All Her Father's Guns, James Warner

An inconsistent, pleased-with-its-own-cleverness, shambling mess of a novel. Full of characters too caricatured to engage with or to like, its attempt to satirise gun culture, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the early 21st century GOP basically falls flat on its face. Physically, it's actually a thin novel, but it takes far (far) longer to wade through than you'd expect. By the end of it, I already only barely remembered its twisty, desperately flailing incoherence. And the coda, which tries to reframe one half of the novel as a reconstruction by the other half, felt like a post-modern slap in the face. Embarrassingly, I bought this one as a present - which makes it all the more annoying. One to avoid.

Love Is Blind, William Boyd

While more restricted in its scale than usual, Love Is Blind sits on the fictional biography shelf of Boyd's canon, taking in much of a single character's life, rather than a more focused, eventful interlude.

This time, it's the life of professional piano tuner, Brodie Moncur, who we first encounter in late 19th century Edinburgh. Charged with helping expand a piano selling business, he's sent to Paris, setting in motion a lifetime on the move, and entwining his path with that of opera singer, Lydia Blum. But Lydia's life is already bound to that of a brilliant, flawed Irish musician, John Kilbarron, forcing Brodie into years of compromise and subterfuge.

An outline of this novel does no justice to the detail Boyd that invests into Brodie's life and times. Whether it's the careful description of how he plies his trade, efficient travelogue on the countries and cities he lives in, or observations on societal change as the pace of life accelerates into the 20th century, Boyd's writing absorbs you into Brodie's world. For one, early on I doubted how interested I could be in the art of piano tuning, but it wasn't long before it became fascinating. I was reminded in this of a similar transformation in Roth's American Pastoral, where glove manufacture is similarly compellingly described.

If it lacks at all, it's only because the focus on characters is narrower, and it's shorter in historical scope than his other biographical works, where wars and larger mass movements come into view. But, as Boyd always is, it's still a very enjoyable and easy read. That's not a criticism, it's testament to his skill at so deftly writing an inviting other world.

Summary: it's been too long Mr Boyd - write faster!

Baghdad Central, Elliott Colla

Having seen the TV series, and being a fan of the crime subgenre "crime drama in an exotic / foreign locale", this was a shoe-in.

It's set in the "wild west" of the aftermath of 2003's falsely-prosecuted and calamitous invasion of Iraq, as the invaders try to rebuild the society they shattered for the sake of its tyrannical leadership. Its moral centre is Muhsin al-Khafaji, a man that the Iraqi state has already robbed of his wife and son, and for whom the US and UK invasion threatens to take much more. After being mistaken for a culpable member of the previous regime and brutalised in prison, he is co-opted into the process of rebuilding Iraq's police service. But, with a growing insurgency, collaboration with the invading coalition is precarious for al-Khafaji and for those around him. Especially when some of them are profiteering from the chaos, while others are using it with a very different endpoint in mind for Iraq.

Overall, this is great. It got a little too complicated for me to completely follow as it approached the end. But everything else works, so this was easy to forgive. I thought that one of its best aspects were the distressing vignettes describing daily life for Iraqis after the invasion. In just a page or two, each one is a study in how lives can be made powerless and desperate by the fallout of war. Alongside the central narrative, they provide a searing commentary on the stupidity, venal arrogance and unforgivable recklessness of "Gulf War II".

Having now read this book and watched its (excellent) adaptation, it's interesting to compare and contrast. On screen, the powerful vignettes are lost, presumably because the faster, rolling narrative of TV doesn't favour brief tangential interludes. But the plot is nicely straightened-out, facilitated by the addition of a snarling British antagonist to stand-in for the worst aspects of the invasion. While I should perhaps be offended - especially when the leading American characters are presented as honourably making the best of their government's mess - this change feels about right: letting us carry the can for a national stain we brought on ourselves.

The Golden Scales, Parker Bilal

Another day, another crime story set in an exotic foreign locale. This time the Cairo, and surrounds, familiar to its author, Bilal, the alias of Sudan-raised Jamal Mahjoub.

It's an efficient mix of crime sparked by modern money rubbing up against much older cultures, framed around a missing child and a missing footballer. While there's a certain familiarity for the reader in working out how the two strands are entwined, this is offset by solid writing backed-up by Bilal's personal experience.

I'll definitely be following up with its sequels.

Mr Loverman, Bernardine Evaristo

It's easy to take pot shots at prizes in the arts. Distilling the distinctive, diaphanous and diverse into a "Best Of" list is crass and hierarchical, and even risks imposing an accepted version of the world using works that are unrepresentative of the wider culture. But, at their best, prizes can work to throw light on an artist hitherto lost in art's ocean. So it is, for me anyway, with Evaristo. Winning the 2019 Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other has led me, and probably many others, first to it, and then to her back-catalogue, including Mr Loverman.

This time around, the protagonist is very male, and while the novel's chorus includes his wife and daughters, it's really all about Barrington Jedidiah Walker. Originally from Antigua, Barrington - Barry - is Windrush generation, made good through the 1980s as a property developer, and now successful and semi-retired. Also, Barry is gay, and closeted, something that his long-term beau, Morris, would like them both to rectify. However, after a lifetime of hiding his true self, Barry is struggling with how to change, with the consequences it will wreak for his family, and with the searing memories of less tolerant times. And while Barry procrastinates, his wife, Carmel, reflects on her own life, and how their situation has imprisoned her aspirations and happiness. But change is coming whether Barry is ready for it or not.

What a brilliant book. Principally through the voice that Evaristo gives to Barry’s thoughts, fears and desires. He’s a great character to be in the company of, and credibly well-rounded with his missteps and failings showing. Ditto the supporting cast of Morris, Carmel, Barry’s divergent daughters, and Carmel’s church group. Evaristo sketches the latter well, first as the harridens perceived by Barry, but then more clearly as supportive friends, much put-upon by the men in their lives. But, more or less, this is Barry’s book, and it’s difficult not to warm to, and be both amused and touched by his stumbling emergence from the closet. Even (or especially) as he self-aggrandisingly reports to Morris that, “I ain’t no homosexual, I am a … Barrysexual!”

Inland, Téa Obreht

Some books you race through, enjoying the whole journey and missing it when it's done. Meanwhile, some books you read to the end because you're hoping it gets better or makes sense there. Set in 19th century America, Inland straddles the divide by alternating the narrative between a straightforward and well-told tale of frontier life, and a largely incoherent but intermittently fascinating parallel tale involving camels. In the former, a wife and mother is stuck waiting at home, slowly coming to the realisation that her husband and sons may not be returning, while steadily falling prey to ghosts from her past. In the latter, an immigrant from the Ottoman Empire falls in with the real-life United States Camel Corps in a trek across the West, largely traced out in conversations with the dromedary camel he befriends. In principle, the latter could have been great (and is, though only sporadically), but Obreht goes out of her way to make it incomprensible, with characters with multiple names, uncertainty about who's a camel and who's a human, and far (far) too much about ghosts. But while reading it, I largely overlooked this in the expectation that the two narratives would come together and make complete sense. They do, but they don't, and the novel ends on a downbeat note, where one narrative strand resolves clearly, the other rather unravels, and the whole is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. But there is great writing most of the way here, but it feels a little wasted by the author's commitment to incoherence (they might say "mystery"). I'd go as far to say that the book would work much better with the second strand entirely expurgated.

Daemon's Departure

The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman

Unlike the first volume, which largely tees up His Dark Materials (HDM), this second volume of The Book Of Dust picks up afterwards, and sets a now 20-something Lyra and, more significantly, her daemon Pantalaimon, on another adventure against the revitalised Magisterium.

Motivated by a murder, mysterious goings-on in a distant desert, and the now-fractious relationship between Lyra and Pantalaimon, this is another exceptionally entertaining, fast-paced and highly imaginative journey through Pullman's rich alternative universe. As well as pulling through several other characters from La Belle Sauvage, it fleshes out Lyra's already rich world by sending her and her daemon on separate (!) journeys into Europe and the Middle East. In parallel, friends and foes are hunting them as the Magisterium rallies to counter threats to its theology and control.

Much as in HDM, Pullman continues to needle authoritarian forms of organised religion, but he has a number of enemies in his sights. The troubles in the war-torn Middle East, and the disinterest of Western powers, are laid bare on Lyra's travels. And perhaps surprisingly, the book also takes some well-deserved shots across the bows of the Ultra-rationalists and New Atheists. Even Boris Johnson attracts some of Pullman's ire with a dismissive reference to second-hand water cannons.

The only real downside to the book is that I've unwisely read it when the final volume of the trilogy ("to be concluded") has no official release date in sight, leaving me now chomping at the bit for Book Three.

However, if I can conclude on two niggles, ... Considering the magnitude of the events of HDM, both Lyra and her world are surprisingly unchanged. Confined within her own universe this time, it's largely left unmentioned that she's been to others, even to the Land Of The Dead, that she's met primordial angels and the alien Mulefa, and that she even (if unwittingly) killed "God". It's very easy to forget all this and to enjoy the novel, but it does sometimes feel like an elephant in the room. There's also a slightly queasy feeling around La Belle Sauvage's Malcolm and his attraction to Lyra.

Feminist Panoply

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo

A cross between a novel and a short story collection, GWO flits between the diverse lives of an interconnected cast of girls, women and others. Tied - chapter to chapter - to the interior concerns of these dramatists, activists, teachers, students, farmers, ..., the book rounds them out when they drift into the view of other characters.

What results is a fantastic cross-section of lived-in lives, and a tapestry of the struggles and joys - mostly, sadly, the former - from across the spectrum of the black British experience. Or so says this white, cis, hetero male reader - for whom it's a *very* pleasing own-perspective-free read.

As the title implies, the novel takes in identities hitherto unrepresented or actively written-out of the culture. But it does so with a definite lightness and fleetness of foot. The chapter written from the life of its Other character gently articulates their perspective and clearly stakes out their right to exist on their terms. But the novel is also broad and realistic enough to have a later character wryly puncture some of the activist language while still giving the respect due to marginalised identities.

By way of a character-limit-imposed summary, it's a brilliant read that I'd recommend to everyone, and a very worthy winner of the 2019 Booker. Having already read the novel it shared that prize with, Atwood's excellent follow-up to The Handmaid's Tale, while both are inclusive tours de force in their respective genres, it's clearly the more encompassing, overarching and relevant read.

And, against a backdrop of BLM and Trans-activism, and a pop-culture present that includes The Handmaid's Tale, Mrs America, I May Destroy You, and more, it feels giddily zeitgeisty.

More than nostalgia

The Rotters Club, Jonathan Coe

The first predecessor to Coe's recent Middle England (although more like a prequel to me given I'm reading them in the wrong order), The Rotters Club is a simply brilliant evocation of the political and cultural zeitgeist of England in the 1970s. Filtered largely through the lives of teenagers at high school (all middle-aged, appropriately enough, in Middle England), it's also - by turns - searing and hilarious on this formative life stage. While there are occasional nostalgic interludes, the novel has bigger fish to fry, with the trades unions and Tories, race relations and the IRA all in its sights. But much of its entertainment value comes from recognition of the teenaged incomprehension, self-importance and angst of its primary characters. While more heightened than my own "skooldaze", I definitely recognised the agonised feelings and the japes, and even some of the characters (our Harding was called Haig). And I also had a shuddering familiarity with the general complicity towards racism painfully traced out. On these facets, it's particularly excellent, but it's much more of a solid all-rounder. The steady buildup of its labour relations backdrop, that completes with the ascension of Margaret Thatcher, is another highlight. As does the infusion of the dark IRA thread, and the timely spectre of the Yorkshire Ripper. Overall, it's a novel that's impossible not to recommend.

Finally, one distinction from Middle England is that this book was written from a position of hindsight, while Coe's Brexit novel is practically reportage. This lets the political scaffolding of The Rotters Club sit half-finished, because we know what calamities happen next. It'll be interesting to see how the future treats the later novel. Except for the fact that we'll have to live through it first.

My First Brexit Novel

Middle England, Jonathan Coe

The first unambiguous Brexit novel that I've read. Running the better part of a decade, mostly before - but also after - the 2016 Brexit referendum, following about a dozen major characters in the approach and aftermath to this rolling, shambolic and toxic national tipping point.

In essence, it's a tragedy (obviously), leavened with many comic moments, and with a smidgen of hope at the end. Perhaps surprisingly, in spite of its subject the novel is a very enjoyable read, in part down to the recognisable, god-awful familiarity of the backdrop, but also Coe's skill with his characters and their narratives. He does a good job focusing on facets of England that illuminate the whole, for instance, a foodbank-using clown and a schoolgirl feud ultimately revealed as "immigrant" UK citizen vs. "native" Irish/EU citizen. He also weaves in an explicitly political strand, has a bit of fun with the literatti (his own tribe), and touches on our still-forming notions of gender. Which all sounds a lot, but it's never rushed, and it juggles these threads skilfully.

While told from a clear Remain perspective, doubtless reflective of the author (and his readers), Leave appears throughout the novel. Not, admittedly, always (ever?) in a favourable light, but my personal Brexit experience largely accords with Coe's handling of Leaver characters (though nowhere near as dramatically). There are doubtless missing Leaver perspectives, but an emphasis on xenophobia, and a minority role for tax-dodging elites, feels pretty reasonable to me.

As I understand it, the characters are drawn from previous novels by the author, but there didn't seem to be any requirement for familiarity with these. Although, based on this book, I will now be digging into his back-catalogue.

While, as noted, this is my first Brexit novel, I expect it's a portent of many more to follow. Something further to fill one with dread.

Imagining Climate Change

The Wall, John Lanchester

One of the many failures of our culture when it comes to possible climate change futures is in playing out the likely consequences of change. "The future" becomes one purely of temperature extremes, rainfall change and, sometimes, agricultural shortages. Numbers that, while meaningful, don't capture the imagination and aren't extrapolated to day-to-day changes in our lives. This makes the future look like somewhere in which we have to, for instance, make do on 10% less food and spend twice as much time indoors sheltering from excessive heat. This overlooks what such changes will actually mean societally, and how they will play out for the daily lives of people in different places on different means.

The Wall is, arguably, an attempt to put human flesh and feeling around one climate future. It's a relatively slim volume, and focused around a small cast, but it makes great strides in sketching out how climate change can reshape a whole society, and what consequences and choices it might impose.

The book opens, almost with sly nod to Game of Thrones, with its central character, Kavanagh, braced against the cold, up on the Wall and looking for Others. The Wall is Britain's response first to sea level rise, but more significantly to the waves of climate refugees displaced from their homes. Kavanagh's job, as a Defender on a two-year stint, is to stop the Others from breaching the Wall and reaching the relative safety within. In this future, it is the young that serve on the Wall, while the old, whose past inactions have caused the Change which drives it, are cowed and nostalgic for lost beaches. And this service comes with double jeopardy for the Defenders - the risk of harm while serving on the Wall, and the penalty of being cast out to sea if any Others break through on their watch. Both of which become more than mere risks for Kavanagh as his tour of duty unspools.

In spite of its relative brevity, this creates an unnerving future Britain. Through the drama it inflicts on its characters, it shows how, while civilization may not necessarily fall under climate change, its best features can easily be worn away. Kavanagh is a relatable Everyman, but even he stops himself thinking too deeply about the Others or why they are so desperate to break into Britain. However, his resentment at previous generations, including his own parents, for their abject failure to avoid the Change is much clearer. This future Britain may not be (completely) materially ruined, but the isolationism fostered by the Change, and the resulting loss of humanity in its citizens, marks its true devastation.

So not the cheeriest read, but recommended.

Stray observations:

• The climate future presented in the novel is an interesting one. The reader is first introduced to how cold it is, counter to ongoing global warming. However, it is later made clear that it’s much warmer elsewhere, which is suggestive of the cold in Britain being a result of changes in ocean circulation. The decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, for instance, is simulated to result in reduced warming in northwestern Europe relative to other locations. I don’t think that (m)any simulations would suggest strong cooling, but there’s something of a basis for the nature of the Change as it appears in the novel.
• A number of reviews have described The Wall as “this century’s 1984” or similar, presumably latching onto the fact that its future dystopia can be read as a warning for the present. And there’s certainly something prophetic in its world, but in terms of style and narrative the two books really don’t overlap. The Wall is far, far less didactic than 1984, and the better for it. The closer parallel is with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, with its similarly pared-back text and narrative, although The Wall gets the nod because its particular environmental calamity is more unambiguously related to our own. (The Road still wins out in terms of total doom, however.)
• In another sly nod, The Wall introduces a politician character with more than a passing resemblance to a certain British Prime Minister known for populism and lying. That said, the narrative ultimately gives him a more noble path than one might expect from this affinity, so perhaps I’m overinterpreting.
• Intriguingly from a “future technology” perspective, the Britain presented in The Wall runs off of nuclear power. It’s fleetingly mentioned, and never referred to again, so it’s difficult to know if the author means much by this. Admittedly, the changed local climate in Britain sounds less favourable to renewables like solar, but there could be more to this choice by the author.
• While an underpinning, and largely realised, feature of the world of The Wall is "civilization within, barbarism without", one of my bugbears about the IPCC scenarios that we use in climate change research is that, no matter how bad their futures get, things remain civilised. I think scenario designers might do well to read The Wall and reflect.

Big Crimes

Big Sky, Kate Atkinson

While we're probably overdue a standalone Atkinson novel that's not from one of her two ongoing series, it's always pleasing to crack open one of her Jackson Brody books. And Big Sky doesn't disappoint.

Though set largely around Scarborough and Whitby, and their fading seaside glories of tourist traps and out-of-time variety shows, Big Sky doesn't move very far from its familiar territory of connected crimes and Brody's quiet heroism. But it expertly blends in 2010s-relevant themes of people-trafficking, celebrity sex offenders, child-abuse and even, though subtly, Brexit. And does all these justice, and with a seeming effortlessness from Atkinson, that makes for a comfortable sort of challenging. She doesn't dwell on any salacious details of the crimes - as other, more questionable realms of the genre might - but equally doesn't leave the reader in any doubt about the depravity behind them. With Brody, Atkinson has a foil with which she can go dark while retaining a clear, positive morality, and with a degree of lightness, as her detective quips glass-half-empty asides on life and the damaged lives he sees around him.

It's very interesting to read this immediately after Belinda Bauer's Rubbernecker. There's a lot of superficial overlap (multiple viewpoints, connected crimes, grimly humourous), but both writers manage to retain their own distinct voices. Possibly Atkinson differs because, for all her weariness of human frailties, she remains more empathetic to her characters and their often circumscribed lives. In any case, for a reader, it's fantastic to have two such talents going at the same time. Roll on their next forays.

Autistic Detective

Rubbernecker, Belinda Bauer

Easily the best crime novel I read last year, and probably for the last couple of years, Snap by Belinda Bauer was a propulsively enjoyable ripped-from-the-headlines yarn, with marvellous characters and a pitch-black sense of humour. Bauer came to our attention, and I expect many other people's, when Snap was included in the longlist for the Booker Prize. But it was just the latest in a line of her books, of which Rubbernecker demonstrates that its brilliance wasn't a one-off.

Similarly borrowed-from-the-front-pages, it centres around Patrick, an anatomy student in Wales, living away from home and dealing with the challenges of Asperger's Syndrome. Not that Patrick quite sees things that way - it's everyone else who's making all the simple things complicated (including his struggling, and now somewhat distant, mother). Instead, Patrick is focused on the exercise, together with a group of fellow students, of dissecting "Bill", their corpse for the semester, and something of a conundrum. "Bill's" cause of death is alluding them all, but a chance discovery by the preternaturally-focused Patrick sets him off on a chain of investigation away from the dissecting table. One that's unwarranted as far as his university is concerned, annoying for his fellow students, and which attracts unwelcome attention elsewhere as Patrick homes in on what really happened to "Bill".

Much as with Snap, this is a headily enjoyable read. Bauer is just excellent at drip-feeding the plot such that "just one more chapter ..." becomes a run of them. Her character sketches really help again, with a well-drawn cast of engaging and sympathetic characters, balanced with some frequently comical wrong-uns. Inevitably, one can't avoid some comparison with Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but Bauer's handling of Patrick is confident and Rubbernecker doesn't suffer. It helps that it doesn't turn into a heart-warming tale of Patrick's normalisation. The only bit of a misstep it takes is with the rather late-stage (and, arguably, tangential) revelations about his family - there needed to be something here, but this was a bit of an overlarge something for me.

Anyway, zero qualms in recommending this excellent read.

Detecting the Savage Way

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño

I'm not one for long books. Especially when they meander aimlessly and the length appears to be beside the point. But this one, which is both very long and very meandery, was definitely worth it by the end.

But where to start? At first glance it's structurally an interrupted diary, bisected by, well, I'll come back to that. The two diary segments cover only a few eventful months in the life of a young Mexican, Juan García Madero, a budding poet and recent recruit to a movement that calls itself the Visceral Realists. In the first part of this diptych-diary, Juan becomes increasingly entrained into the obsessions of the group and with the ardent poets that drive it, principally Arturo Belano (sound familiar?) and Ulises Lima. This culminates in a violent confrontation that forces the protagonists to flee Mexico City, and which bisects the diary.

What follows, and what makes up almost ¾ of the novel, is an extended series of seemingly disconnected narratives, mostly told by unique voices, frequently without any immediately obvious continuity. These cover the following 20 years, as well as a geographical span from South America to Europe to Africa. In this "section", the novel almost challenges the reader to do the necessary detective work to pull together the wildly disparate tapestry of tales and random interludes.

On the surface, these diverse monologues are by people who have met, however briefly, Belano or Lima. They're people who pass them on the street, encounter them working, have a minor adventure with them, or even deeper personal contact. But in tracing the outlines of their lives over this extended period, these sporadic fragments become (to get navel-gazing about it) a wistful eulogy on the vicissitudes of life, of its highs and lows, of the losses incurred along the way, and the discovery, sometimes accidentally, of purpose and direction. By the end, the lives of Belano and Lima have spooled out in the unexpected ways that lives just do, and both reach their own equilibria with that.

The above summary may give the impression of a completely coherent read, but you do have to hang in there to let it build - and I'm still not 100% sure I got the right end of the stick. The poets' quest, post-Mexico City, in the second half of Madero's diary - essentially to dig through the life of a Mexican poet lost in the mists of time - mirrors in miniature the reader's own quest in The Savage Detectives' long middle section, but I might just be seeing patterns where none exist. The parallels between Arturo Belano's life, and that of the Roberto Bolaño who's written it, makes for yet another layer of interpretation.

Anyway, all of which, given my pedestrian tastes, makes this an unexpectedly enjoyable read. Recommended if you're in the mood for something long, discursive and potentially profound, but don't come knocking for a crime yarn - despite the title.

Finally, and this is a flippant observation, for a book about poets, The Savage Detectives is almost entirely (and blessedly) free of poems.

Daemon's Return

La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman

It's been years since I read Pullman's spectacularly imaginative trilogy, His Dark Materials, but it's still as memorable as ever. With its parallel, if familiar, universes, clever reworking of dark matter, epic (humanist) good vs. (religious) evil narrative, and it's unforgettable daemons, it's not a work that ever quite leaves you. Like The Lord of the Rings, its first world-building volume is its best, and like TLofR, it builds to a satisfying climactic good-vs.-evil showdown. But with less songs, thankfully.

So, it was with some trepidation that I picked up the first volume of a planned successor trilogy. But I needn't have worried - Pullman is as sure-footed as ever, and pulls off a great read even where the main destination of the tale is already known.

Set in "Lyra's Oxford", the version of Oxford in the parallel universe that kicks off Pullman's original trilogy, it centres around the everyday life of Malcolm, son of a publican. Into his life comes baby Lyra, entrusted in mysterious circumstances to a local convent where Malcolm performs odd-jobs. Her arrival sparks interest from both the Magisterium, the ecclesiastical wrong-uns of Pullman's universe, as well as Lyra's somehow distant father, Lord Asriel. Skirmishes between these forces steadily spill into Malcolm's world, ultimately forcing him to rescue Lyra in the face of an epic flood, and sending him and Lyra on a strange journey among the other forces underlying the world.

This latter journey is the only weak spot in what's otherwise a greatly enjoyable tale, and then only because it's arguably a tad too fantastical when set against the rest of the book (which is, of course, saying something). In every other way, La Belle Sauvage satisfies - it fleshes out Lyra's Oxford, and the daily life and politics within it, more completely; it makes Pullman's daemons even more intriguing; it gives the reader some enjoyable tradecraft when Malcolm becomes something of a spy; and it slowly and gently transforms Malcolm's ambivalent relationship with Alice, a seemingly surly girl working at his parents' pub, as they are swept down river with Lyra and forced to become her guardians. Also, while it shares HDM's antipathy to organised religion, here it presents religious characters who are genuinely good, principally the nuns, alongside non-religious ones who are not, making for a more nuanced and less antagonistic relationship with faith.

So, all for the good. Although making the down-river drift of Malcolm's canoe, La Belle Sauvage, a little less jarringly otherworldly might have made it even better for this reader.

In passing, amusingly, and echoing a joke made in the book, my phone autocorrects "La Belle Sauvage" to "La Belle Sausage".

A cosy read

Clock Dance, Anne Tyler


I'm not sure that this worked out quite like the author intended.

Beginning as a series of short, decade-spaced interludes in the life of Willa Drake, it hits the temporal brakes to focus on a short interlude in her early retirement. There (or "Then" I suppose), she becomes accidentally embroiled in the domestic life of Denise, her son's ex-girlfriend, when the latter is shot and injured. Flying halfway across the country to assist this near-stranger, Willa is slowly entrained into the lives of Denise, her daughter, Cheryl, and an extended community of quirky (naturally) neighbours.

This is an easy, rather enjoyable read, though it's very difficult to see what Tyler was aiming for. The opening interludes don't establish much other than the general feeling that Willa's life is mostly scripted by those around her. So her self-discovery when helping Denise seems to be what Tyler's after, but it's rather clichéd if so. She's usually got a bit more depth going on.

But, as I say, a warm and cosy read all the same, full of the sorts of recognisable oddball characters that you just know you'll come to love by the end.

(Finally, I should add that I'm also rather unclear on quite what the title of the novel is referring to. Sure, there's some passing of time, but it involves calendars, and not clocks.)

Irish Confessional

Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney

Regularly teetering on the brink of being too self-knowing and arch, this novel of relationships by first-time author Rooney finally remains on the right side of credibility. It does go to the edge, mind, in its tale of friends, Frances and Bobbi, and their complex relationship with wife and husband, Melissa and Nick. While touching on politics, and life in present-day Ireland, it's more a talky examination of relationships. In outline, it would sound a like a bit of a soap-opera, but it's written much better, although at times it does come over as unconvincing as characters divulge more thoughts and feelings than seems (in my humble, if buttoned-up, opinion) plausible. But, after a fumbled first few pages, I found it rather compelling and quite enjoyed it. Even if it does, at times, seem to be written by a very confessional alien species.

A Life in Shorts

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout

Easily one the best books that I've read in a while, this chronological series of snapshots - some with the eponymous Olive Kitteridge as their subject, some with her in the background - spins a wonderfully humane tapestry of modern life from seemingly quiet domestic lives. Olive herself is by turns droll, annoying, insightful, cruel and caring, with an always-on no-nonsense attitude throughout defining events of her life, that of her husband, Henry, and those of her friends or neighbours. By viewing characters from different perspectives, it underscores how we can easily underestimate or undervalue others around us by only seeing them in one light. It's not always an easy read, though, somewhat to my surprise, it's a little more gentle than the more unsparing miniseries dominated by Frances McDormand in the title role. That's a little more close to the bone in its unvarnished holding of a mirror to the world.

Slavery 2.0

Underground Airlines, Ben H. Winters

What if, instead of eliminating slavery, America came to an uncomfortable accommodation with it? One where northern state African Americans are free citizens but their Deep South brothers and sisters are held in Apartheid-like bondage as part of an otherwise modern capitalist economy. That's the premise of this rather impressive alternative history / detective novel mash-up.

Intriguingly, it’s told from the perspective of Victor, an African American forced to work as an undercover agent for the US Marshall service to track down escaped southern slaves. Intriguing both because of the conflict that this role understandably creates within him, and because of the resulting slow tease-out of the bureaucratic banality of the monstrous system he serves. In the absence of the Civil War, the Deep South has retained its slaves to become a commercial success, albeit one hemmed-in by the wider world’s ineffectual jitters about slavery.

Victor’s latest case has him seeking a slave called Jackdaw, and quickly brings him into contact with the "Underground Airlines", an organisation that helps escaped slaves disappear into the North. But the case proves much more complicated that usual, with Jackdaw first turning out to be more than a Southern slave on the run, and then winding up dead. But Victor sees an opportunity to leverage Jackdaw into freedom, and with the help from a young white mother, Martha, seeks to finish Jackdaw’s mission - not for the cause, but for himself. But his discoveries in the South change things much further than Victor ever imagined.

After a start which can be a little confusing as you work out what’s what in Victor’s world, this settles down nicely. That said, it misses a few tricks by being a little too thin about this alternative America, and its late introduction of a game-changing MacGuffin is both too out-of-the-blue and far too unexplored to take seriously. But it’s still entertaining and thoughtful, although it’s not in anything like the same league as fellow alternative history novels like Roth’s The Plot Against America or Chabon’s similarly detective-themed The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

Criminal World

Every Night I Dream Of Hell, Malcolm Mackay

It's difficult to entirely pin down what I like so much about Mackay's Glasgow-set crime series. It's certainly not down to its locale - it's written in such a way that, bar some familiar names, it's practically placeless. And it's not the characters who, while often engaging because of their line of "work", are rather straightforward and practical sorts. And while, yes, the narratives are propulsive, they're not enough on their own to explain why all of his books have proven such catnip to me. I can only think that it's all of the above, alchemically combining into crime yarns of quite unique and compelling flavour. And this one's no exception, seemingly effortlessly building on the crimes and criminals of its predecessors, without feeling the least bit tired or over-familiar. I'll definitely be chasing down its successor volumes.