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.

Inner voice

The Grauniad asks ...

Describe how you express your inner thoughts - is it an internal monologue or something more abstract like sound or shapes?

My most coherent inner thoughts are expressed, as the question poses, as an internal monologue. While this manifests as if it's sound, i.e. it is not dissimilar to hearing an external voice, there is never any confusion between it and sound. In that sense, it seems a little like sound in dreams, where events are not presented in silence, but somehow there's an indefinite qualitative difference with actual sound. Possibly, at some fundamental level so that, even when deep in a dream, the mind is able to separate internal fiction from a real external danger or alarm. One feeling that I do frequently have when thinking with my inner voice is that there's some nonverbal part of my mind running ahead of the voice. This feels like a symbolic chain of thought, and it's almost as if the narrative part of me is following in its wake, struggling a little to keep up. Sometimes it even feels like my inner voice skips over something that's already been thought by this deeper (and faster) layer, just to keep up with it. None of which particularly surprises me. As a biologist, I'd expect something like this sort of nonverbal chain of thought to be an inheritance from our animal ancestors. I imagine that many of them have a consciousness like our own in many respects (emotions, choices, the eerie sense of being here), but without a verbal layer sitting on top. Although I do wonder if some particularly advanced animals, whales and primates, may have the rudiments of the same. Returning to the question, my perception of conscious words on top of semi-conscious symbols may be a function of my working life. Much of my activity involves words, either as emails, reports, papers or presentations. Perhaps, if you don't need to use words so much moment to moment, you have a better connection with what I've described as symbolic. It's obviously not possible to exist as a modern human without language, but it maybe doesn't have to be as all-encompassing as it is for a now-instinctive writer like me. That said, when I'm doing manual tasks (particularly so when quickly), I don't have an inner voice narrating things. But I know that some people do have a more continuous inner voice, commenting on their conscious experience regardless, or at least so they perceive. In any case, it might be that the majority of responders to this question are precisely those with a more verbal mode of thinking.

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.

Music As Muse

Greetings From Bury Park, Sarfraz Manzoor

As a fan of Manzoor from his journalism and Late Review appearances, this had been on my radar for a while (it's not a new book, so quite a while). But it took bring prompted by the release of a fictionalised film of it to finally get my arse in gear (= press the right buttons on the Amazon website).

Presented as chapters with either a chronological or thematic narrative, it's primarily about Manzoor's early life in Luton, and his migrant family's struggles to adjust both to the endemic racism they encounter and to the intergenerational strains between parents raised in one culture and their children in another. Anyone paying attention to UK culture over the last 30+ years will be somewhat familiar with both, but with a book, Manzoor is able to explain and explore it much more deeply.

On which point, the film does make for a rather superficial take on Manzoor's family life, almost stereotypical in terms of migrant family bingo: tyrannical father, tick, subservient mother, tick, repressed sister, tick, etc. The book is far more nuanced, with Manzoor's father, in particular, afforded a much richer treatment. While he does initially appear as that "old country" tyrant, Manzoor's telling of his life, his striving for a better one for his family, and ultimately his achieving of some peace presents a more complete and sympathetic portrait.

In being richer, the book's less heavy on Bruce Springsteen than the film. He's important, but not a dominating gimmick. It's definitely a better balance.

Finally, as Manzoor and I are almost the same age, the book also serves up some enjoyable nostalgia of the 70s and 80s. And while I haven't experienced even a fraction of the strife and struggle that he has, his feelings of being far away from the centre of things were very familiar.

Definitely recommended.

Forged Apology

Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Lee Israel

Now, as its cover notes, "A Major Motion Picture", this slim memoir serves as an excellent - and delightfully acid - complement to the fine work of Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, it's a memoir by the biographer Lee Israel of her foray into the forgery of celebrity correspondence. At a low financial ebb after a disastrously rushed biography of Estée Lauder, Israel almost accidentally blunders into this secondary career. Initially through the selling of embellished letters, she ultimately creates them wholesale, for writers including Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker (after whom the book draws its title). With some attention to detail, including period typewriters plus solid impersonation, as well as the insertion of wicked details, her work becomes a money-spinner within the dubious world of celebrity memorabilia. Inevitably, after the rise comes the fall, but not before a highly enjoyable reveal of the tricks of the trade. Israel is absolutely unrepentant in her telling, which makes for a gleeful read, though one that lightly glosses over the straightened circumstances that led her to crime in the first place.

Viewers of the film might be a little annoyed to discover its changes to certain details of Israel's story (most obviously around a feline character), but I think it stands up well despite these minor tweaks. And I'd simply never have read and enjoyed this delicious takedown of the lucrative celebrity memorabilia market / minor meditation on "getting into character" if I hadn't seen the excellent film adaptation first.

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.)

Galactic Central Point

Galactic Center Companion, Gregory Benford

It was many years ago, and over many years, that I read the six Galactic Centre novels that form the subject for this compact “study guide”. But despite the passage of time, Benford's galaxy-spanning tale of humanity's struggles against implacably superior “mechanicals”, largely set in the vicinity of the “Eater” at the Milky Way's centre, still sticks in my mind. 

In part background from Benford on his thinking behind his series, in part reviews of the full series by critics, and in part actual scientific work by Benford on the Galactic Centre. But the main reason to recommend is the new (to me, anyway) short stories set within it. Especially “A Hunger For The Infinite”, which revisits my favourite of Benford's creations, the Mantis, a mechanical intelligence that both persecutes the humans it meets while drawing artistic inspiration from them. 

I really rather enjoy Benford's penchant for imagining how non-humans might see the world, and it's nice to be reminded of how far his Galactic Centre series takes this. Particularly in the very strange ecosystems and intelligences around the Centre's dominating black hole. Benford takes the opportunity presented by the new stories here to flesh his ideas on these out a little further than the mech-focused novels could. 

Overall, this companion probably isn't much good for newcomers to his works, but for those familiar with them, it serves as a nice reminder of its pleasures, while offering up a few new nibbles to refresh the taste buds.

Green Antarctica

Austral, Paul McAuley

Against the backdrop of a thawed Antarctica, prison guard Austral, herself a former offender and a genetically-modified “huskie”, gazumps her criminal accomplices and kidnaps the niece of a visiting dignitary. Partly to protect her, and partly to negotiate passage off Antarctica with the girl’s uncle, with whom Austral shares a family connection. The novel then follows the pair’s adventures as they cross the Antarctic Peninsula avoiding recapture while meeting up with the assorted people who now make the post-glacial habitat their home.

I really thought that I’d enjoy this novel more. It’s set in the less-explored space of accommodated climate change, it has a rather unexpected take on geoengineering, and presents an arguably positive approach, that of the “Ecopoets”, to adaptation to a warmed world. Of which, it’s a nice idea to present geoengineering as something that just didn’t work fast enough rather than being “Morally Unconscionable”, and I really liked that the novel’s “environmentalists” have worked with the grain of climate change to green Antarctica, and to do so through genetic engineering. And in marrying all this with a narrative fed by a modified human, as well as a wider backdrop of the corporate betrayal of both huskies and Antarctica, I thought it would be more successful than it is. Instead, it’s too much of an episodic “road trip”, where the sequential hook-ups seem a lazy way to explore the world. And where one never quite buys the conceit that the protagonist would be able to escape detection so well.

So, while it’s very nicely ambitious (so far, so McAuley), but just not as narratively satisfying as I’m used to with him.

Android vs. Windows Phone

Now that I’ve had my (Chinese government-sponsored) Huawei P20 Pro phone for a few months, I’ve used it enough to judge it - well, its operating system - against that of my previous Windows Phones.

• Aesthetically, there's simply no competition; Android remains an ugly rip-off of Apple's iOS with a minimal attempt to do any more than just show apps; and, like iOS, it doesn't allow anything other than egalitarian, all-apps-are-equal mediocrity in which every app is allocated the same screen space, and the only way to delineate their importance is organising them onto different home page screens
• Windows Phone, by contrast, allowed app tiles to be a range of sizes, including with enough screen real estate to permit them communicate more completely with the user, it let the user tessellate them neatly into groups (e-mail, social media, phone functions), and allowed the user to keep all of their regularly-used apps on a single, elegant scrolling screen 
• Functionally, there's really nothing like the live tiles of Windows, you just get a coloured dot that indicates that there's something up with a particular app; as well as being less noticeable, the meaning of the dot colour is opaque much of the time; and sometimes a dot appears that just won’t go away; the notification pull-down does serve some of this functionality, but it’s just not as convenient as having a tile tell you directly what’s going on 
• While app overload is an issue with Android and iOS, there is, on my phone anyway, an attempt to stow away less-used apps via “Drawers”, but they're completely inelegant compared to Windows’ solution of having a full list of all apps (organised alphabetically, and with a neat way of skipping quickly) accessible to the right of the start menu; similarly to Windows, Android allows apps to alternatively be put in groups that occupy a single app spot on the home screen 
• Windows’ customisable start menu itself is something I really do miss; I'd got a nice set of differently sized tiles, arranged in a convenient order, and with a nice rhino-based wallpaper; Android - away from Windows launchers, which I've yet to try - looks positively amateurish by contrast; it's an interface designed by a committee, and so has achieved the lowest common denominator in appearance - actually, as it just ripped off iOS to get here, it's even lower than that 
• Doubtless in part because no one was writing apps other than Microsoft itself, the consistency and linking up between apps is much greater in Windows Phone than in Android; in particular, the contacts app is particularly good in Windows Phone, serving as a solid hub for managing communications across and between different apps or media; the corresponding Android app is relatively featureless, managed to mangle more than a few contacts when they were copied over, and still seems to forget contacts sporadically (it doesn’t know who C is, for instance); more generally, apps just feel isolated from one another 
• (As an aside, having used iOS quite a bit through an iPad, and more recently via C's new iPhone, it feels to me that Google just hasn't made as much of an effort as Apple have and (by necessity) Microsoft did in creating a joined up / seamless user interface experience; although I'm not a huge fan of iOS - and for some of the same reasons I'm irked by Android - it runs a much tighter ship than Android on this score)
• All that said, a healthy app ecosystem is a huge plus for Android; it's quite a change to finally know that there really is an app for that; Windows Phone’s coverage was always flaky, increasingly so with time, and even Microsoft bailed on some of its own apps (e.g. song recognition) while the platform was a going (if limping) concern 
• And all *that* said, my app experience to date is very far from frictionless; third party apps are routinely full of ads, lacking in expected functionality, expensive to upgrade, and of such uncertain quality that one is inhibited from paying to find out; the upshot of which is that I find myself sticking with apps from known providers; so, much as I'd always suspected, the so-called “app gap” that pundits would always dismiss Windows Phone for is, to a large degree, a tempting mirage and no more 
• But it is the case that it's nice to finally have apps for activities that I've hitherto missed out on, and even nicer to have familiar apps that are still being given the love and support they need; Google Maps, for instance, long used on my desktop, is a joy to use on my phone, while HERE Maps on Windows Phone was becoming quite dusty (e.g. it didn’t even have a way of selecting mode of transport - it was by road or nothing) 
• And I have really benefited from a few paid apps to move me across from Windows Phone, and get my music properly sorted (iSyncr); they’ve done a grand job in getting me seamlessly working in Android; although it’s still annoying that my Windows Phone WhatsApp account has to stay there 
• Notwithstanding all of the above improvements that my new phone has brought, I'd still prefer to be enthralled by Windows Phone's stylish and functional slickness; it's difficult not to see Android's persistence as another example of market share trumping product quality; even today, VHS can still beat Betamax 

I should add that, while Android is something of a Curate’s Egg, and largely a come-down from Windows Phone for me, the hardware of my new phone is really quite good. As expected, it has an excellent camera, but then I did buy it for just that. But it also handles Android slickly, and has an excellent battery life. Assuming I don’t hammer it, I can comfortably go 2 days without charging it.

It would have done a great job with Windows Phone as its OS ...

Canine Noir

Irontown Blues, John Varley

A long time in the making, this is the latest in Varley’s rather loose series of novels and short stories set in the “Eight Worlds”, easily one of my favourite science fiction worlds. Set (almost) entirely on the Moon, or “Luna” as its residents invariably call it, the tale begins as full-on noir with a private detective, Bach, interviewing a seeming femme fatale, under the sleepy gaze of his faithful hound, Sherlock. Most of the rest of the novel serves to reverse the reader’s expectations from this kick-off, with the noir slowly evaporating as the true nature of the “crime” is slowly – very slowly – revealed, and with Sherlock, actually a genetically-enhanced dog, becoming a key narrative voice (aided by an interjecting translator). This latter turn works better than one might expect, and getting into it takes up the time that one might otherwise expect a noir tale to require. Here, the tale is really rather slight in the end, and it leans rather heavily on the heavy-lifting done by earlier novels, although with a contemplation of post-traumatic stress. It’s also disappointingly light on the Invaders, Varley’s mysterious gas giant aliens who’ve effectively evicted humanity from Earth. So a much thinner read than his earlier “Eight Worlds” works, but not without charm, including, most obviously, a real love for dogs.

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 Parable

The Consuming Fire, John Scalzi

While my last Scalzi was a bit of a disappointment, the predecessor to this novel was a very enjoyable blast. A classic space opera, set in an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse, it was as much about it's colourful cast and their political machinations as it was about the disaster facing them all.

This time, disaster has arrived and the Interdependency is fragmenting, but Emprox Grayland II continues to be threatened as much by grasping political rivals. Underestimated as a naïve ingenue, she marshals her loyal friends to surprise her enemies, while striving to give her citizens the best chance of weathering the storm.

What it lacks in big surprises is more than made up for by Scalzi's inventive twists and turns that keep the reader guessing how (the extremely likeable) Grayland will beat the odds. It's also a joy as a thinly veiled parable for our climate changing times, especially the venality of those characters trying to turn a buck off the unfolding disaster. And it's all done with a brilliant lightness of touch, frequently an enjoyably profane one. Best of all, it's not done yet. Strongly recommended (... for space opera fans).

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.