Confessions

It's been something of a sparkly week for acquisitions here at the York branch of the Alexandrian library.  Not a day has gone by without a book purchase or the arrival of a yummy book parcel. 

It began last Sunday with a trip to Borders where, with a 20% off voucher burning a hole in my pocket, I bought Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk, the first book in his Cairo Trilogy.  I've had my eye on it for quite sometime - apparently 'a sweeping and evocative portrait of a family and a country moving towards independence', it is set against the backdrop of Egypt's occupation by Britain at the end of the First World War and focuses on the Al Jawad family.  It is the story of how Ahmed, a middle-class shopkeeper who rules over his wife, daughters and three sons with an iron will, struggles and adapts in the face of social and political upheaval.

Then, on Monday, two huge book parcels arrived for me, one from Amazon and the other from the very nice people at Gollancz.  I hadn't expected the former for at least another couple of weeks, given what I thought was the publication date of Ian McEwan's new novel On Chesil Beach; I'd preordered it under the misapprehension that it came out on April 5th.  But nevermind. (Very lucky that I had enough money in the bank at the end of the month!)  As well as the McEwan (which I've already read - wonderful!), I'd splashed out on Ellen Kushner's dark fable Thomas the Rhymer, a retelling of the legend of the bard who finds himself the subject of the Queen of Elfland's desire; A Fanatic Heart by Edna O'Brien, a collection of her best short stories (which makes it into Bloom's Western Canon); and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, the first book in his Gentleman Bastards sequence.  The tempt quotes are, well, tempting: Richard Morgan promises me 'a great swashbuckling yarn', while Hal Duncan dubs it 'a rollicking blast of solid fun.'  Apt as I am to mistrust anyone who uses the work 'rollicking' in relation to a book, I'm willing to take Hal at his word - Lynch created a lot of chatter around the sf community when the book first came out, and praise flowed in from all quarters.  I trust that it'll be worth every effort.

The Gollancz parcel contained three books, all of them Arthur C. Clarke nominees - there's a reason for that; Gollancz are a classy sf publisher - and all of them gratis for review. (I think I'm right in saying they also bestowed their bounty on Nic.  Alexandria feels their love and revels in it.) I was particularly thrilled by my hardback copy of Nova Swing by M. John Harrison, a book that I found both difficult (make that: very difficult) and stimulating (make that: very stimulating). A joint Clarke post will follow from Nic and I, but I'm happy to say here and now that Harrison's book was first a trial and then a revelation to me.  Also in the parcel, Jon Courtney Grimwood's End of the World Blues, a cyber-punk-cum-hard-SF set partly in Tokyo and partly in South London, and Adam Robert's Gradisil, which sounds pretty thrilling to me. One Amazon reviewer assures me: 'Gradisil is a story of do-it-yourself homesteaders living in tin cans in Low Earth Orbit, struggling to remain free of the bickering nations of the Earth beneath them.'   It remains to be seen how accurate a synopsis that really is, but this will be my first Roberts' experience and I have high hopes.

I also got two other parcels with books for review this week: first, from Snowbooks, The Needle in the Blood by debut author Sarah Bower.  Now, I admit that when I read this blurb, my heart sank to my knees:

January 1067. When Odo of Bayeux decides to commission a wall
hanging to celebrate his role in the conquest of Britain by his brother,
William, Duke of Normandy, he cannot anticipate how this will change his
life even more than the invasion itself. As his life becomes entangled with
those of the women who embroider the hanging, he comes into conflict with
his king and his God. Friends and family become enemies, enemies become
lovers, nothing in life or in the hanging is what it seems.

A powerful tale of sex, lies and embroidery, The Needle in the Blood,
challenges the stereotypes of Norman and Anglo Saxon, exploring the effects
of occupation on both sides and all classes of society. It also examines
how women can make lives for themselves in the margins of patriarchal
societies. Its characters are brought together through the making of the
Bayeux Tapestry, one of the best known, yet most enigmatic, of mediaeval
artefacts.

I thought: no, no, no, not another historical romance that works itself up into a faux-medieval frenzy of knights and maidens!  But, I was wrong.  The Needle in the Blood is actually excellent; nay, not only excellent but the best medieval historical I've ever come across.  Bowers is a strong prose stylist (although her narrative mode takes some getting used to) and she has a firm grip on the thematics of eleventh century England - on the interlocking concerns of kinship, politics, art, marginality, vassalage and kingship.  She writes believable female characters; doesn't descend into saccharine with her love story (admittedly she still has time; I'm currently on page 220 of 575) and, best of all, she has an eye for detail.  True, her history is sometimes 'text-book' - it seems like she works in every theory ever posited about the Bayeux Tapestry - but I can see she's done her homework.

The other parcel came from Mark Thwaite at ReadySteadyBook/The Book Depository and contained two books with which I'm only slightly familiar: The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson and Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire.  Both are published by small publishers and, if their first pages are anything to go by, have promise.  Dovegreyreader liked the Gregson very much (in a post I just can't find, despite searching), and so I have high hopes.

The remainder of the above pile - Jane Smiley's Ten Days in the Hills; Patricia Ferguson's Peripheral Vision; and Careless by Deborah Robertson - are library books and so perhaps don't count in my confesions.  They're all Orange longlisters and I doubt my ability to get through them before the shortlist anouncement. There are just too many other good books in my path!  I dread to think what my confession will be after our Alexandrian gathering in London this week. Eeep.

~~Victoria~~

Comments

[Graham]

"I dread to think what my confession will be after our Alexandrian gathering in London this week."

It's very simple. Just repeat to yourself: THERE ARE NO BOOKSHOPS IN LONDON. THERE ARE NO BOOKSHOPS IN LONDON. :)

[Mark Thwaite]

Goodness me, what a pile! Glad the books came ...

Best acquisitions for me this week have been "Shakespeare the Thinker" by A.D. Nuttall and "The Perfect Puppy" by Gwen Bailey -- the gorgeous Lola, a nine-week-old German Spitz (Mittel) is sitting on my feet as I write this ...

Warmest regards

markx

[Dorothy W.]

Great pile there! I'm kind of intrigued by The Needle in the Blood based on your description.

[Danielle]

Confessions indeed. I will have to be careful about not using rollicking in any of my reviews. I think I am safe, but anything swashbuckling, I tend to associate with rollicking. Anyway--neither here nor there. Looks like an excellent stack of books! I have I. McEwan's new one on my wishlist. I am curious about the Kushner. And I am abosolutely drooling (okay, not really drooling, but you understand), over the Needle in the Blood. Anything having to do with needlework sounds interesting. I will have to try and find a copy of that one. Thanks for the heads up--so many good books!

[Eva]

I am so jealous of all your new books! I hope you enjoy Palace Walk-I loved it.

[Keirsten]

Hi there - just in case you were still looking for the review by dove grey reader for The Angel Makers here is a link - http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/2007/02/the_angel_maker.html#comments

Thanks so much for keeping it going - people are being so fantastic about this book! Every effort and review appreciated.