I don’t have the space to put too many jokes into my Locus reviews. That’s a good thing. Unlike some critics (John Self and Adam Roberts come to mind)I don’t have the space to put too many jokes into my Locus reviews. That’s a good thing. Unlike some critics (John Self and Adam Roberts come to mind), I’m not as adept with the acerbic one-sentence zinger.
With this review, I was going to bemoan the fact that my musical tastes never matured beyond my teenage love affair with Bryan Adams. I cut this down in the review to “stunted musical tastes”. I’m happy I did. The Bryan Adams gag isn’t funny, even if it is sort of true. My musical knowledge is non-existent.
This is all relevant (well, sort of) because—and I’m sure some of you have figured this out already—Logic is a famous rapper. I did not know this. Nor did I know that Ultra 85 is his second novel; his first was Supermarket (accompanied by an album). As far as I know, Logic hasn’t taken the same path with Ultra 85. But then, the novel's focus—from a creative point of view—is on the tent pole films of the 80s and 90s. Music doesn’t get much of a look in.
Set a century from now, the Earth is dead, nuked out of existence. What’s left of humanity lives on a starship cum space station called Babel. A select few, the founding families who bankrolled the trip to outer space, i.e. the Ultra 85, live on a tidally locked planet called Paradise. Our two heroes, obsessed with films and pop culture in general, search the outer reaches of space in their small craft for precious minerals and anti-matter to keep Babel going. The Ultra 85 are, of course, arseholes. They have banned all entertainment (thus the obsession with pop culture). There are other cruelties (yes, this is a dystopia in spaaaaace), but if you want to know more you can read my Locus review. Let’s just say that it’s all very evil, requiring our heroes, along with an anti-matter and pop-culture-powered mecha, to do some kick arse-ing.
I don’t think there’s much that’s new here. But that’s not to say I didn’t have fun with Ultra 85. I read a lot of earnest, dour stuff, and while I love it, even I need an escapist break from experimental dystopias and post-apocalyptic nightmares. Ultra 85 gave me that break. It’s funny. It’s violent (in a Tarantino sort of way). It moves at a rapid pace. If the novel's message is simplistic: freedom is good, enslavement in spaaaaace is bad, that’s OK. Sometimes, we need the reminder....more
I loved this book. It’s weird, beautiful, violent, and tragic. At different times, it reminded me of Sebald, Tarkovsky (“Stalker” specifically) and JoI loved this book. It’s weird, beautiful, violent, and tragic. At different times, it reminded me of Sebald, Tarkovsky (“Stalker” specifically) and John Berryman’s Dreamsongs.
That suggests it’s not original, that it’s a patchwork of influences. Absolutely not. It’s a dystopian novel that takes place nowhere and nowhen (a bit like Utopia). The inciting incident is an accident at a Factory, a blaze of white light that kills off numerous animals and sees people flee the village near the Factory. Some stay, though. That includes our protagonist and his mother. The army—bald-headed soldiers—move in with their tanks, but who they might be protecting and from what is never made clear. It’s also a queer love story—our teenage narrator (at least I assumed he was a teenager) writes letters to his lover, Boris, who lives in the city. They both seek freedom. There’s violence, enslavement and a mouldering corpse in the back of a car. It’s that sort of book.
I rarely speak about translations in my reviews for Locus. It’s for a simple reason. I have no idea whether the word choice made by the translator reflects the author’s intent.* All I can do is judge the novel based on what’s on the page. In this case, I feel confident that Lethem has nailed the tone and texture of the original text.
Napalm in the Heart is experimental. In the sometimes blinkered world of genre fiction, “experimental” is a swear word.** It’s a shame because, as a field, I feel we ignore some astonishing works of surrealism. Napalam in the Heart is one of them. It’s likely to be one of my books of the year.
*I envy critics who can read in multiple languages and debate word choices endlessly. I would use Duolingo, but I don’t have the patience.
I’m going to take a different approach to the books I review for Locus. I’m going to focus more on the thoughts that crossed my mind when reading and I’m going to take a different approach to the books I review for Locus. I’m going to focus more on the thoughts that crossed my mind when reading and then reviewing the book. If you want to know my refined thoughts on the novel, please read the review when it appears online or, better yet, subscribe to Locus.
In short, I liked Hum. If you liked Helen Phillips's previous novel, The Need, you should like this. Both books are about the stresses and anxieties of motherhood with a speculative twist. Here, we’re presented with a dystopia where the robotic “hums” have taken most of the jobs, and the planet is baking due to global warming. All of this is viewed from the perspective of a mother—May—trying to protect her family.
Inspired by Abigail Nussbaum, I spent a little more time—with emphasis on “little”—digging into the novel’s politics. We’re told not to review the book we wished had been written, but I couldn’t help but note that, like so much fiction these days, Hum is a novel obsessed with the decline of the middle class. As I say in my review, the shit that happens to May and her family, the lack of job and food security, and the threat of the family being split apart are issues that working-class folk and the impoverished are dealing with every single day. And that’s without climate change or an all-powerful AI. I do get it, though. We—and when I say we, I absolutely mean me, don’t think for a moment that I’m shielded from the criticism—only take notice of the shit hitting the fan when it’s the college-educated class selling body parts to make ends meet.
It’s unfair, though, to blame Helen Phillips for an issue that’s endemic across the publishing industry. I read Love on the Dole earlier this year, and it struck me that if Walter Greenwood were seeking to publish it today, he’d have next to no chance.
Obviously, I don’t read everything. Maybe there’s more blue-collar fiction out there that deals directly with the issues raised by Hum. If you know of anything, feel free to point it out.
My Locus review will appear in the September 2024 edition....more
Some novels don’t immediately open themselves up to the reader. You need to have patience and allow the book to come to you.
That’s how I experienced ASome novels don’t immediately open themselves up to the reader. You need to have patience and allow the book to come to you.
That’s how I experienced Abra. I found the first thirty or so pages hard-going. There’s a choppiness to the prose as our titular protagonist—who hasn’t spoken to anyone in nine years—finds her voice. But as Abra flashes back to her past, recalling the name and life she once lived, I found myself drawn into the narrative. By the end of the novel I was ensconced in this book, in its radicalism, its knottiness, its beauty. The fact you can only read this electronically—print copies can go for as much as $200—is a crime.
"My name is Abra. My name is Abra." She must say it twice because she’s almost forgotten who she was. Nine years ago, Abra left her husband and two children for a cabin in the wilds of Ontario in Canada—a place with no mirrors or clocks, where time exists entirely in the present. Nine years later, Abra’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Kate, tracks her down, desperate to know why she walked out on them.
If, like Kate, you’re expecting a straightforward answer to that question, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Abra cannot explain why she left; only that she had to get away, that her life as Abra wasn’t what she wanted or who she was. More than three decades later, Rachel Cusk is pilloried for having the audacity of not so much regretting having children but acknowledging that they subsume a mother’s life. Cusk, at least, didn’t walk away from her family. Abra did. And that’s what makes Barfoot’s novel so provocative, an argument against the mainstream portrayal of motherhood: the need to be a mother.
It’s too easy to frame Abra as a novel about depression and mental health. Doing so strongly implies that Abra’s decision to walk out on her family wasn’t rational but a cry for help. The Abra in the cabin, though she’s no longer known by that name or any name, is so utterly at peace with herself. She is happy. I get it, though. Her happiness and her need for solitude have come at the expense of her children, and both have permanently changed (for the worse in the case of her son Eddie) through the experience. And that’s tragic. The scene where her husband comes to the cabin a year after Abra left is so soul-crushing because he’s a kind, loving man—a very progressive take on masculinity for the mid-70s—and yet Abra can’t fulfil his simple need to know what he did wrong, what he did that made her leave.
And that’s why this debut novel—because, yes, this was Barfoot’s first crack at longer-form fiction—is so damn extraordinary. It’s because we come to love Abra while feeling deep sympathy and sadness for those she left behind. It’s a book comfortable with contradiction. And I love that.
P.S. The quote from The Calgary Herald couldn’t be so wrong. And the cover… oh, God, the cover....more
No, I didn’t read this as a teenager like everyone else. I was reading and re-reading Terrance Dick’s Doctor Who novelisations. They fed my need for mNo, I didn’t read this as a teenager like everyone else. I was reading and re-reading Terrance Dick’s Doctor Who novelisations. They fed my need for mythic heroes and running down corridors (there’s not enough of the latter in Sir Gawain; instead, there are plenty of tips on slaughtering and skinning a deer).
But now that I’ve read Sir Gawain, I’ve realised that fantasy fiction peaked in the 14th Century.* Stuff your Tolkeins**, your Fiests, your Clark Ashton Smiths, and your George R. R Martins (but not Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay; I love that book); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the ur-text, and nothing has ever surpassed it. And the fact you all knew this—yes, all of you—and didn’t bother to mention it really pisses me off.
Most of you know the plot, but for three who don’t know the story, the Green Knight turns up to a banquet at King Arthur’s Court and throws down a challenge to those present. He will let a man strike him with the axe he’s holding as long as he can return the blow a year and a day later. Sir Gawain, the idiot (because, come on… ), takes on the challenge. He picks up the axe and chops the Green Knight’s head off. This bit shocked me. I don’t know what I expected from the poem, but not a bloke with blood spouting from his neck hole, his head rolling around on the floor. The Knight aint dead, though. He picks up his head, plonks it back onto his neck and tells the somewhat surprised Gawain that he will be expecting the Knight at the Green Chapel in a year and a day. And because Sir Gawain isn’t someone to shirk his responsibilities, he sets off for the Green Chapel just before Christmas (yes, like Die Hard, this is also a Christmas story).
The titular knight goes through a series of adventures that the Gawain Poet decides not to bother with. Exhilarating adventures possibly involving dragons and Wodwos and other magical creatures. But, nah, instead, we jump to Gawain encountering a “splendid castle” where he’s looked after by the King and seduced by the Queen. There’s much hunting and sexy bits with the Queen trying to nuzzle up to a naked Gawain who's just trying to have a lie in. This happens over three days, and just as you’re wondering where all this hunting, skinning of deers and cock-teasing is going, it all comes together in a brilliant denouement.
It’s bloody marvellous. Every. Single. Bit. Of. It. And I’m now ruined forever. No fantasy epic will ever match the glorious heights of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Well, except for Tigana. Fuck that’s a great novel.
*Look, I haven’t read Le Morte d’Arthur, authored by Sir Thomas Malory a century later, but I’m going to take the punt and say that it’s not better than the utter brilliance that is Sir Gawain.
**Yes, I know he did a modern English translation. It’s not the one I read, though....more
I made the mistake of first reading the abridged version of De Profundis. This isn’t entirely my fault. For decades, efforts were made to censor the mI made the mistake of first reading the abridged version of De Profundis. This isn’t entirely my fault. For decades, efforts were made to censor the most provocative and personal parts of De Profundis—all the stuff about Wilde’s fraught* relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas—AKA Bosie. Even with those sections removed, it’s still a fascinating, intellectually potent text. Add in the stuff about Bosie, and it becomes much more heart-rending and powerful.
De Profundis is a 50,000-word letter from Wilde to Douglas written during Wilde’s second year of imprisonment in Reading Gaol for gross indecency. In the first half of the letter, Wilde goes into great, intimate detail about their one-way, abusive relationship. Wilde might have been the older man, but he was in thrall to Douglas. Even when he realises that Douglas is a selfish cad who expects to be paid for and lavished with love and praise, Wilde can’t seem to get away. He does try, but gets sucked back in by his ego, the sweet words of Douglas, and even the pleadings of Douglas’s mother, who hoped that Wilde could steer her wayward son in the right direction. It all goes horribly wrong. Especially when Boise’s father gets involved and starts threatening Wilde. At this point, Wilde is bankrupt and estranged from his wife and children. But he only goes to jail because Bosie convinces Wilde to take Bosie’s father to court for defamation (that’s not what they called it back then). It does not go well.***
There’s something cathartic about De Profundis: a chance for Wilde to bare it all, to put his raw emotions on the page in the hope that Bosie will appreciate his part in Wilde’s fall. But it’s also a profoundly religious text, one that put paid to my misconception that Wilde was an atheist. He was non-denominational but converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. The second half of the letter shifts away from their relationship and instead becomes an intense meditation on suffering. Not just Wilde’s suffering in jail but also the very nature of suffering. “Suffering is one very long moment,” he tells us. “We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods and chronicle their return.” (This line is, interestingly, the opening of the abridged version).
This fascination with suffering transitions into an ecstatic meditation on the character and divinity of Christ. Wilde talks about how much Christ has influenced art, how “the imaginative quality of Christ’s own nature” has given us the most diverse things and people: “Hugo’s *Les Miserables*, Baudelaire’s *Fleurs du Mal*, the note of pity in Russian novels, Verlaine and Verlaine’s poems…” and so on. It’s rather glorious and beautiful. Even if you’re not a believer.
It’s also very moving. Especially Wilde’s excitement at leaving prison and his desire to live a more simplistic life, where he takes pleasure in the simpler things: “With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?” That’s not how it turns out for Wilde. On leaving prison, he is rejected by the Church and by most of his friends, including his wife and children. It’s so sad. So tragic. But De Profundis is still an incredible document.
*Understatement. Actually, understatement doesn’t cut it. Poor Oscar **
**Yes, I’m aware we only get Oscar’s side of the story. But having read up on Bosie, it’s clear he was a bit of a prick. When parts of De Profundis came out in 1912, he gave Wilde another kicking.
It took me forever to find a copy of Escape to an Autumn Pavement—well, forever in Internet time. Thank you to an online educational bookshop (Books DIt took me forever to find a copy of Escape to an Autumn Pavement—well, forever in Internet time. Thank you to an online educational bookshop (Books Direct) that had a copy (does this mean it’s on the syllabus somewhere?).
Born in Panama to Jamaican parents, Andrew Salkey spent his childhood in Jamaica before moving to London, where he attended university. Salkey was part of an emerging cadre of Caribbean writers who had emigrated to Britain. I want to tell you I’d heard of Salkey — who also wrote poetry and children’s books and died in 1995 at the age of 67 — but if not for Backlisted (that podcast again), I would have been ignorant of his work. And that would be a shame because while parts of Autumn have not aged well, what it says about the immigrant experience in Britain is, sadly, as pertinent today as it was then. (I post this during a week of anti-Muslim riots in the UK).
The novel is narrated by Johnnie Sorbert who left a middle-class life in Jamaica for the grit, grime, and racism of London. It’s assumed that Sorbert came to Britain for a better life (unlike Salkey, he’s not there to study at university). His mother — through her letters — certainly thinks that’s the case. But Johnnie’s situation isn’t entirely optimal, residing in a “small Hampstead sitter” where he’s loathed by the landlord (a cranky old woman) and several of the tenants, including a young Indian woman (and student) who hates everything about Johnnie. At night, he works as a waiter in a Soho club catering primarily to West Indian clientele.
To say that Johnnie is an ambivalent young man would be the understatements of understatements. He’s conflicted about his birth country — Jamaica — he’s conflicted about his sexuality — he’s having an affair with Fiona, the girl-friend of one of the tenants who hates him, and he has feelings for Dick, another tenant — and he’s conflicted about what he should make of his life — he’s an intelligent man wasting his twenties collecting tips in Soho. Then there’s the racism that he confronts regularly, mainly in the form of political pamphlets calling for “Negros” to be sent back from whence they came.
It’s maybe not surprising then that Johnnie is cynical and rude. He treats Fiona like garbage, he’s horrible to Biddy, the barmaid at the Soho club, and he leads Dick on, unable to admit his feelings. On the latter, I am sympathetic to Johnnie; this novel is set in 1960, and being gay was a crime (I’m sure being gay and black was worse). His misogyny is harder to excuse, but then his attitude toward women only reflects the attitude of those around him, like Larry, the barber or the men he encounters at the Soho club. And, to be fair to Salkey, he’s not asking us to relate to Johnnie but rather to realise that the young man isn’t equipped to deal with these contrasting emotions.
If I didn’t love Escape to an Autumn Pavement, I did appreciate it. The almost Joyceian quality of Johnnie’s thoughts has a poetry and rhythm that brings many of the novel’s contradictions to the fore. Whereas the dialogue — of which there’s quite a bit — has a biting wit, Johnnie can be pretty savage when he’s in a mood. For all its rawness and character flaws, this novel has moments of extraordinary lyricism. It’s certainly worth hunting for....more
Let’s start with the bottom line: if you have a vague interest in genre criticism, you should immediately purchase Track Changes: Selected Review by ALet’s start with the bottom line: if you have a vague interest in genre criticism, you should immediately purchase Track Changes: Selected Review by Abigail Nussbaum. Even if you couldn’t care less, you should buy it anyway to witness a critic at the top of her game.
A bit about the book: it collects around 58 reviews (a tiny fraction of Nussbaum’s output over two decades). The book is separated into five sections: Space, Systems, Places, Bodies and Tales, with the reviews placed in chronological order. Nussbaum covers the gamut of genre work, novels, collections, TV and film; for the most part, her choices – reviews of Interstellar, The Golem and the Jinni, and Severance: Season One, to name three – are those that will appeal to a general audience, not just fandom.
In my Locus review of Track Changes, I point out Nussbaum’s skill in building an argument: meticulous, thoughtful and passionate. Even when I disagreed with her conclusion, I can’t say I wasn’t swayed. But then, Nussbaum’s work isn’t about persuasion; it’s about articulating how genre succeeds or fails to reflect real-world issues, namely class, gender, identity and the environment.
What I didn’t say enough about in my column (due to space) is Nussbaum's artistry in constructing a review. I know this will sound self-serving, but criticism is seen by most people as dispensable (assuming they notice it at all). Criticism only gets attention when someone either pens a hatchet job, or a big-name author attacks some poor schlub on Goodreads for saying something rude about their book, or fuckwits review bomb a book or film because “woke”. Very few point to a piece of criticism and say: “This, this right here, this is extraordinary.” Writing good criticism is fucking hard. It’s taken me four years to get a handle on it, and it’s depressing when the only reviews spoken about are “problematic” or poorly written.
This is why we need to encourage, promote, and applaud those places, like Briardene Press, Strange Horizons and, yes, Locus, that prioritise criticism and give it the space to explore, critique, and deconstruct genre fiction in all its forms. That’s why you should buy Track Changes and keep track of Nussbaum’s criticism on her blog, Asking The Wrong Question. She is one of the best of us, a true artist who inspires critics like me....more
The eleven stories in Puloma Ghosh’s debut collection Mouth are, in the main, about isolation, loneliness, and the longing for human connection. I knoThe eleven stories in Puloma Ghosh’s debut collection Mouth are, in the main, about isolation, loneliness, and the longing for human connection. I know, it sounds like a laugh riot. But it’s not all sackcloth and misery. With an appreciation for the surreal, scary and weird, Ghosh embeds her themes into tales that play with familiar genre tropes such as vampires, werewolves, time travel, and ghosts.
The opening piece, “Desiccation,” is a creepy, dystopian piece about a friendless teenage ice skater who becomes attracted to a fellow skater, Pritha, who may or may not be a vampire. This coming-of-age tale of dead skaters and sexual awakening is told against the backdrop of a war that no one ever sees but kills off (we presume) all the men over seventeen.
In “Leaving Things,” a town is in lockdown, terrorised by wolves targeting female residents. When a vet breaks the rules and takes in a sick, pregnant wolf, she is astounded when the animal gives birth to a human child. Like “Desicattion,” this is a story about loneliness and desire that flirts with taboo.
“K” follows a college student haunted by the ghostly figure of a former resident named K. The protagonist's obsessive search for information about K leads her to the college's enigmatic and possibly dangerous groundskeeper, the last person to see K.
“Anomaly” changes things up a bit tonally, with Ghosh combining time wars, temporal anomalies, and online dating in a story that is both awkward and warm yet unsettling. I also loved the uncanny “Lemon Boy,” which is almost Lovecraftian in its treatment of holes and negative space.
The collection's theme crescendos with the final piece, “Persimmons.” It tells the story of Uma, who lives in a distant world where a persimmon tree entices human colonists with promises of abundance and fertility but demands a gruesome sacrifice. The fecundity of Ghosh’s prose doesn’t mask Uma's loneliness and estrangement, especially in relation to her mother.
There isn’t a story here I didn’t like. Each is a skewed reflection of our world, with lyrical language and a keen understanding of loss, isolation and desire. Apparently, Ghosh is working on a novel; I look forward to it....more
I’ve wanted to read Ginzburg for a while now (I’ve owned a copy of The Road To The City for a couple of years but never got around to it). With BackliI’ve wanted to read Ginzburg for a while now (I’ve owned a copy of The Road To The City for a couple of years but never got around to it). With Backlisted doing Family Lexicon (yes, that podcast decides about 30% of my reading), I thought I’d start with that.
Technically, it’s a memoir, though Ginzburg tells us in the preparatory remarks that “even though the story is real, I think one should read it if were a novel, and therefore not demand of it any more or less than a novel can offer”. It’s an interesting take, ahead of time, because while Family Lexicon is shaped like fiction every character is real and every event occurred. It’s autofiction, 14 years before the term was coined by Serge Doubrovsky (who said similar things about his novel/memoir “Fils”).
Ginzburg tells the tale of an Italian family across three decades, starting just after WW1 and ending five years post-WW2. It just so happens that the family in question is hers. There’s her father, Giuseppe (“Beppino”), her mother, Lidia, and her siblings, Mario, Gino, Paola and Alberto. Ginzburg was the baby. From the very first page, we are given an unrefined blast of her father’s anger, who would regularly describe his children as “numbskulls”, “negroes”, and “jackassess” (the last one being his favourite). His anger is all fury and, as it would appear, very little bite. I’m not saying he didn’t frighten his loved ones, but Ginzburg frames Beppino more as a buffon than a tyrant. The man hated everything, whether it be music, the theatre, spending money, fascists — which, fair enough — marriage — every time his kids get married, he loses it — and cars. It’s extraordinary, given everything he experienced as a Jewish man during the height of fascism, that he didn’t keel over from a heart attack. But somehow, his righteous anger over the important and mundane sees Beppino and his wife Lidia (who often eggs him on) survive the darkest moments.
What’s fascinating in Family Lexicon is that Ginzburg has little interest in writing about herself. She is a passive observer of her family’s stories. Even the death of her husband during the War is kept at arm’s length. But the Family Lexicon is less a memoir and more a compendium of the tales that the family shared and re-shared, including a litany of phrases that would be thrown into every conversation. To put it another way, it is a Family Lexicon. This all resonated with me, partly because her parents reminded me of my paternal grandfather and grandmother, but mostly because my family also has a Lexicon: the stories we repeat and the phrases we share.
The novel/memoir is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and Ginzburg’s deadpan style only elevates this. But it also has darker moments where Ginzburg allows us to glimpse her vulnerability, especially when recounting her memories of her dear friend Cesare Pavese, who took his own life. (That section, late in the novel, is breathtaking.)
The book is also a historical document in how it details how anti-fascists tried and failed to deal with fascism and the rise of Mussolini. Ginzburg’s father and siblings were jailed, with Mario escaping to France by the skin of his teeth. And yet, throughout all this, the Levis continue to share their stories and speak in their lexicon, even as darkness seeks to overwhelm them....more
This isn’t my first Pynchon. I read Bleeding Edge when it came out. I liked it but didn’t love it. Pynchon’s quirky sense of humour didn’t always regiThis isn’t my first Pynchon. I read Bleeding Edge when it came out. I liked it but didn’t love it. Pynchon’s quirky sense of humour didn’t always register; I didn’t always feel like I was in on the joke. Reading the reviews of the time, I wasn’t entirely alone (though Jonathan Lethem loved it). Having read The Crying of Lot 49, with its ridiculous tangents, sophomoric humour and convoluted, even contrived plot, I now recognise the linguistic and literary genius on display. I feel compelled to not only reread Bleeding Edge but to confront those longer novels that made Pynchon famous – namely, V. and Gravity’s Rainbow (which was nominated for a Nebula).
Outlining the plot of The Crying of Lot 49 feels like a mug’s game. It’s not that there isn’t one; it’s that it’s so self-reflexive and knotted it’s an almost pointless task. But if you carve away all the colour, including a faux Jacobean tragedy called The Courier’s Tragedy (a poor man’s Hamlet), what you get is this: Oedipa Mass becomes the executor of the estate of an ex-lover, the inordinately wealthy Pierce Inverarity. In attempting to figure out how to deal with the Estate, Oedipa gets drawn into a centuries-old conspiracy involving the postal system.
Maxwell’s Demons! The symbol of a muted horn! The aforementioned The Courier’s Tragedy! W.A.S.T.E.! Thurn and Taxis! Nazi psychiatrists with a penchant for faces and Freud! And, of course, the foreboding Trystero! All linked together via a cast of eccentric, sometimes oversexed men. And poor Oedipa, ostensibly the only woman in the story, trying to make sense of it all. It’s absurd and silly and wild in the best counter-culture, drug-addled ways. If it regularly reminded me of Vonnegut, maybe it’s because they were cut from the same satirical and surrealist cloth (they attended Cornell together). It’s audacious: you could spend days peeling away all the references and allusions or flowcharting the byzantine plot of The Courier’s Tragedy. You can see how this novel (and likely V., etc.) would have influenced a generation of mostly male writers. David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders and so on. (If The Crying of Lot 49 had footnotes, it could easily be an excised section of Infinite Jest).
But what struck me about the novel (or novella, it’s been called both) is that the issue it deals with: a distrust towards communication controlled by a centralised distribution system, resonates all the moreso today. And not just the way social media has been co-opted by the powerful. The mail is also under threat, especially if you live in the States and you need access to abortion drugs post-Roe v. Wade.
As I was writing this, I briefly wondered what Pynchon would make of the current moment, only to realise that he’s still alive (he’s 87). All we know of the reclusive author is through his work, and given that his last novel was written more than a decade ago, we’re likely never to hear (unless papers are released posthumously) his views on the current culture war. Maybe it’s for the best. In the meantime, I still have his great work to catch up on....more
Hard Girls proves that Lennon is not bound by a particular genre; he goes where the story is.
His last novel, Subdivision, was a trippy Philip K. DickHard Girls proves that Lennon is not bound by a particular genre; he goes where the story is.
His last novel, Subdivision, was a trippy Philip K. Dickian dreamscape. Before that, Broken River was an unconventional psychological thriller told from the perspective of a literal representation of the traditional omniscient narrator. And before that, The Familiar played with alternate realities… or did it?… it’s an open question. Hard Girls, in contrast to those three, is a crime novel. It’s the story of two estranged sisters, Jane and Lila Pool, searching for their enigmatic, estranged mother, Annabel Pool.
Before reading Hard Girls, I would have also said that no Lennon novel is ever the same (noting, I haven’t read his earlier work, and for all I know, they’re part of an epic series… they’re not… but I haven’t read them so I can’t be sure… I mean, I am sure… but, anyway…). Hard Girls breaks that trend. It’s the first book in a series. And while I can't deny a tinge of disappointment that the next novel won’t be something completely new and different – it’s a sequel to Hard Girls – I can understand why an author (for commercial reasons) would want to stick to one set of characters, especially when they’ve stumbled across two protagonists as fascinating, flawed and dynamic as Jane and Lila Pool (the Hard Girls of the title).
Hard Girls might be more straightforward than Lennon’s last three novels, but that doesn’t mean it’s conventional. The non-linear structure, alternating between the past and present, which in and of itself isn't new, allows Lennon to cleverly flesh out Jane’s backstory (the novel is told mainly from her perspective). Throughout the book, we learn about Jane and Lila’s teenage years (they’re fraternal twins), brought up by an absent-minded academic father and an aloof, cold mother (who disappears for weeks on end, Jane and Lila assume she’s having multiple affairs and might even have numerous families). We then return to Jane’s present-day situation, where we learn that she’s a mother with a teenager who was pregnant while in jail. She hasn’t seen her twin for a decade, her mother for longer… and then she gets a coded message (using Nesbitt’s The Railway Children – WHICH I JUST READ!!! – as the cipher) from Lila with news that she has found their mother.
I'm missing chunks (their father, Harry Pool, has an arc that goes interesting places), but so I should. This is a novel that holds its secrets tightly. But for all the plot shenanigans, this story is about mother/daughter relationships; on that count, it’s both edgy and compassionate. If you’ve never read Lennon, this would be a terrific entry point, given there’s a sequel to come next year....more
I was about a quarter of the way through South Riding when I Googled Winifred Holtby (I’d not heard of her before picking up the novel). I was perturbI was about a quarter of the way through South Riding when I Googled Winifred Holtby (I’d not heard of her before picking up the novel). I was perturbed to discover that South Riding was published posthumously in 1936 and that Holtby wrote the novel aware that death awaited her, having been diagnosed with Bright’s disease. She died at the age of 37 in September 1935. Knowing this about Holtby and the book's production adds a haunted, tragic quality to a narrative already brimming with big emotions: love, anguish, honour and greed.
Set in the titular South Riding, a fictional district of Yorkshire (the ridings existed; there just wasn’t a South one), Holtby follows the social and political life of those who live there. Holtby uses the administration of the Riding — the decisions made by councillors and Aldermans — to explore class, with South Riding framed as one of the poorer counties in the region. As such, we’re introduced to a varied cast of characters, covering the social gamut, whether it be the Hollies who live in the “shacks” (the eldest daughter Lydia a wunderkind) or the oily and manipulative Alderman Snaith, who sees profit in developing parts of the Riding. At the heart of the novel are Richard Carne and Sarah Burton. He is the master of the ailing Maythorpe Hall, a once distinguished estate now running short of cash, Carne selling what he has to keep the banks at bay but also fund the expensive care of his mentally ill and unresponsive wife. Burton is a child of the South Riding who returns home to take on the role of the headmistress of Kilpington Girl’s School, full of feminist ideals and aspirations. The two, predictably, butt heads but also predictably fall in love. And it’s that romantic tension that fuels the emotional engine of the novel.
Other wonderful, memorable characters surround Carne and Burton, most notably seventy-two-year-old Alderman Beddoes, South Riding’s first council-woman inspired by Holtby’s mother. I also loved the frequently ill socialist Joe Astell, the conflicted (and hypocritical) Alfred Huggins, the snobbish Midge Carne, and the aforementioned sly and manipulative Alderman Snaith.
Then there’s the tragedy of Lily Sawdon, dying from cancer but unable to tell her husband, Tom, who decides on a whim to buy the local pub at the worst possible time. Her chapters are the most heartbreaking (what she chooses to do with the Alsatian dog gifted to her by Tom, another poor decision, is… gut-wrenching) because it’s clear that she’s as much a character as she is a reflection of Holtby’s own mortality.
And that’s the thing about South Riding; it’s a truly dark novel in which death is a constant presence.
It’s also a politically radical novel. One that sees the Nazis on the horizon and yet hopes for a just world where the divisions between the classes are dissolved and where women have the same opportunities as their male counterparts. The ending is hopeful, bittersweet, yes, but hopeful. It’s a hope never realised as three years after the publication of South Riding, the world is again at War. And yet Holtby’s message — her final words about us as a species — still resonates, even more so where the divide between the rich and poor is so vast and where war and slaughter is a daily occurrence. What an astonishing novel. What a legacy....more
Unreliable narrators are a dime a dozen these days, to the extent that they’ve become cliche. (That’s not to say it can’t be done well. Everything oldUnreliable narrators are a dime a dozen these days, to the extent that they’ve become cliche. (That’s not to say it can’t be done well. Everything old and worn can be renewed). In the days of Ford Maddox Ford, the unreliable narrator was a narrative device you didn’t often see used in mimetic fiction.* But FMF (yes, I’m calling him that) wasn’t just interested in a narrator you couldn’t trust (does John Dowell ever actually lie, or does he elide?), he also employed what he called “impressionistic techniques”, to imitate the non-linear quality of memory. So, what we get is a decidedly untrustworthy narrator telling us a story out of order about infidelity, tragedy and death. And it’s awesome!
Set before Dub Dub 1**, Americans John Dowell and his wife Florence meet English couple the Ashburnhams, Captain Edward and Leonora, at a spa in Nauheim, Germany. The Dowells are there because Florence has heart problems and they’re seeking treatment. The couples form a friendship, one that will last nine years. But, we know going in that their relationship will end in tears — as Dowell tells us, this is the “saddest story I have ever heard” (“The Saddest Story” was the novel’s original title). We also know that by story’s end, Edward and Florence will be dead. This isn’t a spoiler. Dowell is keen we know this straight off the mark. So armed with all this foreshadowing, we’re expecting a sorrowful story about a friendship sundered by tragedy. But that’s not what we get. Instead, as the narrative unfurls out of order, we discover that no one, not least John Dowell, can be trusted.
The Good Soldier is a short novel, but it’s dense. There’s a scant amount of dialogue but rather long, descriptive paragraphs, each one a testament to Dowell’s slippery state of mind. At first, he comes off as gormless, duped by his wife Florence, who married him as a cover for an affair she was having with a “lower class” man (class plays a significant role in the story – especially the horror of having an affair with a man or woman of low standing). But the further we go, the more we start to doubt Dowell’s temperament, given glimpses of his cruelty and savagery. It leaves us to wonder whether he killed his wife (of course he bloody well did) and whether he manipulated Edward to take his own life (errrrr, yes!).
I did chuckle at an early review of The Good Soldier which suggested FMF would have been better served, for the sake of clarity, to tell his story chronologically. How else is a reader meant to figure out whether Dowell is a lovely, simple-minded bloke or an evil, violent bastard? Even now, with the publishing world glutted with unreliable, prickish characters, The Good Soldier maintains a freshness that more contemporary works struggle to match. I’ve read some tremendous “older” novels this year, but The Good Solider would be at the top of the pile. It’s just that good.
*Go on, provide your examples, but they must predate 1915 and be mimetic… horror and crime don’t count! Neither does Chaucer! OK, you can have Chaucer.
** Because there was no War when FMF drafted the novel. Also, while “The Good Soldier” wasn’t his choice the title certainly didn’t hurt sales when it came out in 1915....more
The last time I read a novel by Jeff Noon, I was living at home, attending University (an MA in Philosophy, thanks) and a good nine years away from meThe last time I read a novel by Jeff Noon, I was living at home, attending University (an MA in Philosophy, thanks) and a good nine years away from meeting my wife. It was so long ago that an Ericsson flip phone and a Pentium PC were the height of cool. As much as I loved Noon’s Vurt-verse, his early 21st Century novels didn’t appeal – they came off as literary rather than speculative, and in those ancient days, young Ian viewed literary fiction as deeply dull. How times have changed.
So, picking up Gogmagog by Jeff Noon and his co-author Steve Beard (the first novel in the Ludwich Chronicles) was nostalgic, even thrilling. Thankfully, Jeff Noon—older and possibly wiser—didn’t let me down. This isn’t a Vurt novel, but in many ways, it’s as innovative.
Gogmagog, on the surface, is the sort of epic quest fantasy we’ve all read before. A cranky ex-sailor, Cady Meade, now in her late 70s, reluctantly decides to take a robotic butler and his ward – a 10-year-old girl about to sprout antennas – on a treacherous trip to Ludwich, where they will traverse the ghostly corpse of a dead dragon. Along the way, they will confront phantasms, sea monsters, demons, aristocrats, and resurrected souls encased in clay.
On the level of pure plot and storytelling, this is a blast to read. Shit happens at regular intervals; set-pieces are dramatic, exciting and dangerous. Cady Meade is what you get if you mix Jackson Lamb (a heavy drinker, foul-mouthed and poor hygiene) with someone who gives a shit. She’s wonderful. But so are all the characters. Like Cady, none of them are as they seem.
The world-building is delightfully chaotic, not in a slapdash, nonsensical way, but in a fascinating, crunchy, and clearly deliberate manner. As the title suggests, Cady’s reality draws from Medieval literature, but there are also splashes of Jewish and Arabic mythology. It goes beyond influences, though. The Kethran Isles has the hallmarks of a secondary world… but one where Doctor John Dee pops up and plays a pivotal role in the development of the society. In other words, it’s never clear whether this is a secondary world, an altered version of our world, or both. There’s a wrinkle late in the novel – an origin story for the Kindred, the tribes that comprise the Kethran Isles - that, rather than resolve things, only complicates matters. It’s the sort of world-building that subverts the typical Tolkien-inflected approach in the mould of M. John Harrison, China Meiville or, more recently, Alex Pheby.
It might have taken close to three decades, but I’ve fallen back in love with the work of Jeff Noon....more
I must have been twelve or thirteen when the first season of Hitchhiker’s Guide was repeated on Radio National at around midnight. I recall being tuckI must have been twelve or thirteen when the first season of Hitchhiker’s Guide was repeated on Radio National at around midnight. I recall being tucked up in bed with a cassette player, ready to listen and record an episode. I’ve no idea if my parents knew what I was doing; they never said anything if they did. Hearing those episodes in the darkness, comforted by Arthur Dent’s panic, Zaphood’s hoopiness, and Ford’s…. Ford-ness, to say nothing of dear old Marvin and brilliant Trillian, are pivotal moments from my childhood.
Because this was Hitchhikers, and I could never get enough of it. I read and re-read the books to the degree that they fell apart (especially the first one, which will always be my favourite). And I wore the cassette tape out with re-listening. When the TV series was repeated on ABC, I recorded it and watched it again and again and again. I recently watched it with my daughter Sophie, who absolutely loved it.*
I know my story isn’t unique. Most of you reading this will have done the same. Some of you will have listened to the radio series — Phases One and Two — when they originally came out in 1977 and 1978 (I was far too young). Like Doctor Who before it, when Hitchhikers gets its claws into you, it never, ever lets go.
Despite all this, until this week, I hadn’t read the original radio scripts. Why bother when you can just listen to the episode? But scripts, of course, are very much their own thing, and this book plays on that, replicating Adam’s stage directions and putting back in the lines edited from the episodes (usually for reasons of length). The footnotes from Geoffrey Perkins are lovely, funny and fascinating. I got emotional when Douglas intruded (or was invited) into the Footnotes with his recollection of the recordings. These were fragments of Douglas, sparkling with wit and self-deprecation, that I’d never encountered before. The recovery of a “lost episode” — Arthur Dent being interviewed by Sheila Steafel while sleeping in the cave on prehistoric Earth — is another lovely, unexpected surprise.
Of course, having read the scripts, I went back to the radio series.** I can confirm that it remains one of the most incredible things ever broadcasted across the galactic sub-ether network.
*I’ve seen the movie once. That was more than enough. If you liked the film, that’s fine. But I’m not sure we can be friends.
** It’s on Spotify, along with the other Phases that came later, essentially adaptations of the novels. Sadly, they’re simply not as good because the source material isn’t as good. One of the great disappointments of my childhood is discovering that So Long and Thanks for All The Fish lacked all the wit, charm, surrealism and sharp observations that made the first three novel (especially, the first two) so damn magnificent....more
Don’t yell at me. I know reading the penultimate Lord Peter Wimsey mystery is not the best place to start. And not just because it’s the tenth book inDon’t yell at me. I know reading the penultimate Lord Peter Wimsey mystery is not the best place to start. And not just because it’s the tenth book in the series, but because it’s unlike the other Wimsey books, most notably because Lord Peter — like the 7th Doctor in the New Adventures — doesn’t turn up until the last third of the novel.* Blame Backlisted. They decided to do an episode on this novel, and I wasn’t going to read the other nine just for a podcast, even an awesome one.
Instead of Wimsey, the plot focuses on Harriet Vane, the woman Wimsey saved from certain death (two or three books prior) and promptly falls in love with - though she refuses to marry him. Vane is heading to her alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College in Oxford. She’s there for Gaudy Night, but someone at the college wants to spoil the fun. Across the year, they will send poison notes to students and dons — awful letters making all sorts of claims — while defacing the walls with offensive epithets and damaging College property (the poor library). But who? And why? And can Harriet Vane (did I mention she’s a mystery writer) uncover the responsible party before they do something worse, something violent.
The answer to the last question is no. Wimsey eventually saves the day, which is the only frustrating aspect of what’s a feminist mystery novel, one that advocates for female education and empowerment.
Aside from its setting and focus on female academia, in other ways, Gaudy Night isn’t your average mystery novel. No one dies; the events occur across the academic year, and all things considered, the stakes are small (the College’s reputation is at risk, but there’s never the threat of shutting the place down).
Sayer’s interest is focused entirely on Vane and how she navigates competing priorities - as a writer, an academic (she’s working on a thesis about Le Fanu), and a woman (she does love Wimsey, but is she willing to lose a measure of independence to be with him). It’s a wonderful, sometimes very funny, but also thoughtful, portrait, and I was always a little annoyed when the mystery intruded. Wimsey, for all his deductive brilliance, is dull compared to Harriet. Or, more to the point, and saying this as someone who just picked up his first Lord Wimsey novel, it’s clear that Sayers had lost interest in her star, which is probably why this was the penultimate book in the series.
I think Gaudy Night is too long, especially given that the mystery isn’t gripping. But it’s still a fascinating and astute character study. Will I read the other mysteries? Yes, maybe.
*I watched the first twenty minutes of the TV adaptation and wasn’t entirely surprised to see that Wimsey not only appears straight away but plays a much more significant role than he does in the books. A clear lack of confidence in Harriet carrying the narrative....more
I shouldn’t need to convince anyone who enjoys high-quality fiction to read a new novel by Kaaron Warren. She’s one of the best contemporary writers oI shouldn’t need to convince anyone who enjoys high-quality fiction to read a new novel by Kaaron Warren. She’s one of the best contemporary writers of horror, not just in Australia but internationally, as evidenced by her winning several major genre prizes, including The World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards. Warren’s latest novel, The Underhistory, is, in my humble opinion, her finest work. Which is saying something.
It’s 1941, and 10-year-old Temperance “Pera” Sinclair watches a plane crash into her house. It kills her family and their friends, including the visiting Prime Minister and his wife.* Fifty-two years later, Pera Sinclair has spent most of her inheritance re-building the family home: the Sinclair House. Now, she runs tours through the apparently haunted house, each room a memorial to a member of Pera’s deceased family, including her husband. But while the house might not actually be haunted — despite the games Pera plays on her guests — it does hold secrets. And when, unexpectedly, five escaped prisoners invade the house, those family secrets emerge. Violently.
While The Underhistory isn’t a haunted house novel (no ghosts or weird temporal and spatial anomalies, ala, The Haunting of Hill House), it has a similar texture and shape. Because what are ghosts if not the memories, the joy and trauma, soaked into the walls and rooms of a house. To emphasise this, Warren structures the novel around each room within the residence. It’s an effective way of peeling back, revealing Pera’s troubled, traumatic history — one that she seems all too willing to revisit, a crusty but poorly healed wound that she’s constantly scratching. It makes for a complex portrait of a woman shaped by tragedy.
We see Warren at her very best in the last third. I’ll hold back on the spoilers, but Pera’s confrontation with the escaped convicts is tense, gory and brilliant. This might be literary horror, but it’s literary horror with a sharp bite. The Underhistory is likely to be one of my books of the year.
*It’s worth noting that the novel is set in Australia. Neither Menzies nor Curtin (the Prime Minister in 1941) died in such horrific circumstances. This is really the novel’s only “speculative” element....more
This is Marek’s third collection. Disappointingly, none of the stories match that brilliant title. But it’s a disappointment I soon overcame once I stThis is Marek’s third collection. Disappointingly, none of the stories match that brilliant title. But it’s a disappointment I soon overcame once I started reading the collection.
Most of the twenty-one pieces deal with the intersection between technology and our daily lives (even if that urban life occurs on a space station). But you wouldn’t know that with the opening piece, “We Won’t Show Any of This,” an intense monologue between a director and an actor. The director explains the motivation of the actor’s character, but at a level of detail that’s more than anyone would ever need to know, especially when we discover that this scene is unlikely to make it to screen. It’s a funny slice of absurdity.
The second story is more indicative of the rest of the collection. Presented as an article penned by a science fiction writer, it deals with the history of a failed piece of technology, Cog Shift, which can control a person’s body, switching off their consciousness during exercises. (You can imagine how that might end up being a terrible idea).
With “Poppin” and “Pale Blue Dots”, he gets on the AI-is-evil bandwagon. The former sees a digital assistant start making relationship decisions on behalf of its user. In the latter, an AI makes a digital copy of its user to live a life free of doubts, regret and anything remotely human. Several of the stories take us into space. I especially liked “Lightspeed”, set on a space station where time dilation is straining the relationship between a pilot and his family.
Between the science fiction, there are moments of surrealism and humour. “Commit. Plunge. Bam!” sees one superhero, Mr Indomitable, take relationship advice from Leopard Man. The joke goes on for a little too long, but it’s still funny. And I loved “The Bullet Racers”, about a boy who outraces a bullet in an annual race.
But my favourite story is the magnificent “End Titles”. Like “Commit. Plunge. Bam!” it’s written entirely in dialogue, but in this case, it's the transcript of an episode of Desert Island Discs. On the show, Professor Brody Maitland chooses his favourite tunes and discusses discovering the Hermes Particle, an extraordinary, human-shaping discovery. But bubbling underneath all that is Maitland’s deep jealousy of his sister, who, despite all the famous things he did, was always viewed (at least in Maitland’s eyes) as the more successful. It’s a spiky portrait of jealousy and fame.
There’s more to like here — I go into far more detail in my Locus review… due next month — but if you need a serving of top-quality genre short fiction, this will sort you....more
This is the fourth novel written under the Joel Dane pseudonym; the other three were military SF that I haven’t read. Ragpicker is most definitely notThis is the fourth novel written under the Joel Dane pseudonym; the other three were military SF that I haven’t read. Ragpicker is most definitely not military SF. It’s set about a century after a digital apocalypse that wipes out most humanity (all in thrall to their VR devices).
The survivors — including our teenage protagonist Ysmany — live an agrarian and (mostly) peaceful life in a small village on an Earth that’s replenished itself (there’s plenty to eat and drink; nature loves an apocalypse). The one hitch is that Ysmany’s community is under the protection of Server, one of the few survivors of the Bliss still ensconced (trapped) in their military-grade “secondskin” (a VR body suit). While the villagers fear Server, Ysmany works for the “Twitch”, building an art installation of threads and baubles meant to represent defunct nodes and networks. But when Server kills a group of travellers, abducting their baby, Ysmany is compelled to act. She does a runner from the village, baby in tow, seeking a new home for the child. But she and the infant are not alone. They are assisted by a Twitch, the titular Ragpicker, haunted by voices of people long dead, including their husband.
There’s so much to like about this novel. Dane makes a point of not explaining every aspect of his digital apocalypse. We do get snippets (mostly from Ragpicker), but it’s up to the reader to piece together how the planet got to this point. I also enjoyed Dane's tweaks to the conventional apocalypse. After the Bliss, people help rather than turn on each other; the cockroaches die out (it’s a cute gag); and while people can die from an infected wound, they don’t live a subsistence life.
All bar one of the chapters are told from Ysmany and Ragpicker’s perspective. This is a strength and a weakness. On the plus side, Ysmany is courageous and intelligent with a touch of the enigmatic. The Ragpicker is lonely and sad, their self-aware observations poignant, poetic, threaded with tragedy. But I also found the Ragpicker’s voice frustrating, a discordant, fractured mess of words that reflect their mental state but also kept me at arm’s length. This is a bit of a shame because, at its core, the novel is about human connection, the intimate bonds we form with friends, those we love, and our community.
I have other minor structural quibbles. For example, the lone chapter, "The Pedestal, " is an overwrought play that imagines how the digital apocalypse occurred. It’s funny and melodramatic but comes far too late in the novel. And yet, I can appreciate the innovation and smarts on display. Despite the flaws, this is the science fiction I want to read: science fiction that pushes against the field's conventions and also has something to say about our humanity....more
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