Reviews and possible spoilers below.
June began with Gavin Weightman's The Frozen Water Trade, an impulse purchase that 'just looked interesting'. A suitably chilly book for midsummer.
The Frozen Water Trade by Gavin WeightmanMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
A well-written book that sets out the history and practice of the nineteenth century trade in American ice, as instigated by Frederic Tudor. Weightman writes engagingly about his subject, although he is a tad repetitive at times. It's astounding to think of the thousands of tons of ice shipped to and consumed by parts of the world as diverse as New York and Calcutta.
Worth a look, especially if you're inspired by "if you fail, try try again" narratives.
Then, on to a book for Evil Editor's Book Chat: Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. The chat, moderated by one of EE's molier minions, was a great success.
Bet Me by Jennifer CrusieMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Imagine sitting down to dinner and being served the most perfectly-cooked dish you can imagine, beautifully presented, exactly the right temperature, everything about it impeccable, except...it's a dish you don't like to eat.
That's more or less how I feel about this book. It's well written, it's full of life and heat and warmth, and it left even cynical little ole me with the warm fuzzies. If you like chicklit, you'll adore this.
But I don't.
I was however entertained, and found bits of it funny, and was glad about the HEA. Certainly not a waste of my time.
I did get a bit fed up of hearing about Elvis Presley, any reference to whom leaves me wanting to run for the hills. And then she names the poor damn CAT Elvis. Aaaargh!
And then there were the shoes. Dinky shoes. I've never been able to have dinky shoes; I always have to have the ones that fit, which usually means men's shoes, and they're never dinky. I didn't enjoy having my face rubbed in that. And I passed out from incomprehension and boredom halfway through the description of Diana's wedding dress.
But those are trifles. A fun read.
That out of the way, on to a Gardner Dozois anthology--the third Year's Best. It's been a long time coming, as they say, and sqrls are still desperately counting their pennies in the hope of one day affording the first and second anthologies in this series. Although they seem to be becoming more expensive by the day.
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection by Gardner R. DozoisMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm glad I finally found an affordable copy of this book. The first three "Year's Best" weren't published in the UK, and they're vanishingly rare even in the States. Hence ridiculous prices. This one was (relatively) cheap!
A very enjoyable anthology, with Kim Stanley Robinson's "Green Mars" a stand-out. Gripping climbing story with a mixed bag of characters and lots of excellent description. Left me green with envy :).
"Dogfight" I had already read elsewhere. It's a surprisingly poignant tale of loss set against a harsh world in which the protagonist 'gets by' through casual crime.
"Neat Thing" by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) has a protagonist who's perhaps a bit too girly-fussy-pink, but it's a fascinating story, in which even girly-fussy-pink proves its worth.
UK Le Guin's Gifts came next. A YA book, but worth a read for all that.
Gifts by Ursula K. Le GuinMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Books like this leave me green with envy. In 288 pages, Le Guin creates a world, realises characters that resonate even after you put the book down, and tells a fascinating story.
Damn. I wish I could do that.
Next was Dan Ronco's Unholy Domain, but as that's a review book for GUD, you'll have to wait :). And on to a book picked up very cheaply from a secondhand shop: a multi-author novel, Years Is Dead.
Yeats Is Dead! by Roddy DoyleMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is modestly entertaining, not least for the way the authors undo the work of the previous contributor, run off in different directions, unwind things, and generally do everything they can to make the story go how they want it to go. Only to be undone by the next writer. That aspect is hilarious.
Easily the best writer here is Roddy Doyle, standing head and shoulders above the rest. Nobody is a bad writer, although Frank McCourt annoyed me by using a fictional character to make broad (and inaccurate) statements about women. Surely that sort of thing went out in the 1970s? Maybe not.
There isn't a plot; there is instead a plethora of plots, and more people seem to get murdered even than in a series of Midsomer Murders. An astonishing death toll!
More non-fiction next, with Charles C. Mann's 1491. Mann is a journalist, and it shows--he writes engagingly and with clarity.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. MannMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Non-fiction writers who produce prose as dry as the Negev should take a leaf out of Mann's highly readable, very enjoyable, and, most important of all, enlightening book.
Mann provides an overview of recent research regarding the extent of city-building and agriculture in North and Meso America in the thousands of years prior to Columbus's arrival in 1492. Exposing the "pristine myth", Mann explores sophisticated societies, methods of agriculture, and writing systems that have no European equivalents.
Throughout, Mann strives to be even-handed, giving all sides of contentious issues, and exploring the evidence for each. This is a book that positively encourages further exploration and debate.
Recommended.
And onwards, ever onwards, to Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. A freebie from Transworld Publishers, given out on condition that it's reviewed and discussed on their Facebook site. Which is hardly any condition at all :).
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana FranklinMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
A likeable enough book, but I do wonder why it is that authors of historical mysteries seem to envisage the plot, then bend the history to fit it, rather than, yanno, the other way around. It's actually painful at times for someone with even a limited knowledge of medieval England to read these books. Although this one isn't as bad as the ones with Cadfael, who is clearly either an alien or a time-traveller.
The book opens with a bouncy, arresting style that draws the reader in. It's jovial, almost the voice of the marketplace. Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably, the novel can't sustain it. Soon, it settles down to more conventional story-telling, including some irritating head-hopping. I like to be in the same head for at least a paragraph, myself. This aspect is, however, inconsistent--and that sets the tone for the book. Some evocative writing, some info-dumps. Some well-rounded characters, some ciphers. When one of the ciphers turns out to be the evil child-killer who's been predating in Cambridgeshire and the Holy Land, you have to wonder if the book wasn't trying a little too hard to deflect suspicion.
The best character, for me, was Henry II himself, who wanders in at the end to dispense justice. He's instantly likeable. Adelia, the protagonist, is a bit too closed-up to be approachable, which in itself is an excellent piece of characterisation. But the novel blows it big-time at the end when it has her making a choice that I consider impossible for an educated, intelligent woman of her time to have made. Throughout the book, we're shown how she values respect for her status, and yet she voluntarily reduces herself to one of the lowest and most despised positions in her adopted society. I DON'T BELIEVE IT.
The last O'Brian I had on hand was Clarissa Oakes. Rather than hoarding it, I shamelessly read it, instead. La.
Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O'BrianMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
A move for O'Brian away from guns and action and more towards a character study, this novel presents us with the eponymous young woman, who is rescued from the prison colony in New South Wales by an enamoured midshipman.
O'Brian writes with a light, sympathetic touch and the reader moves from suspecting Clarissa of all sorts of infamy to sympathising with her approach to life.
There's action too, of course, as the Surprise sets all sail and cracks on to resolve a dispute between two rulers on a South Seas Island by persuading one--or the other--to ally themselves with King George.
A more thoughtful novel than some of its predecessors.
More ships in The Caliban Shore by Stephen Taylor. Wrecked in the middle of nowhere, a ship's crew try to save themselves in this true story--with varying results.
The Caliban Shore by Stephen TaylorMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this fascinating book, Taylor brings together what evidence he can find to explore the fates of the castaways from the Grosvenor Indiaman, which smashed into the coast of Africa and sank because of the captain's abysmal navigation and the refusal of the officer of the watch to listen to sailors' warnings that the ship was approaching the coast.
The captain, Coxon, then compounded his error by setting off in the wrong direction for help, and abandoning female and child passengers to their fate--even those two children specifically placed in his care by their parents when they boarded the vessel.
It's perhaps fortunate that Coxon didn't survive, as infamy would have been heaped upon his incompetent head.
Of the 140 people washed ashore alive, only 13 ever made it home. A few were even drowned after being rescued--a case perhaps of being 'marked for death'. But a few stayed in Africa, joined local tribes, and even had descendants. Tracing their stories is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the research Taylor has done, but also the most rewarding. It seems some of the women and children found kinder people than those who should have protected them, but who instead just walked away.
Something very different next (although there is a ship in it)--Katie Hickman's The Aviary Gate. Harems, sultans...all the stuff of romance except the HEA.
The Aviary Gate by Katie HickmanMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
"The Aviary Gate" takes the reader into the inner workings and machinations of a Turkish harem. I ought to write, "an Elizabethan Turkish harem", but unfortunately that's one of the major problems with this book--it has no redolences of the period in which most of it is purportedly set. It feels modern. It doesn't feel like it belongs to the age of the merchant princes.
Part of the problem may be that you don't expect to find mobile phones or DVD players in a harem; they are, to the Western imagination, timeless. But the modern feel goes beyond that, applying equally to the sequences with Sir Paul Pindar, the utterly ineffectual merchant prince, ambassador and so-say lover of the enslaved Celia. Yeah, this guy loves her--we can tell, because all the while he's bargaining for her freedom, he's trying to ogle the woman hidden behind the screen.
The language is too modern--that's where I think the novel falls down. The narrative is modern and the dialogue is modern. Nothing in the 'Elizabethan' part of the novel would be out of place in the C19th; not the fascinating astronomical instruments, not the ship in the harbour, not the Sultan and his pathetic collection of women for whom the harem is preferable to marriage to some farmworker. Hardly surprising, really, given that they can expect to get fucked less often, are able to be clean, eat excellent food, have access to medicine, recreational drugs and the opportunity to acquire wealth and power. That joining the harem is a voluntary act for many is hardly surprising when you examine the alternatives. That wouldn't occur to Celia, however, who comes from a more privileged background--the daughter of a sea captain, she's chosen her husband in Pathetic Paul. Her love for him comes across as almost as shallow as his for her, but she has more excuse; she's struggling to survive in an alien environment.
Pathetic Paul wibbles around for a while, making small forays into finding out if Celia really is in the sex shop, and very very carefully almost asking someone to help find her. The narrative even contrives to help out by arranging for him to take a cook with him--to enhance his status. Yes, a cook! They're the guys with status in 1599, I tell you! They are!
But you can see PP's not going to do anything. There'll be no midnight rescue, no laying of all his worldly goods at the Sultan's feet. Too much of the book is devoted to this wimp. Sir Walter Raleigh would have had Celia out of there, and damn the consequences!
The 'Elizabethan' part of the novel is framed by the confessedly modern-day research done by Elizabeth Staveley into the fragment of Celia's narrative she discovers in one of PP's books, research which takes her into modern Istanbul. Hers, too, is a love story, one almost as ashen-pale as PP and Celia's. She's torn between serial-adulterer Marius (sorry, that's the extent of his character) and sexy Turk Mehmet (sorry, that's the extent of HIS character).
The crowning glory for me, though, is that twice Celia is presented for the Sultan's pleasure, and twice she manages to escape virgo intacta. Yep, all of the eroticism of forced sex in an Oriental context, and none of the sordid reality. Pah.
For all that, it's an enjoyable book, if only because it presents the harem women as powerful and scheming, not victims. No, not victims at all.
Back to ships and shipwrecks with a telling of the story of Alexander Selkirk, the 'real' castaway whose story inspired that of Robinson Crusoe, in Diana Souhami's Selkirk's Island.
Selkirk's Island by Diana SouhamiMy review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book is interesting mostly for the contrast it draws between the romantic figure of Robinson Crusoe and the somewhat coarser goat-fucker on whom he was based. Hmm, yeah, I said goat-fucker.
At times, Souhami speculates on how nice it would have been for Selkirk to have had women on his island. Nice for him, no doubt--I think the goats probably suffered less than women would have. One quick confusion, a notch on the ear, and it's over. They don't even have to pretend they enjoyed it.
Souhami charts two voyages by privateers seeking to prey on rich merchant vessels, both relatively unsuccessful. The suffering these men caused and experienced seems to be out of all proportion to what they achieved. It's instructive to see how, having preyed on the unfortunate people they encounter, they are, on their return to London, preyed upon in their turn.
For me, though, this book suffers from trying too hard to be arty. Constant references to "The Island" (it had a name, even if Selkirk didn't know it), which Souhami tries to bring forward as an actor in the story in its own right. Attempts to be lyrical that clash with the sheer callousness of Selkirk's shipmates. It's not right to try to be poetic when dealing in the sale of human beings, far from their homes.
So. Points gained for the history, which is interestingly told. Points deducted for over-writing.
A complete break from ships, sea, deserts and shipwrecks next with Philip K. Dick's Lies, Inc., a novel that's actually two novellas shoved together, with the joins somewhat visible.
Lies, Inc. by Philip K. DickMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another notch on my belt of attempts to read every novel Dick ever had published :D.
Despite the fact that it's inchoate, this is a very enjoyable novel. Many of Dick's preoccupations are here--alternate realities, mind-altering drugs, mad scientists, a supra-potent UN--and we also have an almost-hero, Rachmael ben Applebaum, who plans an eighteen-year space voyage (alone) in order to uncover what's happening with what appears to be an ideal colony world, but which he suspects is an extermination camp.
It becomes evident a short way in that this is two stories shoved together and inadequately integrated. Ben Applebaum has barely glanced at the sexy siren figure before she's described by all and sundry as his mistress (this always happens in Dick books, but there's usually some interaction first), and he simultaneously travels to the colony world, Whale's Mouth, by spaceship and by teleport. Presumably Dick would have addressed these issues had he lived. But as the novel stands, they make it quintessentially Dickian--nobody knows what the hell is going on!
Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice next. Nothing like following up obscure SF with a love story.
Town Like Alice by Nevil ShuteMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book wasn't at all what I was expecting. For a start, I wasn't expecting it to be narrated by an elderly London solicitor.
It's a lovely book, though, of the sort of positive, warm, compassionate type that men don't seem to write these days--they're too busy doing their drugs and banging 'their' women. It's rare that you see a romance that actually is a romance--an intense attachment between two people who meet under extraordinary circumstances and carry each other away in their hearts. Rather than two people who just, yanno, want to get it on because they're so hot (or whatever).
Yes, I'm old fashioned. Or just old :D.
I liked this book so much I'm even willing to overlook at least one egregious POV violation.
Next, back to ships. You knew I couldn't stay away from them for long! Here we have Billy Ruffian by David Cordingly, the tale of a Napoleonic ship-of-war and her part in defeating the French, the Spanish, and anyone else who came near.
Billy Ruffian by David CordinglyMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Patrick O'Brian taught me that ship of the line Bellerophon was known as the "Billy Ruffian" to her crew, so the title of this book immediately told me what it was about. Grab!
Cordingly traces the story of the Napoleonic Wars through the service life of the Bellerophon, a 74 gun ship built at Frindsbury on the Medway. The Bellerophon saw action on the Glorious First of June and at Trafalgar, and was the ship that carried Napoleon from France to England after his regime was destroyed at the Battle of Waterloo.
Condemned to spend her last days as a prison hulk, the Bellerophon seems to have run the gamut from glory to ignominy. A sad ending for a ship that was dismasted and nearly destroyed in a battle with the French flagship L'Orient, yet managed to win clear before the French vessel exploded.
Cordingly writes clearly and engagingly, and his description of the action on the Glorious First of June is so exciting as to stir some patriotic fervour in even the most undevout of squirrels. Definitely worth a read.
Next, abandoning the sea and ships once more, R.J. Ellory's A Simple Act of Violence, gifted by BookRabbit on condition that it be read and reviewed. Which proved to be more of a condition in this case, as else I would probably have stopped reading it about a third of the way in.
A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. ElloryMy review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
So. After 600 pages, I lost count how many deaths, and a lot of plodding from place to place, nothing is resolved.
Detective Robert Miller investigates the murders of four women, apparently beaten and strangled by a brutal serial killer who leaves a weird signature behind. But nothing, of course, is as it seems, and as Miller delves deeper into the case, and encounters the mysterious John Robey, he begins to fear for both his life and his sanity.
There's a gripping story at the heart of this book, and some of the descriptions of the killings are truly creepy, but overall it reads like a first draft. A first draft, moreover, in need of a brutal edit.
Either Ellory has a bad memory or he thinks we do, because there's so much repetition in this book that at times it was in danger of being hurled across the room. Yes, I know that. Yes, you already told us that. Get on with the story already! The repetition often isn't even of meaningful points. Do we really need to be told twice that the purloined hairbrush has been wrapped up in a baggie and hidden in a locker? I don't think we even needed to be told that once, especially given that nothing at all comes of it. Despite all the angst attached. Despite all the times we're told how Detective Miller has crossed a line, and put his career in danger, and put his friend Marilyn's career in danger, that danger never materialises. Never exists.
And, oh dear, all the info-dumps about Nicaragua and the CIA and drug-smuggling, as if it's Great Secret Insider Info rather than common knowledge. Then the book throws away what credibility it had by tying anything and everything it can think of into some CIA super-plot. I'm surprised UFOs weren't mentioned. But if knowing that the CIA smuggle drugs to fund their operations is Great Secret Insider Info You Can Be Killed For, I'd better go bar the door.
Many a time I simply put this book down because I couldn't go on. The weight of repetition, of attaching huge significance to trivia, of explaining things again and again and again, got to me. There's some gems in this book, but you'll need to be an expert book-miner to find them.
Gah. Where's my red pencil.
Next, a freebie from Canongate Books with no strings attached--Under Control by Mark Mcnay. Sqrls are spoilt :).
Under Control by Mark McnayMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Social worker Nigel thinks he wants to help people, but when he decides he fancies Charlie, the prostitute girlfriend of one of his clients (Gary), all bets are off. He manipulates the situation so he can get Charlie into rehab and Gary sectioned. Presumably he imagines that once Charlie's clean, he'll have her all to himself. He obviously hasn't thought this through, however--clean, she'll have no need to semi-blackmail him for money for drugs. The dope.
This novel is very readable--I got through it in a few hours--and it presents a largely convincing picture of the lives of these losers and junkies. They're ruled by their addictions, but they come across as people as well.
One aspect that puzzled me is the 'mental illness' Gary is supposed to have. The symptoms seem consistent with some form of schizophrenia (in itself an unhelpful term, I know), but at one point the people who should know describe him as having a personality disorder. Now as far as I know, you can't section someone for having a personality disorder--it's untreatable, and therefore not covered by the Mental Health Acts. Gary may be delusional but it's debatable whether they have the evidence to prove he's a danger to himself or others. So I think a little poetic licence may have been applied. A shame, given even a small amount of research might have plastered over this plot hole nicely.
A good book for a train journey or for sitting on a bench in the park.
Next, more struggling for survival, not because of a shipwreck this time, but because of isolation at the South Pole. Jerri Nielsen's amazing memoir of her self-diagnosis and treatment of her breast cancer during the Antarctic winter, and her evacuation by LC-130, Ice Bound. Nielsen's grief at being estranged from her children runs through this book like a thread of pain.
Ice Bound: One Woman's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Jerri NielsenMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which gives an insider view of life at the South Pole in the 1990s. Nielsen (and/or ghostwriter Maryanne Vollers) writes well and doesn't hold back from sharing her responses to the Antarctic or the incredible camaraderie she developed with her fellow overwinterers at the Pole.
Told partly through narrative, and partly through contemporary emails, this is a touching story of the intense closeness that grows between people facing isolation and the ever-present risk of death in the driest part of the world.
Although Nielsen's breast cancer was the inspiration for this book, and features large in the last third or so, the book is about far more than that. Well worth a read.
An excellent companion book to "Terra Incognita".
Yes, we're shipwrecked again, and walking for our lives, this time across the Americas, in Andre Resendez's A Land So Strange. If there's a theme for June, it's obviously sea, ships, and a lot of trudging....
A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century by Andre ResendezMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was disappointed in this book. Not because of any particular defect in it--it's well written, interesting, and only occasionally partisan. But because I was hoping for more detail about life in the Americas before its destruction. Unfortunately, there's a frustrating lack of detail. We hear about 'Indians', and one (abandoned) city is described in detail, but the depth of information I was looking for just isn't there.
Whether this is a lack in the source material, or in this book, I don't know.
Finally, I finished off this multi-book volume by R.L. Stevenson. I figure overall it counts as three books--Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde & Other Tales, plus Kidnapped, plus Treasure Island. Others may disagree :).
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde & Other Tales; Kidnapped; Treasure Island by Robert Louis StevensonMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Kidnapped.
I've read this before, but it's no less enjoyable the second or maybe third time around. Dour Whig David Balfour and lively Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart make unlikely comrades-in-arms, but, thrown together in adversity, they come to depend on and care about each other. Set mostly in the Scottish Highlands, this book is full of action sequences and danger. The characters spark off each other, and there is some lovely observation. A good read.
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
A quick read, although it gets dull towards the end when Jekyll's letter repeats a lot of what we've already been told in Lanyon's, albeit from a different viewpoint. The story is of course familiar, from the diabolical Mr Hyde to the steaming elixir that brings about the Jekyll/Hyde transformation. What's interesting is that the story is told not from the point of view of either Hyde or Jekyll, but from that of Mr Utterson, a dry, elderly lawyer. When Hyde is brought to his attention in casual conversation, he begins to investigate, and, by the end of the book, learns more than he could have ever wanted to know.
The Treasure of Franchard
An odd little piece, this. Well written, but puzzling in that it seems to have no particular plot until about halfway through, when the reader begins to get a glimmer of where it's headed. The foreshadowing could have been handled better--ie not introduced half a page before it becomes relevant--and the story could have introduced the plot problem a little earlier. But interesting, for all that.
The Merry Men
A moody, unsettling tale of shipwreck and madness. The narrator brings the islet of Aros and its inhabitants to life, and amply demonstrates his helplessness in the face of elemental and other forces. The description of the loss of the schooner is harrowing.
Overall, not a bad selection of Stevenson's works, although this cheap edition has errors where the text has been scanned and imperfectly proofed, and there's one very badly-printed page. The discerning reader might want to buy a better edition.
View all my reviews.
And so, for June, that's a respectable twenty-one books, making a grand total of ninety-five so far. I think I may be on track :).
2 comments:
Pictures!
Looks good.
The only "problems" is a lack of differentiation between review text & your narrative stuff. As I've read the reviews before I tend to skim them & reading the joining bits, but I miss where these change.
Yes, I was wondering about that. I used to use blockquote on the reviews. Maybe I should use it on the narrative instead!
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