Straight from the ‘made in a lab just for me’ short story universe, this is a ‘lost media’ story with a twist. Stella is a compulsive liar, if a harmlStraight from the ‘made in a lab just for me’ short story universe, this is a ‘lost media’ story with a twist. Stella is a compulsive liar, if a harmless one; she falsifies facts about her life partly to amuse herself, partly to see how people react. So when she asks an old friend if he remembers the fictitious kids’ TV series The Uncle Bob Show, she’s shocked when he not only says yes, but pulls out VHS tapes of old episodes on which they both appeared. Great starting point, well told, just long enough to pack enough detail in without overcomplicating things. A bit like Mister Magic if it was much better and a lot shorter. ...more
(3.5) Hmm, big mixed feelings about this one. I loved the world it created, and honestly felt the vagueness (of the setting, of the nature of the ‘gra(3.5) Hmm, big mixed feelings about this one. I loved the world it created, and honestly felt the vagueness (of the setting, of the nature of the ‘grand jeu’) only added to the magic. I loved the detail: this is an evocative, nostalgic text. But I guessed the twist almost immediately – it feels like Collins wants you to, though I’m not sure why, because the narrative then carries on doing that annoying thing where we’re extremely close to a character’s thoughts yet they have to think in circles around something that’s being obscured from the reader, which takes all the tension out of the story. The ‘I hate this person! but... do I actually like them? no, it cannot be’ of both romantic threads seemed endless, and particularly unlikely for intelligent adults, no matter how guarded. I also hated the ‘rat’ chapters and would gladly have cut that whole pointless plotline out of the book. I sound negative here, but I liked the way it felt overall: cosy and so perfect for this time of year, a warm blanket of a book. A hot chocolate with brandy. A big cushion with stars embroidered on it...more
Lotti Coates is the eldest daughter of an acclaimed painter and his beautiful muse; she’s accustomed to glamour and success. So when her family move tLotti Coates is the eldest daughter of an acclaimed painter and his beautiful muse; she’s accustomed to glamour and success. So when her family move to Canberra and she starts attending a new school, she’s determined to be one of the in-crowd – a plan that’s jeopardised when her parents allow her classmate Kyla Tyler, a notoriously strange and unpopular girl, to stay at their house. Lotti hates Kyla, whose odd looks and coarse manners horrify her. Yet as time goes on (and to Lotti’s disgust), Kyla seems to become increasingly entangled with the Coates. In the present day, the adult Lotti, now a doctor, returns to Canberra and – with a retrospective of her father’s work due to open – is forced to reckon with memories of those years.
Initially, I couldn’t help but compare We Were Never Friends to Emily Bitto’s The Strays, another Australian novel which features many similar plot points: an artistic family with three children taking in a disadvantaged girl; an unequal, obsessive friendship; complicated family dynamics and emotional neglect; a narrative structure that involves an adult reflecting on their childhood. But after a while, Bearman’s book pulls way ahead of Bitto’s. The writing is brilliant at the sentence level, and those crisp sentences illuminate Lotti’s world with startling colour – the settings are vividly portrayed, as is the emotional landscape of adolescence. I thought at first this would be an easy read, and while I certainly got through it quickly (I couldn’t put it down in the second half), it’s much bolder than I had imagined. Whenever I thought I knew where the story was going, it did something even more daring.
I would have liked to know a bit more about present-day Lotti, whose concerns aren’t fully elucidated. I also found it slightly jarring that past-Lotti and friends are pre-teens – a lot of their experiences, along with their language, feel too ‘old’ for girls who have just left primary school – but that’s probably a lack of similarity with my own experience more than anything else. Aside from those quibbles, I (somewhat unexpectedly) loved this book....more
Very very very compelling – almost unaccountably so, because the style is actually quite dry. In the beginning, I was hooked partly out of sheer curioVery very very compelling – almost unaccountably so, because the style is actually quite dry. In the beginning, I was hooked partly out of sheer curiosity: how would this story of a mutually half-hearted relationship between two rather dull people be transformed into the ‘exercise in Highsmithian horror’ promised by the quote adorning the cover? By the end of part one, it is clear exactly how, and Three suddenly becomes a very different book. The concluding part is downbeat, and retribution, when it comes, is bittersweet and definitely served cold; there are no fireworks. Still, I was really impressed by Mishani’s handling of the plot and how the book prioritises the inner lives of Orna and Emilia....more
I chose a truly wonderful book to start the year with, but it’s also an extremely difficult one to write about. Lote is an academic mystery about a seI chose a truly wonderful book to start the year with, but it’s also an extremely difficult one to write about. Lote is an academic mystery about a secret society. It’s about the exclusion of black people from (what is recorded of) history. It’s mostly set in a mysterious, vaguely sketched European town that seems to exist a little outside reality. It’s about a woman who repeatedly seeks to escape her own life and reinvent herself. It’s about a weird artist’s residency where people speak in pure cant and revere an obscure architect. All these things are in there, but there’s also a load of other stuff – about aesthetics, beauty, decadence, ways of seeing – Lote is a book of fantasies and ideas, fizzing with intelligence, infused with baroque spirit.
Solitary and highly resourceful, Mathilda lives by wringing what she can from a situation/place/person and then moving on. She is infatuated with the Bright Young People of the 1920s (among many other things). While volunteering in an archive, she finds a photograph of an unidentified black woman alongside one of her existing ‘Transfixions’, the socialite Stephen Tennant. Her quest to find out more about this woman, Hermia Druitt, takes her to the strange and dreamlike town of Dun, to a fateful meeting with destitute aesthete Erskine-Lily, and to the possible conclusion that everything is connected.
The synopsis says Lote ‘immerses readers in the pursuit of aesthetics and beauty, while interrogating the removal and obscurement of Black figures from history’, and it really does, but not in any way didactically, which is always my fear about novels that claim to ‘interrogate’ things or impart some overview of theory. Every time Mathilda discusses history, art or any framework for her thinking, it feels organic. (Meanwhile, the dense jargon used by the ‘Thought Artists’ effectively pillories not only the impenetrability of much critical discourse, but also how unimaginative it is.) I read Against Nature straight after this (not particularly because I’d read this, but my brain was probably making connections without me realising) and it struck me how much Lote is a black/female/queer counterpart to it, capturing the same heady sensations of lush abundance without any of the narrow-mindedness.
And I also found it immensely charming: Mathilda’s language can be florid (and occasionally blunt, and often funny), but it feels real and deliberate, including (especially?) the bits that don’t quite make sense, and I loved that she has such strong opinions yet also changes her mind quite often; she is open to ideas, an attitude that’s bound to bleed into the way one reads the book.
I read Lote in a sort of delirious trance, a phrase that could also describe the novel itself. It left me dizzy with pleasure; from it I acquired a new perspective on the history of art, a wonderfully vivid mental image of its setting, and a strong craving for frothy pink champagne.
The Sun Down Motel is a virtual masterclass in how to write a spooky, atmospheric mystery. Part of the narrative follows Vivian, a runaway who comes tThe Sun Down Motel is a virtual masterclass in how to write a spooky, atmospheric mystery. Part of the narrative follows Vivian, a runaway who comes to the small town of Fell in 1982, then vanishes. In alternating chapters set in 2017, her niece Carly tries to solve the mystery of Vivian’s disappearance by following in her footsteps. At the centre of both stories is the forlorn – and definitely haunted – motel of the title. It’s this setting that really makes the book shine. I could feel it and see it: the freezing rain, the inexplicable sounds, the loneliness of the night clerk’s job (which both Vivian and Carly take on). On top of that, much of the plot hews to a favourite pattern of mine: that of characters uncovering the truth by following physical clues. I’m docking a few points for the romantic subplot (boring, sorry), but I had such a great time with this book, and I’m definitely going to be reading more Simone St. James.
(3.5) I’ve been so busy recently that some of my reading choices have been about ease more than anything else. When I’m perpetually tired and always r(3.5) I’ve been so busy recently that some of my reading choices have been about ease more than anything else. When I’m perpetually tired and always rushing to meet some deadline, I don’t want to spend my spare time reading anything that feels like a challenge. I understand now why some people I know with extremely demanding jobs exclusively read trashy, formulaic books.
I’m not calling The Quickening trash, by the way. I just mean there is something about this type of novel that, for me, makes them very easy to read (not least because there are so many of them around now; as I noted in my review of The Whistling, the success of books like The Silent Companions seems to have made the ‘gothic chiller’, as they are often termed, ubiquitous). If you read one of these, you generally know what you’re going to get: a female protagonist (it’s nearly always a female protagonist) going to an imposing house in a remote location, where people seem to be keeping secrets and there are whispers of a haunting. She investigates, and typically finds there is definitely a ghost, but also that someone’s lying/covering something up/not who they claim to be, etc. 50/50 chance there’s also a love interest for the main character.
Anyway, this book is set mainly in the 1920s and involves a photographer, Louisa Drew, being sent to a country house to photograph the owner’s collection of antiques for an auction catalogue. She is heavily pregnant, but needs the money from the commission to support her family. Once at Clewer Hall, she learns it’s somewhat infamous: a notorious séance, attended by Arthur Conan Doyle, took place there in the 1890s, resulting in reports of a curse on the house and the family who inhabit it. More surprisingly, the medium who conducted the séance still resides there. No surprise that Louisa’s arrival coincides with things going bump in the night once again.
I knew exactly what kind of book this was and what I wanted from it. I enjoyed it. If you enjoy this sort of thing as well, The Quickening is a good example, nicely plotted with a likeable main character. But I’m getting a bit tired of the formula now and might swear off these books for a while.
Newly arrived in the UK from Hong Kong, Chloe Chan quickly finds herself disillusioned with life at a British university; she’d envisioned ‘intellectuNewly arrived in the UK from Hong Kong, Chloe Chan quickly finds herself disillusioned with life at a British university; she’d envisioned ‘intellectuals sat in armchairs by a fireplace, debating the minutiae of academia’, but her peers are more interested in binge drinking and skipping lectures. Things change radically, and seemingly for the better, when she starts working for Professor Roland Crannus. Reclusive and mysterious, Crannus is a near-mythical figure on campus – hero-worshipped by some, though no one quite seems to know what he does. It quickly becomes clear that his work is very unorthodox indeed. Whether she likes it or not, Chloe’s along for the ride, which means she attracts the attention of her mentor’s enemies too...
Professor Everywhere is framed as a memoir written by Chloe about her experiences with Crannus. Ten years after something referred to as ‘the Pimlico incident’, he’s become even more of a legend – reviled and revered in equal measure – and she feels it’s time to share her story. I liked and felt interested in Chloe almost from her first words; we’re straight into the tale of her time at university in the opening chapter, and the things we learn about her tell us so much about who she is. I immediately wanted to get to know her.
What worked best for me about this book is something that perhaps should have worked against it: its world feels so small, so cosy. I realise that this might sound to some like a real flaw in a story that involves characters stepping between worlds and contemplating the existence of countless realities. All I can say is that I loved it. I felt I had been given access to a self-contained environment that I could step back into simply by opening the book, and that seems to me perfectly apt for its themes.
Professor Everywhere is often at its weakest when it switches focus from the theoretical/scientific to the emotional. Chloe’s ill-advised entanglement with her admirer James is well-drawn, and there’s a moment of revelation that lands with real shock, specifically because it highlights certain characters’ lack of empathy. However, the supposedly significant romance between Chloe and Sarah feels like the story’s main flaw. Perhaps it’s simply that I found it difficult to believe in a new relationship between two 18-year-olds as a great love story, especially amid such an ambitious plot. It says something about how much I enjoyed the rest that I wasn’t deterred from loving the book as a whole. Even its shortcomings only made it more charming to me.
Speculative fiction about multiple worlds that also has a captivating academic setting and a narrator I felt attached to almost instantly... This was a book I’d always wanted to read without knowing it existed. I’m glad I found it.
Wow, this was like a stinging slap to the face. I mean that as a compliment. It’s about a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his friend’Wow, this was like a stinging slap to the face. I mean that as a compliment. It’s about a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his friend’s younger cousin, and that’s all you need to know, because this isn’t a story, it’s a feeling, or a string of them: the aching nostalgia of walking streets you used to know well and now find changed; the numb pleasure-pain of tracing over memories of good times long gone; the sick excitement of violence anticipated. There’s not a scrap of fat on Shah’s prose – it’s as bare and unforgiving as the bleak Midwestern urban sprawl its characters traverse. Ant says he wants to emerge from the funeral ‘core-shook and sparkling, death-ecstatic, fully diamond-hearted’, and that’s how I emerged from the book, shuddering and cold like someone on a comedown. Again, a compliment. To be read in one sitting.
I received an advance review copy of Whiteout Conditions from the publisher, Dead Ink.
I wanted an audiobook I could listen to last thing at night, while drifting off to sleep – I often use podcasts for this purpose, but I’ve listened to the few I really like so many times I’m in danger of wearing them out. Since one of those podcasts is The Magnus Archives, created by Jonathan Sims, Thirteen Storeys seemed like the perfect choice. Having read it relatively recently, I knew I wouldn’t have to concentrate too hard on the plot, and had a ready-made mental image of the setting. I also assumed Sims would have had a hand in the casting of the narrators, and would have chosen well.
There’s probably a proper term for this, but when I read fiction, I read it visually; what I mean is that I see the events of the story play out in my head as though I’m watching a film. I find audio fiction tricky because it makes the visualisation much harder. With Thirteen Storeys, I had particular problems with the voices.
Each chapter in the book tells the story of a different character, so each is narrated by a different person, who seem to have been chosen to approximate their characters as closely as possible. A couple are really good; one made me like the chapter more than I did in the book. But more often I found them offputting. For example: for a chapter told from the point of view of a child, the narrator is an adult, but she’s affecting an upbeat, sing-song tone to convey the youth of her character. Which is a good way to approach it, but... the creepiest moment in the book occurs in this chapter, and that jaunty tone instantly neuters it. Another has a male narrator putting on a stupid high-pitched voice for the dialogue spoken by his character’s wife, which is one of my absolute pet hates.
Plus the ~message~ comes across even more awkwardly than it does in the book. Horror can and should engage with political and social issues, of course. But, ugh, the way that’s handled here... I’m not a fan.
If I was going to rate the audiobook specifically, I’d rate it lower than the physical book. But I’m not going to, since a) I did enjoy the book qua book and b) as an inexperienced audiobook listener, I have no real way of judging whether this is a good or bad example.
I don’t know whether we’re truly getting more good literary horror collections these days, or whether I’ve just had good luck in picking them out lately. Either way, Only the Broken Remain is a pleasing addition to the stack of such collections published within the past year, including London Incognita by Gary Budden, Where We Live by Tim Cooke and London Gothic by Nicholas Royle.
Coxon’s stories tend towards a theme – that of an outsider finding community, albeit of an uncertain sort, among other misfits, often eschewing reality as well as conformity. Sometimes this is inverted, as in ‘Baddavine’, a folk horror tale in which a group of villagers, tormented by the whispers of an unseen creature, form a mob to pursue it. My favourite story was ‘No One’s Child’, the richly, fascinatingly grim tale of a young evacuee forming a deadly alliance with a creepy cellar-dwelling being. I also really enjoyed ‘All the Letters in His Van’, which offers a macabre take on a certain kids’ TV show, and now I’ve finished the book, it’s this clever and devilishly funny story I find myself thinking about a lot.
I received an advance review copy of Only the Broken Remain from Sublime Horror, courtesy of Black Shuck Books.
I really liked Tim Cooke’s story ‘The Box of Knowledge’, which was included in volume 4 of the anthology series Tales from the Shadow Booth. In it, a gang of young misfits find an abandoned container and adopt it as a place to drink and do drugs; the story’s main strength lies in the building of a richly detailed world, especially in the character of the narrator, whose personality and motivations are quickly and deftly sketched out. Reading Cooke’s debut collection, it becomes clear that ‘The Box of Knowledge’ is a fragment of a bigger picture. Its narrator is the central figure of each of these loosely connected tales. The group of teen friends appears in several other stories, but we also meet the narrator as a younger child, and as a grown-up father of two.
The blurb positions Where We Live as part of the emergent microgenre of landscape punk – indeed, a focus on landscape is an obvious implication of the title. The stories are inarguably rooted in their setting of South Wales. They dip their toes into horror, though sometimes this is no more than a shadowy suggestion. Despite that, my favourite story was the most explicitly horrific: the dark, dramatic ‘Nights at the Factory’. This is a book to recommend alongside Gary Budden’s debut, Hollow Shores, and Lucy Wood’s The Sing of the Shore. I like the idea of a map of the UK composed of these weird, ambiguous collections.
I received an advance review copy of Where We Live from Sublime Horror, courtesy of Demain Publishing.
I'd assumed the Curious Tales imprint – of Poor Souls' Light and Bus Station: Unbound fame – was defunct, so it was an unexpected end-of-year I'd assumed the Curious Tales imprint – of Poor Souls' Light and Bus Station: Unbound fame – was defunct, so it was an unexpected end-of-year treat when this new volume popped up on Christmas Eve. The stories themselves, which overlap slightly, are both set around Christmas Eve 1995. In Jenn Ashworth's 'Our Mother's House', twin sisters return to their childhood home and are forced to remember the strange gatherings organised by their late mother. In Richard V. Hirst's 'The Tar Triangle', another set of twins sign up to be part of a historical reenactment event, but Maisie (who narrates) quickly finds herself worryingly subsumed by her role. Though I liked both, 'The Tar Triangle' was my favourite; Hirst managed to make me feel emotionally invested in Maisie's story very quickly. An atmospheric duo of tales for a late-night one-sitting read.
(3.5) This was an unusual experience: a book I enjoyed even though I never – at any point – managed to get my head around what it was actually about. (3.5) This was an unusual experience: a book I enjoyed even though I never – at any point – managed to get my head around what it was actually about. At first I thought the early chapters’ thicket of infodumps was standard procedure for a novel like this with a near-future setting: we need to understand how New India works in the late 2020s, as well as the complexities of the characters’ relationships (Joey, the protagonist, is a ‘Reality Controller’ for Indi, her influencer ex; another major character, Joey’s childhood friend Rudra, is from a wealthy family with its own complicated web of connections). By the time I was about halfway through, however, it had dawned on me that it was all going to be like this. And it really is; every chapter up to the last feels like it’s haring off in a completely different direction. For all that, I had a really good time with the story! Basu writes at a convincing level of detail without getting bogged down in technicalities, and I didn’t tire of learning how this world’s economy of fame worked. Reminded me a lot of Lauren Beukes’ Moxyland, because of the colourful setting full of imagined tech/VR/AI/streaming stars, and also because of the distinct lack of structure – but somehow I liked this a lot more.
In the pub after the funeral, his father told him about the crash sites on Blackfell.
A man, his fiancée, and his father go on a hike together after thIn the pub after the funeral, his father told him about the crash sites on Blackfell.
A man, his fiancée, and his father go on a hike together after the funeral of the man's brother. The brother, Jimmy, is the only character to be given a name; the others remain symbolically anonymous. Tom Heaton has a way with sentences ('Nothing spoils a wedding like a dead brother'; 'He was within the space waiting to be filled, and it was unsustainable'), and there is something beguiling about the diversions within the story. Poignant and affecting.
I received a review copy of On Blackfell from the publisher, Nightjar Press.
As she makes her way home on a cold winter night, Kate notices a few things: a naked man standing in a winThe windows of Meridian House were all dark.
As she makes her way home on a cold winter night, Kate notices a few things: a naked man standing in a window 'as if he was lit up in a display cabinet', an indistinct image on her phone screen, a motorcyclist anonymous behind a black visor. In its first half, Michael Walters' story encapsulates the way it feels to walk alone in the dark, an experience that can be both threat and comfort. In its second, the strangeness ramps up, with doubled images and sinister encounters. It never feels implausible, though; there's an admirable restraint in the writing which makes the story's events all the more ominous.
I received a review copy of Signal from the publisher, Nightjar Press.
Dougie Blake spotted the suitcase first, at the top of the cul-de-sac, a red suitcase punching through the grey afternoon.
In a small seaside town someDougie Blake spotted the suitcase first, at the top of the cul-de-sac, a red suitcase punching through the grey afternoon.
In a small seaside town somewhere off the beaten track, Dougie and his elderly mother (who make an amusing double act in themselves) take 'home-stay guests', usually during the summer. Their latest guest, however, is unusual. Firstly, she arrives in winter; secondly, she insists her name is simply B – not short for anything. Dougie finds her dour and aloof, yet is fascinated. Where does she go, what does she do on those long walks in the cold? And then there's the strange music he hears coming from her room at night...
I just loved this story; its humour, tension and ambiguity make a perfect combination. In 19 pages, Hilaire crafts a deft portrait of Dougie, the dynamic between him and his mother, and their community, with its nosy shopkeeper and 'Friday nights at the Constitutional Club'. The author also makes B just as fascinating to the reader as she is to Dougie. A real pleasure, both funny and discomfiting.
I received a review copy of The Red Suitcase from the publisher, Nightjar Press.
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