Reading Diary: 17 August-23 August

Descendant of the Crane, by Joan He: This ancient Chinese-inspired fantasy novel isn’t my usual fare, but it’ll be somebody else’s cup of tea, without question. Princess Hesina’s father, the king, has just been killed, and she is determined to find out by whom. But with a wily Minister of Rites, a kingdom so terrified of magic that it slaughtered all (spoilers: not quite) of its “sooths” three centuries ago, and invasion threats from the neighbouring country of Kendi’a, finding the murderer is the least of Hesina’s problems. This, in turn, presents the reader with a problem: there are so many plot strands fighting for primacy that it’s difficult to know where to place one’s attention and investment, and He’s characters, while endearing, also perform a lot of cliched actions. Hesina is constantly blushing, gasping, fighting for breath, inwardly cursing, feeling her throat constrict, and so on. (A lot of this overcooked rhetoric is respiratory, now that I think of it. I wonder why authors go for it so often?) The characters’ reactions frequently slow the pace of the action; when the dead king’s tomb is opened, whole paragraphs go by in lavish descriptions of bafflement before we’re told what Hesina and her peremptory love interest Akira are actually seeing. It’s a lot of fun–it reminds me forcefully of the fantasy novel I spent much of my pre-teen years writing, which was sort of equal parts Tolkien, Pierce and Pascal–and it sets up a sequel, which I wouldn’t spurn if it was offered to me, but there’s definitely a sense of too much material, not quite tightly enough controlled.

The Searcher, by Tana French: A new French novel is always cause for celebration. The Searcher (out in November; my copy is from Netgalley) continues her move away from the traditional cop protagonists that characterized her first six books, although it’s kind of a lateral move: here, our investigator is an ex-policeman and an American ex-policeman at that, Cal Hooper, formerly of the Chicago PD. Chicago is fairly notorious for police violence, and Hooper’s experience reflects both the truth and the nuance of that: he has never killed an unarmed young black man, but an incident where his partner nearly does so is ultimately what pushes him into early retirement. A divorce and a move to rural Ireland later, he hopes to find peace and quiet in the country, but is instead recruited by a young kid, Trey, whose brother Brendan has gone missing, and who demands that Cal find out where Brendan is.

The Searcher is as beautifully written as all of French’s books, but what it lacks, for want of a better word, is a sense of intoxication. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The professional detectives in her early books love their job, they live and breathe it, and that sense of drive, passion, righteousness, infuses their appreciation of the world around them and of human relationships within it. As French’s career has matured, her characters’ perceptions have too. Cal isn’t quite the hard-bitten cynic he considers himself, but his understanding of social dynamics, of how we fit in with each other, has less flash and snap than, say, Cassie Maddox’s or even Scorcher Kennedy’s; more resignation and determination. It’s a mystery novel for grownups, this–which isn’t to say that it’s excessively violent or disturbing, but rather that both French and her characters are increasingly interested in how to behave when the right thing and the correct thing are not the same. (Cal and Trey have a fantastic conversation about the difference between etiquette, manners and morals that sums up what I think French is getting at throughout the entire book.) A really promising turn for her. I can’t wait to read more.

In Praise of Shadows, by Junichiro Tanizaki: A rather lovely little essay on aesthetics (sort of, I guess?), clocking in at well under 100 pages but published on its own by Vintage Classics. Tanizaki was a 20th-century Japanese novelist who produced, amongst other things, the magnificent The Makioka Sisters, which has always reminded me very strongly of Jane Austen’s work, with its similar cultural context of a high value placed on reputation, limited economic options for middle-class women, and a codified (and coded) set of behaviours, from which deviation cannot be tolerated by polite society. In Praise… is a different beast: here, Tanizaki explores the distinction between a Western prioritization of light (specifically electric light) in design, and a traditional Japanese preference for “the pensive lustre” over “the shallow brilliance”. His arguments are both wide-ranging (he touches on toilet design, the unique properties of jade, why Japanese cuisine really must be eaten by candelight to be properly appreciated, and the allure of half-hidden women in old-fashioned brothels, amongst many other things), and intriguing in their engagement with cultural imperialism: he posits, for instance, that technologies such as mass-produced paper and modern interior lighting would look completely different worldwide had they been invented by the Japanese instead of Westerners (and mainly Americans). It’s a thoughtful and surprisingly profound piece of work; I’m glad I picked it up on a whim.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde: This tale of corruption, scandal and decadence is one of those books I constantly thought I’d read (and everyone else seemed to have done in school) but hadn’t actually, until this week. The Penguin clothbound edition is good because it contains the introduction by Robert Mighall from the paperback, which dwells on Wilde’s revisions between the original publication (in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1890) and the slightly longer printed-book version (1891). These were largely made in order to tone down the overt homoeroticism of the original material, which, I have to say, is blatant if not absolutely screaming. Basil Hallward, the painter who becomes obsessed with Dorian’s physical beauty, speaks repeatedly of “adoring” him, of being “jealous” and “romantic”; the Mephistophelean Lord Henry Wotton, who turns both Dorian’s head and his soul, mocks Hallward’s devotion in terms that render it explicitly romantic, but clearly desires erotic domination over Dorian himself, and encourages the latter to practice that same domination on other impressionable young men. The interpolated revenge-plot material focusing on James Vane is not especially interesting or good (it feels like the third-rate subplot of a Dickens novel; all the big ones have got one of those), and the scenes in high society… well, I tend not to like those even in Wilde’s plays; here they strike me as simultaneously silly and mean-spirited. The supernatural element of the book (the whole portrait scapegoat thing) is actually the least dwelt-upon, since Wilde is really more interested in philosophizing upon Art, Morals, and the relationship between the two (in Wilde’s ideal world, none). Divertingly grotesque, though.

Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler: I had a rather rough afternoon on Friday and a friend suggested I pick up a YA fantasy novel, which usually soothes and resets me; when I told her I was halfway through this, she described it as “almost laughably the opposite” of soothing, which is true. It takes place during the Moscow show trials of 1936-8, during which Stalin purged most of the historic leadership of the Communist Party—”purge” being a light word for imprisonment, solitary confinement, torment, humiliation, forced confession, and execution. The protagonist here is Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who has done some bad things in his time but who has become disillusioned with Soviet propaganda and ideology as a result of Stalin’s rule, and who is consequently imprisoned. Much of the novel is about Rubashov’s own struggle to determine whether he was right or wrong in his dedication to the Revolution as a younger man: if he was right, the only validation he’ll receive is from posterity, decades after he’s gone; if he was wrong, as he puts it, “I’ll pay.” And pay he does, in the end, as we know he will right from the beginning. The intimacy Koestler achieves in charting his psychological journey, however, is exceptional, disturbing, and moving. The evocation of prison—and particularly the solidarity shown between prisoners, even those who thoroughly disagree with each other ideologically—is perhaps the strongest part of a very strong book: the scenes where Rubashov and his neighbour in cell 402 tap out messages to each other, where Rubashov is initiated into the prison tradition of hammering on one’s cell door in percussive salute each time a fellow inmate is taken away for execution, and where finally Rubashov and 402 have their last conversation, will haunt me for a long time.

Reading Diary: 10 August-16 August

Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, by Johny Pitts: Pitts’s travelogue-cum-social/cultural history won the Jhalak Prize in 2020 for best book by an author of colour published in the UK, and it’s easy to see why. With immense grace, curiosity and goodwill, he spends about six months traveling continental Europe in search of the continent’s black communities, and specifically those who have forged a new identity as hybrid citizens, both African and European. His quest takes him from the alarmingly bleak suburb Clichy-sous-Bois outside of Paris, cynically patronized and abandoned by politicians, to the warmly welcoming bustle of Surinamese cafes and black cultural centres in Berlin, to an altogether more baffling experience in the museum of imperial history in Brussels which elides Belgium’s colonial atrocities altogether. Pitts is rather like a more understanding, less crotchety Bill Bryson; his eye for the spirit of a place, and his ability to convey the essence of an experience, is the same. If he sacrifices Bryson’s frequently snort-worthy comic observations for a rather deeper and more earnest approach to travel, frankly, I don’t mind (especially as the former’s observations often come at the expense of poor people, provincial people, fat people, and/or women; this is a sad thing you notice about Bryson as you get older). Pitts’s respect and, usually, affection, for his subjects’ lives opens doors: a wandering, shouting, apparently mad old African man in Moscow turns out to be a former anti-apartheid activist who last saw his parents forty years previously and knows they were too old then to still be living now. Pitts gains his story by not fleeing or ignoring him, as everyone else in the vicinity does. Afropean is gorgeous and bittersweet, and also provides perfect armchair travel; I can’t speak more highly for it.

Sisters, by Daisy Johnson: I read this in one evening, prompted by the rapturous reviews of two of my colleagues, and found it lived up fully to their praise. It may even be better (for my money) than Johnson’s Everything Under, although, like the former book, it promises an explanation only to complicate things with an ending that again blurs the line between fantasy and reality, fiction and sanity and the supernatural. It focuses on the two titular sisters, July and September, who are as close to twins as it’s possible to be without actually being so: born ten months apart, they both aren’t each other and fiercely identify with each other. This is compounded by September’s need to dominate and control her younger sister: halfway through the novel, we discover that they share a single mobile phone, and they often play a disturbing game called September Says, where July has to hurt herself. Presented to us through July’s eyes, these controlling actions often seem plausible for a time; July has internalized her sister’s behaviour, as so many children do, and understands it as a bond of love. The book opens as the pair and their mother move to a remote house in Yorkshire—where both their abusive, now-dead father and September were born—to escape a catastrophe that has occurred at the girls’ school in Oxford, but there’s something wrong with the house: footsteps where no person can be, shattering lightbulbs, a patch of paint on a wall that both absorbs July’s exploratory finger and explodes outward, pouring ants onto the floor. Body horror and the grotesque are well represented here along with psychological horror and illness, in a manner reminiscent of Shirley Jackson. The denouement, in which we discover what really happened at school, is perfectly paced (I worked it out at just the right moment), and the final few chapters leave a disturbing taste of ambiguity that feels bravely appropriate. A perfect novel for the electric, humid dog days of a difficult summer.

Cane Warriors, by Alex Wheatle: Out in October, this new novel from garlanded children’s/YA author Wheatle takes as its focus Tacky’s Rebellion, a historic slave revolt that occurred in Jamaica in 1760 and shook British colonial confidence so badly that a raft of new, brutally repressive laws were passed subsequently, including a law that outlawed the practice of obeah in the island. Our protagonist is fourteen-year-old Moa, the youngest member of the rebellion (a historical invention, I believe, though probably representative of many other young men who fought with Tacky). Through Moa’s eyes, we understand the fears and motives of the fighters: he is particularly worried for his mother, younger sister, and beloved friend Hamaya, who will soon be of an age to start being sexually abused by slavemasters and white overseers. Tacky (or Takyi), who led the rebellion, was said to have been a king in his village, and he is portrayed as a strong, natural leader here, as is Keverton, Moa’s slightly older friend and fellow fighter. My only reservation was a sense of distance from the characters; I can’t put my finger on what made it so, but it might simply be that I’m not the primary audience for this book, either in age group or in racial heritage. Certainly I think that a YA novel largely narrated in patois and detailing a heroic assertion of independence not habitually taught in schools is exactly the sort of book that publishing needs to champion, and exactly the sort of narrative young readers need to hear, and Wheatle is an accomplished pair of hands.

Reading Diary: 2 August – 9 August

This was a format that worked well for quite a long time a few years ago, and maybe it’ll be a little more manageable than a monthly roundup. It’ll also have the distinct advantage of forcing me to a) post more than once a month, so you won’t forget I exist, and b) corral my thoughts about books fairly recently after finishing them, instead of getting to the end of the month and trying to remember it all at once.

The Habsburgs: the Rise and Fall of a World Power, by Martyn Rady: I read this in proof so unfortunately did not get to glory in the finished edition’s excellent front cover. It’s also not necessarily my usual bag, but I picked it up because I knew a lot of my customers would be keen and I wanted to make up my own mind. And it’s excellent! Rady has about nine hundred years of history to distill into <350 pages, and does so masterfully; the occasional confusion about dynasties (so many Ferdinands!), genealogies, and religious affiliations were mostly easily resolved by consulting the multi-century family trees in the front of the book. (A lot of family-tree typos in the proof copy, though; more “Emporers” than you can shake a stick at. Presumably these have been dealt with in the finished version.) The chapters are a perfect length: long enough to provide an overview of a topic or period, short enough to feel manageable and give a pleasing sense of progress. And although Rady is a historian, not a comedian, he clearly has a keen sense of the ridiculous (such as the attempts to cure a particularly mad scion by forcing him to sleep with the mummified corpse of a saint, which–surprise–did not work). His style is light but not lightweight, witty but not intrusive, and intelligent but highly readable. The topic is also less Eurocentric than I’d imagined: the Habsburgs presided over the first genuinely global empire, with outposts in Latin America thanks to their Spanish connection as well as the occasional foray into Southeast Asia (who knew?!) and Africa (likewise). Highly, highly recommended.

Grace Will Lead Us Home, by Jennifer Berry Hawes: This was my next audiobook choice and it was a very good one – I was guided by the fact that it won an Audie Award for Best General Nonfiction. It is an account not only of the massacre of nine Black worshippers at Charleston’s Emanuel AME church in 2016, but of what followed: the national and local responses, the arrest and trial of Dylann Roof, and the incredibly painful journey of the survivors and the bereaved. This last is probably the most powerful element of the book. Although forgiveness was the watchword that got picked up by media when one of the survivors told Roof she forgave him just days later, this was not an easy or a universal response. Particularly tragic is the story of the husband of one of the murdered women, who returned from a merchant marine job halfway across the world and sank into depression, bitterness and apathy without his wife’s leavening presence. You find yourself unable to blame him, really. Roof is described about as objectively as possible—we learn about him through his actions and his reactions to his family and police—but it is highly evident that there is something wrong with him, perhaps undiagnosable, perhaps simply the manifestation of evil. A hard book but a very necessary one, and one that gives dignity and complexity to all of the actors in this horrible episode in American history.

Lot, by Bryan Washington: Washington’s debut connected-story collection focuses on the lives of Black and Latinx characters in Houston, Texas. About half of them focus on a particular young man who goes unnamed, but whose uneasy relationship with his family and his burgeoning sexuality is the focus of most of the stories in this main thread. Others, like “South Central” and “Waugh”, are snapshots of different individuals struggling to maintain integrity—or just survive—in a city beset by gentrification, poverty and racism. “Waugh” in particular is appallingly moving, its protagonist Poke a young prostitute forced to reckon with his pimp and protector’s HIV-positive status. It’s the story in which a cultural emphasis on the implicit, the unspoken or unarticulated emotion, is most evident. Elsewhere, our unnamed narrator’s uber-masculine brother Javi teaches him “what happens to faggots”, his father takes him on a visit to his “plainer than plain” mistress, his sister marries to get out of the neighborhood, and his mother suffers as gentrification forces her to give up the family restaurant. Washington’s prose style is clipped and succinct, which often creates a perhaps unintentional sense of emotional distance, but the final chapter—in which the narrator at last decides to commit to a romantic relationship with a man instead of the no-strings-attached sex he’s allowed himself up til now—holds out a delicate hope for fulfillment that only a rock could fail to find heartrending.

Set My Heart to Five, by Simon Stephenson: The premise here is perhaps cringey to a certain type of reader: in a near future containing “driverless ubers” but no New Zealand (casualty of a nuclear exchange with North Korea, apparently), Jared, a bot who looks exactly like a human but whose brain is a biological computer and who has no emotions, begins to develop feelings, along with a taste for classic movies. Pursued by an incompetent but dogged jobsworth from the Bureau of Robotics, he flees his comfortable, sterile dental practice in Ypsilanti for Los Angeles, intending to write and direct a movie that will change the way the world feels about bots. So far, perhaps, so cute (an impression backed up by Jared’s relentlessly slangy narration: “10/10” and “I cannot!” being but two of his many catchphrases). But what makes this stand out as more than just a big-hearted underdog novel with futuristic set dressing is its obsession, nay its love affair, with film tropes—which are, of course, storytelling tropes—and by way of which Jared comments, both explicitly and unconsciously, upon his own quest. I wrote “underdog” up there, for instance; Jared knows he’s in a quest story, and he knows how the logic of such stories works. He knows that Inspector Ryan Bridges of the Bureau of Robotics is his nemesis, and that (as per RP McWilliam’s Twenty Golden Rules of Screenwriting, a text he treats with reverence) coincidences should only occur in order to create obstacles, not to smooth the hero’s path. This incredible circular knowingness—a story about stories, and who gets to tell them, and how they can be hijacked (there’s a great subplot about an unscrupulous Hollywood producer), which also knows it’s a story, and comments on that, and the comments are both an integral part of the story and reinforce its thematic meaning—is quite brilliant, and further reinforced by form, as sections of the book are typeset to resemble a film script. If this all sounds a bit precious, please trust me when I say that it is not. There is something perfect and painful about Jared’s first viewing of Blade Runner, for instance—quite deliberately a movie about whether robots are people—or about his being reassured that the people sailing on Lake Michigan during inclement weather probably don’t want rescuing, because humans actually enjoy illogical risk. Not to mention his unexpected side trip to Las Vegas with a lonely, self-deluding fellow train traveler (who happens to hate bots), or the way he falls in love. Set My Heart to Five is poignant, funny, light on its feet, and very, very sharp. By the end, I felt—as Jared hears a famous screenwriter say—as though I’d been “f-worded in the heart”; I can’t recommend it more highly.

Remain Silent, by Susie Steiner: This is the third of Steiner’s Manon Bradshaw novels, and may be her last—she was recently diagnosed with what seems to be (going from her Twitter and the Acknowledgments page here) a pretty aggressive cancer. Bradshaw (or Manon, as most everyone in the books calls her) has always been an extraordinary creation: grumpy, dogged, keen on a custard cream, not so keen on buzzwords or bullshit. Here her smallest child is a toddler, her older boy Fly—adopted in an earlier novel—is about to sit GCSEs, her partner may or may not be terminally ill, and she is staring at the settlings, losses and alterations of middle age. The crime, on the other hand, could hardly be more contemporary: a dead immigrant hanging from a tree in Cambridgeshire, a note reading “The dead cannot speak” pinned to his clothing. Because this is a crime novel, of course nothing about it adds up, and of course Manon is determined to get to the bottom of it all. Steiner tells the story in a pretty effective multi-POV fashion, switching from the present (narrated alternately by Manon and by her deputy, Davy) to “Before” (narrated by Matis, best friend of the dead man, and Elise, a local girl whose father is a frothing xenophobe abetted by, and fawningly besotted with, a Nigel Farage analogue). Davy’s presence in the book is an interesting leaven to what could otherwise easily be a one-note political set-up: we know Manon has no time for Little England, National Front bollocks, for she tells us so frequently and forthrightly, but Davy is a white man of precarious status approaching middle age and his internal monologues often muse on the anger he sees in these men. He doesn’t quite agree with them, but he understands them, and in some moments even sympathizes, and through his eyes we can understand them too. Or at least understand how other people can understand. The solution to the murder is actually quite ingenious: it struck me as both believable and appalling, which is no mean feat for crime fiction. The believability rests on Steiner’s work with characterization, which she’s remarkably good at; if there is a slight wobble of “would someone really…?”, it’s covered by the fact that most of the other characters wonder that, too. If this is the last Manon Bradshaw book, it will be a very great loss: she is really one of the most exceptionally idiosyncratic characters—let alone detective characters—currently being written, and I would miss her. Let’s hope she rides again.

currently reading: Afropean, by Johny Pitts, which I am absolutely loving. No wonder it won the Jhalak Prize. More on that next week.

July Superlatives

A good sixteen books read, in print, e- and audio form, this month! This is hardly a Superlatives post, though, given that I can’t summon up the creative energies to think of the categories. I’ll just do what I normally do—a short paragraph on each book read—without categorizing them, and hope you’ll forgive me. (I’m also thinking of returning to the weekly Reading Diary format; it might be more manageable.)

Rubyfruit Jungle, by Rita Mae Brown: A wickedly funny coming-of-age story about a young lesbian in the 1950s, who comes from dirt-poor Southern stock and eventually finds her way to New York City, film school, and freedom. Molly Bolt is the most engaging, uncompromising, self-aware and hilarious protagonist I’ve met for a long time, and her social and sexual escapades make for delightful reading, despite the prejudice she faces.

How To Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi: My problem with this book is not the book; it’s me. And it might not even be me qua me, so much as it is timing. Having already read two very up-to-the-minute nonfiction dissections of racism in twenty-first century Western society, a third hot on their heels felt somewhat repetitive: much of the material, and the general thrust of argument, is the same. This is, however, clearly an excellent book for people eager to learn, and I’d recommend it.

A View of the Empire at Sunset, by Caryl Phillips: My first book of Phillips’s, though it won’t be my last, A View of the Empire… is a fictionalized exploration of the life of Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea (which I read last month). The constant tension between her Creole upbringing and the expectations of white England infuses the book, and Phillips’s style shows a melancholy restraint that reminds me of earlier English authors like Brookner and Fitzgerald.

The Book of Queer Prophets, ed. Ruth Hunt: Like all anthologies, some entries here are stronger than others, but the concept—queer writers describe how their sexuality and their religious faiths, or lack thereof, affect each other—is a winner. Amrou Al-Kadhi’s piece on becoming a Muslim drag queen is wonderful, but the one that hit me hardest was Jay Hulme’s account of conversion and cathedrals. It’s a magical piece of writing that ties in revelation, suicide, and the appreciation of beauty. He’s a poet, but I would read more of his prose.

Playing Nice, by J.P. Delaney: Delaney is one of our foremost writers of domestic, or psychological, noir, and all his work (I was convinced he was a she for ages, but apparently Delaney is the pseudonym of a male author) is both utterly addictive and really quite good, despite the melodramatic plots. Playing Nice deals with the scary implications of an accidental child swap, and, like many contemporary domestic thrillers, invests in the notion of the common or garden psychopath. The scenes where one character forces/manipulates his way over the boundaries of the others are nauseatingly believable, even if the actual story might not be.

Rainbow Milk, by Paul Mendez: Mendez’s debut, dealing with the trajectory of Jesse from Black Country Jamaican Jehovah’s Witness and closeted homosexual, to rent boy in early ’90s London, to professional waiter—and unexpectedly beloved—in the 2000s, is lush with accent, detail, and a LOT of meticulously described sex between men. Critics have said it’s too autobiographical and doesn’t give its characters enough space, but I loved the authority with which Mendez writes Jesse’s experience (and the restaurant scenes are really, really spot-on).

Conjure Women, by Afia Atakora: Set in a community of former slaves after the American Civil War, Conjure Women deals with the clash between folk medicine/obeah and Christian teaching, as midwife Rue falls under suspicion when the children of the area begin dying. Flashbacks to the era of slavery illuminate goings-on in the narrative’s present day, and Atakora’s depiction of characters forced to make terrible choices is empathetic and moving. Lots about mother-daughter relationships, love and the vulnerability it brings, too.

Lady Sings the Blues, by Billie Holiday: Actually not written by Holiday, but composed by journalist William Dufty from transcripts of interviews he conducted with her. This brings its own set of interpretative and moral difficulties, but the voice that shines through these pages is strong and clear, and it belongs to someone: it’s easy to imagine Holiday holding forth in a hotel room, Dufty recording and scribbling. Much of the autobiographical material is invented or embellished, but on singing in Jim Crow-era America and as a general set of observations on craft, plus for its glimpse into a lost world of glamour, drugs and celebrity, this is hard to beat.

That Reminds Me, by Derek Owusu: My problems with this book, again, are mine alone. That it feels unfocused and underpowered is a subjective assessment; that the periodic invocations of Anansi strike me as slightly mannered is also opinion and not fact. That it tells a story that needs telling—that of a black boy taken into care as a child, and his subsequent mental health issues as an adult—and does so in short, innovative prose-poetic sections, is also the case: and it won the Desmond Elliott Prize. I suspect it might click more upon rereading.

Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah: I was told this was specifically excellent as an audiobook, so I listened to it, and it absolutely is. Mostly, and unsurprisingly, it’s just fucking funny: Noah tells stories well, and he has good ones to tell here. The section where his grandmother and aunts hold a wailing exorcism for the demon whom they believe has planted human shit in the wastebin (it was, in fact, young Trevor) had me giggling helplessly aloud. It stops before Noah’s comedy career takes off, which is probably a good thing; the final sections, detailing his late teens of DJ-ing/petty crime, are a little repetitive.

Empires in the Sun: the Struggle for the Mastery of Africa, by Lawrence James. I really, really struggled with this; I’d hoped for the balance and impartiality that the Literary Review blurb promised, but James instead writes with a kind of blasé Eurocentrism that seems to equate acknowledging atrocities with reparation for them. I can best describe it by saying that for James it’s as though African minds don’t really exist—he certainly doesn’t write about them, only African bodies. A decent overview of the historical events for the beginner, but otherwise, I think, best left.

Zami: a New Spelling of My Name, by Audre Lorde: I’d somehow never actually read Lorde before now, and had developed the idea that she was a slightly scary/po-faced theorist along the lines of Sontag. Zami proves nothing could be further from the truth: a barely fictionalized autobiography, it’s warm, funny, and vivid about Lorde’s feelings of being left out (along multiple axes of race, gender, sexuality, and general oddness) as a child and young woman. A true joy and revelation to read, and a contender for the Best Books of 2020 list.

Enter the Aardvark, by Jessica Anthony: Congressman Alexander Paine Wilson awakes one morning to find a stuffed aardvark being delivered to him by FedEx. It’s from his male lover, who has (apparently) just committed suicide. Only, Wilson is in the closet—even to himself—and a rabidly conservative Republican. As the aardvark’s existence begins to unravel Wilson’s life with the relentless rapidity of a nightmare, a second strand focuses on the eighteenth-century taxidermist who stuffed it, and his hidden romantic relationship with the explorer who brought it back. There are some tonal/factual errors which I put down to the author’s American cultural background (the most egregious being that you would never refer to a man named Sir Richard Ostlet as “Sir Ostlet”; he would always be “Sir Richard”). But it’s an extremely funny, surprisingly poignant book, and it basically stole my heart.

The Vanishing Trick, by Jenni Spangler: My first children’s book for many months was… all right? There’s certainly a very cod-Aiken vibe to its supposedly Victorian but much more generic-fantasy-feeling setting, and the horrid Madame Pinchbeck, who traps children’s souls in household objects, is a clear descendant of Miss Slighcarp. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that three child narrators (all in an undifferentiated third person) was at least one too many, and Spangler compounds the issue by spelling out emotion and motive instead of building up character through behaviour and letting us deduce it. The Vanishing Trick is definitely fun, but you can’t compare it to Reeve or Hardinge or Robin Stevens.

A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid. Oh, my days. I’m definitely a scaredycat, but this (randomly picked up as 99p on Kindle and I’d never read McDermid before; I know, I’m sorry) is a really creepy book: not just about the abominable things men do to vulnerable girls, but also about the Wicker Man-esque community of Scardale, which demonstrates a mute solidarity in the face of outside interference (aka a police investigation) that is at least as frightening, in its own way. It’s the sort of book that would never work in these days of wifi and well-maintained roads (though actually, in some parts of the Peaks, mobile reception is still rubbish enough to make this a reasonable plot in 2020).

You People, by Nikita Lalwani: This has definite ambitions to be a state-of-the-nation novel, although its focus is narrow enough (one pizzeria in South London; two point of view characters, Welsh waitress Nia and Sri Lankan pizza chef Shan) that it might be more productive to read it as a London novel. Shan has left behind his wife and child, and is both horribly ashamed and desperate to get them to England; Nia, who’s fled an alcoholic mother, is determined to get to the bottom of restauranteur Tuli’s not-so-legal extracurricular activities (he operates the pizzeria like a safe house for undocumented asylum-seekers). The ending is a touch sentimental, but it provides satisfying narrative closure, and Lalwani’s depiction of the “hostile environment” is thoroughly terrifying.

---

So that was July; August is shaping up well (though I genuinely cannot believe it’s been four and a half months since I’ve been into the office. We’re going back in, on a rotating once-weekly basis, this week; my first day back is Wednesday. I’ll be lonely, as it’ll only be me from my team, but maybe I’ll get things done.) In the meantime—I’ve got plenty of proofs, having finally been brought my office stash a few weeks ago, plus several remaining new and old purchases, AND I went on a Netgalley spree, like a lunatic. What’ve you been enjoying this past month?