with his reaching - slowly, deliberately - for a cracker on the plate next to him, cutting off a little piece of Stilton, and placing it in the centre of the cracker. By the time cracker and cheese reached his mouth - slowly, ever-so-slowly - the door of the living room had slammed shut, and Serena had gone, taking all other possible endings of that silence with her. 

He also tries blame, self-loathing and any other emotion that might cut himself off from life, bring an end. As Head of the House, Harry insists on being hurt, refusing to serve up to a guest the turkey leg that is Melissa's favourite part of the bird and seeking comfort from the notorious Ms Kirsten Machin (what really did happen between them? We get different accounts, but there are I think no reliable narratives here).  But he isn't alone in his despair, which is shared by Lizzie and Serena: Lizzie needles her stepdaughter, buying the wrong type of milk or hassling her over how her "image" won't help trap a boyfriend: Serena breaks down in class, seeing echoes of Melissa in everything she reads.

The story is told from different perspectives, mostly by a narrator, partly by quotes from newspapers (and The Sun), reports, emails, medical diagnoses and other sources. As a result it can circle round its subject, sometimes repeating the same events from a different perspective, or jumping forward or back - and significantly leaving a gap, a Melissa shaped gap, which fills with the aforementioned grief, blame and guilt. And with music: the book is suffused with musical analogies, structures and speculations whether implicit - for example the form of the book is a Prelude, Variations and a Code - or explicit (Serena's conversation with her Physics teacher about music and entropy).

It is a powerful story, which is nonetheless very funny in places: the Combs' neighbours provide a degree of relief - though often dark, rather than light, relief - one is a Holocaust survivor, who contributes her own perspective on death and grief, another (Ms Machen) is the subject of a running gag about her babies who are often heard but never seen, a third seems to be a veritable Private Pike but whose mother endlessly goes on about his career in the Territorials as though it made him akin in soldiering terms to the Duke of Wellington: there is also a BNP supporter and a bouncer-turned-Bible basher, all of whom add to the rich tapestry of the novel.

It is not, as I said, an easy read, indeed, actually heart rending in places, but still a compelling and deeply human book, going to the heart of the grieving process (I can hear Harry sneering at that - "grieving process" - and taking another cracker).

It comes to a resolution... of sorts.

Not that there can be a final resolution because, as Harry, again wails, things don't ever stop.

Review: Fellside by M R Carey

Fellside
MR Carey
Orbit, 7 April 2016
HB, 496pp

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

Before I get into this review I should issue a couple of warnings. First, it's going to be very hard to do the book justice without dropping some spoilers. I don't want to do that, so if you find things getting a bit... cryptic... that may be the reason. (Or it may be me reviewing badly, it can happen). Secondly, this is a very violent book in places. I didn't find that a problem but if that bothers you, take note. It is also, though, in places a very tender book).

Onwards, then.

Carey had a hit a couple of years ago with The Girl with all the Gifts and Fellside seems, at first, to resemble the earlier book. There is a sympathetic female protagonist with a dark history who's clearly in A Lot Of Trouble, an institutional setting, some real hard cases making her life difficult and - behind the gritty realism - an element of the fantastic.

But that's only, I think, superficial. While I enjoyed Girl a lot, this is in many ways a tenser, more complex story.

We first meet Jess Moulson when she wakes in hospital. She has suffered injuries and - beyond those - something very bad has happened. How bad, and the exact trouble she's in, would be one of those spoilers but it's enough to say for now that it carries her away to Fellside, a private mega-prison somewhere in (I think) a remote part of Yorkshire. There is some grim humour here in that the Governor believes he's running a model institution while the very opposite is true. Jess's problems only get worse: shut away (in her own view, deservedly) she's prey to the truly terrible Harriet Grace, leader of the prison drug gang; to prison staff, revolted by Jess (spoilers!) and not above dealing out their own justice; but most of all, to the voices that come in the night.

Jess has, it seems, a strange ability to walk through others' dreams - and hear the voices, to meet others who walk through them: "the dead were dreams that dreamed themselves alive. Maybe the living were too..." That means she can not only engage with her fellow inmates on a visceral level, but also, perhaps, with her own past. If she doesn't lose herself in the Other Place, might she be able to find the evidence that will free her from Fellside? But if it does - with so much else going wrong - with it be too late?

The book knots together Jess's own quest for redemption; her lawyers' attempts to prove her innocent; the machinations of Grace and her accomplices (willing and unwilling) as they try to use her for their own reasons; the despair of weak people, fallen into Grace's power; and a tragic love story. All woven round the nightmare world of Fellside, which Jess explores by day as a prisoner and at night, in her dreams, as something else.

What's especially good is the balance between the fantastic and the mundane. This is a supernatural story, no doubt about that, but Grace is a scarier monster than anything in the dreamworld and the day to day indignities and fears of prison life can't just be stepped away from but have to be lived through, and not only by the prisoners: others are locked away in Fellside too.

The characters are also real - frighteningly so in the case of Grace her associates, but everyone here - the other prisoners, the prison staff, Jess's legal team - is so well drawn that you could have just met them at work. You mostly wouldn't want to, but you could. In fact I think I've met real people who were less convincing than some of these characters. Equally with the setting. Yes, the systemic reality of a prison is exposed in harsh detail (the corporate flam of the PR and legal suits, the smug Governor) but that's not the main point: quite simply, Carey makes Fellside-the-place simply, simply, real. (Another scary thought. I don't want it to be).

This degree of reality both in setting and character means that when it's time for the fantastic you simply walk with Jess and accept it - the weird dream logic, the nighttime world - and therefore its consequences. This is how such things would be, if they were. (The reality does slip, but only at one point - you'll know the moment when you reach it, in a courtroom scene where something happens that is obviously needed for the sake of the plot, but that wouldn't, in real life: by then though the book has built up such a head of steam that that this scarcely registered with me.) That's how, for me, this is a better book even than The Girl with all the Gifts.

The complexity of Jess's situation, her need for redemption - and where will she find that in Fellside? - the absolute reality of the characters and the fascination of the mystery that she very gradually unteases, kept me totally hooked and wanting more of this.

Blogtour review: Wicked Game by Matt Johnson

Wicked Game

Matt Johnson

Orenda Books, March 2016

PB, 392pp

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for letting me have a copy of Wicked Game as part of the book's blogtour. (See below for details of the tour).

If, like me, you did most of your growing up in the 70s, there are things you may remember. Not just the long hot summers, the year of the ladybirds, and punk rock. No, I'm thinking of the politically heated times. Bombs going off - both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland. Rumours about disgruntled cliques of ex military types plotting in London clubs, of "shoot to kill" in Northern Ireland. Trade unionists targeted on the mainland. Shady, semi acknowledged arms law enforcement over the water known only by cryptic initials.

Set firmly at the opening of the present century, Johnson's book nevertheless looks back to those times through the eyes of his protagonist, Robert Finlay. While it might be stretching things to give Finlay - ex Army, ex SAS - an active past in the 70s, his background in the murky world of Northern Ireland policing, and his contacts among those ex officers, mercenaries and spooks - now gearing up for a different, even more deadly, counter terrorism campaign - can't help but evoke that atmosphere as Finlay becomes embroiled in the deadly game on the streets of London.

Certainly the air of suspicion, of paranoia, effortless sweeps him up, making him contemplate actions that should form no part of modern policing under the rule of law... especially since The trouble is, Finlay is now an Inspector in the Metropolitan Police, sworn to uphold law and order. He will fall far and low if he's caught taking part in any of these "deniable" activities. Yet he's also convinced that his life, and the lives of the wife and daughter he loves, are at risk - and that only he can protect them.

This book is in a genre I don't read very much, the fast paced action thriller and that did mean I had a little acclimatising to do in the early part of the book where we are briskly introduced to Finlay's past, and to some of the elements of the later mystery. 

The writing is direct: facts and histories stated, not left for the reader to pick over: there isn't time to stop and sift the finer aspects of motivation - to do so would only slow the plot. That style of writing may not be to everyone's taste but it becomes a real strength in this book as events cascade, ruthless killers spill into the open, and the agencies who should be tackling them are far less united and coherent than one might expect. Johnson marries form and subject very well, almost as if Robert Finlay himself was giving an urgent briefing to his superiors en route to the scene of yet another murder.

This is I think where Johnson's experience at the sharp end of anti-terrorism really shows - he's good at portraying how events unfold, the roles of the different agencies, their shifting agendas and the very human dilemmas and failings of those who work for them. And also, how little they may really be able to affect events. 

He also really gets into the minds of the terrorists - there are some great passages of writing that seem to be banal monologues until you realise you're in the mind of a would-be killer stalking their victim. The ordinaryness is very convincing, as is the self-justification 

Finlay himself is straightforward: he does what he has to do now, he did what he had to do in the past. When he needed to kill, he killed: when he needed to plan, he planned. These skills come back in the present, and serve him well even though the mess he's wandered into in knottier and has many more layers than anything he dealt with before. What he doesn't do - much - is brood: unlike the heroes of many crime novels, his life isn't a mess, he lives for his family.

And he's prepared to kill for them...

You'll enjoy this book if you're into thriller and action: even if you think you're not, the pace of the writing will carry you away. Robert Finlay's not a man who gives up easily.

Review: Nod by Adrian Barnes

I'm grateful to Titan Books for a review copy of Nod.

At first sight this book is (post)apocalyptic fiction in the classic vein, meaning, of course, John Wyndham. We are introduced to the world as it is shortly before a catastrophe. Our narrator, Paul, and his partner Tanya then witness the change and are soon in a new world, battling for survival - and their greatest challenge isn't the disaster itself but the hostility of other survivors, who have not coped with the catastrophe so well. The immediate task, then, is to clear away those unfortunates and begin to rebuild the world, after which we see how all will, eventually, be well.

The book certainly works on that level.  It doesn't, perhaps, deliver quite the sense of reassurance I suggest above - which is one clue that there is more going on here than you might expect.

The disaster that Paul and Tanya are affected by is a worldwide loss of the ability to sleep. A small number can still sleep, but they are drawn into increasingly compulsive dreams of golden light - from which, eventually, they do not wake.

For the first day, the lack of sleep is a joke, or a mild irritant although “Brazen heads” on the TV news spread alarm as ever.

After a second night without sleep, those who can't sleep - the "Awakened" - begin to resent and later to hate the "Sleepers”.

After several nights, the Awakened become delusional, paranoid and dangerous. After a few weeks more they can be expected to die - but Paul doesn't have the luxury of just waiting: Tanya is an Awakened, he is a Sleeper, they have taken in an orphaned child, Zoe, and they are surrounded by wily, driven Awakened who believe that a drink of a Sleeper's blood will cure them...

Then the book gets really weird. Paul, who narrates the story, is an etymologist. He writes not-so-popular books on word origins, while Tanya brings in the money. In a classic Wyndham apocalypse the main protagonist would be a scientist or practical sort and we'd get a rationalistic take on what happened: here it's all about the words. Paul comes to believe that the wakefulness is related somehow to the capacity for belief, mediated by the use or not of words: and that his books, which are a graveyard of lost or nearly lost terms, have somehow highlighted things, concepts, that disappeared - or almost disappeared: perhaps they went into a dreamworld from which people have now awakened. Some of these terms are defined throughout the book and used as chapter headings: so "Admiral of the Blue", a term for a blood-stained butcher, is the title taken on by a leader of a cult of the Awakened who wants to use Paul as a puppet prophet.

While that's not a cause and effect explanation of events it's as much of one as we get, and it informs both Paul's approach and that of the crazed cult who try to hunt him down. Whether you feel the accompanying digressions into what I can only call wordiness (writing both about words and meaning and employing thick barrages of the things to illustrate themselves) advance or delay the story will depend, I think, on how wedded you are to that Platonic ideal of the apocalyptic.

For myself, I found them slightly jarring at first but then, as Barnes gets into his flow, I quickly saw that they made a strange kind of sense. In fact, the book proved to be a refreshing change, focussing on the characters' responses to the situation they're in (and not just in the sense of recording their bewilderment at what they have lost - though it does do that) and the changes it brought about in them, rather than on the mundane details of finding food, water and shelter.

The book also, then, works on a deeper level. Those changes to Barnes' characters don't just appear on a blank slate which pops up Day 1 of The Disaster: they're actually edits to complex stories which occurred before the book started and glimpses of which he shows us (chiefly the background of Paul and Tanya). Similarly, the world that's plunged into chaos by the loss of sleep wasn't perfect before; large parts of it resembled what Vancouver soon becomes: so in that sense the events here are, truly, an awakening into a reality that was already here.

In the end this is a book that gives the reader a lot to think about.

It isn't always an easy read (and there are some gruesome events in here) but it is a very rewarding one.

Thoughts: The Coming Demise of Newspapers

I happened to buy a copy of New Scientist last week*, on impulse, at the checkout in (I think) Marks and Spencer's food bit and I was shocked at how slight it has become.

It's a magazine I used to read years ago (yes, and there's the point...) first when I was doing A levels, waiting for the copy in the school library and then when I was doing my degree and PhD. I subscribed to it for years, eventually cancelling because I no longer had time to read all of every edition. Back in those days, my life pretty much was physics: with other distractions - family, work - it seemed hard to find time. The same thing has happened with other magazines I've subscribed to in the past: The Listener at one time, New Statesman.

I have also pretty much stopped reading newspapers daily. I still get them on Saturday and Sunday: my morning then is focussed on the book reviews, eating breakfast while I see what's out there. I have to admit though that I buy far, far more books because of recommendations from Twitter,  or just from scrounging around to see which of my favourite authors have something new coming out soon, than because of a thing I see in the paper. Although it does still happen, and in any case, the review bits are nice to read just for the bookishness.

How long, though, can this last? I'm under no illusions that The Guardian and The Observer can keep being published indefinitely just so I can luxuriate in a few pages of book reviews. Like New Scientist - though perhaps not to the same extent - their physical version has diminished: when I used to buy them to read on the train in the morning there were all kinds of supplements - like the Guardian tech section - that aren't published on paper anymore and that I don't actively seek out online. It can only, I think go one way.

My son took me to see Spotlight a couple of weeks ago. (Son is the cinema enthusiast in this house). It wasn't a film I'd have chosen to see - confronting, dwelling on a nasty subject (the abuse cover-up in Boston, USA - and wider) and without an obvious good ending (how could there be?) Not that I only like cosy uplifting films, but still. However it was  revelation and actually very enjoyable. Not only for the story itself - the horrors that had gone on - but for the story of a team of journalists who uncover the truth. In some ways it was a very old fashioned film - it could have been shot in black and white, everyone wearing hats, with cries of "hold the front page!" (did that ever really happen?) The Web was happening - there were puzzled discussions of how to put up a link to the story once it broke - but it was secondary. When they needed to look up lists of priests in the Boston diocese, the jouralists went down into the cellar of The Boston Globe and went through dog eared old yearbooks, which, of course, we filed away. (My workplace recently abolished its reference library: I don't know where the stuff previously kept there has gone, but I fear it went in a skip).

Spotlight is in effect a celebration of - perhaps an epitaph to - a time when newspapers and journalists were a power, when they could get things done. I'm sure that falling circulation and the loss of advertising have curtailed that and while technology may have provided some alternatives I suspect that more has been lost than gained.

I felt the same way on reading Lauren Beukes' wonderful book The Shining Girls (link is to my Amazon review). One of the themes in this book is the power of popular journalism, in the right hands, for good. Of course it's set a good decade or so back. Today I feel more gloomily certain than ever that that book couldn't be written about now because the readers and the advertisers just aren't there anymore.

This fits. I think, into the "law of unintended consequences" heading. Yes, we all have these wonderful shiny new toys and SO MUCH TO READ. And responsible, factual reporting will continue, somehow (though if it has to load three flashing ads, seventeen listicles and six pop-ups before you can read the content, perhaps not for long...) But we will consume it so differently and I think it will be a long, long time -if ever - before it has the heart and moral authority of The Guardian or The Boston Globe in their pomp, or before it sits there on the coffee table in the physics department or the sixth form library, waiting to plant seeds of ideas or liven up a dull morning.

Anyway, that's enough from me. This month I'm editing the village magazine which goes out in hard copy only and is distributed free, though with ads. And deadline is looming...

*For the article on the anomalous bump in HLC data that CERN has spotted and which may point to new physics. It's an interesting piece, do read it!