February Round Up

 

I’m not one of these readers who set themselves reading goals. I read what I read when I read it. Some choices are dictated by proofs, arcs and blog tours but they’re fewer now than ever so I can indulge in my own selections. 

 

Speaking in Tongues – Jeffery Deaver 

I was sent this book as part of a book bundle at Christmas from my sister. I’d read a couple of Jeffery's novels before so thought I knew what to expect but whilst I found this gripping it wasn’t a pleasant read. 

 

The Fox Wife – Yangsze Choo

I was so thrilled to receive an advance copy of this book from a publisher who I thought had dropped me off their lists years ago. I read The Night Tiger as part of a buddy read initiated on social media and it was a lot of fun. The book will stay with me forever particularly the character of Ren. This latest offering from this author is a shapeshifting homage to the fox, full of intrigue and mystery and no less haunting than The Night Tiger.

 

Poor Things – Alasdair Gray

I borrowed this from the library as I was intrigued by the film buzz. I haven’t seen the film yet, but Emma Stone is one of my favourite actresses and I see that she won a BAFTA for her performance.  I expect I’ll wait for it to be shown on TV. I thought the book was a vehicle for the author’s political and sociological opinions, but it was certainly a phantasmagoria of a book!

 

The Dark Within Them – Isabelle Kenyon

Isabelle Kenyon is an independent publisher at Fly on the Wall Press. She often invites me to participate in blog tours and is understanding of my need for physical books. As a blog tour organiser, she is one of the most supportive and encouraging I’ve worked with. So, I preordered a copy of her book because I was interested, and I wanted to support her back. I didn’t know what to expect with this book, but I could never have imagined this. – a thriller set in a Mormon community in Utah! It’s quite a dark tale with plenty of twists and turns, plenty to keep me guessing.

 

The Sanatorium – Sarah Pearse

I had seen this book on social media, and I chose it as a prize from a publisher following my participation in a bookish community. I found it to be gripping and tense and heading towards the ‘unputdownable’ genre although I felt it fell away a little towards the end. That didn’t stop me borrowing the next in the series The Retreat, which I’m reading currently. 

 

Umbilical – Teika Marija Smits

This was a collection of short stories sent by the author herself after soliciting for my attention on social media. Always a gamble when a writer does this, but I go with my instincts and my gut told me this was sound. I wasn’t wrong. It’s a highly readable collection of sci fi, fantasy type stories with many allusions from mythology and folk lore.

 

3 Shades of Blue – James Kaplan

This was brilliant. I was offered a copy form the publisher on the strength of a previous request I made for a music genre book. The book looks at the development of jazz from the bebop era using the lives and careers of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans as the focus of the book. It is a feast for jazz fans and ever since reading I’ve been playing nothing but the music of these giants of the genre. 

New Gillion Street - Elliot J Harper - Blog Tour

 Okay, listen up. Don't read this book. I FORBID you to read this book. Unless.......unless.....you have an imagination as wide as the ocean and as deep as a bottomless pit. The author has so it seems only fair that the reader should too, and trust me, you will need it and it will stand you in good stead.

In politically-neutral Neo-Yuthea, Albert Smith's orderly life is disrupted when Mr Zand campaigns for Mayor.

Shocking deaths caused by strange forest creatures, enforced arranged marriages, and the impending suppression of Albert's secret garden meetings bring the community to the brink of chaos.

Albert and his neighbours must rally together, resisting the encroaching darkness, and fighting for their freedom before their world crumbles.'

Elliot J Harper has  created an immersive landscape, possibly in a galaxy far, far away, but this doesn't hit you as a stereotypical science fiction novel in terms of planet hopping in spaceships and hurtling through hyperspace. There's elements of speculative and fantasy fiction too. One of the things I enjoyed was the paradox of describing fairly normal and straightforward pursuits, like drinking tea, familiar to us in our present day earth alongside some weird and otherworldly happenings, not to mention hanging out with some weird and wonderful otherworldly beings!

New Gillion Street is a settlement created and populated by survivors of a space ship crash after they left Yuthea (which I think we can interpret as earth) to seek a new life elsewhere. The planet upon which they landed was already populated and those 'indigenous' inhabitants aided the survivors to create a new society on the understanding that they remain separate. Neither strays into the domain of the other. And it works. For a while. 

The Odds and Evens reminded me of Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, so the seeds of a division are sewn early on. I also thought of Animal Farm, 'all animals are equal but some are more equal than others' when Mr. Zand decides to assert himself as a leader. But if all that sounds like stuff you've read before you won't have been bargaining on the expansive imagination of Mr. Harper. The world created is like none you've ever visited with overwhelming beauty and characters that range from a talking, swearing garden gnome to the Narda, a peaceful and wise race who I wish would populate earth, right here, right now. 

I wouldn't want to plot spoil because exploring that is one of the joys of the book but also words are inadequate to truly describe how the initial narrative explodes into a landscape so far removed from all that we know. It had me thinking of the author, whatever he's on, I want some! 

But it isn't just an intergalactic fun romp there's some serious intent behind the story. I mentioned Animal Farm? The character of Mr. Zand prompted that with his aspirations, his devious contriving, to bend the inhabitants of New Gillion Street to his will. These sequences illustrate the frailty of life's infrastructures and how in the wrong hands the changes can become devastating. There's a political undercurrent to the book but fear not if politics isn't your bag because it doesn't dominate and the book also has plenty to say about love on many levels. 

The writing sparkles along with pace and clarity reaching a conclusion that should satisfy us all. Even the facking gnome.😉

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon of Fly on the Wall Press for a gifted copy and a place upon the blog tour.

Umbilical - Teika Marija Smits

 

I look at the best seller lists sometimes and I find myself thinking, why? I receive a book like Umbilical and I find myself asking the same question. But for a different reason. Why hadn't I heard of this book before I was sent a copy? Why isn't it all over social media? I've seen and read books that have been splashed about all over the place and they aren't half as good as this. I know that short stories don't always get the accolades they deserve. I long for that to change. It would be fantastic if this were the book to do that. 

As a book blogger I am sometimes asked directly by authors if I would care to read and review their books. My decision rests on my own gut instinct, and whether there's a physical copy because I can't bear e-reading. Often that's the end of the story and I get it because economically and environmentally ebooks make sense. But every once in a while an author is willing to send me a paper copy and I am always very grateful that they are willing to invest in my humble opinions. When this writer approached me via social media my instinct radar started buzzing even though the genres listed weren't amongst my favourites, I don't do horror! (As a young teen the Pan Book of Horror Stories Volumes 1 and 2 did the rounds in the playground and I think they scarred me for life! ) But instinct rules, and a sample story which I did e-read convinced me that I would find something in this debut collection of short stories.

However I wasn't prepared for just how good this collection is. This is writing of quality, compassion and intelligence. Each story is different and original but there is a cohesion that binds them all together. I particularly liked how the opening poem is referenced again in the concluding story, such a subtle move but so effective.  

There is an almost futuristic fairy tale quality to many of the stories and although they may appear benignly different initially there are threads and themes running though the entire collection which offers the reader a pleasing cohesion. The Greek myths provide a wealth of inspiration for some tales, Theseus, Icarus, Daedalus, characters from global folk lore, Baba Yaga, Bluebeard and The Green Man, some literary heroes, Sherlock Holmes and they all nestle alongside some deliciously futuristic scenarios -  instead of an engineer coming to service your boiler, in the opening story he comes to service the AI ! For some reason I thought of Hal and 2001:A Space Odyssey as I read of Marvin, so called because he hears things through the grapevine! If you don't get that allusion then you're not as old as me! Little touches like those were a delight to encounter as I wove my way through the narratives, enchanted by the creativity and the unfettered imagination of this author. 

Thematically the stories are diverse and in the hands of a lesser writer it might not work as a collection but it does here because there are subtle strands that knit the stories together.  They are not overtly feminist stories yet the female as an archetype populates many of the stories whether they are set in some dystopian future or a 19th century past. The bind between mothers and daughters is wonderfully explored in the titular Umbilical. Parenting, marriage, miscarriage are all compassionately explored in other stories. 

As a metaphor the labyrinth appears in a couple of stories, most effectively in the concluding story The  November Room, one of my favourites, and you come away from the book feeling that you have in some way navigated the labyrinth of life in so many of its aspects. 

There's nothing superficial about these tales, they are at times deep and challenging but redemption is never far away. It is a considerable skill to explore intense themes without descending into bleakness and negativity and to offer hope to the reader. 

My thanks to the author Teika Marija Smits who offered and gifted me a copy, and my thanks to my instinct that urged me to accept. 

You could treat yourself and buy a copy - http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=229&referer=Catalogue

The Fox Wife - Yangtze Choo

 

I will confess that I struggled to start reading this book. Why, I hear you ask? Because I knew that once started I would read on and on until I had finished and once read it couldn't be unread. And I knew it would be one of those books where I would feel sad that I'd finished it because I would want it to go on forever and there may be quite a wait before the author's next book! Yangtze Choo is one of those authors who you could never call prolific but the old adage 'quality not quantity' applies here. I fell in love with this author's work when I read The Night Tiger. I was lucky enough to snaffle a proof before its 2019 publication date and I was also lucky enough to participate in a social media buddy read organised by the publisher Quercus Books. The book and that experience will stay with me for ever. 

The Fox Wife is a very different book in terms of content but the themes are still there, an element of fantasy, the nature of creatures and their place in our world, the convergence of humans, animals and spirits.

Foxes sometimes get a bad rap. Certainly in the UK urban foxes have become a familiar part of the landscape. I have one who visits regularly and gave birth to four cubs last season to the frustration of some neighbours around me and to the delight of myself! There is a certain mystique that they carry with them, in part through their physical appearance in that sense sometimes that they are laughing at you and something more, something undefined yet present in an other wordily sense.

That sense is captured here in the novel. 

'Manchuria, 1908.
In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman's identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they've remained tantalizingly out of reach--until, perhaps, now. 

Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can't escape the curse that afflicts them--their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family's luck seems to change--or does it? 

Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all she's a mother seeking vengeance for her lost child. Hunting a murderer, she will follow the trail from northern China to Japan, while Bao follows doggedly behind. Navigating the myths and misconceptions of fox spirits, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.'

Although we are given a year when the novel starts there is a timelessness to the narrative, a fey, almost dreamy sense as we begin our journey with Snow and Bao. It's a slow start, measured and controlled, offering us information, thoughts to conjure with, the reader can settle and adjust to an ambience of the Orient and a culture probably very different from the one they are used to. The notion of shapeshifting is fundamental to embracing the story. The mythology of foxes, so important in Chinese lore,  is prevalent and a sense of folk mythos, enigmatic yet tantalising. 

The chapters shift between Snow's perspective and Bao's. Both are on journeys with different intents; Snow to find a murderer and Bao to uncover the identity of a murdered courtesan. I loved the way the story progressed and developed as you feel the convergence of their two paths approaching.

Yangtze Choo's writing is hypnotic, mesmerising almost. Her characterisations are so empathic that even if a character is of dubious integrity there remains a draw, a pull, a desire to find the good in them. And the atmosphere she creates is almost surreal. And yet as well as being full of ethereal mystery it is also a detective tale! 

I feel credit too must be observed for the historical aspects of the novel, some serious research has been undertaken here and it all reads so authentically.  

My thanks to Ana McLaughlin at Quercus Books for a gifted proof.

Poetry Unbound - Padraig O Tuama

 

Poetry Unbound is an engaging anthology of 50 poems with the intention of opening worlds and I think it will do just that. I say I think it will because I will confess straight away that I haven’t read all the poems yet. That’s just not how I read poetry. I like to read a poem and savour it for a while, letting the intent and images wash over me and infuse me with its power. Reading one poem after another just doesn’t work for me. But that can take me quite a while before I ‘finish’ an anthology. It doesn’t bother me to do that but when publisher has been kind enough to send me a copy, I feel the commitment to offer some kind of response as close to the publication date as possible. 

 

What makes this diverse selection a little different from other anthologies is the text that accompanies each poem.  Padraig O Tuama has lovingly crafted a structure for each poem where he offers a brief introduction before the poem itself then he gives us his feelings and responses, a little lit crit maybe, some information on the poet which somehow gives the poems a wider context and the experience of reading them a greater intimacy .

 

There are poets I ‘know’ –  Margaret Atwood and Lemn Sissay for example and some who are new to me. As with any collection I always read each poem aloud  and  I already have my favourites;  Song by Tracy K. Smith – powerful in its observational simplicity, A Blessing by James Wright – a moment captured and analysed  so succinctly and delicately. 

 

It's a quite delightful collection and even when I have read all of the poems in it I shall return again and again. 

 

My thanks to Canongate Books for a gifted copy. 

A Spell of Good Things - Ayobami Adebayo

I read this author's previous novel Stay With Me, an unusual Nigerian tale of love, impotence and deception. I was interested to read her second book where I can see the author developing her style and expanding her themes which never stray far away from her rich Nigerian culture but also issues facing class and society and where the two might overlap. 

Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted, young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of family friends.

Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, and begging, dreaming of a big future.

In this breathtaking novel, Ayobami Adebayo, shines her light on Nigeria, the gaping divides in its society, and the shared humanity that lives in between.'

The story works well with the two perspectives of Eniola and Wuraola. Both are well developed characters and the reader can become invested in their stories feeling their pains and frustrations and willing them both to rise above the challenges that society and life throws at them. I found it fascinating to observe the family dynamics of both protagonists from a culture so very different from my own. I feel better informed and more aware and more outraged, I guess, at some of the issues and events in the novel. I had to reread the concluding sections more than once because I hoped that if I re read the ending, it might change. Of course it doesn't and I found it heartbreaking. 

I doubt there is a single country in the world that is not in possession of some inequitable laws and social conventions and politicians of questionable morals  this book certainly details the situation in Nigeria. 

It's compelling reading but by no means a feel good read, its quite bleak with the occasional upbeat moment. There were times when I struggled to engage fully with the narrative yet others where I couldn't put the book down. It's a masterful piece of writing and would seem to cement Ayobami Adebayo's place as a foremost Nigerian author.

My thanks to Canongate Books for a gifted, readalong copy. 

Speaking in Tongues - Jeffery Deaver

 

I have to say that this book gave me something of a conundrum. On the one hand it gripped me and ensnared me in its web so much so that I simply had to find out what happened. It's not a whodunnit it's a whydunnit and to an extent I figured a potential reason but without the specifics. On the other hand, if I am honest, I found it to be an unpleasant story with a particularly nasty character. So there was no sense of well-being after having read it, no sense of having read a great book, so no sense, really, of enjoyment. It's not that I'm squeamish but it all seemed gratuitous, as if the story had been constructed around the violence and deceit, the narrative was a vehicle to showcase some loathsome behaviour. And I'm probably upsetting Jeffery Deaver fans everywhere! I did read Coffin Dancer and The Sleeping Doll many years ago and  I don't remember feeling like this but Speaking in Tongues left me underwhelmed. 

'Words are the most dangerous weapons on earth – and Tate Collier has a consummate skill with them. He can talk his way into anyone's heart, get them to do whatever he wants. This served him well when he used to defend death penalty cases in Virginia's Supreme Court; it also made him enemies.

Then his teenage daughter goes missing. All the signs are that she's run away. But Tate and his ex-wife, Bett, feel differently. When they set out in search of her, they soon discover that Megan is in the hands of a man, with no morals, and a gift for words, coercion and deceit, as great as Tate's.

And Megan is not the only one in danger…'

The Intern - Michele Campbell

 

Wow, this is a chiller thriller that had me on the edge of my seat, looking over my shoulder and checking all my home security was intact! A story from two perspectives; Madison Rivera, the intern of the title, young, ambitious, and a seemingly respected lawyer Kathryn Conroy. 

Madison reveres Kathryn and is stoked when her intern application is successful and she goes to work in the judge's chambers. But all is not as it seems. With a complex plot that takes Kathryn's past and weaves it into the present day narrative ensnaring Madison in a convoluted web of deception and corruption this story is the proverbial page turner. There are several facets to the plot that have mysteries  requiring solutions before everything dovetails towards a conclusion.

The suspense is so cleverly tuned to tingle the nerve endings of the unsuspecting reader. With a cast of characters, many of whom are of dubious integrity, the readers joins them all in a game of cat and mouse that seems to be hurtling headlong into disaster. It is a legal thriller in part but so much more. 

Sometimes I felt that Madison was a tad too naive, too trusting. Kathryn comes across as a strong character but to admire her seems wrong in the light of her nefarious dealings. There are family dynamics aplenty at play here from both protagonists' points of view, Madison's brother, Danny arrested and later missing, Kathryn's parentage, which offer us insights into their personalities.

I believe Ms. Campbell has a legal background and she puts it to good use here. She is also an experienced author and her ability to further the novel with each chapter, peeling off onion like layers to move the reader forward was quite intoxicating. 

If there were elements of implausibility at times they tended to dissolve into the wider circle of the fiction. There are many twists some of which could be anticipated, others that came as a shock but all orchestrated in such a way that the reader's attention is engaged and you just have to read on and on. 

This is the first of Michele Campbell's book I have read but it has put her firmly on my radar.

My thanks to HQ stories at Harper Collins for my copy that I won in a giveaway.