Number 33- The Last House on Needless Street -

A very delayed write up on the last book in my 'cats on the cover' theme. I've been away with no internet connection so it would have been difficult. The copy I wanted had a cat on the cover, the copy I actually received was the one in the picture, so I'll have to make do with the letters preceding "riona" in her name to make the connection.

After the difficult read that was the Bulgakov, I really needed something light and easy and this fits perfectly in that category.

I've heard a lot of things about this.  It seems to be a real marmite book (for non-UK residents, Marmite is a spread that people put on toast that you either love it or hate it, no in between. I think it tastes like a yeast infection would, so you can make your mind up which side of the fence I'm  on in that debate.) 

Ted lives in a run down house at  the end of Needless street. He shares the house with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia. A new neighbour moves into the empty house next door who could blow their world apart, which may not be a bad thing.

The book is narrated in alternating chapters between each of the four characters (yes, the cat narrates her own sequences).

It becomes very obvious, very quickly that all is not as it seems in Needless Street. Catriona Ward takes her time to drip feed us any explanations about the odd events and disturbing behaviour of our protagonists. The atmosphere she creates is creepy and suspenseful and the reader is constantly guessing (in my case mostly wrongly) what is actually going on. I can't say any more about the story without risking major spoilers.

I raced through this book in one day. I don't think it lives up to the quote in the reviews that span the first 6 pages about it taking the crown from Shirley Jackson's Hill House, but it is an extremely dark and brooding horror novel. It brilliantly takes some hoary old horror tropes and turns them on their head in a most surprising fashion.

An easy  8/10 and her other books are next on my shopping list. Count me in the "love it" group on this debate.

Number 32 - The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

 

Nearing the end of the cats on the cover theme…

The Master and Margarita is a classic of Russian literature and Mikhail Bulgakov’s most famous work. It’s not an easy read. Any Russian novel written between the two world wars is going to be a challenge for a casual reader and this is no exception (and I admit that, even though I keep this blog, I am a casual reader and read for pleasure. This blog is merely an attempt to tell people which books achieve this aim or not, and why).

The Devil has come to Stalin era Moscow and he’s brought some troublesome friends. We first meet him when he encounters a poet and an editor arguing about the existence of Jesus in the street. He tells them the “true” story of Pontius Pilate passing sentence. He goes on to predict the imminent violent death of the editor, and the incarceration in a mental hospital of the poet. These predictions rapidly come to pass and he moves into the deceased man’s apartment, from where he starts his reign of chaos over the city.

The style of writing is convoluted, and every character has at least three different names they’re known by, and these names are used completely randomly which makes things occasionally difficult to follow.

Fortunately, last week I was away and removed from all normal life distractions, so I had most of the week to sit and read. If I hadn’t, I would probably have taken 4 weeks or so to get through this. As it was, it took me 4 days.

I won’t lie. I did struggle to get into this one. It took till about page 200 before the style finally clicked. From the séance in the theatre onwards this was a pleasure to read. Prior to that there were flashes of brilliance, but it was difficult. 

Despite this I do think that this is a work of genius by most metrics. It’s surreal. It’s funny. It’s occasionally shocking. It seems to have quite a modern sensibility despite being a 90-year-old novel. As it’s a contemporaneous satire on Stalin’s Moscow, I probably did miss out on a lot of jokes and references, but there are sequences in this book that are timeless. A naked witch flying through the air on the back of a large pig that used to be the downstairs neighbour is an image from the book that particularly stuck in my mind for brilliant and funny surrealism.

This is as mad as a box of frogs when it gets going. It was constantly surprising and at no point could I predict where the plot might lead next. Even in the very difficult opening chapters the plot carried me through. I had no idea what I was reading, but it kept me interested. Once the style clicked with me, it was actually a weirdly easy read.

I'm very glad I read  it despite the early struggles. Do I recommend it to anyone else?  If you like densely written, strangely plotted Russian novels that confuse and confound, definitely. 

number 31 - The Cat Who Saved Books - Sosuke Natsukawa

 

Running a little bit behind on these at the moment.  I finished this last week but haven't had a chance to post here. 

First of all, that's a very pretty cat on the cover, and it's shiny, and that's the entire reason I bought this.  Yes, I am that easy to persuade to buy a book.

This is another Japanese fantasy novel in the form of four linked novellas. This time, the theme is the value of books.

Rintaro Natsuki is a teenager who runs a bookshop, Natsuki books, with his grandfather. When his Grandfather dies he's considering closing up the shop and moving away to live with his aunt, (both parents having died when he was a very small child).

He's visited in his shop by a ginger tabby cat that talks.  It takes him through a labyrinth that appears at the back of the shop on quests to save books from undignified fates.  One man who imprisons books, one who destroys them and one who betrays them.  The fourth quest is a far more personal odyssey for young Rintaro.

It's written in a very similar style to Before the Coffee gets Cold as well as being an identical format.  I don't know if that's a common format in the Land of the Rising Sun, or just for the books that publishers deign to translate for the English audiences.

 This was a nice easy read with some good points to make about the value of books and the trend for simplifying and bowlderising works of literature.  Rintaro makes for a sympathetic protagonist and his developing relationships form a nice emotional heart to the story.

All in all a solid little book, a quick read with a great cover.

Number 30 - Cat magic - Whitley Strieber

 

Added Grendel for cuteness to the normal picture of the book. Since this is the next in the cats on covers theme, it seems appropriate.

This book also has a really great dedication page (pictured below). Sadly after that, things went awry.

This is a real curates egg of a book.  I've read some Strieber before but not for a very long time and I remember really enjoying them.  His book Billy is a horror masterclass as is the Wolfen, but this is nowhere near those standards.

Amanda Walker returns to her childhood home town to illustrate a book of fairy tales by a local author and wiccan leader of a number of local covens. Amanda's uncle George is a scientist at the local college, working on experiments on resurrecting the dead. 

A local pastor is psychopathically opposed to both the witchcraft and the science (which are more closely linked than people suspect). He's also a minor league psychopath.

Added to all this, the mountains around the town are home to faery folk and demons, including one that typically manifests as a large black cat.

There's potential for a great horror story here, and Strieber is a very talented writer. 

But the book just didn't work for me. the back cover sells it as a Frankenstein type story with evil spirits attacking the town. Instead we get Amanda being manipulated by all sides to the point it's impossible to tell who the bad guys are. 

I'm all for morally grey characters, but this isn't morally grey as much as a bit of a mess. They're not well enough explored to make us side with them regardless of their behaviour and therefore I personally ceased to care about halfway through.

It's not helped by a preface that talks about how wiccans are misrepresented in literature and then the book proceeds to use most of the old clichés in not too positive a light.

The head witch at the start of the book is manipulating every side to coordinate events to her liking, regardless of who dies as a result. We're supposed to be on her side.

The mad scientist element is beyond daft. the scenes in the lab, despite starting strongly, soon descend into farcical stupidity.

There are hints in the text of a conspiracy against the witches and someone on the inside working against them.  That may have provided an interesting twist to the tale, but it comes to naught.

Instead the majority of the last two thirds of the book is Amanda's spiritual journey that she's been well and truly conned into embarking on.  As a chosen one narrative it falls flatter than my last attempt at a soufflé. 

There are good points to the book. There are sections that are very well written. There are disturbing elements.  The speculation on the nature of death, Heaven and Hell and all things in between is quite interesting. but the more I think about this book the less I'm liking it.

If this was the first Whitley Strieber novel I'd read, it would almost certainly be the last. It's a shame. The quotes on the cover from Charles Grant and Ramsey Campbell made me very excited for this book and it just didn't deliver. 

If you want to read a Strieber novel, read the Wolfen or Communion or Billy. Avoid this one.

Number 29 - Blitzcat - Robert Westall

 And yet more moggies on the cover.

I've not read anything by Robert westall in nearly 40 years. He was one of my favourite writers when i was a teenager - The Scarecrows would have been just about my favourite book ever when I was 13 or so.

This is children's literature still but I found so much to love in it.

It's the story of a cat called Lord Gort (after a rather unpopular leader of the armed forces back in WWII) who is missing her first owner after he's sent off to help the war effort and sets off to find him.

along the way she finds rest and shelter (and new homes) with a wide variety of characters and we hear their stories and how Lord Gort  helps them find their own way in the confusing and disturbing slice of history that was the Second World War.

Westall wrote about WWII a lot. The first of his books I read was the Machine Gunners, and that led me to read everything of his available at the time.

Cats also pop up in a lot of his books.  It's good to see him mix his two favourite subjects.

For a children's book, this has surprisingly few child characters - indeed, apart from a passing mention of one child stroking Lord Gort, and some children escaping the Coventry Blitz, there are none. This makes it feel surprisingly grown up in themes.  Her first temporary owner is a lonely watchman on the cliffs of southern England, who finds newfound confidence after Gort helps him spot an incoming plane and sound the alarm early enough to ward off a bombing raid. 

She then has a brief stint at a railway station where Dunkirk evacuees stroke her for luck, before staying in Dover with a young housekeeper forced to billet 10 soldiers. We witness the blossoming romance between the housekeeper and the sergeant of the troops before Gort is separated from the sergeant  somewhere near Coventry and the next chapter of her life begins. 

This is more a series of linked vignettes than a true novel but each story is so well told, and the linking is so smooth with the travels of our feline hero that it doesn't feel patchy at any time.

Also for a children's book, some events are quite shocking. There are some descriptions of death and dying that certainly felt more powerful than you expect from a book for young people. There's also a smattering of minor swearing, so this is certainly for teens rather than very young children.

The last few chapters were genuinely emotional. I was wiping a small tear out of my eye by the end.

Despite being a children's book, this is certainly great writing, and more than good enough to entertain this particular adult reader. I may have to seek out a few more of his, see if I have any left from my childhood collection hidden in the back of a cupboard somewhere. 

It's good to reconnect to some of the writers that made you the reader you are today, to see if they still measure up. Robert Westall certainly does.

PS, I know book 28 is missing if anyone is watching the numbers... I'm writing that up later, I haven't finished it yet