Number 24 - Kink by Kathe Koja

Damn you Kathe Koja!

As anyone who cares to scan back through the books I've reviewed so far this year will see, I like quite a wide range of fiction. There may be a slight lean towards the horror genre, crime and fantasy stuff in general, but I tend to read a lot of different genres.

One genre I don't like is romance/love stories.  Who's sleeping with who is a sub plot, useful for character motivation.  A well written sex scene is always welcome but I really don't think that who's in whose bed is an interesting enough idea to be the centre of the plot. It's the stuff of soap opera, not a serious attempt at storytelling.

So then we come to Kink, by Kathe Koja -  a love story, a cautionary tale, a novel about sex, and who's in whose bed, with whom...

And it's an easy contender for the best book of the year.  I've enjoyed every word of this book. The prose is amazing. The story sucks you in and keeps hold.  I wish I'd had more time for long reading sessions these last few weeks as this book was so difficult to put down.

Koja doesn't write like anyone else I've ever read. Angela Carter is close, but I've nor read any of her long fiction yet to judge on this properly... Like Angela Carter, there is something disconcerting in Kathe's prose style.  Read it too long and you can find yourself feeling like you're vaguely intoxicated.

     She doesn't follow usual rules of grammar, run on sentences abound,  words cascade, like water rushing over you as the dam wall breaks, feelings intensify as her story pulls you under through sheer force of  narrative. Immediacy of language: rules ignored but it all works, stream of consiousness; we are in the narrators head, his thoughts, his feelings. We feel with him the intensity of his love for Sophie and his obsession's genesis for Lena - her dark beauty encapsulating his and our entire being. Paragraphs can run for whole pages, as well as whole sentences, switchback ride from action to thought to observation with no delineation; normal rules of writing gone by the wayside

     and it works so damned well, dragging us, the readers deeper into Jess's being and experiencing with him his fortunes and misfortunes and loving his loves then hating and suffering with him as the story moves through myriad combinations and convolutions.


I give up. I apologise for trying to ape the writing style and failing so miserably. Kathe Koja is an amazing writer.  Open the book at random and copy a paragraph for a taster


And the blending duet, Lena and Sophie trading stories and me in the middle content to listen, to look, Sophie effervescent with wine and hilarity, Lena chin on fist and smiling, those dark and shining eyes: as if we could tell her anything, everything, the trivial to the vast: from Sophie's passion for sourball candies to my own failed attempts at writing there was nothing off-limits, nothing that, once words were found, might not be said- and not only said, but without words understood: how rare is it, a friend like that?


This is a tale of obsession, set in an all too real backdrop of seedy clubs and night haunts. A complicated love triangle at the centre of the story. I guess I liked it as much, not just because of the prose, but because, despite the storyline being contained 100% within my most hated genre, it's a dark tale indeed. Love gives way to obesession. Obsession is rewarded with betrayal and hurt. Jess's head is not a comfortable place for we the readers to inhabit, but Kathe Koja plants us firmly in the middle of it. Seeing life through his kinks is maybe not for the faint of heart but is a rewarding experience in many a strange way. 

I seriously cannot reccommend this book highly enough. 9/10

It is available second hand on Amazon, or there is a chance that Ms Koja might have some in her own store

https://kathekoja.com/buy-books/

Number 23 - Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster

There are two types of readers in this world.  Those who think Paul Auster is a true genius, and those who are entirely wrong.

I have an issue with trying to review this book. I normally try to stay relatively spoiler free, not saying much more about the plot as you can glean from the back cover. Especially when I like the book.

However this is such a short book, and the reasons for its genius can't really be described without giving spoilers.  So consider yourself warned.

This is not a book for someone who has never read anything by Auster to pick up and read. If this is your first Auster novel, you will likely as not not understand anything that's going on, without a lot of associated google-fu.

The reason for that is how self referential this book is.

An old man wakes in a room with no memories.  He's visited by an array of people and finds a half written novel on the desk along with many photographs of people he cannot remember.  We learn that every action he takes, including all the most intimate and scatological, is being recorded by an unknown omniscient third person narrator who describes all this detail to us. The prose is clinical with occasional forays into the poetic.

The reader is referenced many times throughout the novel(la?). Nothing ever seems to exist to the old man until it is desribed in detail in the text. He never finds the closet, although Anna Bloom, the first of two nurses to visit him lays out his change of clothes for him from somewhere while he is busy elsewhere. All items visible in the room have been labelled with their names. Wall.  desk.  Bathroom.  etc.

These are switched mysteriously later on in the narrative, causing our Mr Blank to panic. Words are things of power and should be applied correctly. This is as good a visual metaphor for that as I think I've ever seen.

The names of the various visitors seem familiar to te long time reader of Auster's work. The missing Mr Fanshawe is the same Fanshawe who is missing in New york Trilogy. Anna Bloom is the lead character from In The Country of Last Things, and so on. The title itself is actually quite a big clue to the answers to all the questions raised in this book. The closing pages show the creation of a metafictional and existential nightmare.

Some would argue that Auster has vanished up his own rear end and currently resides somewhere near his own ileum after reading this and I can actually understand why. However I derived so much pleasure from this book that I really don't care if he's gone so far up his rear end that he's set up a granny flat in his tonsils.

This is vintage Auster. If you like him, you'll probably love it as much as I did.  If you've not read him before, read some of his other books first. Start with New York trilogy, move on to Leviathan and Mr Vertigo and maybe a couple of others before you read this one. If you don't like him, why are you reading this review?

An easy 8.5 maybe 9 out of 10.

Number 22 - The Winter Chaser by Christopher Holt

This month's book group book. This was a quick read. There were some good ideas, and in places the prose was actually quite good. The opening section was reasonably amusing.

That's the good part over with.

This book was clearly self published and never given to an editor to tidy it up. The layout of the book is dreadful. the grammar throughout is questionable and occasionally completely wrong. The very first paragraph has missing commas.  This was not a good sign and sadly an accurate one.

The good ideas previously mentioned were filched wholesale from many other much better books and authors. For example - one section that was praised at tonight's book group was where the lead character uses a home made electronic gizmo to silence all the noise making devices on a tube train. Ray Bradbury wrote exactly that story in 1953.  Check out The Murderer from his Golden Apples of the Sun collection.
  http://www.sediment.uni-goettingen.de/staff/dunkl/zips/The-Murderer.pdf

The satire on modern times is clunky and heavy-handed.  Although it starts off reasonably amusing, it becomes wearisome. The whole novel is about as subtle as a sledgehammer in the face. He should either have eschewed the humour for a more disturbing take on the idea (which could have worked well) or learned how to write comedy.  Instead he falls squarely between the two stools.

The prose is mainly bland. I've eaten rich tea biscuits that have more intrinsic excitement than Holt manages to inspire for the most part. Where the prose isn't bland, it's mainly pretty bad and ungrammatical. One or two paragraphs here and there demonstrate that there may be a writing ability hidden somewhere in Holt's head, but it's very well hidden indeed.

The author has no idea how to integrate ideas subtly into the narrative. One of the joys of Inspection (the Malerman novel I just finished prior to starting this book) was the way the world the boys inhabited was introduced so brilliantly in the opening chapters.  It was done through the character's actions and inner voices, steadily and cleverly drip-fed into the narrative. Not so in this book.  "Show don't tell" does not apply in this book.  Christopher Holt tends to introduce ideas with the worst expositional dialogue I think I have encountered in many many years.

As for the storyline - what there is of it is vague, unfocused, lacking any kind of pace and entirely predictable. A couple of half decent action scenes apart, the story just meanders around a badly realised version of a possible future Britain.  The title makes no sense whatsoever, as he never actually goes chasing after the source of the Chyll - a mysterious cold snap which descends randomly because of something or other that Holt doesn't really go into any detail about.

Despite the far flung future setting, despite the science fiction devices scattered through the narrative, despite the fact that this is clearly a genre novel, Christopher Holt takes a leaf from Atwood, Ishiguro and McEwan in proclaiming that he has NOT written a science fiction novel. While this is a minor irritant when Margaret, Kazuo and Ian say it, it's bloody annoying here. The three big name genre refuseniks have talent to spare. Their writing is good enough that we can nod and say "yeah, yeah, whatever" and enjoy their books in any case.

Not only has Christopher Holt written a science fiction novel that borrows from Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, Gene Wolfe and countless other SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS, he's done it without a fraction of the talent of any of the people he's borrowed from.

I assume, from the way the story just kind of grinds to a halt, that this is part of a continuing story. Well I for one will certainly not be following up on it.

One last point.  On the badly formatted back cover, it proudly proclaims the book was shortlisted in the novel category for a literature award. I googled the award in question.  It's a very local prize for very local people. Entrants pay a whole £12 to enter their novel on the shortlist.

It's like me calling myself a prize winning playwright.  I genuinely did once win best original play for a play I wrote and starred in.  The fact that it was at a local one act play festival with only two original plays performed (out of 20 plays overall - all the rest were off the shelf plays) - and the other was by a junior group who couldn't remember their lines...

It also claims to have won another award, but this one is so obscure I can't find it on google.

This book is available through Amazon, but save your time and money.

Number 21 - Inspection by Josh Malerman

Some authors automatically bypass my entire TBR pile completely when they put out a new book.  Since reading Bird Box two years ago, Josh Malerman has been one of those. This is my third Josh Malerman read of the year - and not the last.  His follow on to Bird Box is due out in a few months and I can't wait.

The only review I'd seen of this book online wasn't the most enthusiastic I've ever seen.  But it was reviewing this book as if it was a full-pelt, pedal-to-the-metal, all-out horror novel (Like Bird box and On This The Day of the Pig were). And that is why they were lukewarm about it IMHO.

If you were to review The wizard of Oz as if it was a western - after all it opens and closes on a ranch in western America -  you'd say it was a piss poor western.  Review it as the fantasy novel/film it actually is and it's superlative.

This book is a diffeent beast from JM's pure horror novels. Like Unbury Carol, it defies easy pigeonholing.  It contains horror elements, that is for definite. But it also contains elements of science fiction, some fantastic elements.  It could even be read as a mega twisted crime novel, about abduction, incarceration and murder of children and adults.

The basic story - the Alphabet Boys live in a tower in the middle of nowhere. They have been deliberately kept separate from society, and particularly from the opposite sex. They are being raised as prodigies and geniuses, schooled in the arts and the sciences to superlative heights. A few miles through the woods is a similar tower containing the Letter Girls.  All this is part of an inhuman experiment. When J from the Alphabet Boys meets K from the Letter girls.... all hell breaks loose.

The style of writing is the usual efficient and atmospheric prose I've come to expect from Mr Malerman. There's a clinical effectiveness in this book which truly suits the subject matter. The world building is excellent.  The drip feed of information in the opening chapters is very skillfully done and the enclosed world of J and his twenty three surving brothers feels entirely real by the end of chapter 3.

The tension builds nicely throughout as the children discover more and more. As the most developed of the adults, Warren/Laurence and Richard are great characters. The guilt of one and the megalomania of the other shine through the pages and set up a nice rivalry at the heart of the story, but not one that pans out in any predictable form. 

In any good thriller - because that's a category this could also fall into - there should be THAT point in the story.  THAT page you get to where THAT happens and you know you will finish this book in this sitting regardless of how many pages are left, or what time of day it is.  In this book, THAT occurs about 100 pages from the end, and I can honestly say that if I was a heart surgeon with a fully prepped patient on the table who'd just been opened by my assistant, waiting for me to perform the most complex part of the surgery, I would have told them to hold on for a while and I'd be with them after  I finished the book.

You can take two things from that.  Number 1 - when THAT happens in this book, it really is bloody effective and this book is a page turner of immense quality.  Number 2 - heart surgery should not be on my list of career choices, I am a horrible person with poor prioritisation skills.

Slight spoiler ahead.

It's not an absolutely perfect book. There is a basic flaw at the heart of the story, but that same basic flaw applies to Lord of the Flies (one of my favourite novels of all time). I once heard William Golding talking about the reason there were no girls on the island.  It was so that "sex wouldn't rear its ugly head".  Even at age 15 when I heard him say that, I did wonder if he'd heard of the different variations in sexuality.

Removing the opposite sex is not going to remove the distractions inherent in the "delicate years", it could just switch it into a same sex distraction. It may not even be a switch. However, in this book I chose to ignore this as just an (extreme) oversight on the part of D.A.D. and M.O.M..

Theoretically the Burt papers could have referenced the possibility, and it wouldn't have felt like a plot hole. However, it didn't impact on my enjoyment of the book in the slightest.    

If you're going to have a narrative flaw, it might as well be one shared with one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

This is available from alll good book shops, quite a few bad bookshops and anywhere online that sells books, so you have no excuse to ignore my advice and go out and buy this now.

An easy 8.5/10 - read it.