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So last year I had a very simple aim, which was to read The Graveyard Book as soon as I could get my hands on it; the evidence here shows how well that went in practice!
And now we are seven or eight months further along and I have finally managed to find the time to savour this award-winning novel by one of my favourite writers properly and of course I’m kicking myself for having waited so long as, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a little gem of a masterpiece.
No need to set the plot up I suppose, but I’m going to anyway. Bod is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard when the remainder of his family is murdered; brought up by ghosts and with a guardian who is one of the undead (and I don’t think that’s a spoiler, just look at Silas on the cover and tell me what else he could be) with a witch as a friend and Miss Lupescu as an occasional governess, this is the story of how he grows up, how he learns from his friends and how he finally faces up to what happened to his family. And it’s absolutely fantastic.
I’m boringly recommending this to almost everyone I know , forcing the Book God to read it so that I have someone to talk to about it, because I read it days ago and it’s still in my head, in a good way of course. I love Silas, I love Miss Lupescu, I love the fact that whenever a new ghost is introduced they have a quote from their epitaph in brackets after their names (Dr Trefusis (1870-1926 , May He Wake To Glory), I even loved the bad guys.
I’m going to stop gushing now, but if you haven’t already read this then you must; seriously, you must.
And it contributes to my reading for The Dream King Challenge.
So we find ourselves in an alternative 21st century, one where Germany won the First World War and the Ottoman Empire still exists. Ashraf Bey is the son of an American photographer and apparently the Emir of Tunis, though his mother always told him his Dad was a Swiss watchmaker or something. Anyhow, Raf is on the run from prison near Seattle where he was serving time for a murder he probably didn’t commit, and has been summoned to El Iskandryia (alternative world Alexandria) by an aunt he didn’t know existed, and is to be married off for money. For he is pashazade, a member of the aristocracy with a diplomatic passport and extremely eligible as a husband for the daughter of a man climbing his way up the social ladder.
But of course it doesn’t work out quite like that. His aunt is murdered, he is the prime suspect and of course that means he has to go on the run again, relying as much as he can on the help, reluctant or otherwise, of Felix (an expatriate American policeman), Zara (the woman whose hand in marriage he has rejected) and Hani (his nine year old niece). All while trying to identify both the killer and the motive and clear his own name.
I really enjoyed this, because it brings together two things I love – science fiction and crime – and does so very successfully. The sci-fi is quite light, the world of El Iskandryia is not so far away from our own that its unrecognisable, but still sufficiently different that you know we are in an alternative time-line. The mystery is well done; didn’t guess the murderer this time but you can’t win them all. It works because Raf himself is an ambivalent and attractive character and its easy to root for him. This is the first of a trilogy and I am looking forward to reading the sequels.
While I was about a quarter of the way through this novel I happened upon an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent from a few years ago (we are woefully behind here…) which was similarly based on the Jon-Benet Ramsay murder case but took a very different approach (and guest starred the wonderful Liza Minnelli as the grieving mother); an interesting coincidence.
The L&O slant was very much a classic solve-the-murder thing, as you might expect, but My Sister, My Love is as much about family dynamics and wider society as it is about who killed a small, precociously-talented girl and why.
But it’s fair to say that this is really the story of Skyler Rampike, the older brother of Bliss Rampike, the tiny little skating prodigy who is found murdered in her parents basement not long before her seventh birthday. Skyler tells his story in the first person, and not only gives us the background to his sister’s murder (which happened when he was only nine) but the effect that it has had on him – his estrangement from his parents, his drug addiction, his myriad doctors and special schools as he becomes a problem child who has to be managed rather than a damaged youngster who needs to be looked after.
What is interesting for me is the satirical picture it paints of a certain section of society in the USA, of which I have to say I have no knowledge other than what I see on TV and read in books like this. His parents are acquisitive and have aspirations to move up in society. Skyler (and a number of the youngsters at his various schools) are diagnosed with a range of disorders and syndromes and heavily medicated, and you get the impression from Oates’ perspective that actually most of the time there isn’t really anything wrong with them at all, they are just inconveniently becoming teenagers with all that entails.
Part way through I had developed a pretty good idea of who was responsible for what happened to Bliss but not why, and being right re the culprit didn’t spoil the enjoyment of the novel for me, it’s really well-written and wonderfully put together. I’m a huge JCO fan and looking forward to working through the pile of her stuff that I have tucked away on various bookshelves in the house; happy to have started with this one.
So you have two children with a pet gazelle (like you do) and a treasure map, who go off exploring behind their father’s back and find a whole world underneath the city full of monsters and pirates and creepiness. Will they find what they are looking for? Do the 26 lines of the story actually stick to the alphabet as we know it, or do things go a little awry?
This is a great alphabet book, full of wonderfully creepy illustrations with lots of detail to pore over at your leisure. It’s huge fun and I for one became very fond of that gazelle.
Oh and look out for the creatures with deep sea diving helmets for heads…..
Another read for the Dream King Challenge.
So, what to say about The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, which was intended to be one of my reads for Carl’s Once Upon a Time III challenge but which I miserably failed to complete on time? Well, before getting into the meat of the plot, it’s worth recording that this is one of the best examples of steam-punk that I have read, and it’s a good introduction to that genre if you have never tried it before.
We are in Jackals, a pseudo-Victorian society with a parliamentary democracy of sorts, a nominal king (who has his arms amputated when he inherits the throne so that he can never take up weapons against his people) and an extensive secret police. We have two young people: Molly, who is an orphan in the Poor House and towards the beginning of the book is taken to work in a local bawdy-house; and Oliver, who is shunned by his local community because of the time he spent within the Feymist, from where people return dangerously changed, if indeed they return at all. A separate series of violent deaths lead these two to go on the run supported by a motley crew of helpers, before their paths cross as a mysterious, ancient evil foments rebellion, threatens civilization as they know it, and all the usual society-in-peril-waiting-to-be-saved-by-an-ordinary-person-with-a-hidden-secret stuff
This is a really good adventure story with a remarkably well-imagined world as its setting. Some of the other species (if that’s the right word) that Molly and Oliver come across are absolutely fascinating, my particular favourites being the Steammen, sentient machines with astonishing abilities and a well-developed society of their own. There is an extensive cast of characters but these are so well-drawn that there is little danger that a reader will get confused over who’s who, and the plot comes together well without those obvious coincidences that sometimes get in the way of a good tale.
I absolutely loved this; another one of those books that I got so wrapped up in that I nearly forgot to get off the train at the right station, and when I got to the last third of the book where things really get moving I basically gave up all thoughts of doing anything else and spent a happy Sunday morning polishing the thing off.
I can really recommend this, and am looking forward to reading the next book in the sequence, though not quite yet….
I’ve been reading a little of the Journal of Joyce Carol Oates each morning over breakfast before heading out to work (which is probably why it’s taken me so long to finish it….) but it has been a very rewarding experience getting inside the mind of one of my absolutely favourite authors. Reading journals and letters certainly satisfies something deeply inquisitive in my nature, and although I know published works like this do leave a lot of stuff out, I am still learning more than I would otherwise about someone I admire hugely. I still don’t know how she finds the time to teach, write so prolifically and have what seems to be a contented life, but I’m very, very glad that she does.
I’ve also started book buying again despite my resolution in January to cut back. I suppose I’m not buying quite as many as I used to, but given how many books there are in this house that I haven’t got round to reading then any new purchases are probably a bad idea. Anyway, the newest additions are:
Music for Torchingby AM Homes – an incendiary novel, apparently; read some of her other stuff an found it challenging and interesting so thought I would give this one a go;
Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker – the beginnings of WWII, the end of civilization, unusual structure for a non-fiction work about the war;
Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates – a new collection of short stories.
I’ve also been inspired by reading the Journal to buy a couple more Joyce Carol Oates to add to the ever-growing pile….
So, given my well-known tendency to examine other people’s bookcases whenever I get the opportunity, it was probably inevitable that I would buy Snoop as soon as I saw it; especially with the subtitle “What Your Stuff Says About You”.
Sam Gosling is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and he specialises in studying the differences in personality and how we all form impressions of other people in our day to day lives. And one of the ways he studied this is by training students in snooping and setting them loose in the bedrooms of a sample of college students to see what they could work out about them. If that makes sense. I suppose bedrooms are apparently one of the best places to look because they tend to be private spaces where we let our guard down, so to speak. Work spaces are also a good hunting ground, but you need to be aware of any company policies on displaying personal stuff before you get too carried away.
This is an interesting read; there’s a particularly intriguing section on stereotypes and why they are not always a bad thing – we normally see them in a negative light but they can have some validity as long as we don’t rely on them too much. Though having been on the receiving end of one too many interpretations of what it is to be Scottish, I might reserve judgement.
The great pleasure for me in this book are the case studies that Gosling uses to illustrate his points, and how important it is to look at context before reaching conclusions and not be swayed by things that may be out of place. For example, one of his students wrongly identified a room as belonging to a woman based on a pair of high heels lying on the floor. This other things in the room to be interpreted in a particular way; in fact the shoes had been left behind by the occupant’s girlfriend.
The big message I took away from Snoop is that it’s almost impossible to fake a personality. There are lots of things that you can do to give a particular impression to someone else but the things that you don’t see in yourself will almost always give you away; all those things that we do unconsciously and therefore can’t adapt or amend. As someone who has difficulty throwing things away I was pleased to see a good explanation of the difference between a collector and a hoarder which I will save for the next time the Book God suggests I might want to clear out my study…..
Having said all that, I suspect that there isn’t much in here that anyone who has studied psychology a bit wouldn’t be aware of. I’m just not one of those people.
So I’m still going to check those bookcases; but I just might rummage in your medicine cabinet as well…..
So here we have the third of the Lucifer Box novels by Mark Gatiss. Black Butterfly is set in the early 1950s with a new Queen on the British Throne and changes afoot in HM Secret Service. Lucifer is an old man now and in the throes of passing on the baton to a new generation when the uncharacteristic suicide of an old friend and several other mysterious deaths send him back out into the field to foil another dastardly plot.
This is quite consciously a spoof of James Bond type of thriller – beautiful women, exotic locations, arch humour, evil genius, convoluted plot, the world saved just in the nick of time – and for that reason I think it’s the least successful of the three books.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed watching the plot come to fruition and it was interesting to see Box try to deal with the effects of old age on a man in his profession, but there was something too familiar about it. I suspect the problem is that James Bond has been parodied so many times (and often within its own film franchise) that I didn’t find much that was actually that new here.
It’s a shame as I really like Gatiss and I wanted to get more out of this than I actually did; I was just a wee bit disappointed that it didn’t grab me.
So, you are the daughter of a nineteenth century professor, and the ancient Egyptian mummy owned by your father wakes up for the first time in 3000 years or so; what do you do?
Well in this case you dress him up in Dad’s top hat and tailcoat and swan around London arm in arm, all the while falling in love. But inevitably there are misunderstandings and parental disapproval on both sides to stand in the way of true love. Plus Her Majesty Queen Victoria ending up in the Thames…
This is a lovely book, a sweet story beautifully illustrated and, according to the blurb inside the cover, best enjoyed with romantic company and a pot of fine Darjeeling (though I would always go for Earl Grey myself.)
So, cards on the table, I really, really like Tess Gerritsen. I like the fact that her two main recurring characters are women. I like the fact that her books are pacy and easy to read. I like the fact that the plots are nicely judged so that they are a bit (but not too) complicated. I like the fact that there is just enough bloody murder to satisfy the gorehounds but not so much that the crime fan who’s a bit squeamish about the whole serial killer thing will be put off. The Mephisto Club fits the bill, and I lapped it up.
I’m not even going to attempt to explain the plot because the whole point of a good crime/detective novel is not to know what’s going to happen in advance and then having the fun of trying to work it out yourself. So here we have dismemberment, ancient symbols, mirror-writing, revenge, evil, an elite group with a mysterious purpose and all the right connections, a long-buried secret, and lots and lots and lots of blood. What’s not to like?
I absolutely adore anything with a decent secret society; even though I don’t believe any of them really exist, the idea of some kind of cabal running the world, or at least a little bit of the world, or maybe just having influence in a particular sphere, manages to be both comforting and worrying at the same time.
Failed once again to work out the murderer but still huge fun.
Bride of the Book God 