Number 4 - After Sappho - Selby Wynn Schwartz

 

Number three in my Galley beggar Press themed month. There is one (now two) more but ehy may have to wait.

I've had this in my TBR for nearly a year and I have to admit to not being too keen on it from the description.  It really didn't sound like my kind of book - a feminist LGBTQ tract (with emphasis on the L) detailing the lives of assorted early campaigners.

However, it's always good to move out of your comfort zone - one of the reasons I decided to theme books this year, to deliberately force myself to read some I might not have read otherwise.

After the florid writing in the last two books, the return to short sentences and a simple vocabulary was a really welcome change of pace.

This is one of the most eye-opening books  I've read in many many years. Told in short segments, rarely if ever more than one page long (very rarely more than three paragraphs), each segment headed with the relevant name/date/title, it gives us glimpses into the lives of dozens of real life campaigners for women's rights.

With this structure it does feel very bitty, and there's not much of a n obvious central story to hang your attention to. However this doesn't stop it from being an engrossing read throughout. The struggle for recognition is the central character/theme of the book.

Schwartz manages to celebrate the women in the history without blaming ALL men for the problems, just the men in charge. And those women she celebrates had to put up with far more than I ever imagined. The details of the law that meant a man could rape a teen girl and she would be forced to marry him were shocking. Along with this, Schwartz makes it clear how women weren't even citizens of turn of the 20th century Italy (and elsewhere).

The title comes from the unifying factor in the early segments that the women are inspired by the writings of Sappho, and extracts from Sappho's surviving works are scattered throughout. We read of their efforts to emancipate themselves (in some cases through sheer disregard of the rules society expects them to adhere to) from the systems holding them back and the eventual formation of the Bloomsbury Group.

I did have some minor annoyances with this book. The style gets a little grating after a while, and I'm sure I missed a lot of references that any feminist would see a mile away. The writer admits in the text late on that she has deliberately excised any men from the narrative -and even names a few of the allies to the cause that she has removed from the story. The segment that bemoaned the number of women who died in World War 1 was the most annoying part. Not a mention of the generation of young men dying in the fields.  

I suppose male centered histories have erased women's contributions, but is it maybe a little bit petty to not only excise men from the story and then admit to doing it deliberately? 

These are minor quibbles though. This book was so much more than I thought it would be, and has changed my way of thinking on several fronts. On that level, this is a definite success.

Number 3 - My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is - Paul Stanbridge

 

Secomd book in my Galley Beggar Press themed month...

This is an odd one. 

It's a book about distraction. It's about an awfui lot of things, but they're all distractions.

In 2015, Paul Stanbridge's brother hanged himself. This book is a sort of a journal/biography of Paul and his attempts to deal with the loss.

And he does that through distraction.  There are a mountain of facts and figures about a myriad of topics.  It starts off with his research into how and when the Germanic Sea was renamed the North Sea, complete with diagrams and digressions and mini-biogs of noted historical cartographers (also some obscure and hitherto un-noted cartographers).

At the heart of it all is his not wanting to deal with his loss.  The various rabbit holes of research he throws himself into, all the obsessions he creates for himself are shields against his feelings.  The only thing he never researches directly is the suicide that lies at the heart of the book like an unwashed and festering sore.

The style of writing is longwinded, never using one word when an entire lexicographer's toolkit of thesauruses thesaurii) will supply alternative extraneous clauses and sub-clauses to suffice in its place, and run on sentences are common, sometimes taking up entire pages with complex and occasionally almost incomprehensible additional verbiage.

However, this doesn't stop the book from being a fascinating read.  The endless stream of facts and figures and random trivia is really interesting to read. There's something almost soothing about the rhythms of the writing. 

It's possibly a bit too emotionally distanced from the source of his grief. As much as I'm aware how traumatic the event must have been, there was never the palpable sense of loss that I've felt in other books dealing with similar subject matter.

Back to my fist point, it's an odd one. Is it a beautifully written book despite its long-windedness? Yes. Did I enjoy reading it?  Yes. Is it intellectually engaging? Yes. Did it emotionally engage me - I'm not sure.  Probably not.  Would I read it again?  I don't think so. Was it worth reading? A definite yes.

Your mileage may vary. 

2023 Number 1 - Malarkoi - Alex Pheby

 

The first book I started this year, but the second one I finished... These things happen.

This is the first of a themed set of books for this month. I will be doing a few Theme months this year. This month it's Galley Beggar Press books. Expect to see a few more of these understated yet rather handsome black covers.

This is the sequel to Mordew which I read when it came out in November 2020 and I've been waiting impatiently for this ever since, Mordew ended on one hell of a cliffhanger and this has been one of my most highly anticipated books.

It doesn't pick up the action immediately. It starts by recapping the story so far (with some expansions) from the points of view of several of the secondary characters from book 1. It does this for a whole 150 pages until it moves on with the story properly.

It also introduces a lot of complex ideas into the story and it's fair to say that some sections (especially in the recap) were quite confusing.

However, I've never felt so entertained by a novel where I had no idea what was going on as I did in the opening section of this.

Pheby's prose is an absolute delight to read. And when he eventually does move on with the stories of the survivors from the ending of Mordew, the book moves at a cracking pace and it was a struggle to put this down at night.  I've had more 2am finishes where I can barely keep my eyes open and I absolutely have to put the book down with this book than anything I read last year (or the year before).

Imagine if Mervin Peake wrote a high fantasy set in an alternate Earth - possibly far future - with an exceptionally complex magical system, twisted realities, buried dead gods, talking dogs, and bull headed men and human headed snakes thrown in just to add to the general surrealism and you're partway to this book. I genuinely don't think there's anything quite like it.

This is not a standalone novel. You absolutely have to have read Mordew for this to make a lick of sense. I think the character of Nathan's mother might have had a bit of an unplanned retcon in this book, but it's so skillfully done I forgive Alex Pheby completely. 

This is one of those books that will divide opinion. The prose will be too verbose for many, but I love the rhythms of it and the moods he creates. The dark heart of the first book continues to beat through this one. There are character deaths I would never have guessed and that hit me right where it hurts. Some of them may be reversed in the next book, as the magic system does allow for that, but these books are hugely unpredictable.

The ending on this one isn't as much of a hammer blow as the first book's was, but it's a great set up for the final book in the trilogy.  Sadly, I now have possibly another two years before I can read how he's going to tie up all the floating threads.

I'm still annoyed that I never saw the pun in the title of Mordew until it was pointed out at the end of the that book. A city built over the body of a dead god. OK so the pun is in French, but I still should have spotted it. There are a couple of explanations for the title of Malarkoi offered on the final pages. They're not quite as satisfying as the Mordew pun, but amusing enough. 

Edit - after a quick look at the glossary from Mordew, the expansion on the character of Nathan's mother was planned all along and it's my faulty memory that made it seem like she had been retconned for this book. 

2023 Number 1.5 - The Dunnie - Keith Thomas

 

This is number 1.5 not 1 because I found myself with a few hours to kill, book 1 was at home but I had this novella lined up on NetGalley so I could read it on my phone.

Asher is a 12 year old boy going to stay at his senile grandfather's (known to him and his mother as Pa) house till his mother finds a suitable care facility to move Pa to.

In one of Pa's more lucid moments he tells Asher about the thing living in the vents in the walls. It's the Dunnie, and Asher can see it too, Asher also witnesses his Pa dragging a sheep into the house in the middle of the night.to feed it. he's been forgetful lately and its getting hungry. Who knows what or who it's going to eat next...

The ideas in this book are a lot more effective than the the writing. There's a really scary book to be made out of the ideas in this, but this book isn't it.

It's a clever twist on an old Cronenburg movie plot that should have worked much better than it did, 

The main reason for that is the workmanlike prose.  there's no atmosphere built at any stage. Asher doesn't ring quite true as a 12 year old,  Pa's Alzheimer's seems to switch on and off as is convenient for the story and the big finale doesn't feel as dramatic or tense as it should be.

The book starts with three full chapters set more than a decade before the events of the main narrative to give some explanation for later events.  The resulting shift forwards in time, and the switch of central character felt like an awkward leap after three chapters.  Maybe it would have felt less awkward as one long prologue (which is what it actually is), or even inserted as flashback chapters later on... As chapters 1,2 and 3, it felt wrong.

Having said all that, I'm probably overanalysing it. since my actual book 1 is very heavily stylised and in depth, while this is a quick easy read.  I was never bored while I was reading it so it did its job in entertaining me while I was reading it and I can't fault that. At only 120 pages it certainly doesn't outstay its welcome.

If you're looking for a quick and easy read, there's no reason not to go for this. It has some genuinely good scary ideas floating around even if they're not given the oomph they should have. Maybe it should be marketed more as a YA book, then people are more likely to overlook the flaws (I know I would be).