Tag Archives: Book review

Book review

The War in the Air, by H G Wells, 1907

I was intending to take a break from Wells, but this novel jumped out at me from the shelves of a second hand bookshop, and as it wasn’t one I had heard of before, let alone read, I thought it worth the £1 investment!war

It is interesting how the reputations of writers and their works evolve over time. In the publisher’s introduction to this 1967 Penguin edition, written much nearer to the time of Well’s death than today – and even slightly nearer to the date the novel was first published than today – Wells’s “chief novels” are listed as “Ann Veronica, (109) Tono-Bungay, (141) The World of William Clissold (4), Brynhild, (3) Dolores (now published as Apropos of Dolores (3)), and The Holy Terror (2)”.

Now be honest, how many of these novels have you heard of, let alone read? This is a Penguin edition remember, not some obscure publisher wanting to promote Wells’ back catalogue. The numbers in brackets are the number of reviews each book has received on Goodreads – by comparison the results for three books not mentioned in this introduction are 8,473 – The Time Machine; 5,726 – War of the Worlds; 4,322 – ‘The Invisible Man’.

Why did Penguin focus on these now largely forgotten novels, and ignore his science fiction – in the introduction to one of his science fiction novels? It is not the case that the more popular novels I have mentioned have only recently become popular – they have been in print since first published, and formed the basis of many films, television programmes, sequels, and of course radio adaptations?  Usually I can offer some speculation on these questions, but this time I am completely stumped? Anyone?

‘The War in the Air’ (66), another invasion novel, is subtitled ‘And particularly how Mr Bert Smallways fared while it lasted’. The novel is Wells’s speculation on how human flight, just taking off (if you will excuse the pun) when written, will affect warfare. The novel is a strange mixture of fairly low comedy – much of it is written as the misadventures of Wells’s everyman character, as sort of English Good Soldier Schweik – and combat scenes. Wells’s predictions are partly wrong – aerial combat did not develop the way he thought it might, largely due to the practical limitations of airships – and partly completely right, in terms of the devastation of global war. The comedy doesn’t really work, and fits uncomfortably with the war scenes, which explains I think why this novel is largely forgotten while others such as ‘War of the Worlds’ continue to grip our collective imagination.

Steampunk aficionados have claimed this text as one of their own but even this community of readers will find it hard to enjoy much in this labouring and poorly constructed novel.

Standard
Book review, First World War, H H Munro, invasion literature, Saki, When William Came

When William Came, by H H Munro (Saki) 1913

More invasion literature, this time a long short story or novella by a writer more traditionally associated with humour, albeit of the more biting kind. I originally read ‘When William Came‘ many years ago, and it is one of those stories that sticks in your head, particularly the final vivid image of resistance and rebellion. when william came

Let me explain. In the years running up to the First World War, there was a common understanding that a global conflict was coming. Initially this was a speculative idea – “what if there is a global war?” –  but after much repetition it become more a question of “When there is a global war…” This idea in other words became part of the political and cultural landscape, accepted as a truism. Novels were written about how the conflict might start and pan out, and a particular focus was on the UK’s lack of preparation. There was also a fashion for novels that saw the country quickly defeated by a technologically and militarily superior alien force (‘War of the Worlds’ for example) with the bulldog spirit emerging at the end to fight back. Other perspectives focussed on the precise nature of our enemies’ preparations – see ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ by Erskine Childers for example.

‘When William Came’ (William, in this context, being Kaiser Wilhelm) opens with the return to the UK of Murray Yeovil, a wandering aristocratic Englishman. He has been very unwell on his travels, and thus isolated from the catastrophic news from home. This provides an opening for a recount of the story of the UK’s recent conquest. A swift and decisive land invasion and an equally destructive naval battle, in which the dispersed British fleet was destroyed by superior German technology, followed by the flight of the royal family and much of the upper classes to imperial India, left the UK defeated and conquered. A few months has passed, and London is slowly accommodating the German victors. Society is divided between those prepared to put up with the demands made by the Germans – new street signs, higher taxes, new currency, German culture, etc – and those who either retreat to the country or emigrate.

Resistance has not entirely faded from the conquered British spirit, and there are several discussions about how the UK could throw off the German oppressor, possibly using the forces of the Empire. These are given short shrift – the German stranglehold on the UK is overwhelming and any resistance by Australia or Canada for example would see their swift defeat in turn. Munro is arguing that there will be no second chances – defeat is the end of the Empire. Yeovil despairs at the decadence of British society that has led to this situation – the novel is a thinly disguised plea for rearmament and the introduction of national service.

Anti-semitism is a feature of far too many novels of this period, and Saki’s portrait of Jewish characters and society in this novel is hard to stomach at times. He goes far beyond the casual anti-semitism of everyday Edwardian language and perpetuates many of the classic anti-semitic tropes that were widely accepted at the time but no less distressing and damaging for all that. I still haven’t worked out whether this damages the novel overall for me sufficiently to detract from the value of Munro’s writing – it is not an integral part of the novel, but it is sufficiently pervasive to be pretty damaging, not something that can be skipped over as ‘just the way people spoke back then’. This is also not a question of Munro giving anti-semitic ideas to a character as part of their portrayal – this is a much more didactic novel than that. I am not a proponent of censorship of novels featuring language or ideas we no longer find acceptable, but there are some novels that should be left to gather dust.

Which is a pity, because ‘When William Came’ is otherwise a powerful portrait of a conquered and cowed Britain, emasculated by defeat. (Yeovil’s wife openly flirts with other men in front of her husband, who seems untroubled by her disloyalty.) The closing scene in which the youth of the country defy the invaders has been criticised (on Goodreads) as being ridiculous or anti-climatic, but I found it powerful and vivid. The fact that Munro went on to die in the imminent Great War gives the novel a greater poignancy.

This is undoubtedly a literary curiosity, and unrepresentative of Saki’s oeuvre, his waspish short stories. It is I think an important representative of the invasion literature genre – one that accepts war as inevitable, and expresses fear for Britain’s preparedness. It is however unlike many other examples in that the war is not described, and avoids any reference to the physical destruction many other novels anticipate (London seems barely touched). I can’t honestly recommend it unless you have a particular interest in these topics and a strong stomach for anti-Semitism.

Standard
Book review, Crime, gothic fiction, Laura Purcell, The Silent Companions

The Silent Companions, by Laura Purcell, 2017

This was a holiday, ‘I need something to read that isn’t too serious’ read, but to be honest it is not the kind of novel I would usually bother with, even notwithstanding the endorsement of the Zoe Ball Book Club. This is one of those novels where the book cover and blurb tell you almost everything you need to know:

purcell
“When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . .”
I appreciate that sometimes dramatic clichés are hard to avoid. But this novel embraces them with ardour.
In Jane Austen’s satire on this genre, ‘Northanger Abbey’, the heroine Catherine Morland describes why she is not frightened to be visiting the Abbey, despite her romantic fancies:
“Besides, it has never been uninhabited and left deserted for years, and then the family come back to it unawares without giving any notice, as generally happens“.
You have guessed it, this is precisely what happens at the opening of ‘The Silent Companions’, when with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, Elsie returns to the spooky ancestral home with only her husband’s cousin for company. Or so she thinks. The husband’s cousin has been dispossessed by the marriage and siring of an heir, so one would expect her to be a figure of suspicion when the inevitable mysterious and eerie events start to occur. But of course that never happens.

You have to wonder whether Austen would have thought her satirical observations on the gothic novel would remain relevant 200 years on?
Locked doors, painted wooden figures that bear a striking resemblance to other characters and whose eyes follow you around the room, a moody housekeeper, sullen villagers, mental asylum patients struck dumb with fear, things that almost literally go bump in the night – there really isn’t a cliché left unmined in this gothic horror story. Oh, not forgetting the shop that mysteriously appears and then can’t be found the next day – isn’t that borrowed from ‘Gremlins’?

The author never quite decides if she is writing a crime novel or a supernatural thriller. There is an entirely predictable, common-sense whodunit ending in which we are led to believe that the novel’s events are all wrapped up, but a moment’s consideration reminds the reader that many of those events have in fact not been explained, and could only have had a supernatural explanation, making the attempt to provide a realistic explanation redundant.

It will be clear by now this is not a recommended read. It is lazy generic fiction and a waste of the reader’s time.

Standard
19th Century literature, Book review, George Orwell, H G Wells, science fiction', The Time Machine

The Time Machine by H G Wells,1895

Continuing with my Wells-athon, all of which have been quite short novels, I now turn to the hugely influential ‘The Time Machine’.

Time travel was not a new concept, but Wells’s novel was one of the earliest on this theme, and established some concepts and principles that remain with us. having said that, I found the behaviour of Wells’ s protagonist in many ways puzzling. If you had invented a time machine, what would you do? Where would you go? Would you go back to the nativity, to the Globe in 1605, to assassinate Hitler? Or would you travel 800,000 years into the future, as Wells’ time traveller does, without packing a sandwich, let alone a camera or a weapon? I know that is a ridiculously literal response to a science fiction story, but good science fiction is above all plausible. If I could forward travel in time I would like to know how society reshapes itself in 100 years, what new technology is developed, whether extra-terrestrial life is encountered, so many other things – but 800,000 years?? Given that the existing span of human civilization can be measured in single-figure thousands of years, it seems wildly optimistic to imagine that humans will still be around this far into the future.

I appreciate I am still being too literal – time travel is simply a device to allow Wells to speculate on how human society will evolve, and we need not get too absorbed with the precise date – this is simply the vaguely distant future. In this future humans have evolved into two distinct races, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Morlocks live underground, and predate upon the simple-minded Eloi. Society is decaying terminally. Into this world the time traveller is pitched, loses his machine, and is forced to confront his slowly dawning realisation that this is no Utopia he had hoped man would have built for himself.

Wells’s conception of time travel is quaint. It doesn’t involve Government-led endeavours and vast resources – an independent inventor working in his shed is able to master the feat after a few years of study. He sets off in an extraordinarily blase fashion, making no preparation whatsover – this is a quick jaunt into the future, not an expedition risking life and limb, back in time for a quick bath and dinner at eight. Victorians were of course great explorers, and often quite eccentric into the bargain, but Wells’ s time traveller takes this to the extreme.

One of the most distinctive features of Wells’ writing is his focus on the personal, the everyday, even when his themes are global or astronomical. As I mentioned in my review of ‘War of the Worlds’, the Martian conflict is constrained within the English Home Counties, and described from the limited perspective of two individual observers. The scenes from ‘The Invisible Man’ are all rooted in suburban and rural England. Kipps and Mr Polly follow the same pattern – his protagonists are everymen. It is no coincidence that the central characters in ‘The War of the Worlds’ and ‘The Time Machine’ are both unnamed. This allows them to act as representatives of their class and time.

However, politically, ‘The Time Machine’ is a difficult book. Wells is commonly considered as a socialist, but his portrait of a future in which the working class has become a cannibalistic underground monster, preying on the weak and enfeebled middle classes, is profoundly pessimistic. It not only expresses “Wells’s horror at the realities of 19th-century class relations, but also his fears about what utopian socialism and communism were offering in their place” (Matthew Taunton). It is hard to travel back from the dystopia of 800,000 to 1895 and find a way to avoid this co-evolution and class war.

It’s been interesting to revisit Wells, but I remain ambivalent about his status as a writer. Influential, without question. I think his social comedies have aged less well than his science fiction. But if I ever am at a loss to put into words my thoughts and feelings about a novel or a writer, there is always one reliable solution, and that is to turn to George Orwell. Try it – he almost always has something sensible and interesting to say about any author of his time or before. Reliably, he puts his finger on this sense of unease. In ‘Wells, Hitler and the World State’, published in Horizon in 1941, he wrote:

“Thinking people who were born about the beginning of this century are in some sense Wells’s own creation… I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much. The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed.”

But he goes on to say

“the singleness of mind, the one-sided imagination that made him seem like an inspired prophet in the Edwardian age, make him a shallow, inadequate thinker now…. Back in the nineteen-hundreds it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H. G. Wells….But because he belonged to the nineteenth century and to a non-military nation and class, he could not grasp the tremendous strength of the old world… He was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity. “

Orwell anatomises with extraordinary precision why Wells’s utilitarian version of socialism had not come to pass, even though the scientific advances he anticipated had been realised and indeed exceeded:

“Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to slay them…Wells is too sane to understand the modern world. The succession of lower-middle-class novels which are his greatest achievement stopped short at the other war and never really began again, and since 1920 he has squandered his talents in slaying paper dragons. But how much it is, after all, to have any talents to squander.”

“Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present“. Wow.

 

 

 

Standard
Book review, China Meiville, Crime, The City and the City, Weird fiction

The City and the City, by China Meiville, 2009

When reading this review, if you do, please remember my policy on spoilers – which is that I will probably use them. I don’t do so deliberately, I just find it hard to write comprehensively about something I have read without writing about the things that other readers might consider spoilers (bearing in mind of course that there is no meivilleuniversally agreed definition of what constitutes a spoiler in the first place). ‘The City and the City‘ is particularly difficult to review without reference to the central concept. If you avoid blurbs, plot summaries, reviews, tv adaptations etc, and read this novel without any preconceptions (I would agree by the way that a ‘pure’ approach to reading any novel is impossible – the reader will be influenced by their knowledge of the author, the cover illustration, etc) you become slowly aware that there is something unusual about the setting.

The central concept in this otherwise orthodox police procedural novel is extraordinary. Inspector Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad in the central European country of Besźel, investigates the murder of a foreign student. The victim was involved in debates about the complex relationship between Besźel and its neighbour and rival Ul Qoma. From early on there are some unusual aspects of Borlu’s narration. He talks about ‘unseeing’ a passerby, with no explanation of what this means. Borlu is Beszel born and bred, so his instincts as a native are deeply ingrained – he sees nothing out of the ordinary in what follows. Slowly, the true nature of Beszel and Ul Qoma’s unique relationship is revealed. The cities occupy the same geographical space, but preserve their separation through rigid adherence to ‘unseeing’ – being aware of but refusing to acknowledge the existence of the other – its buildings, vehicles, citizens and so on. This practice is enforced by a sinister entity known as Breach. Separation is assisted by differences between the city and the city – clothing, architecture, even gait. Residents are taught from childhood to recognise things belonging to the other city without actually seeing them. Ignoring the separation, even by accident, is called “breaching” – a serious and swiftly punished crime.

I suspect Meiville drew inspiration for this separate but the same concept from the situation in the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s and 90s, where neighbouring countries fought bitterly over small areas of land. This separation could have arisen from this kind of conflict, although we are told it dates to before recorded European history. Inevitably there are many complications to this way of life. The cities have areas where ownership is unclear, and where people of both cities walk and drive alongside one another. The only way one can legally pass from one city to another is through border control – even though such journeys involve returning to the same physical space one has just left.

Meiville’s construction of this world is thorough – he thinks through all the practical aspects (what if there is a traffic collision between cars from the different cities?) – this is not just a whimsical concept but a fact of everyday life for the citizens of the two cities, which make investigation of cross-border crime a logistical and conceptual nightmare.

Within this world, the murder investigation unfolds, and it is not a criticism to say that in this respect the novel is a traditional police procedural. Suspects are interviewed, other crimes are discovered, hidden forces interfere with the investigation, all in a routine manner. This is not of course a simple murder, even if where it was committed had been a less complex environment. A conventional buddy relationship develops between Borlu and his Ul Qoma partner, and Borlu’s sidekick does what every good sidekick does, providing back-up and insight without stealing the limelight.

In crossing genre boundaries, any author runs the risk of pleasing fans of neither original genre. Meiville does what he can to mitigate this risk, but his weird fiction fans are the most likely to have been disappointed – other than the setting or context, this is a very recognisable world. I really enjoyed it, and while I recognise it is probably not typical of Meiville’s work, I will be interested to see to what extent that is true, or whether my fairly uninformed impressions of this author are correct.

Standard
Book review, Death, Discworld, fantasy, Mort, science fiction', Terry Pratchett

Mort, (Discworld 4) by Terry Pratchett, 1987

If you are still counting, ‘Mort’ is the fourth novel in the Discworld series. It is also the first novel in the series where Death is a central character – some people read the books thematically like that (i.e Death 1, 2 etc.).

Anyway, experiencing the need to get out a bit more and live, Death takes an apprentice, Mortimer, aka Mort (see what he did there?) to help with the harvesting of souls. And mucking out Binky’s stable. There is also the nod and a wink promise in the unwritten job description of taking over the family business when Death finally retires, however unlikely that sounds. (If that is the bit that sounds unlikely, whereas Death taking an apprentice you are OK with, then I would question your grip on reality!mort)

One of the things readers of the Discworld novels know is that Sir Terry was a bit of a philosopher. He had important insights into the way the world works, and shared them with us through the medium of humour. ‘Mort’ includes plenty of examples of this, because there are few more serious or profound issues to meditate on than death itself (or indeed, Death himself). Death doesn’t kill people, he is just there when they die, and eases their passage into the beyond. People react to Death’s arrival in a range of ways, from anger to annoyance, surprise, resignation, and occasionally with a welcome.  Sir Terry’s insights range across all of life’s big issues, and most of the small ones – this sentence jumped out at me for example:

“People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it”.

Which is a bit wonderful don’t you think?

A quick plot synopsis for those of you who expect that kind of thing in a book review. Once his initial stable cleaning duties have been completed, Mort gets to accompany Death on ‘the duties’. In Sto Lat King Olerve is due to be assassinated, but in the course of their otherwise successful visit Mort falls heavily for the King’s daughter, Keli. Later on a unscheduled half day off Mort tries to return to Sto Lat to find out whether the princess really saw him, in the course of which he meets Igneous Cutwell, a young wizard, whom he hopes can help explain his developing tendency to manifest magical powers such as walking through walls. We can tell that Mort is becoming like his master, but he remains blithely unaware of it, for now.

Death then decides that Mort is ready to perform the Duty on his own, and sends him to collect three lives. Goodie Hamstring, a witch from Lancre is very understanding about his inexperience, as is Abbot Lobsang, from the Listening Monks who is destined to be perpetually reincarnated. As soul collections go these are ideal learning deaths. But the training wheels come off with a big when Mort finds out that the third death is to be that of Princess Keli, due to be assassinated on the orders of her uncle.  Mort can’t bring himself to do it, thus creating a rift in reality that is going to cause some serious issues when time catches up with it.

Keli, suffering a temporal anomaly in which everyone thinks she is dead, appoints Cutwell as Royal Recogniser. In a badly timed move, Death decides to take some more time off, leaving Mort in charge. He tries drinking, gambling, partying and fishing before finally taking a job as a short order chef in Ankh-Morpork. Mort tries to keep the show on the road, but in doing so he slowly becomes more and more like Death, including the capitalised speech. Reality is beginning to assert itself now, for example by changing a pub sign from The Quene’s Head to The Duke’s Head. Finally, after the intervention of a very ancient wizard, (and a brief reappearance by Rincewind) Death discovers Mort’s mistake, and in a climatic scene they duel as the old reality closes in on the Princess.

Pratchett’s “and they all lived happily ever after” endings can sometimes feel a bit forced, but the resolution to this clash is well managed, and well, they all live happily ever after. If Death can’t adjust reality just a tweak to make matters right, then who can? The old universe (in which the Princess dies) becomes a wedding present which will expand into another universe once the current one dies. Which I thought was rather neat.

P.S. You will recall, because I have written about it before, that the way Sir Terry chose to notify people of his death in 2015 was the extraordinary tweet “AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER”. Of the thousands of comments this tweet received, one of the earliest was by an account in the name of the ‘Death of Rats’ (aka The Grim Squeaker) which went “Squeak, squeak, squeak”. For reasons known only to themselves, Microsoft offers the option to “translate this tweet” – sadly the link doesn’t work. But I think we know what he was trying to say.

Standard
Book review, Discworld, Equal rites, fantasy, science fiction', Terry Pratchett

Equal Rites, (Discworld 3) by Terry Pratchett, 1987

Equal Rites’ is the third novel in the Discworld series. This is the novel where Pratchett really hits his stride. ‘The Colour of Magic’ and ‘The Light Fantastic’ are good, of course, but by comparison they felt a little childish when I was rereading them recently (see the reviews earlier in July). Some of the jokes in particular are quite crude, and the plotting is simplistic if not awkward – magic is used as the ultimate get out of jail card. Pratchett dips his toe in the waters of social issues, but quickly reverts to the frothy irreverent humour that is the trademark of these books.

Equal rites.jpg

‘Equal Rites’ is different in kind. It introduces the extraordinary, imperious Granny Weatherwax -‘I’m not a lady, I’m a witch’. This is going to sound like hyperbole, but if Terry Pratchett had not written about any other character his place in the pantheon of great writers would have been secured by his portrait of Granny Weatherwax. She is funny and kind and clever and wise and respected and seems almost a real person.

“Granny Weatherwax was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.”

I also love her stubbornness:

“She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn’t.”

Pratchett’s theory of magic – that a large part of it is in the head of the person on whom the magic is being performed – ‘headology’ – is cleverer than any system of runes mana or potions you find in other fantasy series.

“I saved a man’s life once,” said Granny. “Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I’d bought it from the dwarves. That’s the biggest part of doct’rin, really. Most people’ll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.”

The central question posed in ‘Equal Rites’ is why can’t a woman be a wizard? Eskarina Smith is accidentally given a wizard’s staff, and despite all efforts to the contrary is destined to be a powerful magical person – be that a witch, wizard, warlock, sourcerer, thaumaturge or otherwise. She is apprenticed to Granny Weatherwax, who soon realises the girl’s potential, and they set off on a classic road trip to try to gain access to Discworld’s only college for wizards, the Unseen University. Her application to join the university is dismissed out of hand, and a passionate battle for equal rights ensues, with only one winner ever being likely.

Given that female wizards are unheard of in Discworld, Granny has to get a bit creative, so Esk enters the university as a servant. She is reunited there with Simon, an apprentice encountered earlier on the route to Ankh-Morpork. Simon is, like Esk, a naturally talented wizard, but he loses control of his magic and accidentally opens a rift to the Dungeon Dimensions. As you can probably guess this is not a good thing. With the help of Granny Weatherwax, Archchancellor Cutangle, and Esk’s staff, Simon and Esk manage to defeat the demons and escape back to Discworld.

The ending of the novel is one of its weaker features – there is never any real sense of peril or doubt that Esk and Simon will escape unharmed from the Dungeon Dimensions – but who reads Pratchett novels for their plot? it was great to read what is in effect Granny’s origin story. I am really enjoying my rediscovery of early Discworld, watching it emerge and expand before my eyes. The next novel in the series, Mort, takes us to Death’s own domain – I can’t wait!

Standard

Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ contains 12 short stories, all originally published in the Strand magazine between June 1891 and July 1892. Some are better known than others, but all follow a fairly rigid format – a curious case is brought to Holmes’s attention by a flustered individual, often incognito, Watson’s support is engaged, and the case is then swiftly resolved. Disguises are often deployed, trusty service revolvers are pocketed, and Lestrade is ritually humiliated. In every story Holmes performs the deductions which are his hallmark, usually at the opening of the story, although rarely if ever are these deductions anything to do with the case in point.

A Scandal in Bohemia is the story in which Irene Adler, ‘the woman’, makes her one and only appearance in Conan Doyle’s stories. It is a simple case of blackmail which is resolved without Holmes’s assistance, because Irene marries and decides not to pursue her victim. Holmes counts it as one of his very few failures, which suggests his definition of success is somewhat flexible, but there is no suggestion of any attraction between the two, more a mutual respect.800px-A_Scandal_in_Bohemia-04

The Red-Headed League is one of Holmes’s more ridiculous cases. A pawn broker is duped into leaving his store all day for several weeks to allow a tunnel to be dug from the premises to a nearby bank. The bank robbers could surely have found easier ways to do this than the invention of the League, which would have drawn a lot of attention to themselves, left clues all over the place, cost a lot of time and effort to establish, and could have fallen apart at any time.

A Case of Identity is one in which someone assumes a flimsy disguise, which Holmes sees through but fails to tell his client he has resolved the case. See ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’

The Boscombe Valley Mystery. In this story Holmes bizarrely allows a murderer to go free, and a guilty man to spend months in prison, simply because the murderer is dying.

The Five Orange Pips sees Holmes allow his client to be brutally murdered and the murderers to escape the country, if not justice. Another great success!

The Man with the Twisted Lip. Someone assumes a flimsy disguise which Holmes sees through, again.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. In this story Holmes starts with the missing gem falling into his lap, and then working back to find out who stole it – an easier approach than the other way round I would have thought.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band. Conan Doyle thought this his finest Holmes story, but it is riddled with preposterous plot points.

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb. A good headline, but a story in which Holmes detects absolutely nothing. Perhaps explains why this has not been an adaptor’s favourite.

The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor. A missing person story depending for its resolution of a previous relationship in America – the States is the setting for several of Holmes’s client’s backstories.

The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet. I think the real mystery – why a member of the royal family comes to pawn an incredibly valuable coronet for a fraction of its value – is ignored, instead focusing on whodunit in which footprints in the snow provide all the answers.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. A governess is recruited at highly inflated wages to impersonate a kidnapped heiress. Another case where the villains employ ridiculously complex means to pursue their villainy, when many other simpler options are available.

To Victorians, Holmes’s deductions and flashes of brilliance must have been dazzling, and to this day there are readers who hold Holmes in the highest possible regard. He is not the character most often portrayed on film for nothing. In recent years ‘Elementary’ and ‘Sherlock’ have given new life and new depths to the character. For me Holmes probably works best in this short story format where the weaknesses in his deductive method and approach aren’t too visible.

19th Century literature, Book review, Conan Doyle, Detective, Detective fiction, Holmes, Holmes and Watson, Sherlock

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle 1892

Gallery
Book review, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic, (Discworld 2) by Terry Pratchett, 1986

TLF_cover

‘The Light Fantastic’ concludes the adventures of Rincewind, the failed wizard, and Twoflower, the curious tourist from the Agatean Empire, who were left at the end of ‘The Colour of Magic’ falling in some style off the edge of the world (the world being, of course, disc-shaped, said disc being on the back of four giant elephants who in turn are perching on the shell of the Great A’Tuin, a celestial turtle). Hope you got that.

Reading back over my review of ‘The Colour of Magic’ I think on reflection I may have not clearly conveyed my awe at the wonder that was Terry Pratchett. He was a creative and comic genius, and my admiration of his body of work is tinged with sadness that he will no longer be adding to it. As comic writers go I would put him almost on a par with Douglas Adams – I can think of no higher praise.

Of course this isn’t just a fan-blog, these are intended as above all things honest reviews, so there’s no point in self-censoring observations that are less than adulatory – what would be the point? But there’s equally no point in just listing the minor flaws in a novel, and ignoring the gems. So if I got the balance wrong with ‘The Colour..’ then apologies, not least to TP. Continue reading →

Standard
Book review, Malorie Blackman, Noughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, 2001

untitled‘Noughts and Crosses’ is set in an alternative society in which the dark skinned people of the world conquered and enslaved the lighter skinned. As a consequence, although slavery has now been abolished, black people are prosperous, have good schools and hospitals and hold senior positions through society, white people are disenfranchised, hold most menial jobs, and are economically disadvantaged. Relationships between noughts and crosses are frowned upon – they are not unheard of, but still considered transgressive and likely to lead you to end up being assaulted. Critics have called this society dystopian (“relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one”), but I am not so sure about that – I think Blackman intended it to be as realistically close to our own as possible.

This inversion of society and race is an inspired way of encouraging people to look at the power relationships in society, and the many ways in which black and minority ethnic people are still treated as second-class citizens, despite the progress that has been made in some areas. Certain scenes, such as when four “blanker” children (‘blanker’, we can deduce, is a shockingly offensive term similar to way the n-word is used in our own society) are allowed to attend a “Cross” school, are based on incidents in the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. However a knowledge of this history is in no way essential for an appreciation of the novel.

One reason why this is not simply a dystopian nightmare is that there is some evidence that society is in transition. There appears to be a democratic Government, albeit one in which Crosses dominate, and an international organisation, the Pangean Economic Community, which promotes racial equality. Noughts can now attend cross schools. There is hope that the oppression of noughts is being eased, albeit slowly.

This world is portrayed through the eyes of two teenagers, Sephy, (short for Persephone) a prosperous Cross, and the son of her nanny, Callum, a nought. Callum and Sephy narrate alternative chapters in the novel, similar to the turns taken in a game of noughts and crosses. Their fledgling romance is disrupted when Callum’s mother is spitefully dismissed by Sephy’s mother for failing to provide an alibi for one of her affairs. Callum’s father and older brother Jude are slowly drawn into the dangerous world of the nought resistance movement, the Liberation Militia. As you can probably guess, things don’t go well for the star-crossed youngsters. I will eschew my normally strict policy on spoilers; suffice to say this is not the traditional teen romance the opening chapters might have led the reader to expect.

The target readership for ‘Noughts and Crosses’ is finely calibrated. Readers need to be young enough to forgive the simplistic structure, the use of clichéd scenarios (spurned young love, letters read moments too late, parental neglect, etc.) and the reliance of heavy handed narration in which teens sigh a lot and complain about how no-one understands them:

“I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”

“That’s why I started crying. That’s why I couldn’t stop. For all the things we might’ve had and all the things we’re never going to have”.

However, the caution on the novel’s front cover – “Not suitable for younger readers” – is a warning that this is more than a teenage romance novel. The characters a bit wooden, even two dimensional, and in particular Jude is the world’s worst terrorist, but this is nevertheless a challenging novel of ideas where easy answers are avoided.

It is difficult for adults to review books written specifically for children and young adults. If we point out their bland characterisation, flaccid language, and clichéd storylines, we miss the point – children are looking for different things in their fiction, such as strong themes, identifiable characters, and just the right amount of danger. ‘Noughts and Crosses’ is a modern children’s classic, but there’s no doubt I would have enjoyed it so much more if I had read it as a teenager.

Standard