Another joyous alternative history from Natasha Pulley, and my first five-star read of the year. I was confused as to why this was listed as "The WatcAnother joyous alternative history from Natasha Pulley, and my first five-star read of the year. I was confused as to why this was listed as "The Watchmaker of Filigree Street 1.5" until a certain Keita Mori turns up about halfway through.
Pulley does absolutely what she does best, writing place an character and the nuances of communication between characters.
Here, the author seems to be setting up something for the Royal Navy that doesn't emerge in the subsequent book, so I do hope she returns to the series....more
I’d been meaning to read more of Nicola Griffith’s work since I read Ammonite a couple of years ago (checks Goodreads: almost exactly six years!), butI’d been meaning to read more of Nicola Griffith’s work since I read Ammonite a couple of years ago (checks Goodreads: almost exactly six years!), but had not quite got around to it, so when I saw that one of my Goodreads groups was reading Spear, and the audiobook was on special offer when bought with the ebook, it seemed like the perfect time.
Wow.
The writing is simply extraordinary – poetic and lyrical in a way that sometimes put me in mind of Under Milk Wood. The story is a gender-swapped version of the myth of Peredur or Percival of Arthurian myth, but pulling in elements of Irish and Welsh legend along with ideas from the various strands of the Arthur stories (her afterword on this is well worth the read).
It’s a short, fast, powerful read, less than 200 pages or six hours on audio, and the author teases that she may continue it. In the meantime, I’ll not be leaving it so long before reading Nicola Griffith again. ...more
I enjoyed the first novel in this series, The Way of All Flesh, but this second instalment is truly superb.
Set in Edinburgh in the 1850s, newly qualifI enjoyed the first novel in this series, The Way of All Flesh, but this second instalment is truly superb.
Set in Edinburgh in the 1850s, newly qualified doctor Will Raven and former housemaid and medical assistant Sarah Fisher meet again a year after the events of the previous book, but things have changed for both of them. Working again for respected Dr Simpson, they have to cope with bitter rivalry amongst the Edinburgh medical profession, the local gangster and a spate of mysterious deaths.
The authors build a gripping plot with fully-fleshed characters in a tale with several parallel themes.
Toksvig, national treasure that she is, takes us through the year highlighting the lives of mostly - but not entirely - women from history, as well asToksvig, national treasure that she is, takes us through the year highlighting the lives of mostly - but not entirely - women from history, as well as interesting facts and events, all with her wonderful dry wit. She reads the audiobook herself, and listening to her is a pure delight.
While some of the people she mentions are well known - Ediths Piaf and Wharton, Betty Friedan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ida B, Wells, Benazir Bhutto - most are lesser known, especially considering their accomplishments. The running theme is of people denied education, status and recognition due to their sex, and often their colour
This is not just a celebration; showing only the good and the great or venerating these women would do them a disservice; it is impossible to mention Coco Chanel without mention that she was a Nazi spy, and Toksvig includes three female serial killers.
She begins by writing about how even the tools of literacy have so often been denied women, despite the fact that:
The first writer in the world of any kind that we know about was a woman. The earliest known poet whose name was recorded was Enhaduana, who lived in the Sumerian city-state of Ur in the 23rd century BC.
She also makes a point of saying that these are merely snippets introductory appetisers that should lead us into deeper reading. "Amuse-bouches for the mind", and I find myself both amused and intrigued....more
As the title suggests, the author uses the framing of seven occasions that it has been invaded to examine how the Eternal City has changed over the laAs the title suggests, the author uses the framing of seven occasions that it has been invaded to examine how the Eternal City has changed over the last two and half millennia. From the first breach by Gauls when it was a budding regional power through several by roving Scandinavians, up to the Third Reich after Mussolini was deposed and the Italians joined the Allies in World War II, each presents a snapshot of a quite different Rome. My favourite is in the 11th Century where Rome has become a backwater and the city is little more than a collection of villages, people living with plenty of room in once-crowded tenements and parts of the city become pasture and fields.
The author does an excellent job of painting an image of each iteration, and bringing together various written and archaeological sources, filling out the detail of social background along with decades of relevant history, and sometimes a sketch of the centuries between each event to bring us up to date.
Well worth a read, and a fine jumping off point for more in-depth reads....more
Holmes writes a vivid, intense and action-packed account of the final decades of the Eastern Roman empire: Byzantium. More fine-grained to the events Holmes writes a vivid, intense and action-packed account of the final decades of the Eastern Roman empire: Byzantium. More fine-grained to the events than Judith Herrin's Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire and with a different perspective than Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World, which focuses both on the longer view of the rise of Islam and the view from that side, the author also does an excellent job of arguing that both Big Trends and individual people shape the course of history - for example, that the First Crusade wouldn't have stood a chance if not for the fragmentation of the Seljuk Empire, but how the brilliance of certain leaders and the betrayals and political manoeuvring of others lead to certain pivotal events. He also writes with a flair for the descriptions of battle that, unlike some specifically military historians, doesn't get bogged down in the minutiae.
As Tidhar's novel opens it seems to be an alternative history. We are in London in November 1939, but Europe is not at war. In **spoiler alert** Wow.
As Tidhar's novel opens it seems to be an alternative history. We are in London in November 1939, but Europe is not at war. In this timeline, the Communist part took power in Germany in the early 1930s leading to disruption and many refugees fleeing to Britain, where Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists appears on course to win the election fuelled by anti-immigrant, -communist and -Jewish rhetoric.
One of these refugees is a man calling himself Wolf, who is working as a low-rent private eye. He hates the whores who work in the alleys near his office/apartment, he hates the kindly old Jewish baker who rents him the room, he is constantly bitter about The Fall, as the collapse of Germany is referred to and, especially, about how close he himself came to power. In best noir style, events are instigated by the arrival of a beautiful (Jewish) heiress at Wolf's office.
The tale switches between Wolf's journal - where we get his observations and thoughts, often distasteful, sometimes humanising as he remembers the past events that shaped him - as well as the observations of someone who refers to himself as the Watcher, clearly a disturbed individual even before he takes action, some third person narration - and the reveal that the story of Wolf is being told inside the head of Shomer, a Jewish pulp fiction author as he endures the horrors of Auschwitz.
Tidhar masterfully weaves a fine noir detective story, made powerful by the frame and characters. The description of Wolf losing his temper and shouting and spitting in rage would be enough to tell us who he is, even were we not given other clues. In his investigations, he looks up his former associates - notably Goebbels and Hess, both having "sold out" - but we also see Ilse Koch, Klaus Barbie and Josef Kramer. Along with Mosley we meet his wife Diana and her sister, Unity, both fervent Nazis. Wolf bumps into Leni Riefenstahl, now an up-and-coming Hollywood actress (this giving us one of several surprisingly funny scenes, where Leni tells him she is filming a sequel to The Great Gatsby where Gatsby (played by Humphrey Bogart) had become a gun runner before retiring to run a bar in Tangier where she, playing Daisy Buchanan, finds him, before the scene ends with Leni, tearfully, saying "We'll always have Nuremberg, won't we, Wolf?")
Shomer, in his mind, puts Wolf through many humiliations and degradations but is unable to avoid giving his character humanity, for all the seething bigotry that drives Wolf's hatred and violence.
I don't tend to read fiction about the Holocaust; I know the details, I've read and seen much non-fiction, as well as the great Primo Levi and don't feel the need to descend into that place again, but in embedding the story in this way Lavie Tidhar casts light on those events, and on the experience the refugee and the foreigner and the other, as well as the perpetrators. (To be clear, I am not feeling in the slightest forgiving of or sympathetic to Hitler, or the others, but the character of Wolf in this novel goes through a journey that might just allow a measure of redemption). The rise of Mosley and the crowds that welcome him with anti-Semitic chants also draws a parallel with the return of the far right in our own time - although it was published in 2014, I couldn't help but see echoes of the events of Charlottesville in 2017 and those "very fine people on both sides".
A Man Lies Dreaming is a stunning novel that has left me shaken and moved, and will stay with me for a very long time indeed....more
Author John Man takes us from the youth of Temujin, and how he became Genghis Khan and built an empire that crossed Asia into Europe, to his descendanAuthor John Man takes us from the youth of Temujin, and how he became Genghis Khan and built an empire that crossed Asia into Europe, to his descendants - not just Ogedai and Kublai, but all the branches of his family, taking us into the internecine feuds and jostling for power while the empire Genghis has founded doubled in size, and then caused it to fracture and split.
He does a wonderful job of following the often tortuous paths of history with clarity, but also setting them in the context and feel of time and place; the attitudes of the lands and nations who faced the Mongols, well-argued reasons for why they fell or resisted. The canvas is vast, and he introduced me to many aspects of this history of which I was entirely unaware: the facts that the Turks were a earlier wave of settlers from the same part of the world, the Mongol conquest of the entirety of Asian Islam, the fact that European Christian crusaders allied with the Mongols on more than one occasion ( from a belief that they represented the mythical Eastern Christian emperor Prester John to simple practicality of fighting the same opponent ), the failed invasions of Vietnam and Japan, the off-hand remark that modern Pakistan was part of the empire. Each of these and more could fill volumes in their own right, and I hope I can find accounts written as well as this.
Not that this book is simply a brief overview, Man goes into detail that is substantial and in depth, but not overwhelming. Early on I had been perhaps a little disparaging of his narrative style, but that was entirely unfair; while quite different from the style of, say, Tom Holland, one of my personal favourites and a consummate writer of narrative histories. While initially it seems that Man is rushing through events and piling up detail, he circles back and suddenly he is building a narrative picture that has drawn the reader right into the heart of the story. His main achievement, though, is the way he connects the events to modern history, not only the China ( including how the Chinese claim Genghis for their own ) but Russia, the 'Stans, the Middle East and even how it moulded medieval Japan.
I do have to say that one problem with the book is the way he deals - or doesn't deal - with rape. This becomes especially apparent in a later section when he revisits the fact that one of Genghis' sons was viewed ( possibly correctly ) as illegitimate as his mother had been held captive by an enemy tribe for several months, as well as the fact of Y-chromosomes originating in Mongolia being widespread throughout Asia and Europe. He states these matters as simply that, without acknowledging the sexual violence implicit in both. I'm sure the author would say something along the lines of "it was a simple fact of how the world was then", but he doesn't say anything in the text and this omission, whether he feels it irrelevant, or is uncomfortable with the subject, leaves for me a troublesome gap that should at least have been recognised....more
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