August 2023 Books

As you can see from the sheer number of books in my ‘Great’ category, I had a fantastic reading month in August. I’m cheating slightly as I finished a couple at the beginning of September, but best to slot them in here before I forget them, and they feel like summer books to me anyway. When I look back, maybe one of my best summers of reading… ever?

The Great

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

I read this back in June and really liked it, but nonetheless felt a re-read would help clarify some of my feelings about it, particularly regarding the ending. Now I’ve completed my second read and had two fantastic discussions about it in our book club, I can safely say this book has made it onto my All-Time Favourites list. There’s something magnetic about this novel; the more I’ve thought about all that’s captured in its 500 pages, the more layers and complexities I find. And it is one of those where its imperfections are interesting in themselves, they invite engagement and discussion.

It's about Leigh, a microbiologist who opens the book relating her difficult childhood in subdued, quiet tones. She is deeply curious about the origins of life, which lead her on a grand journey, from the depths of the ocean up into the stars. To say too much more would be to disturb the reader’s experience of Leigh’s story. The prose of this book has a real undertow. Like Leigh’s dives beneath the water, the reader is drawn inexorably into her world and her voice. This is true literary sci-fi; questions loom larger than answers, and this will for sure frustrate some readers, especially with regard to the ending. But for me, it works perfectly, especially on a second read.

Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb

The final novel in the Farseer Trilogy, and what an ending! I feel I can’t say too much of the plot of this one lest I spoil the first two novels for you, but I highly recommend Hobb if you’re looking for well-written fantasy to immerse yourself in. You all know I’ve got to have some good ideas in my fiction, and Hobb doesn’t disappoint there, either (you can check out my previous review of the second novel here). Of the three, this book is certainly overlong and repetitive at times, but I’m willing to forgive her basically anything for what she has reintroduced into my reading life. I really look forward to reading more Hobb next year.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

This is a fantastic read, delineating what we know about the mysterious lives that fungi live, and crucially all we don’t know about these alien beings. It makes a great companion to Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass that I read earlier this year; though different stylistically, both authors seek to show through their subjects the limits of the scientific process, and the requirement for multidisciplinary engagement with the life around us. Sheldrake shows us how fungi disturb our urge to categorise, how they pose questions about the concept of the individual, and the metaphors we use to make sense of their lives (the Wood Wide Web/internet comparisons, the sense of some sort of forest free market). Not to mention, I know a lot more about fungi and have all sorts of interesting facts to disgorge at the next opportunity. Highly recommend!

Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler

I listened to these two stories by Butler as I had them hanging around in my Audible account and was at a loss for an audiobook for a few days. I liked both of them, though I found the first to be particularly immersive. As always with Butler, there is so much complexity surrounding the workings of power and race, and her worldbuilding is always expertly done. I recommend these if you come across them, especially for existing Butler fans who have an interest in her work. I think I will finish her oeuvre next year.  

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

This novel is a little wonder. I would like to read it again immediately. It follows Quoyle, a perpetually unlucky, ‘lonesome’ man. When his monstrous wife dies unexpectedly, he leaves New Jersey for his ancestral home of Newfoundland with his daughters and elderly aunt. There begins a slow redemption, surrounded by a cast of strange and lovable local characters.

The beginning is a little bristly. Proulx’s style is choppy and even awkward, undoubtedly on purpose. The syntax is uneven and it requires some small effort of the reader. Quoyle’s life is hopeless, and he himself not particularly likeable either. But this novel has a way of creeping up on you. As Quoyle and his family settle into Newfoundland, I found myself being drawn deeper into it, until I found I cared very much about them as I reached the end. We don’t even follow Quoyle that closely, but rather Proulx’s story ranges out and through other characters in the village where they settle, slowly building the web of life here. The landscape takes on a life of its own, and she conjures up the atmosphere of this rocky, watery, dangerous place seemingly effortlessly. Like in Close Range, Proulx’s prose is precise and careful, and there are some knockout sentences here, and imagery I won’t long forget. The difficulty of the choppy start began to melt away as I progressed through the book, no doubt because I was getting used to it but also as Quoyle himself relaxes into his new life. I loved it, and can’t wait to return to it at some point.

A small note, this book does have a bit of a strange relationship with SA in a 90s-ish way. It is mentioned a number of times. Just a note for anyone who would like to avoid it completely.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

My second Baldwin of the year, and as always, he is impressive. This book is narrated by Tish; she is nineteen and pregnant, and her lover Fonny has been falsely accused of rape and imprisoned. We follow her for a few months in her life, as she and her family try to get Fonny exonerated. Baldwin carefully balances the love story of Fonny and Tish with the degenerate state of the American justice system, especially when it comes to its treatment of the African-American community. Unfortunately, this novel is all too relevant even today. We read this for Books on Film, and it’s no wonder that Barry Jenkins adapted this one into a film recently. If you would like to know more about these issues, I really recommend The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

As always with Baldwin, there are some stellar sentences in here, particularly those final lines in that ending, which tends to be a little controversial. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help comparing this to Baldwin’s other novels, and I felt this one lacking slightly when I compared it to my experience with Giovanni’s Room and Go Tell It on the Mountain. I think Baldwin’s personal experiences really elevate those novels, and this one felt a bit subdued in comparison. I think perhaps Tish’s voice is not quite right, at least for me. It’s certainly not completely wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily feel wholly real either, in the way that Baldwin’s other books have a real feel of authenticity. It is like I viewed the whole book through glass. Considering that Tish can only view Fonny through glass, and that iconic line ‘I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass’, perhaps that is the intention. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t love this one in the way I did the others. Still, I did feel attached to the characters by the end of the novel, and its emotional high points did resonate with me. Baldwin is always worth reading.

Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but I was very pleasantly surprised by it. You’d think that I would expect to really like a VanderMeer novel, but I’m always thrown off by the polarising reviews. And I get why some people don’t get on with VanderMeer; he is most certainly an acquired taste. But I loved this. It may even be one of my favourites of his works.

This was his debut, and what a debut it was. It is hallucinogenic and completely Weird (with a capital W). As Charles Yu says in his introduction to this novel, VanderMeer (here and elsewhere) wants to “try something very hard: to actually shift point of view. Away from our solipsism, not just as individuals but as a species”. This novel is darkly mythic, deeply strange, and brazenly decadent. We follow three narrators living in the city of Veniss, first Nicholas, a “slang jockey” whose sentences curl with the weight of jargon from this super-future world. It was hard to wade through some of this, but his perspective quickly gives way to his sister’s, as she tries to track him down when he goes missing after associating with the dark figure of Quin. Quin is a bioengineer, a crime lord and an insidious power in Veniss, slowly infiltrating the lives of all of its inhabitants.

It is not until we slip into the final perspective with the character of Shadrach that we really get into the meat of this story. Clearly inspired by Greek mythology (but luckily for me and my aversion to it, without direct mention), VanderMeer describes Shadrach’s epic journey into Veniss’ underground to find Nicola, his former lover, and her brother. What he finds there is often deeply disturbing (so do be warned if you’re not a fan of gore), but oftentimes quite magnificent, too. Where the sheer chaos sometimes alienated me in VM’s novel A Peculiar Peril, I was compelled here by the thrust of the storyline and the ragged determination of Shadrach’s love. In the end, I found it very moving. Best to end on VanderMeer’s own description, I think:

“Fed by fragments the reader cannot see but can sense, by visions and transformations, by cross-pollination with other story cycles, it is a mutt, a mongrel, but, to me, oddly beautiful nonetheless.” – I tend to agree.

Gifts / Voices from Annals of the Western Shore by Ursula Le Guin

I haven’t completed Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore trilogy just yet, but the first two books were a real success. I listened to Gifts and read Voices, which turned out perfectly for me. I’m listening again now to Powers. Each book follows a different protagonist, though they do link together and of course, are all set on the titular Western Shore. These are marked as young adult but I can think of countless ‘adult’ novels that have less than half of the complexity here, and Le Guin’s prose is as sophisticated as ever. In Gifts, we follow Orrec and Gry, two young adults growing up in the forbidding Uplands, known for its witchcraft; each family has a “gift” which is more often than not turned against their neighbours. Voices follows Memer, living in the besieged city of Ansul, and her fight to protect literacy against the conquering force.

These are beautiful, lyrical, but dark stories. Whilst I always appreciate Le Guin’s science fiction, fantasy remains my favourite genre of hers. She writes the landscape of Gifts and the ruined city of Voices wonderfully; it is so atmospheric and yet so effortlessly done. If you liked Earthsea and are looking for something similar, you must try these ones. And there is really careful, nuanced portrayal of how power functions, what freedom means, and how vital storytelling is to human life. These novels are forgotten gems, and I highly recommend you read them.  

Joker, Joker, Deuce by Paul Beatty

What can I say about Paul Beatty that would do him justice? This collection of poetry has all his usual hallmarks; it’s satirical, biting, immensely clever, deeply musical and compelling to read. Exploring racial identity and African-American culture, if you can get your hands on these as an existing Beatty fan, I highly recommend them.

The Good

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

I really liked this slim novel about Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish-American who inherits her father’s Nebraskan farmland upon his death, and makes a real success of it where others before her had failed. There was also a love story here, between her younger brother and another local woman, which I wasn’t entirely expecting given the blurb. The prose is light and deft, evoking the atmosphere of the various scenes and the cycle of the feast and famine of farm life perfectly. Can I put my whole heart into this novel, which romanticises the pioneer experience? Not entirely. I’m sure that the Nebraskan country described at the beginning of the novel as endless “sombre wastes” was very precious to the indigenous peoples that lived on it before the arrival of families such as Alexandra’s. And we needn’t start worrying about the damage this type of farming has done to huge swathes of land in the US and beyond. Nonetheless, I can appreciate the novel for what it is, and as an unusual character study of an independent farming woman (even though it never quite escapes into truly subversive material).

At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories by Kij Johnson

There were many great stories in here, and others I wasn’t so keen on, which is to be expected when encountering a collection like this, drawing together Johnson’s work from over twenty years. I think ’26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss’ is a perfect short story and I recommend everyone read it. I also enjoyed ‘Names for Water’, ‘The Horse Raiders’, ‘The Man Who Bridged the Mist’ and the titular ‘At the Mouth of the River of Bees’. Johnson writes about animals and human relationships with animals wonderfully, and she also manages to include some truly unique and fascinating speculative concepts in some of the stories, too. A few of the stories utilise Japanese history and culture in ways that would probably be less acceptable for a white author these days, so I’m interested to see if she’s changed that in more recent work. She does have a new collection coming out soon, so we’ll see! I’m definitely intrigued and would like to read more.

The Fine

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

I always expect a little too much of Kuang compared to what she gives me, whether it’s because of her extremely impressive educational background and the obvious depth to her academic knowledge, or just because she’s extremely popular. This was a solid thriller that satirises aspects of the publishing world and is fairly satisfying as a result. Her prose is always taut and flows well, and I can see why this one appeals to many. It follows writer June Hayward, who witnesses the accidental death of fellow author and friend Athena Liu, a Chinese-American woman who has experienced much more publishing success than June. June is pretty bitter about this, and on a whim picks up the first draft of Athena’s latest novel in the aftermath of her death, eventually editing it and passing it off as her own. She is full of vitriol and jealousy and is decidedly racist to boot.

There are some interesting critiques of publishing in this novel, though putting anything into the mouth of June serves to undercut it a bit as a result of her unreliability, and the fact we are supposed to hate her. In general, nothing is examined in much depth, though the buzzwords are all there. I wouldn’t say this was a particularly literary novel due to this refusal to engage with the nuances of what Kuang is writing about. As I said, I enjoyed listening to it for the most part (though the ending is pretty crap) as seeing June’s spiral had a strange sort of compulsiveness to it, but it was definitely soaked in bad energy (not least because Kuang seems to be addressing her own ‘haters’ at times). I don’t think I’ll be picking up more of Kuang’s work – she’s just not for me!