Eve's Alexandria

The Arthur C Clarke Award, 2010: Shortlist

My turn to get all excited about a bookish award! The shortlist for this year's Arthur C Clarke Award has been announced, and it looks like this:

Gwyneth Jones - Spirit

China Mieville - The City & the City

Adam Roberts - Yellow Blue Tibia

Kim Stanley Robinson - Galileo's Dream

Marcel Theroux - Far North

Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

The general feeling seems to be that this is a solid shortlist; I agree. It's not the most adventurous list the Clarke has ever produced - but, on the plus side, there's no obvious candidate for this year's What Were They Thinking prize (see, previously: this, this, or - ack - this).

I've read three already: the Jones, the Mieville and the Theroux. All are strong contenders. I reviewed Spirit last year - a feminist The Count of Monte Cristo in space! - and longer considerations of the other two will follow in the next week or so. Post-apocalyptic loner-in-the-landscape tale Far North I liked a lot, once I got over the comparions with The Road; The City & the City, meanwhile, has a brilliant central conceit and provides much food for thought (and debate), but is let down by being hitched to an unremarkable thriller novel.

Of the rest - which, again, I'll review here once I've read them - I'm most looking forward to Yellow Blue Tibia, which has had generally excellent reviews. Galileo's Dream is a doorstep about intellectual history, although it sounds less of a slog than Anathem was last year; I've read two of Robinson's previous novels (one rather good - review in the works - and one rather annoying), and I live with a die-hard Robinson fan, so that should be interesting, one way or another! The Wooding is apparently a fun romp with more than a passing resemblence to Firefly, which sounds like a perfectly acceptable way to round out a shortlist.

Links to many other reviews of the books have been gathered by Niall (the aforementioned Robinson fan). Three of the previous shortlists were also reviewed here at Eve's Alexandria: 2009 round-up and links (the missing Al Reynolds review is here); 2008 round-up and links. There doesn't look to be a round-up post for 2007, which Vicky and I did together, but the individual reviews are all linked from the left-hand sidebar - scroll down beyond the 'Past Posts' menu.

~~Nic

The Tamed Wild

The Wilding is a barely furnished house.  It has good solid walls, and wide windows, and nicely proportioned rooms.  The light comes in strongly, and is kind to what it falls upon.  It is airy and pleasant and everything in it is of good construction. It has all the potential in the world.  But there is no denying that things are missing from it; as it stands, it is just a shell that echoes.  More than anything else historical fiction needs an authenticity of atmosphere to work well.  Sometimes the authenticity comes from character, as it does in Wolf Hall; sometimes it comes from setting, as it does in The Little Stranger.  Creating it is a species of alchemy, and without it the whole enterprise is hollow.  Maria McCann's second novel doesn't have it, and that is a shame.

The plot promises all good things: it is 1672, and Jonathan Dymond is an itinerant cider-maker who spends autumn and winter on the road with his portable press.  He is young - my age, 26 - and carefree.  His family are well-established, if not wealthy, and he is the unmarried and only son of devoted parents.  If there is any discomfort in his life, it is his inability to settle on the right woman to marry.  But there is no rush, all the time in the world.  That is until his uncle Robin dies suddenly, leaving behind him a garbled letter that signifies a guilty conscience and a dark secret.  Pursued by nightmares and determined to lay his uncle's ghost to rest, Jonathan finds himself embroiled in a decades old scandal involving his widowed Aunt Harriet and her estranged sister, Joan.  Narrated by Jonathan himself, this story trots along at a steady pace, revelations leaking out at regular intervals in all the usual ways: in letters, and words spoken in passion or in rage.  I can't say much more without spoiling it, except that the narrative twists, when they arrive, are of the usual and anticipated kind.  You can tell that McCann very carefully marked out of the foundations of her house before she laid the first stone; it feels very orderly and gentile for a novel supposedly about dark secrets and heinous acts.

At first I thought it was the little historical things that were putting me off it.  So, for example, the book is set in the seventeenth century but God is hardly mentioned in its first two-thirds. Jonathan is apparently unaware that his whole world and every institution in it is built upon the Church.  For a narrative about mortal sin in which illicit sex plays a very large part there is not enough about the moral policing of communities, and certainly not enough personal piety.  Jonathan may not be a Puritan - his family was Royalist in the war - but he could hardly have been an atheist either.  This was the period during which the ecclesiastical visitations and courts were at the height of their influence, before the Toleration Act, and using every tool at their disposal to control the personal lives of ordinary citizens.  When McCann mentions the constable but says nothing about other parish officials; and when she has a minister enter stage left to look threatening but makes no reference to the diocesan authority that he represents, it feels wrong to me.  It feels as though the story has no depth; step through the veil of the plot and there is no world beyond it. 

Then it occured to me that it was character itself that was the real problem.  I had a difficulty with Jonathan from the beginning.  I couldn't buy into him.   He is a grown man of the world, who spends weeks away from his natal home, and yet remains the object of his mother and father's caresses and kisses as though he was still a little child.  He knows almost nothing about women, even less about sex, and barely seems to have felt aroused in his life.  This is all necessary if the plot is to work; he has to be something of a simpleton otherwise everything would turn out differently.  He has to seem older in years than his character feels in sense, and I think it is too much manipulation for his weak personality to bear.  Sometimes McCann has him say clever things that made me smile:

...in weighing a man's opinions, we should weigh along with the words the character of the speaker.  A writer is always an unknown quantity, never more so than when the writer is a woman.  It is a deceitful sex.

This is a playful thing for a female author to put into the mouth of her seventeenth century hero, and it as at times like this that Jonathan is closest to sounding like he comes from the seventeenth century. The rest of the time, however, he speaks and acts like a young man of more recent years.  He and his family are very modern in their thinking, and in their expressions. (They even have an 'office', a rather unlikely room in the house of yeoman who doesn't even own a horse.) More than that though, and forgive me for saying it, but he is bland. The human equivalent of an inquisitive labrador puppy.  He keeps doing stupid, even damaging, things that should change and confuse your perceptions of him, but his dutiful nature keeps bouncing you back to where you started from.  This shouldn't be, because Jonathan has his hand in some rather nasty and degrading events in the course of the book, yet his goodness is unassailable.  The same is true of his father and mother.  It does begin to feel like an episode of the BBC's Lark Rise to Candleford.  The darkness is never going to last past the end credits and the idyll is always breaking through.  (For those who haven't seen this show: imagine the most syrupy, sentimental rural setting you can, in which all the characters live simple, mostly blameless existences, interrupted occasionally by a soft scandal or a practical joke gone wrong.)

After a while though I realised it was something else, something more fundamental that lay behind my uncertainty about the novel.  As a conceit The Wilding is too neat by far.  It doesn't have any cracks.  At first it looks as though there will be a few.  There is a young woman, a hard unyielding vagrant called Tamar who is temporarily taken in as a servant by Jonathan's aunt Harriet.  She has what it takes to add authenticity to the plot, because her character is impenetrable and other people cannot read her.  They cannot tell whether she is hard as a stone, or soft-bellied under her shell, and it is just as difficult for the reader to interpret what she says as it is for Jonathan.  This is necessary.  She adds that element of alienation that is essential in historical fiction if we're to believe in the time-shift.  It isn't long though before all is revealed.  In the end there is nothing that we don't know about Tamar, or the circumscribed world in which she has lived.  The plot has too many clean lines like this and not enough dusty corners: it begins and then it ends.  There is no sense (except the most superficial) in which it carries on and lives beyond its pages, in which it is part of a longer, broader, deeper story of its time.  There is nothing left to pick at when it's over.  This is despite the fact that it is staged at one of most politically and culturally controversial periods of England's history.

None of which should be taken as a statement of outright dislike. I can't condemn the novel entirely. On the contrary, on some cosy reticent  level I actually quite enjoyed it. McCann is a competant writer, and her prose is undemanding.  I think the problem only comes when I try to see The Wilding as more than a way to spend a few pleasant and forgettable hours.  When I hold it up to the light I feel I can see right through it.

~~Victoria~~

Orange Segments: Some Early Thoughts

(Apologies for the disgracefully twee title to this post. I just couldn't help it.)

Thought 1: If there are three more books on the Orange longlist as strong as Wolf Hall, The Little Stranger and This Is How, then I think it has to be the strongest list (by a long way) since 2006.  Surely all three have to be on the shortlist?

Thought 2: Twenty books is a lot of books. I've collected in fifteen of the longlist so far (through a mixture of begging, borrowing and a little buying; a big thank you to the publishers who have kindly sent me review copies) and my bookshelves are absolutely groaning.  Admittedly they were groaning already; now it is just a bit louder.  I hope and pray that bookshelf no. 3 does not topple over and kill the friend we have staying this weekend.

Thought 3: Some of the books are a lot longer than I thought they were.  Has anyone seen the mass market paperback of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver?  It runs to 600+ pages and would make a fine, sturdy house brick.  I thought I better start reading it immediately after finishing This Is How, otherwise it will daunt me from the bookshelves. 

Thought 4: The press has already had comment aplenty about the Orange Prize, as usual. I know the PR people must court controversy on purpose.  Following chairwoman Daisy Goodwin's complaint about books by women being too depressing and humourless, we had some thinly veiled sexism from Giles Coren (with some not so veiled sexism in the comments) and some discouraging stereotypes about women's writing from William Skidelsky in the Guardian.  Meanwhile former Booker judge Philip Hensher was nodding enthusiastically in the Independent (albeit in connection with the state of literary fiction generally).  Rowan Pelling in the Telegraph (also a former Booker judge) suggested a shortlist of humourous women's writing.  At which point I was mightily relieved to read Jean Hannah Edelstein's blog post, which moved the focus of the debate onto the culture of literary publishing.  For my own part, I think it is silly to interpret Daisy Goodwin's comments as about the state of fiction writing by women in general.  We have to assume that she is talking about her reading experience of the 129 books submitted for the Orange Prize in 2009/10.  All of these books were submitted by editors not by authors, and were chosen because they fit a literary profile that the Orange Prize has developed.  If there is an issue it is with the yardstick by which we measure literaryness and what is published as literary fiction, surely.  As both Philip Hensher and Jean Hannah point out: literary fiction by men is just as depressing as anything the Orange Prize has on offer.  The only difference is that nobody is suggesting their writing is depressing because they are men.  Not that Daisy Goodwin suggested that in the first place, but it doesn't take much for a discussion of the Orange Prize to skew into a catfight about the differences between the sexes.

Personally I don't perceive darkness in fiction as a problem, probably because in my experience unrelenting darkness is very rare.  Yes, it's true: fiction that deals with rape or war or bigotry is unlikely to provoke a belly-laugh ala Terry Pratchett, but the dichotomies the press has invented between sad and funny, depressing or witty, are false ones.  It is the balance of hopefulness with the horrors and indiginities which is a better measure, I think. If there is just a little humanity and kindness in a book then that is all the light I need to contrast the darkness.

Thought 5: Oh to be a teenager again. Well, not really. But I would love to sit down in a room with five other people who had read the same 14 Orange Prize winners I had and weigh their merits.  Any bets that Small Island is going to win again?

~~Victoria~~

But That's Another Story

She materialized so quietly and expertly out of the dark that the gatekeeper found himself looking into her face without the slightest warning: a young, gray-eyed countrywoman, silent, shadowy, self-assured. She was hugely amused. "My name," she said, "is Alyx."

"Never heard of it," said the gatekeeper, a little annoyed.

"Good heavens," said Alyx, "not yet," and vanished through the gate before he could admit her, with the curious slight smile one sees on the lips of very old statues: inexpressive, simple, classic.

She was to become a classic, in time.

But that's another story.

My Joanna Russ reading-and-blogging project - which began, on the blogging side at least, with the brilliant and unsettling We Who Are About To... - continues with two collections of her characteristically genre- and gender-bending short fiction: The Adventures of Alyx (1976) and Extra (Ordinary) People (1984). Rather than trying to cover everything, this post will concentrate on a handful of stories.

I don't think it's controversial to say that Russ' fiction is neither comfortable nor accessible reading. I recently started On Joanna Russ (2009), a volume of literary criticism edited by Farah Mendlesohn; three articles in, the word recurring most frequently seems to be 'fierce'. Russ' fiction is knotty, prickly, exhilarating, and it sometimes feels as if you need several brains just to take it all in. Every sentence is a challenge to your expectations as a reader. If these stories were striking (and they were) to a 1960s and 1970s audience unfamiliar with, and largely unprepared for, feminist narratives in their fantasy and science fiction, I find myself equally wrongfooted on encountering them in 2009 and 2010, albeit for different reasons. Rarely did these stories follow anything remotely like the course I thought they would.

Russ continually remakes the ground beneath your feet: evoking genre frameworks to play with and comment on them, hitting surprising emotional and thematic notes while skipping over whole chunks of plot and characterisation that, accustomed to a particular set of narrative strategies, I expected to see. Had it come from the pen of almost any other writer of sf/fantasy, the pivotal moment in the Hugo Award-winning 'Souls' (originally published 1982, and collected in Extra (Ordinary) People) - in which Viking raiders come to an abbey headed by the remarkable Abbess Radegunde - would have been the sack of the abbey. And, indeed, this is the pivotal moment; but we are not shown it, because the narrator (recalling, years later, his time in the abbey as the nosy but fondly regarded 'Boy News') is protected, both physically and emotionally, by Radegunde. Before he has even registered the violence breaking out, she conceals him with her body such that he is "almost suffocated" - and sees nothing.

What he shares with us, instead, is the increasingly tense build-up to the sacking, in which Radegunde - having greeted news of the Vikings' arrival with the terse observation "'God protects our souls, not our bodies'" - does her best to avert violence, and the lengthy, difficult aftermath, in which victims and attackers alike struggle to come to terms with what has happened, and Radegunde takes her own particular revenge on the Vikings. Radegunde plays expertly on the raiders' shared customs and individual weakness, running verbal rings around them in an effort to persuade them to accept loot offered freely, rather than taken as pillage:

"Heed my counsel. Why play butcher when you can have treasure poured into your laps like kings, without work? And after that there will be as much again, when I lead you to the hidden place. An earl's mountain of treasure. Think of it! And to give all this up for slaves, half of whom will get sick and die before you get them home - and will need to be fed if they are to be any good. Shame on you for bad advice-takers! Imagine what you will say to your wives and families: Here are a few miserable bolts of cloth with blood spots that won't come out, here are some pearls and jewels smashed to powder in the fighting, here is a torn piece of embroidery which was whole before someone stepped on it in the battle."

The narrator evidently enjoys the memory of her speeches, even though they are (in the immediate term) ineffective. Even the war band's leader/spokesman, Thorvald, can only marvel ("'If I sold you in Constantinople,' he says, 'within a year you would become Queen of the place!'").

One possible reading of the story is that this is a woman who talks too much, and whose cleverness disturbs and alienates the Vikings, so that they eventually lose patience and carry out their attack. But what the narrator cannot quite hide, I think, is that the attack is an inevitability; the raiders are thrown, for a brief while, by the tenacity and quick wits of Radegunde, but ultimately they have come for violence - and they have the weapons. Words are not enough to make them feel the consequences of what they do.

Or at any rate, not the amiable, twinkly-eyed, slightly mocking words of the first half of the story. In the aftermath, surrounded by women left crippled and maddened, Radegunde sheds her folksiness and becomes fierce - especially when one or two of the warriors show signs of wanting absolution. Initially, her anger is expressed in terms of the culture she is in:

"All that child wants is someone more powerful than your Odin god or your Thor god to pull him out of the next scrape he gets into. [...] The Christ does not wipe out our sins only to have us commit them all over again and that is what he wants and what you all want, a God that gives and gives and gives, but God does not give; God takes and takes and takes. He takes away everything that is not God until there is nothing left but God, and none of you will understand that! There is no remission of sins; there is only change and Thorfinn must change before God will have him."

Gradually, though, she sheds such references, too; and it becomes apparent that this isn't the historical tale I thought it was, but something science fictional, and the whole meaning shifts. Because Radegunde isn't the unlikely abbess she appeared to be, either - she has witnessed many, many more violent events than this one - and in her otherness she has an exquisite way of inflicting revenge. "'I lent him my eyes, that is all'", she tells the Boy News later: she inflicts upon Thorvald empathy, and thus makes him share her anger.

Of the other stories in the volume - which are (very) loosely linked by snippets of introductory dialogue that frame the stories as lessons presented to an unnamed child - I enjoyed the more lightweight 'Everyday Depressions' (original to this collection). It is framed as a series of scatter-brained and faintly unhinged letters from an author to her (surely long-suffering) editor, about a lesbian Gothic romance she is working on. It is, of course, all very meta - and (fiercely) funny - with commentary on structure, plotting, gender politics and sexual morality:

Lady M, having been the innocent instigator of the carnal behaviour, of course feels responsible for Miss B's death. Sex, you see, is not only unspeakably evil in itself; it leads inevitably to SUICIDE.

'The Mystery of the Young Gentleman' (1982), meanwhile, tackles gender even more strongly, focusing on two people - who, like Radegunde in 'Souls', seem to be either not human, or post-human - crossing the Atlantic in the late 19th century aboard the S.S. President Hayes. One (whose diary entries provide the narration) appears to be an adult male, the other a young girl, but from the exchanges between them it becomes apparent that both their ages and their genders are shaped to fit the environment in which they're travelling, rather than a fixed or fundamental state for them. When a fellow passenger, a doctor, takes a shine to the narrator, farce ensues - but not without a note of sadness, for the limitations that the doctor's society places on his experience of the world, by making him see only gender binaries, and everything else as a harmful deviation.

The stories in The Adventures of Alyx are more closely linked, although they remain distinct entities. All but one of them feature the same main character: "a neat, level-browed, governessy person called Alyx", as she is described in the first story, 'Bluestocking' (1967); "among the wisest of a sex that is surpassingly wise". She is - or becomes - a skilled, quick-witted, self-reliant thief and wandering adventurer in a land reminiscent of the late Bronze Age Mediterranean world. This is, in other words, Joanna Russ' take on sword and sorcery - although, this being Russ, the adventures don't stay in one genre for long.

Epic heroines were not completely unknown in sword and sorcery before Alyx, but they were hardly common, and Russ takes some care in finding in a place for her in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world. Alyx doesn't have the preternatural combat prowess of Xena, but she does have many skills:

Now in Ourdh there is a common saying that if you have not strength, there are three things which will serve as well: deceit, surprise and speed. These are women's natural weapons.

'Bluestocking' sets the (laconic) tone for much of what is to come. Alyx comes to the city of Ourdh ("'this city, this paradise, this - swamp!'") as part of a group of followers of the god Yp, the sort of faintly ridiculous religion that wouldn't be out of place among the Discworld pantheon (its tenets include "the venomous hatred of inanimate objects for mankind"). Within two pages she has declared the whole thing nonsensical, and turned to picking pockets instead. Shortly thereafter she takes up with a rich brat of a young woman, Edarra, who wants help to flee both the city and an arranged marriage. The rest of the story follows their travels together downriver, as they get into the inevitable scrapes from which Alyx must save them (some likely, so less so: a brutal fight with some random men, a sea monster, the stove setting fire to their boat) and bicker about who's going to do the cooking. Edarra even grows up a bit. It's good fun, and Alyx is an appealingly tough, blunt, resourceful character.

The second piece here, 'I Thought She Was Afeared Till She Stroked My Beard' (1967), may or may not come before 'Bluestocking'. It has the feel of an origin story, and Alyx seems to be younger in it, but precise chronology isn't really one of the priorities of these tales. Like 'Bluestocking', it opens with detached generalities about women and their place in the world:

Many years ago, long before the world got into the state it is in today, young women were supposed to obey their husbands; but nobody knows if they did or not.

...and then spends the rest of the tale deconstructing them, through the person of Alyx, a young farmwife who has an abusive husband and "her head full of pirates". She murders her husband, cuts off her hair and escapes her old life, finding someone to train her in the skills she'll need before making her way to Ourdh:

Six weeks later she arrived - alone - at that queen among cities, that moon among stars, that noble, despicable, profound, simple-minded and altogether exasperating capital of the world: Ourdh.

Note the emphasis on "alone", here; even from the start of her adventures, Alyx is above all self-sufficient, relying only on herself. Even her identity is self-made, and self-claimed: she isn't named by the narration at any point in 'I Thought...' until, at the very end, she names herself (see the passage quoted at the head of this post).

Genre-bending starts in earnest with 'The Barbarian' (1968), which starts out as a sword and sorcery tale - Alyx versus en evil (apparent) wizard - but turns science fictional at the end. Alyx has become notorious now ("Alyx, the gray-eyed, the silent woman. Wit, arm, quick-kill for hire"), and has begun to make enemies. Her opponent is, as in the previous story, bigger, stronger and filled with the smug of conviction of his own superiority - as a man, and moreover, here, as a man from the future surrounded by his technology (the title comes from one of his many insults to her). But Alyx, although her physical training remains important to her ("In the dark she felt wolfish, her lips skinned back over her teeth; like another species she made her way with hands and ears") uses logic and experimentation to find the loophole in a forcefield protecting the time traveller's tower, and outwits his flashy toys the same way.

The ironically-named 'Picnic on Paradise' (1968) is full-blown science fiction. Alyx is now even more the alien outsider who makes those around her slightly uncomfortable with her intensity and sharp humour: she is "a soft-spoken, dark-haired, small-boned woman, not even coming up to their shoulders", 'their' being a group of stranded tourists four millennia into Alyx's future. She has been charged with escorting them from Station A to Station B (Russ having fun with the sketchiness of the premise, there) across a planet made somewhat inhospitable by war. Alyx, we learn, was accidentally scooped up - literally - by a time-travel device beloning to archaeologists from the future:

"One day they were fishing in the Bay of Tyre and they just happened to receive twenty-odd cubic metres of sea-water complete with a small, rather inept Greek thief who had just pinched an expensive chess set from the Prince of Tyre, who between ourselves is no gentleman. They tell me I was attached to a rope attached to knots attached to a rather large boulder..."

The Trans-Temp Agency apparently recognised talent when they saw it, however, and gave Alyx a job. What follows is arguably Alyx's most trying adventure yet - and the most disconcerting to read, transplanting as it does an unreconstructed epic heroine, whom we earlier saw battling a sea monster, into such an archetypally sfnal setting. As Niall discusses very well towards the end of his post on the collection, on the rare occasion when Alyx lets us in to her state of mind, it is made clear that this is a rather more than disconcerting experience for Alyx herself: being catapulted between such different worlds, but unable to forget the suffering she has left behind (shades, here, of Radegunde in 'Souls'), carries with it horror.

It's certainly the story where she displays the most agitation and even emotional involvement (albeit not, by and large, where the other characters can see). Capable and pragmatic almost to a fault, she is brisk to the point of rudeness in her efforts to rally the group and keep them alive, and can barely contain her frustration with their weaknesses and vanities:

"I have," said Alyx, "just killed a bear. It was eleven feet high and could have eaten the lot of you. If anyone talks loud again, any time, for any reason, I shall ram his unspeakable teeth down his unspeakable throat."

Maudey began to mutter, sobbing a little.

"Machine," she said, "make that woman stop," and she watched, dead tired, while Machine took something from his pack, pressed it to Maudey's nose, and laid her gently on the floor. "She'll sleep," he said.

"That was not kindly done," remarked one of the nuns.

Alyx bit her own hand; she bit it hard, leaving marks; she told Machine, Raydos, and Gunnar about the watch; she and they brought more snow into the cave to cushion the others.

As the journey wears on, though, the risk of becoming attached looms even larger than the frustration ("The more they liked her, the more they obeyed, the more they talked of "when we get back", the more frightened she would have to become"). Looking back over this, I'm reminded of the narrator of We Who Are About To..., who similarly struggles to convince her companions of the fatal gravity of their situation - and faces similar challenges to her competence and her assessment of the situation from men certain they know better than a mere woman. Alyx, though, is more able, and more willing, to lead - and the situation, of course, is not quite so hopeless.

The collection is rounded off by 'The Second Inquisition' (1970), a beautifully elegiac tale about reading, imagination, escapism and the idealism we project onto our heroes, set - again an incongruous shift - in 1920s small town America. A teenage girl becomes fixated on the exciting life - half-real, half in her head - of a mysterious visitor who is staying in her parents' house. The stranger is forthright, confident, strong, and has many skills (it's a theme); she can, she says,

"kill a man barehanded or learn a new language in six weeks or slit a man's jugular at fifteen yards with nothing but a pocketknife or climb the Greene County National Bank from the first story to the sixth with no equipment."

She is apt to casually challenge the assumptions the family holds about her, about women, and about the world. She holds long conversations with the girl (our narrator), who is, not surprisingly, smitten - especially when it emerges that the woman is a time-traveller (a relative of Alyx, or a protegee), and a time war erupts into the middle of the quiet family home. The violence comes as both a shock and a liberation to the narrator, who has been reading HG Wells avidly: adventure has found her, and one she can participate in. But then, just as abruptly and unexpectedly as she arrived, the traveller leaves - turning down the narrator's inevitable plea ("'My dear, I wished to take you with me. But that's impossible. I'm very sorry'").

I found the ending especially poignant, as the narrator puts away the makeshift time-traveller "uniform" she made in a burst of fannish enthusiasm, returns to her more conventional "middy-blouse and skirt", and resumes, with sadness, her old life:

Nothing came. Nothing good, nothing bad. I heard the lawnmower going on. I would have to face by myself my father's red face, his heart disease, his temper, his nasty insistencies. I would have to face my mother's sick smile, looking up from the flowerbed she was weeding, always on her knees somehow, saying before she was ever asked, "Oh the poor woman. Oh the poor woman."

And quite alone.

No more stories.

In contrast to all the previous Alyx tales, which conclude with the refrain "But that's another story", 'The Second Inquisition' seems to signal an end. Yet Russ, in a recent interview with Samuel Delaney, noted that,

I put a lot of autobiographical detail in that story: the town, the backyard, the little sort of couch or swing they sit on, stuff like that. The dance. All comes from stuff I've seen or lived through.

...which gives some support for Gary Wolfe's reading, in contribution to On Joanna Russ, of 'The Second Inquisition' as an origin story for a science fiction writer - the narrator, inspired by this episode in her life, will go on to write the Alyx stories, all that escapism tempered with experimentation and gender-bending. Delightfully recursive.

The cover art on both these volumes, I should note, was the creation of the splendid and lovely Judith Clute.

~~Nic

Death and Life, Twilight and Dawn

There were once three gods. The one who matters killed one of the ones who didn't and cast the other into a hellish prison. The walls of the prison were blood and bone; the barred windows were eyes; the punishments included sleep and pain and hunger and all the other incessant demands of mortal flesh. Then this creature, trapped in his tangible vessel, was given to the Arameri for safekeeping, along with three of his godly children. After the horror of incarnation, what difference could mere slavery make?

Debut novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), by N.K. Jemisin, has been getting quite a bit of love around the blogosphere of late, attracting praise for its characters, unusual secondary-world setting and polished prose. It's a book I've been looking forward to reading for a while; I've enjoyed Jemisin's thoughtful and forthright blogging, at The Angry Black Woman and elsewhere, for a few years now. She very kindly gave me an ARC when I met her, briefly, in Montreal last year; I waited to read it until closer to the release date and then, of course, failed to make the time to write my review. (I am one of life's great procrastinators.)

While I don't quite share the rapture expressed about the book in some quarters, I found it to be an assured and very accomplished debut: a fantasy fish-out-of-water story, set primarily in a floating city called Sky, with a war between gods for a backdrop. This is large canvas stuff.

The story is told, retrospectively, by its central character, a young woman named Yeine, who opens the book with some evocative lines:

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore.

I must try to remember.

While the style of what follows is neither as fragmentary and unreliable, nor as conversational, as I'd hoped - there remain plenty of long dialogue scenes that are presented straightforwardly - Yeine is nevertheless cagey on some issues, and given to interrupting herself. She pauses to query her memory of certain details, recount snatches of folk tales, or digress into episodes from her youth, and that of her parents; sometimes she interjects lines that she wishes she had said. At times, she second-guesses her own gloss on things, and reflects on the way she is depicting her world:

Not the gods that remain in the heavens, who are loyal to Bright Itempas. There are others who were not loyal. Perhaps I should not call them gods, since no-one worships them anymore. (How does one define "god"?) There must be a better name for what they are. Prisoners of war? Slaves. What did I call them before - weapons?

Weapons. Yes.

First-person narration and narrative tension always make somewhat uneasy bedfellows. On the one hand, the writer is tempted to lay on the foreshadowing (and thus we get "It was not the worst of the days to come" and so on); on the other, the reader can be fairly secure in the knowledge that no day can be that bad, or else the story would not be being told at all. The former remains a slightly clunky device even when the narrator has a habit of jumping around in her story; but, thankfully, Jemisin demolishes the latter hurdle by having Yeine note, casually, around 150 pages in, "and that is how I ended up here, dead".

By that point, as it happens, I was already sold. Yeine is an appealing lead: bitter, yes, and (in the events she's recounting) often out of her depth, but also outspoken and capable and unhesitating in her willingness to help and protect others. There are several layers of duality to her. She is the daughter of a very much frowned-upon relationship between a scion of the Arameri imperial elite and a 'barbarian' Darre tribesman from the subjected northlands. She is thus of two races, two social classes, and two cultures. Raised in the north and summoned south to Sky, as the story opens, by her maternal grandfather, she is of both worlds and neither; her whole life is centred around continual negotiation of her self, her status, and the prejudices of others (notably physical: being short, dark-skinned and curly-haired, she is not only far from Arameri standards of beauty, but instantly marked out as different, not-belonging). It's a conflict that becomes much more acute once she is in the floating city, but it isn't new to her.

Yeine has some prejudices of her own. Her antipathy to the Arameri is not without justification, as I'll discuss in a moment, but it does alienate her from a part of herself, and hamper her interaction with the less objectionable members of the Sky elite. In addition, Darre society is matriarchal. "[I]n my land, only weak women allowed men to protect them", she notes; Darre men are "our last line of defence, their physical strength bent toward the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children". As a result, Yeine has some trouble taking men entirely seriously:

I took his hand and held it while he bowed his head and trembled and fought to keep control of himself. He led and protected the servants here; tears would have made him feel weak. Men have always been fragile that way.

Jemisin never explores this quite as much as she might, though, and doesn't weave it into the story as comfortably as some of the other character and thematic elements - such as Yeine's duality, and her identity as someone beyond that duality, who combines both worlds and yet is distinct from them. This theme is echoed in the event that kicks the plot into motion. Yeine has been summoned to glittering, decadent Sky ("the Arameri's home; business is never done there. This is because, officially, they do not rule the world") not because her ailing grandfather her some grand reconciliation in mind, but because Arameri succession operates on a sort of survival of the fittest principle. As he explains:

"It is very simple. I have named three heirs. One of you will actually manage to succeed me. The other two will doubtless kill each other or be killed by the victor. As for which lives, and which die--" He shrugged. "That is for you to decide."

It is also there in the book's central mythology:

There were three gods once.

Only three, I mean. Now there are dozens, perhaps hundreds. They breed like rabbits. But once there were only three, most powerful and glorious of all: the god of day, the god of night, and the goddess of twilight and dawn. Or light and darkness and the shades between. Or order, chaos, and balance.

The aftershocks of the war between the three gods is still felt in Yeine's time. Itempas, the god of day, reigns supreme; those on the losing side were - as the quotation at the header of the post describes - trapped in human bodies and given over to the Arameri. They eke out an existence in Sky, as prisoners of the Arameri and the keys to their imperial power. They must obey every order given by an Arameri - although, in true mythic style, they don't always interpret said orders quite as the people who give them might wish. They are, as Yeine says, weapons:

But sometimes, sometimes, their masters call them forth. And then there are strange new plagues. Occasionally the population of an entire city will vanish overnight. Once, jagged steaming pits appeared where there had been mountains.

It is not safe to hate the Arameri. Instead we hate their weapons, because weapons do not care.

They are also the Arameri's playthings, as Yeine discovers when she befriends the child-god Sieh. The Arameri - most of whom will never be in contention for the throne, so voluminous is the family tree - have had many years to devise elaborately cruel ways to relieve the boredom of being two steps away from absolute power. They abuse their human servants - who are, without exception, minor members of that same family tree, in a subtle commentary on the way power operates hierarchically and oppressively even with an elite group - and they abuse their immortal ones:

"I could be older," [Sieh] said softly. "If you'd rather have me older, I mean. I don't have to be a child."

I stared at him and did not know whether to feel pity, nausea, or both at once.

"I want you to be what you are," I said.

His expression grew solemn. "That isn't possible. Not while I'm in this prison."

The gods heal quickly, but are not immune to pain, and some characters - like Scimina, one of Yeine's opponents - take considerable satisfaction in exploiting this.

This exploration of the dynamics of power and the allure of having power over others was, for me, was the most interesting (and disturbing) aspect of the book. Even Yeine, although she resists the slaver's mindset as far as she can, because of her revulsion for everything the Arameri stand for, comes to understand the desire:

Consider: An immensely powerful being is yours to command. He must obey your every whim. Wouldn't the temptation to diminish him, to humble him and make yourself feel powerful by doing so, be almost irresistible?

I think it would be.

The Arameri are who they are, and their culture is as oppressive and arrogant as it is, because they've grown accustomed to having this power over others; degrading others has become central to their identity and self-worth. The more they feel their power and status threatened - and among the Arameri, as I've said, there are many who are a long way from the top of the heap - the more they seek security in reinforcing the hierarchy. Beating their slaves reminds them that at least they're not at the bottom. (Oh, so many real-world parallels...)

The central figure among the enslaved is Nahadoth, the Night Lord, fallen counterpart to Itempas and the embodiment of a host of dualities - not least, male and female (although in practice we largely see 'him' as male, here, and Yeine uses male pronouns for him). In his human shape, he has two natures, which manifest at set times: by day, his power is masked and he is rational and tender and vulnerable; by night, his power is unleashed in callous violence.

His hands released me, but he did not move away. I danced away instead, and hated myself for it when I turned to face his smile. It was cold, that smile, which made the whole situation somehow worse. He wanted me - I could see that plainly enough now - but sex was the least of it. My fear and disgust pleased him, as had my pain when he'd bruised my arms.

It was with Nahadoth, however, that I parted ways with the book, or more accurately with the story that Jemisin wants to tell within this world: namely, the developing relationship between Yeine and Nahadoth, which begins as an intriguing and attractive thread in the tale, but gradually overwhelms the rest of the plot and characters in a welter of scenes in which our heroine moons over the hot, brooding immortal guy. (I gather that the original title of the book as The Sky-God's Lover, which in retrospect might have been more appropriate.)

Thematically, it's still interesting, and it does accompany at least one quite fun further layer of Yeine's duality. And there were still some nice touches that transcended the immediate love story, about the way gods and humans relate to each other:

He laughed softly; the bitterness had returned. "Oh, Yeine. You really don't understand. If mortals were truly nothing to us, our lives would be so much easier. And so would yours."

But it was no longer (quite) the same story I'd been enjoying; where did all the court intrigue go?

Not quite for me, then, but very well done nonetheless. I look forward to the next book. In the meantime, Jemisin's official site is here, and you can read her Nebula-nominated short story 'Non-Zero Probabilities' here.

~~Nic

The Orange Longlist, 2010: The Close-up

It is hard to get to know longlists.  When there are twenty books, and you've only heard of half of them, I think becoming acquainted is daunting.  So I thought I'd do a 'close-up', and think about each of the books in turn. First so that they don't become an undifferentiated mass of stuff to read in my mind - all of these by June 7th, eep - and second so that I can keep track of my longlist reading.  I'll pop a link to it in the side-bar and cross each book off as I go.

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Rosie Alison - The Very Thought of You (Alma Books)

Of all the books on the longlist, it is this one which has received the least national press attention to date.  Before this week it hadn't received a single review in the broadsheet press. (Of course, it has now.)  But you wouldn't know it from the plaudits on the cover: shortlisted for Amazon's Rising Stars award 2009, longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year 2010, longlisted for the Le Prince Maurice Prize for Literary Love Stories 2010.  Obviously people out there have been reading this debut novel, and liking it too.  

I must admit that it was entirely off my radar; I'd never heard of it.  A quote from The Bookseller on the back promises me that it is 'Perfect for fans of Sadie Jones and Ian McEwan', which is a rather startling pronouncement.  Rather like saying that if you like chocolate and chips you're sure to like cheese, but you know how these things are: the sellers need to market books at some imaginary, hybridised audience.  Because it isn't the kind of book I would ordinarily read, I'm eager to dig into it, like a tourist.  My copy has been very kindly sent by Alma Books and will be my next read after The Wilding.

Synopsis: England, 31st August 1939: the world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate that has been opened up to evacuees by Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, an enigmatic childless couple. Soon Anna gets drawn into their unravelling relationship, seeing things that are not meant for her eyes – and finding herself part-witness and part-accomplice to a love affair, with unforeseen consequences.

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Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal (Granta)

This book has had a little more coverage in the UK press (and on the blogs), all of it positive as far as I have seen and the general consensus seems to be that it is an confident, controversial and original debut. The adjectives 'amazing' and 'extraordinary' have been kicked about. I have to admit that the synopsis doesn't set me alight with excitement, it doesn't sound promising, but the critical momentum and the reputation of the publisher are enough to convince me it must have quality.  I'm looking forward to it and a copy is on its way to me now from the Book Depository.

Synopsis: A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency. The sudden publicity seems to turn every act into a performance and every space into a stage. But when the local college decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve…

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Clare Clark - Savage Lands (Harvill Secker)

The first of many historical novels on this Orange longlist, much to my pleasure.  I've never read Clare Clark, although both her previous novels - The Nature of Monsters and The Great Stink - have found their way onto my TBR.  The reviews I've read of this book, though, have been muted in their praise; the consensus apparently that Clark is too forensic and clinical a writer for her genre. But in my experience it is usually a lack of these qualities which makes for the poorest historical fiction.  It remains to be seen but I do like the cover. Prettily muted. It will be interesting to see how it compares with Mantel and Maria McCann in terms of style and texture (texture, I think, is one of the most important qualities of historical fiction).

Synopsis: It is 1704 and, in the swamps of Louisiana, France is clinging to its new colony with less than two hundred men. Into this hostile land comes Elisabeth Savaret, one of twenty-three women sent from Paris to marry men they have never met. With little expectation of happiness, Elisabeth is stunned to find herself falling passionately in love with her husband, infantryman Jean-Claude Babelon. But Babelon is a dangerous man to love.

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Amanda Craig - Hearts and Minds (Little, Brown)

Aha, an immigration novel, of a sort.  There had to be at least one.  I know I shouldn't judge, but I do feel like we've been here before with the Orange Prize. Several times. At least this one has a mysterious corpse to spice things up a bit. I sound really cynical, don't I?  I am, I suppose, just a little.  Can anyone reassure me that it isn't a 21st century cliche?

Synopsis: Entrepreneurs and cooks, au pairs and cleaners – London’s immigrant population floods into jobs and spaces unwanted by the legitimate majority. Against the backdrop of the city’s elegant terraces and conspicuous wealth, these men and women are powerless, invisible, and untraceable. So when a girls’ corpse is fished from Hampstead Ponds one morning, she could be anyone…

Rich or poor, five people, seemingly very different, find their lives in the capital connected in undreamed-of ways. Job, the illegal mini-cab driver whose wife in Zimbabwe no longer answers his letters; Ian, the idealistic supply teacher in exile from South Africa; Katie from New York, jilted and miserable as a dogsbody at a political magazine and fifteen-year-old Anna, trafficked into sexual slavery. Polly Noble, an overworked human rights lawyer, knows better than most how easy it is to fall through the cracks into the abyss. Yet when her au pair, Iryna, disappears, Polly’s own needs and beliefs drag her family into a world of danger, deceit and terror.

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Roopa Farooki - The Way Things Look to Me (Pan Books)

Roopa Farooki was nominated to the Orange New Writer's Award in 2007, for her first novel Bitter Sweets.  I gulped it down like juice and thought it was very pleasurable but didn't really rate it as literary fiction.  Since then Farooki has been enormously prolific; this is her third novel and her fourth is coming out later this year.  Either she had a nice stack of manuscripts waiting for the publisher, or she writes at a devilish pace.  The Way Things Look to Me sounds a bit zeitgeisty to me - its main character is autistic - but I seem to remember that Farooki has a light, humourous touch and I hope that means she won't be twee or earnest about it.

Synopsis: At 23, Asif is less than he wanted to be. His mother's sudden death forced him back home to look after his youngest sister, Yasmin, and he leads a frustrating life, ruled by her exacting need for routine. Everyone tells Asif that he's a good boy, but he isn't so sure.

Lila has escaped from home, abandoning Asif to be the sole carer of their difficult sister. Damaged by a childhood of uneven treatment, as Yasmin's needs always came first, she leads a wayward existence, drifting between jobs and men, obsessed with her looks and certain that her value is only skin deep.

And then there is Yasmin, who has no idea of the resentment she has caused. Who sees music in colour and remembers so much that sometimes her head hurts. Who doesn't feel happy, but who knows that she is special. Who has a devastating plan.

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Rebecca Gowers - The Twisted Heart (Canongate)

I like the sound of this very much: an historical murder mystery involving Charles Dickens, mixed with a little romance thrown in. It sounds like a guilty pleasure, and I trust Canongate as far as literary quality goes.  Has anyone else read it?  The Independent calls it 'singularly convincing and genuinely moving...[an] ultimately strange and lingering novel.'  Canongate are very kindly sending me a review copy, but I may save it until closer to the end of the Orange reading challenge. Something to really look forward to.

Synopsis: Kit, a work-obsessed literature student, decides, on a whim, to go to a dance class. And for a while it looks like Joe, the shadowy figure she meets there, may tempt her to put her books aside and live a little.

But as Joe’s world becomes increasingly threatening and Kit’s research leads her to stumble on a complex historical mystery, she is faced with a choice. Should she hide herself away in her studies or make the leap of faith that could change her existence forever?

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M.J. Hyland - This is How (Canongate)

I'm both suprised and pleased to see this book on the Orange longlist. It stands out for me, because Hyland is one of those novelists who has managed to escape her gender, and inevitable pigeonholing because of it.  Her books aren't conceived of as 'women's fiction', I don't think.  Like A.L. Kennedy, she has those gender defying initials and has slipped the net.  Because of this, fiction like hers usually falls foul of the Orange Prize, probably I think because the judges (consciously or unconsciously) privilege 'women's fiction' or fiction written for women - an amorphous category, but I think we know what it is - above the wider field of fiction written by women.  I think this is an important distinction, and that it is important for books like This is How to be included.  It makes a very clear statement that the Orange Prize isn't just a prize for books with certain themes - like domesticity, love, motherhood - that don't get recognition by other prizes (although this is an important function) but rather exists to reward all excellent fiction by women.  I want to write more, and more coherently about this, as I read the books themselves. 

Saying all of that, I have tried and failed to read This is How already. It is a psychologically demanding book, and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to tackle it last year.  Second time lucky I hope.

Synopsis: When his fiancée breaks off their engagement, Patrick Oxtoby leaves home and moves into a boarding house in a remote seaside town. But in spite of his hopes and determination to build a better life, nothing goes to plan and Patrick is soon driven to take a desperate and chilling course of action.

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Sadie Jones - Small Wars (Chatto & Windus)

Sadie Jones' debut novel, The Outcast, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, and I thought it was an impressive piece of work.  It was tight and atmospheric and I liked Jones' style of writing - the long conjunctive sentences, built out of a limited and stark stock of monosyllables.  There were parts of that novel which have stayed with me in that powerful way that scenes sometimes do. But there were also things about it that I didn't like: the ending, for example, which I thought was tired and old.  In many ways Small Wars sounds as though it tackles very similar themes to The Outcast, although it takes us a little further back in time and gives us a fresh setting.  I'm very much looking forward to seeing how Jones' has developed as a writer.  

Synopsis: Hal Treherne is a young and dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Impatient to see action, his other deep commitment is to Clara, his beautiful 'red, white and blue girl', who sustains him as he rises through the ranks.

When Hal is transferred to the Mediterranean, Clara, now his wife, and their baby daughters join him. But Cyprus is no 'sunshine posting', and the island is in the heat of the Emergency: the British are defending the colony against Cypriots – schoolboys and armed guerrillas alike – battling for enosis, union with Greece. The skirmishes are far from glorious and operations often rough and bloody. Still, in serving his country and leading his men, Hal has a taste of triumph.

Clara shares his sense of duty. She must settle down, make no fuss, smile. But action changes Hal, and Clara becomes fearful of the lethal tit-for-tat beyond the army base and her increasingly distant husband. The atrocities Hal is drawn into take him further from Clara; a betrayal that is only part of the shocking personal crisis to come.

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Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna (Faber and Faber)

I have read two Kingsolver books up to now - The Poisonwood Bible, which is wonderful and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1999, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction diatribe against food consumerism.  I noticed The Lacuna when it came out and put it on my wishlist - the mention of Frida Kahlo captured my attention - but it was crowded out by the many other books I put on there every week and I barely thought of it in connection with the Orange.  Now I think it may be serious contender, and I'm eager to get reading it. The comments I've read online are overwhelming positive; the consensus seems to be that the novel takes you by surprise. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing that will interest you, but then it knocks you over.

Synopsis: in the US and reared in a series of provincial households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing mother, Salomé; his fortunes remaining insecure as Salomé finds her rich men-friends always on the losing side of the Mexican Revolution.

Harrison aims for invisibility, observing his world and recording everything in his notebooks with a peculiar selfless irony. Life is what he learns from servants putting him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs on the streets. Then, one day, he ends up mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist, Diego Riviera – which leads to a job in Riviera’s house, where Harrison makes himself useful to the muralist, his wife Frida Kahlo and the exiled Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky.

A violent upheaval sends him to the US. In Carolina, he remakes himself in America’s hopeful image and finds an extraordinary use for his talents of observation. But political winds continue to volley him between north and south, in a story that turns many times on the unspeakable breach – the lacuna – between truth and public presumption.

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Laila Lalami - Secret Son (Viking)

When I saw this book on the longlist I knew the name immediately: Morrocan born Laila Lalami is a book/lit blogger, as well as a novelist and a journalist.  Back in the days when I read mostly the big American litblogs, before Eve's Alexandria was even thought of and the Britlit blogosphere was very small indeed, I used to visit her site occasionally.  I knew she was writing a novel but knew very little about it, and now here it is.  I have to admit that it doesn't sound like the kind of book I would ordinarily pick up, but that is one of the joys of reading prize lists. It forces you to sample and discover novels outside of your usual fare.

Synopsis: Casablanca’s stinking alleys are the only home nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, the only glimmer of hope in his frustrated dream of escape is offered by the film stars flickering on the local cinema screen. Until, that is, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive.

A shady businessman with wealth to burn, Nabil is disenchanted with his daughter and eager to take in the boy he never knew. Soon Youssef is installed in his penthouse and sampling the gold-plated luxuries enjoyed by Casablanca’s elite. But as he leaves the slums of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a stark reality…

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Andrea Levy - The Long Song (Headline Review)

Now for an admission: I've never read Small Island.  I own it, but I've never got around to reading it.  This is despite the fact that in 2004 it won the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year (now the Costa), followed in 2005 by the Commonwealth Writer's Prize.  And then it also won the Orange Prize Best of the Best in 2006.  It is one great fat gaping hole in my Orange knowledge.  So The Long Song will be my first encounter with Levy as a writer, and I'm apprehensive about it.  Whenever I read a much-lauded author for the first time I always feel nervous: what if I don't like her? What if I can't see what all the fuss is about?  I shall soon find out, as Headline Review have very kindly sent me a copy of the hardback (at my cheeky request).

Synopsis: July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was also present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July’s mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides - far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse.

Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a book they might care to consider. Cha, I tell my son, what fuss-fuss. Come, let them just read it for themselves.

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Attica Locke - Black Water Rising (Serpent’s Tail)

Attica Locke? I'd never heard of her until this week. I think it's safe to say that Black Water Rising was amongst the least anticipated of Orange longlisters, coming straight out of left-field.  It is a thriller, for a start, not a genre widely noted for winning literary prizes, for second it is published by a small press (though admittedly a small press with an Orange history - Serpent's Tail also published Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin), for third it sounds distinctly un-Orangey.  How many Orange longlisters have had washed-out criminal lawyers with past demons as their heroes? Not many I warrant.  And because of this I'm looking forward to it; a bit of something different does you good. 

Synopsis: On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife’s birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora’s Box.

Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darker sins and resolved to make a fresh start.  His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family and even his life. But before he can untangle the mystery that stretches to the highest reaches of corporate power, he must confront the demons of his past.

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Maria McCann - The Wilding (Faber and Faber)

I'm over two-thirds into The Wilding as I type, and will probably finish it off this evening, and so it is difficult to comment on its longlisting without giving an opinion. Its appearance suggests rather strongly (if we hadn't guessed already) that there are some fans of historical fiction on the judging panel, which I like to see.  But whether The Wilding is the best example of that genre of fiction is a matter for discussion.  I did know of McCann before - her 2000 debut As Meat Loves Salt has met with wide critical acclaim and I've always meant to read it.  Commenting on my last post Jodie called it 'fantastically dark and bitter', and I've read a lot more praise for the writing and the atmosphere over the last few days.  It has taken 10 years for this, her second novel, to appear and I wonder what resemblance it bears to the first? At the moment I don't predict a shortlisting, but we shall see how the ending unfolds.

Synopsis: 1672. A generation after the Civil War, England is still struggling to return to normal. In the village of Spadboro, Jonathan Dymond, a cider maker who lives with his parents has enjoyed a quiet and harmonious life. But the death of his uncle leads Jonathan to secrets that have lain dormant since the war.

Jonathan discovers his dying uncle’s letter to his father, hinting at inheritance and revenge and he becomes determined to unravel the mystery. Under the pretence of making cider, Jonathan goes to stay with his newly widowed and strangely hostile aunt. While he tries to make sense of his own family, Jonathan becomes involved with his aunt’s servant girl, Tamar, who soon reveals that she has secrets of her own…

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Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)

I think Wolf Hall has to be on the shortlist this year.  You already know what I think of it: it is a tour-de-force, a big fat slab of literary genius.  Will it win overall? If it did then Hilary Mantel would be the first author to have won both the Booker and the Orange Prize for the same novel.  For my own part I think she entirely deserves it.  But I imagine the judges will be wary of a foregone conclusion; they would have to be quite brave to give the prize to Wolf Hall.  God forbid the Orange winner should be dismissed with a bored shrug from the literary community and a groan of 'oh, that again'. 

Synopsis: England in the 1540s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe oppose him. The quest for the petulant king’s freedom destroys his advisor, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum and a deadlock.

Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a bully and a charmer, Cromwell has broken all the rules of a rigid society in his rise to power, and is prepared to break some more. Rising from the ashes of personal disaster – the loss of his young family and of Wolsey, his beloved patron – he picks his way deftly through a court where ‘man is wolf to man.’ Pitting himself against parliament, the political establishment and the papacy, he is prepared to reshape England to his own and Henry’s desires.

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Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy (HarperCollins)

I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to this very much.  In the first place I think it is difficult to do this kind of novel - the child on an epic war-torn journey to find his family - in a fresh and interesting way, without being sentimental.  It feels like a Hollywood movie at the outset; I can see the sweeping vistas and hear the orchestral crescendo.  I know, I know, this impression is probably the fault of the synopsis and the Khaled Husseini-esque cover more than anything else.  But there is another thing putting me off: the story is based on the real-life journey of Mohamed's father and partly composed from taped interviews with him.  I don't know what I think about this; it makes me feel emotionally manipulated.  Criticise the fiction and you stand in danger of belittling the real-life experience. It makes me feel boxed in, and I don't like that.

Synopsis: 1935, Aden. Jama is ten years old and has grown up in the slums of this ancient city, learning to survive amongst the cosmopolitan ragamuffins and vagabonds of the port. When he loses everything in Aden, his only chance of survival lies in finding his father, who disappeared years before.

But between him and his father lies a dangerous, lonely expanse and just ahead is the war that will test the world to its limits.

So begins an epic journey by foot that will take Jama through war-torn Eritrea and Sudan, to Egypt, Palestine and finally to the icy realms of Britain that he’d heard about in Aden.

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Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs (Faber and Faber)

This is Lorrie Moore's third novel and having only sampled some of her short stories up to now I'm anticipating very good things.  Strange then that I can't think of more to say about the book at this point. Perhaps it  is because my impressions of it are amorphous, and barely formed; plain and unassuming, like the cover.  I have the sense of it as a claustrophobic book, one of those uncomfortable family dramas that the Orange is so famous for highlighting.  Closely-observed, tense, slightly edgy, revealing the dirty heart of our most treasured institutions, that sort of thing.  Probably that is entirely wrong; we shall find out soon enough though, as Faber have popped a review copy in the post for me.

Synopsis: With her government quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a ‘half-Jewish’ farmer’s daughter from the plains of the Midwest, has come to the university town of Troy – a girl escaping her home to encounter the complex world of culture and politics.

When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious and glamorous, Tassie is drawn more deeply into the life of their newly-adopted child and a household that steadily reveals its complications. With her past becoming increasingly alien to her – her parents seem older when she visits; her disillusioned brother ever more fixed on joining the military – Tassie finds herself becoming the stranger she has at times imagined herself to be. As the year unfolds, love leads her to new and formative experiences, but it is then that the past and the future burst forth in dramatic and shocking ways.

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Monique Roffey - The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon and Schuster)

This is another book that had passed me by until now.  Reading the synopsis I feel like we're in relatively familiar territory for the Orange Prize and in previous years I'd have said that (if turns out to be well-executed) I wouldn't be surprised to see it on the shortlist. As it is, what with the thrillers and other surprises this year, who knows what the shortlist will look like?  Usually it would the kind of Orange book that I would run to the library for, but there are some difficulties with that this year - my branch is closed for refurbishment and I'm dependent upon the vagaries of the tiny mobile library's stock.  Who knows how I'll lay my hands on a copy.

Synopsis: When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life, but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill at ease with the racial segregation and the imminent dawning of a new era. Her only solace is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad's new national party, to whom she pours out all her hopes and fears for the future in letters that she never brings herself to send. As the years progress, George and Sabine's marriage endures for better or worse. When George discovers Sabine's cache of letters, he realises just how many secrets she's kept from him - and he from her - over the decades. And he is seized by an urgent, desperate need to prove his love for her, with tragic consequences...

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Amy Sackville - The Still Point (Portobello Books)

Isn't that one of the most beautiful book covers you ever saw?  So beautiful that I had to dash onto the Book Depository and order a copy immediately.  Everywhere I look online I bump into litbloggers who are utterly smitten with Sackville's prose and I think I will probably save this one until the end of my longlist reading because of it. That way once the fatigue has set in I'll have something to look forward to.  (I have to admit though that I can't suppress that little flowering of envy: Amy Sackville is just two years older than me and she has a novel on the Orange longlist. Not that I have any ambitions to write a novel, but this is yet another reminder that I'm a grown-up, and my peers are grown-ups. Scary.  When Eve's Alexandria was born I was 22 years old; now I'm 26.  Oh how time marches relentlessly onward.)

Synopsis: At the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young wife, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood.

A hundred years later, on a sweltering mid-summer's day, Edward's great-grand-niece Julia moves through the old family house, attempting to impose some order on the clutter of inherited belongings and memories from that ill-fated expedition, and taking care to ignore the deepening cracks within her own marriage. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long-held image of Edward and Emily's romance, and her husband Simon faces a precipitous choice that will decide the future of their relationship.

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Kathryn Stockett - The Help (Fig Tree)

I think I must have been asleep to miss the hype around The Help before now.  It seems like everywhere I look now there are reviews of it, and an Orange Prize survey has just placed it second most likely book to make the shortlist after Wolf Hall.  This is another first novel - debuts abound on the list this year - and I wonder if it might get shunted over into the New Writer's Award shortlist instead of the main shortlist? 

Synopsis: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver. Some lines will never be crossed.

Aibileen is a black maid: smart, regal, and raising her seventeenth white child. Yet something shifted inside Aibileen the day her own son died while his bosses looked the other way.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is by some way the sassiest woman in Mississippi. But even her extraordinary cooking won’t protect Minny from the consequences of her tongue.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter returns home with a degree and a head full of hope, but her mother will not be happy until there’s a ring on her finger. Seeking solace with Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, Skeeter finds she has gone. But why will no one tell her where?

Seemingly as different as can be, Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny’s lives converge over a clandestine project that will not only put them all at risk but also change the town of Jackson forever. But why? And for what?

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Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger (Virago)

I said before that I think this might be Sarah Waters' year for winning the Orange and I still think that, to an extent, although I see now that the competition is fresh and tough.  I know there are people out there who would vehemently disagree with me, but I really, really do believe that this is her most successful novel yet.  I don't mean that it was the most enjoyable - Fingersmith would take a whole world of beating on that count - but of her five novels The Little Stranger is the one that accomplishes everything that it set out to.  It has a creepy assuredness about it, a precision that both terrifies and excites me.  Sarah Waters has always inhabited her characters but she inhabits Dr. Faraday completely and absolutely.  If there is such as thing as a perfectly executed novel, then this is it I think. 

Synopsis: In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its garden choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners – mother, son and daughter – are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own.

But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely and how terrifyingly their story is about to become entwined with his.

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There we have it.  Twenty books, two months.  Now all there is do is read them, which is what I'm going to do right now.  The final 80 pages of The Wilding here I come.

~~Victoria~~

The Orange Prize Longlist, 2010

As I'm sure you're all aware by now, the Orange Prize longlist was announced yesterday, and what a surprising list it was.  I was desperate to get in on the blogging action immediately, but it was a busy work day for me, and then I had a pile of archives reading that I'd pledged to complete in the evening.  So I'm a little late to the party but, believe me, equally as eager to get it started.  Just in case you haven't seen it, here is the list of contenders again:

Rosie Alison - The Very Thought of You (Alma Books)
Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal (Granta)
Clare Clark - Savage Lands (Harvill Secker)
Amanda Craig - Hearts and Minds (Little, Brown)
Roopa Farooki - The Way Things Look to Me (Pan Books)
Rebecca Gowers - The Twisted Heart (Canongate)
M.J. Hyland - This is How (Canongate)
Sadie Jones - Small Wars (Chatto & Windus)
Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna (Faber and Faber)
Laila Lalami - Secret Son (Viking)
Andrea Levy - The Long Song (Headline Review)
Attica Locke - Black Water Rising (Serpent’s Tail)
Maria McCann - The Wilding (Faber and Faber)
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)
Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy (HarperCollins)
Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs (Faber and Faber)
Monique Roffey - The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon and Schuster)
Amy Sackville - The Still Point (Portobello Books)
Kathryn Stockett - The Help (Fig Tree)
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger (Virago)

I'm planning on looking at each of the long-listers in more detail at the weekend, but my first thoughts are largely positive.  I'm relieved to see both Hilary Mantel and Sarah Waters on there (whether you like them or not, the omission of such strong novels would reduce the credibility of the prize I think) but hugely disappointed at the omission of Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man.  Given the statements in the press by Daisy Goodwin, the chairwoman of the judging panel, the omission is perhaps less surprising - it is an emotionally gruelling novel - but I still think it's a massive oversight. Sarah Hall writes so well, and so fruitfully, and How to Paint a Dead Man is absolutely one of the best novels by a woman released in the last year.  I'm also a little disconcerted that there is no Evie Wyld; I haven't read After the Fire, a Still Small Voice but everything I've heard about it led me to anticipate its inclusion.   

There are some very familiar names - Barbara Kingsolver, Lorrie Moore, M.J. Hyland - and some names that are entirely new to me, like Attica Locke, Rose Allison and Monique Roffey.  Then there are the books that I've heard of but which have loitered at the back of my mind rather than taking a seat front and centre.  Nearly everything else falls into this category in fact.  Which is why I've read so few of them, and own so few of them. 

I've read Wolf Hall of course (and will now have to restrain myself from re-reading it) and The Little Stranger, from when they were Booker short-listed.  Sadly I didn't write about either of them for Alexandria, because they date from a distracted time last summer, but I will try to remedy that in the coming weeks.  The only other books from the list I've touched are M.J. Hyland's This is How and Maria McCann's The Wilding.  The latter was near the top of my TBR pile anyway - you know I can't resist a bit of literary historical fiction - and the former was, at one time, on my 'reading now' pile.  In fact I read just over a third of it before I set it aside.  It wasn't that the book was disappointing - not at all, it was extraordinary - but because it wasn't the right time for it.  Daisy Goodwin says she got weary of grim, serious fiction, and tried to keep the long list up-beat.  In which case This is How is the one that got away. I find it hard to imagine a more serious writer than M.J. Hyland, or a book grimmer than This is How.  Anyway, I will be determinedly picking it back up again for a second attempt.

Like fellow Orange reader, Kirsty from Other Stories, I'm now gathering in the other long-listers: The Long Song, The Rehearsal, The Lacuna, A Gate at the Stairs, The Twisted Heart and The Still Point are all on their way to me as I type.  The Wilding, which was ready and waiting, has now gained reading priority (and I will have to apologise to Nicola Barker profusely for it; Burley Cross Postbox Theft deserves better, I know).  I've read 27 pages so far, and my impressions are mixed.  At the moment it reminds me, quite disconcertingly, of a seventeenth century version of the BBC's adaptation of Lark Rise to Candleford but I'm sure I'm going to be disabused of the country idyll soon enough.

~~Victoria~~

Almost upon us again...

The Orange Prize, that is, and the blogging community is preparing for the longlist announcement tomorrow.  I'm more than pleased to see the sense of anticipation building; it means that I have more people to share it with.  Eve's Alexandria has been covering the Orange Prize for several years now.  Along with the Clarke Award (for sf), it is the book prize we have followed most avidly and consistently, much more so than the Booker.  I first read along in 2006, which turned out to be a good vintage year for the prize: Naomi Alderman won the New Writer's Award for Disobedience (which was amongst the first books I reviewed here) and Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith were all on the shortlist.  Beyond Black, The Accidental, The Night Watch.  Three books I still think about with admiration.   Ironically, the fact that Zadie Smith's book On Beauty won that year, sealed my affection for the Orange.  I didn't like the book (an understatement?) but its winning was an exciting sort of disappointment.  It was something to feel passionately and lively about; I like a bit of bookish outrage.

     

Year after year I'm always surprised by the longlist - sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not - but this year (fingers crossed) should be a bumper year.  Fiction by women has already been in the spotlight with the Booker shortlist.  So, predictions?  I'm hoping that Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man will make an appearance, not just on the longlist but on the shortlist.  (I have a feeling, a little niggly feeling, that this might be Sarah Water's year for winning - you heard it here first...maybe.) Those are the three books I've read by women in the last year which took up permanent lodging on my shelves.  Of the ones I haven't read I'm betting that  Evie Wyld's After the Fire, A Small Voice is in with a sound chance of making at least the longlist. It is standing very high on my TBR.  Margaret Atwood is eligible for The Year of the Flood, as is Penelope Lively for Family Album; as old-guards of the prize, I think they are likely picks.  Perhaps we'll also see Joyce Carol Oates' A Fair Maiden on there, and Anne Tyler's Noah's Compass, and there is Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations too.  Oh and Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures. I'm sure that Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly will be on the New Writer's shortlist. 

What I like about the Orange prize, though, what I have always liked, is discovering books I've never heard of.  I'm expecting at least half of the longlisters to fall into this category.  Every year I promise myself I will read the full list, and every year I fail miserably, so what the hell I'll say it again: this year I'm going to read the full longlist. Twenty books in two months? Surely not impossible? I shall just have to hope and pray that I've read at least three of them already. 

~~Victoria~~

Literary Serendipity

I learnt the word 'serendipity' in an English class in my first year at secondary school, on the same day that I learnt the word 'masticate' (as in, to chew).  The class itself wasn't particularly memorable but those two words have stayed with me for reasons unknown.

Yesterday, after writing my post, I had a serendipitous encounter with Gabriel Josipovici.  Not in the flesh, of course, because that would be weird (and I wouldn't have recognised him anyway), but with his collection of critical essays The Singer on the Shore.  It is a book I first read about online some years ago, when Josipovici was interviewed by Mark Thwaite at Ready, Steady, Book.  After that I spotted a few reviews of his latest novel, Goldberg Variations (2000), around the blogosphere and managed to mooch myself a copy of his book about the Bible as literature, The Book of God.  Although it was The Singer on the Shore that had most piqued my interest, the cost of it was prohibitive at the time and it got shunted to the back of my mind. I remembered it immediately though when I saw it on sale in my local 'book outlet' (you know the kind of place) for £2 yesterday morning.  I fear I made one of those squashed mouse noises in bookish excitement. The women next to me reading the back of a Josephine Cox romance certainly scooted one step to the left.

It is not the kind of book that you expect to see remaindered in the Yorkshire Book Outlet's fiction section.  I go in there mostly because they sometimes have Doris Lessing paperbacks, and odd numbers of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series in their 3 for £5 section.  Nevertheless, there it was, a single copy of the Carcanet edition practially luminous with serendipity: plain buttermilk cover, with just the title marking it as treasure. You can't buy it for under £10 second-hand online.   I rabbited off to the till, startling a woman balancing the relative merits of two misery memoirs in my eagerness.  Oh, happy day.

But the serendipity didn't end there.  Later I sat down and flicked through the book, before settling on the last essay in the volume, 'Writing, Reading and the Study of Literature'.  It was Josipovici's inaugural lecture when he was made a Professor at Sussex in 1986 and the broad scope of the title attracted me.  It turned out to be about the impossibility of creative writing and, to an extent, the impossibility of creative reading; about how every writer and every reader is at war with themselves, half free to be original and daring, and half trapped in tradition and cultural tropes.  Jospivici talks about his own struggle to slough off the Western tradition of mimetic realism, of descriptive prose and linear narrative, when he wrote his first novel in the 1960s.  He describes his decision 'not to have to do what I don't want to', not to tell a story but to make a story happen, differently.  He contrasts this attempt with the Canonical writers of the Western realist tradition, and especially Tolstoy and George Eliot.  He describes them as having 'a closed sealed off quality', that 'locked him out'.  They might be 'supremely confident, supremely articulate' but they did not capture the essential quality of his lived experience that the fragmentary and oblique work of Proust or T.S. Eliot did.

It was all very interesting, and definitely worth re-reading, but it was the subject and title of Jospivici's first novel that took the serendipity biscuit.  It is called Inventory and attempts to explore a man's life and relationship to his family through the taking of an inventory of his possessions after his death.  Why should that come under the heading 'strange coincidences'?  It's to do with the archives assignment I'm currently working on.  I have to present a 45 minute lecture to my tutor on any subject, so long as it is based on original archival research and foregrounds a particular record type.  The subject I have chosen is probate inventories - the lists of moveable goods that were a legal requirement for probate from the sixteenth century onwards - and the insight they can give us into domestic relationships and material culture.  Funny how different parts of life can meet and touch like that, without warning.  It cheered me up no end, in a moderately freaky kind of way.

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Oh, and these arrived in the post.  They cheered me up quite a bit too.

 
 

Victoria~~

Reading Weak, Writing Weak

No, those aren't typos in the title.  Both my reading and my writing seem a little weak this week. (Which clearly doesn't mean that I can resist a word-play when it presents itself.)

Whether this is the result of work burn-out, or the continuing cold weather (not so much of an excuse, perhaps, now that we've had a week of chilly blue sunny skies), or the tasks I try to turn my mind to, I don't know.  More likely it is just one of those times, when your brain is on a forced slowdown and fighting against it is futile and self-defeating. Better to acknowledge it and ignore it till it starts whirring back at full speed.  So, no review from me this weekend; instead some preliminary thoughts on books for review. 

If I were writing a review, what would I be writing about? Probably Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion, which is out next week. Why that book? Because it is an easier book to write about than the three novels I have queued for review.  It is a book about which I feel equivocal but generally positive; I can thoroughly subscribe to its feminist principles even if I don't think it is a classic of its kind.  The novels are harder because I have more invested in them, emotionally, intellectually.  The first is The War with the Mein, Book 1 of Acacia by David Anthony Durham. You might remember that I originally started this when I went to New Zealand, five months ago now, and it took me nearly as long to read it (in terms of weeks and months) as Don Quixote.  Admittedly I took a two month break in the middle but nevertheless, it is a book I lived with for a long time.  I'm ashamed to confess there were moments when I decided not to finish it.  I have a post half drafted about why this was, and what changed my mind.  It has a lot to do with how and why I read (epic, high) fantasy, I think, and the importance of reading it with a generous heart.  By generous I don't mean forgiving or in any way charitable; I mean open and wide and willing to admit 'big' emotions that are generally alien to our daily experience.  Since I've never felt more cynical and less generous than I did after 36 hours of airline food and transit lounges, it's perhaps no surprise that Acacia and I didn't get along at first.  That and the fact that the first third of the novel is weaker than the rest in my opinion. It gets good though; very good.  After five months of looking at it on my bedside table and living with it under my skin, I almost picked up the second book immediately.  Which is testament enough to my feelings.  I want to be able to marshall all my resources effectively before I write about it though, and the time doesn't seem right at the moment.  I'll have to live with it for a little longer.

The second novel is In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield. This one came to me from fellow Alexandrian Nic (who read it for SFX magazine and re-posted her review of it here a while back) and Niall (who reviewed it at Torque Control).  I think it is safe to say that they liked it, a lot, and so did I.  So much in fact that my first attempt at writing a review, the day I finished it, was gushing rubbish.  I couldn't curb the positive adjectives - 'extraordinary', 'exhilarating', 'inspired', etc - and they ran rampant over any attempt at measuredness.  Isn't it ironic that the books I most want to recommend to people, books like In Great Waters  and Wolf Hall, are the ones I find it most difficult to write about?  Incidentally, I can't help noticing that both these books are just out in paperback: an exhortation to read them will have to stand in place of my review, at least for the time being.

Finally, William Golding's The Spire.  I have read Golding before, twice. The obligatory Lord of the Flies - most recently, when I was in my early 20s - and Rites of Passage, in my first year at St. Andrews.  Of these two Rites of Passage stands out, but this was probably because I was studying it (and even wrote an essay about it, if I remember correctly).  My experience of reading him teaches me two things. First, the kind of novel he wrote is out of fashion; second, immeasurable further damage has been done to his reputation by the teaching of Lord of the Flies in high schools.  I was surprised to discover that not a single one of my colleagues - generally a very well-read and opinionated bunch - had read any Golding other than Lord of the Flies.  Their impressions of him from that book were of a clumsy metaphorist and heavy-handed moralist, which undoubtably comes from the way we teach all literature to schoolchildren as though it were parable.  Everyone wrinkled their nose at The Spire. Which is sad, because it is a really interesting novel.  Interesting form and structure; interesting narrative technique; interesting themes.   'Interesting' might sound a rather faint word when it comes to praise, although it shouldn't.  This comes back to my first point about Golding being out of fashion.  On the whole I think his experimental, oblique style has less currency today than it did when he was writing at his peak in the 1970s and early 1980s.  We seem to like our experiment quirky and playful these days, with a touch of edginess.  We like footnotes, and weird tenses, and unexpected points of view.  We like coming at our fiction from different angles.  Golding doesn't do angles, and he isn't playful.  He is dead serious, and deals in essentials.  This is probably why he seems like such an old-fashioned moralist, and why he is quite a difficult writer to love.  I say 'old fashioned moralist' but maybe I should say 'old fashioned modernist', because he sits very comfortably with that crowd.  I feel as though I need to read more, and think more, before I say more about him. 

~~Victoria~~