January and February 2024 Books

The Great

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

If you, like Thomas Nagel, have ever wondered what it is like to be a bat, this book is for you. Or an electric fish, or an elephant, or a mantis shrimp, or a dog. In extremely accessible prose, Yong talks us through the umwelts of some of the creatures we share the planet with. An umwelt, of course, being the “sensory bubble” that we each exist within (sometimes different even in humans… did you know some of us can see ultraviolet? Or can use echolocation?) Our perception of the world and every single interaction with it is completely informed by our senses, and Yong is keen here to meet these other lifeforms on their own terms.

I read this very speedily before our Mini Book Club meeting, and I was amazed at how easy that was, for a nonfiction book. It really captured me, and Yong strikes a good balance of giving in depth insight, whilst not losing the reader in technical speak. And it struck me as fitting for much of my other reading. The best speculative fiction that deals with other, nonhuman lifeforms should always be able to delineate differing umwelts in thought-provoking, interesting ways. It’s something I always like to find in my novels. And here we have a whole bevy of umwelts, ones that might prompt us to ask, how do the senses of human beings inform our worldview? What can’t we sense, what lies outside our conceptions?

I’ve thought about this book countless times since I set it down, which I think speaks to its brilliance.

Witness by Jamel Brinkley

I started reading this one on my e-reader as an ARC at the end of last year and was very impressed by the opening stories, but when I realised I wasn’t able to prioritise it in the way that I wanted to, I decided to switch to an audiobook, instead (I promise this is vaguely relevant). I liked the audiobook a lot, the performance was good, and fundamentally not really irritating as so many performances are. But I am still glad I read the opening stories to get a feel for Brinkley’s writing style; it’s quiet, pared back, belying inner depths that cause slow ripples in your mind.

For these are stories of people living in New York; families, friends, lovers. He explores themes of intergenerational trauma, specifically through the Black American experience, gentrification, loneliness, mental illness, systemic racism, and of course, witnessing. There is, too, an undercurrent of the speculative occasionally, used with a deft hand in this collection that reads so much of our time now. This is shockingly difficult to do, and Brinkley handles it all masterfully, while still delivering us good stories, taut with tension. I always rejoice when I find a new-ish author doing great work like this, and I’ll definitely be adding Brinkley to my list of ones to watch. He is a real talent.

The Employees: A Workplace Novel by Olga Ravn

This is one strange, wonderful little book, and it led to some fantastic book club discussion. Indeed, I think it’s best read ‘in discussion’. It’d be very easy to breeze through this and think ‘what the f*ck was that?’

It’s a book made up of short statements given to a committee. The committee is trying to ascertain the effect of some ‘objects’ on their workforce, a workforce which is comprised of both humans and humanoids. The ‘objects’ have been found on a distant planet and seem to produce some unusual developments in the crew members of the spaceship hovering nearby. I won’t reveal too much more, as it’s best to allow the narrative to carry you along (though don’t expect lots of action). The writing, in turn, is pared back, spare.

So yes, ‘in discussion’ is best. Whether that be with yourself or someone else, it’s the only way to get the most out of this slip of a novel. Is a human or humanoid speaking? What are the objects? How do they function? Differently between the humans and humanoids? How does it speak to your experiences of the workplace?

I loved getting into the nitty gritty of what Ravn is trying to do here. So many authors have taken on the AI or humanoid concept in their books, and all too often it feels half-baked, or even stale. Ravn approaches it in an entirely new way here, in an entirely new form. For my literary speculative fiction fans, you must read this one.

Little, Big by John Crowley

Ah, another impossible review. This book is a bit of a cult classic for lovers of speculative fiction. Harold Bloom called it “a neglected masterpiece”, Neil Gaiman said it’s “one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century” and Ursula Le Guin called it “indescribable”, “a book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy”. And I’m absolutely inclined to agree with Le Guin there; there is something about this book which eludes description.

We begin with Smoky Barnable; he is leaving the City to wed Alice Drinkwater, who lives in a place called Edgewood (think upstate New York). He is an ‘anonymous’ man; in many ways unremarkable. But when he comes to meet his beloved’s family, he discovers that the Drinkwaters believe in fairies. Or maybe they believe in fairies, he’s not quite sure. And perhaps Edgewood borders Faerie itself. From there we follow this family through three generations. Will Smoky ever be truly accepted/accepting of this world? If they exist, what do the fairies want with the Drinkwaters? Why?

I’ve tried and tried to put my finger on how this book functions, and I’ve come to some tentative conclusions, but you’ll only really be able to get a sense of it by reading it. For this novel layers a few different genres you already know. First, the American Novel. You know the one, often focussed on a singular family, also on America, on American myth-making. Then I think we have magical realism. The is-it-there-isn’t-it-there of it all. And finally we have some outright fantasy. Whilst the latter two are ostensibly from the same family of writing, it is highly unusual to put them together; it’s like when you don’t quite colour match your top to your trousers; it’s even more discordant than if you had picked two totally contrasting colours. And of course, in the best American Novels, there is often a hint of the strange, too. When you combine these things together, you have a heady cocktail that seems familiar, and yet completely unfamiliar. And Crowley creates a real sense of enchantment, through all this. I’m not sure I’ve ever read another novel that does this so successfully. While I was reading it, it kept sending me to sleep; it was like I was being put under a spell myself.

And if you know my tastes very well, you’ll know that fairies in books make me nervous. ‘Faerie’ is so often done extremely badly, without a real sense of the deep unease and strangeness that underlie our oldest fairy tales. Or it’s made to stand alone, a symbol of itself, rather than anything deeper or meaningful. But here there is real depth. A thesis would be needed for me to go into all its details, to trace its themes.

The plot is slow and meandering, especially in the first three hundred pages or so (it actually does pick up a lot in the latter section, which I wasn’t really expecting). This has frustrated many a reader if some of the reviews are anything to judge by. For me I was drawn on and into its depths; I was enchanted by its language; I wanted to figure out how it was doing what it was doing; I wanted to uncover the central mystery. But this won’t appeal to everyone. Also, this was published in 1981 and you can tell. There’s a fair bit that wouldn’t fly today. It depends on your tolerance for this in literature of this time whether you’ll be able to let it wash over you, but do check content warnings if you have any concerns.

Finally, it took me way too long to read this book. Don’t let it drag out for weeks like I did, you lose what narrative tension there is (and just like with other quiet, meandering books, I do believe it’s there) and it undermines the power of the way the story builds. As usual, I found out about this book through our amazing book club, thank you Emily for recommending this. I want to read it all over again right now, to be honest.

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

I can’t believe I first read this book five years ago. In many ways it feels like yesterday, and just like the legend of Håkan, this book’s legend as one of my favourites has grown over time, too. I find myself recommending it over and over.

It was wonderful, again. There is something so touching about this novel; Håkan is a character that lingers long after you close the book. We discussed this for book club, and many of us wanted to make the connection with MacInnes’ In Ascension, which we read together last year. In content they are vastly different (though both Leigh and Håkan are on journeys of a kind), but both feel deeply personal and speak to something about what it feels like to be human. A human who doesn’t really know how to be in the world. And neither feel like perfect novels, at a technical level. Yet the emotion that arises from them somehow supersedes this, or the imperfections themselves add something to this experience of humanness.  

In case you are one of the few who I haven’t raved to over the years, we follow Håkan, a young Swedish boy who accidentally ends up on the wrong side of the US during his immigration. He loses his brother in the mix up, and is determined to battle over from the American West to New York to find him again. I was struck this time by how phenomenal Diaz is at putting a sentence together. So many beautiful observations of the world. Håkan meets a strange, sometimes grotesque, cast of characters in his journey. And he creates for himself a legend, one that deeply disturbs him. Though I didn’t enjoy Trust as much, I am still eagerly awaiting more of Diaz’s work. I think he will be one of the defining authors of this generation.

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera trans. by Lisa Dillman

Herrera accomplishes something nigh-on impossible here, which is to distil the feeling of an epic into just about a hundred pages. We follow Makina, as she is smuggled across the Mexican-American border to find her brother and return him home. To do this, she must go into a sort of underworld, peopled with strange and dangerous characters. In this way, it is so reminiscent of all those fantastical epic underworld journeys that have inspired stories throughout the ages (Herrera makes reference to a specific one in this interview but read the book first). It naturally reminded me of Veniss Underground, which I read last year. Makina, meanwhile, is one hell of a character; she is tough and resilient, even in the face of enormous challenges.

There are some passages in here that will take your breath away. I think he and his translator, Lisa Dillman, have a particularly great relationship, and I’m keen to follow it in his other books, too. Her translator’s note for the Herrera I read last year, Ten Planets, sticks with me. And just like in Ten Planets, Herrera is keen to look here not just at the physical border crossing, but also the linguistic one, the metaphysical and psychological one:

“Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It’s not another way of saying things: these are new things. The world happening anew, Makina realizes: promising other things, signifying other things, producing different objects. Who knows if they’ll last, who knows if these names will be adopted by all, she thinks, but there they are, doing their damnedest.”

Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to read the rest of what Herrera considers an informal trilogy, but I will be certainly returning to it as soon as I can.

The Good

New Daughters of Africa ed. by Margaret Busby

This anthology has contributions from over two hundred Black women writers and thinkers. Though it has a few entries pre-1900, the focus is mainly on the last century or so. It is a follow-up to an earlier anthology, and Busby didn’t double up, so both books cover different writers. I’m keen to read the former, too, now, as you can imagine. I read a piece here and there for about a year in the end, so my finishing it in January definitely does not mean I read all one thousand pages this year.

The range here is incredible. We have essays, fiction, poems, speeches, extracts from plays or scripts, articles. The depth and breadth of experiences is remarkable to behold back-to-back. I was expecting more fiction, I’m not sure why, and just based on my personal tastes that’s what I’d have preferred. Also, like any anthology, some pieces were stronger than others, but overall, there were still plenty of good snippets to get my teeth into. You read something like this to get a sense of the variation of writers, not necessarily for each piece to be a full five star read. It solidified for me the importance of anthologies in my reading life (I discovered quite a few authors whose work I’d like to explore more). In general, a worthy read.

The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley

In this novella we follow Shirley Fearn, living in a small village in interwar England. She has plans of becoming an educated woman and teacher, and she considers herself somewhat above the daily life of the village. She is also in love with scarred veteran Mr. Tiller, and dreams of returning home to marry him after getting her teaching qualification. Only, he has other plans for her. This is an unusual and intriguing science fiction novel, based as it is in such a specific historical period. In many ways, it reminded me of Catherine Lacey’s Pew; the small town life, the sense of the community working together against our protagonist, a strange May festival scene that blurs the lines of reality.  

Shirley has a very self-important narration style that might remind you of any number of teenagers who think they know everything. It makes sense, but it doesn’t always get you close to her as a character. I don’t want to reveal too much more of the plot as it is best to let it unfold, but I liked the direction it went, and the message Whiteley wanted to convey with it. Overall, though, I think this was probably a touch too short to make a huge impression on me, and the narration style a little distant. I would be interested to read more Whiteley though, to see how she tackles a different topic.

The Fine

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I enjoyed reading this book, but I didn’t feel good about it afterwards (or really, through much of the second half). Because I don’t really agree with this book. The underlying ideology of this book is… more than a little icky.

It’s about a Jesuit mission to a recently discovered planet that has been broadcasting music, suggesting intelligent life. Once there, disaster ensues. For much of the book we are trying to work out what happened; everyone on the mission died except for Emilio Sandoz, who has been sent back to Earth in disgrace over his actions. For most of the novel we are clueless; we don’t even make it to Rakhat until quite late.

This is compulsively readable. Russell has a natural writing voice, and she writes compellingly of the relationships between her central characters, and also manages the tension well throughout the book as you build towards its climactic ending. But the more I look back on the book, that is where the praiseworthy elements seem to end. They’ll fool you though until you look a bit closer.

Here’s what Russell had to say about why she started writing this book: “The idea came to me in the summer of 1992 as we were celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. There was a great deal of historical revisionism going on as we examined the mistakes made by Europeans when they first encountered foreign cultures in the Americas and elsewhere. It seemed unfair to me for people living at the end of the twentieth century to hold those explorers and missionaries to the standards of sophistication and tolerance that we hardly manage even today. I wanted to show how very difficult first contact would be, even with the benefit of hindsight. That’s when I decided to put modern, sophisticated, resourceful, well-educated, and well-meaning people in the same position as those early explorers and missionaries - a position of radical ignorance.” Yeah, it’s really that bad.

So, it’s a defence of colonialism of sorts. And you can see this when you read further. The intelligent life living on Rakhat is hastily and lazily drawn by science fiction standards (they’re rather too human); they ultimately serve only to further the story of Emilio. And let’s not forget that Emilio is a beautiful but inaccessible priest; some awkward and uncomfortable fetishisation of this occurs throughout. In general, a lot of the things that I would find interesting about this story; what kind of life will they find? How will their differences inform their worldviews? How will Emilio go about learning their language and what interesting quirks will it have (he is an adept linguist)? All of this is thrown by the wayside to examine the relationships between Emilio and his crew. Fair enough, but combined with its other flaws it bothers me more. The ending is all sorts of wrong and exploitative in a way that reminds me of A Little Life. In general, I felt we were in Russell’s own personal fantasy of sorts, which always makes me a little nervous. As you might have guessed, therefore, I sadly can’t recommend this one.   

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

I quite liked this whilst I was reading it, but apart from occasionally dwelling on its faults since, I have not thought about it at all since I finished it. This is not a great sign.

We follow the devolution of a supposedly nice, respectable Irish family living in a small town. The bulk of the book is made up of four sections, one from each member of the family’s perspective. The best of these is by far the mother’s, Imelda. She gives us a lot of pertinent backstory and in general is one of the more compelling voices. There is a nod to the climate crisis, which is good, I guess? It definitely could have been edited more in the second half, it ranges on for a little too long before we come to the ending. And, that ending. It’s ambitious and impactful, I suppose. But something wasn’t entirely convincing about it.

A bit like The Sparrow though (although maybe not quite so deranged), this novel had some uncomfortable undercurrents that I wasn’t a fan of. The treatment of queer culture felt odd, and Murray was toeing a very fine line between being accurate and being derogatory. There is one immigrant in the town, and he is portrayed as Pure Evil. No nuance whatsoever. And he is but a plot point, too. What can possibly be the purpose of pitching him as such? You’ll deal with the climate crisis but not the issue of immigration and xenophobia? I’m sure that Murray didn’t outright intend these things in the way that Russell did, but they’re there nonetheless. Either way, it’s safe to skip this one.

Beyond the Deepwoods by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

I read this in a fit of nostalgia after rearranging my shelves toward the end of last year. I remember loving The Edge Chronicles as a child; Riddell’s remarkable illustrations and Stewart’s captivating world-building stood out even down the decades. And I was struck by the opening chapter when I had a quick glance. Unfortunately, I did end up a little disappointed by this. The opening chapters were promising; atmospheric and surprisingly dark for a ‘middle grade’ book. But sadly, it became episodic to the point of distraction. In each chapter, our protagonist Twig would get into some scrape, manage to escape, rinse and repeat. We did pick up on storyline a bit toward the end, thankfully, and more importantly I am assured by a quick scroll through reviews for the following books that Stewart improves upon this a lot in later instalments. This first one reads like two storytellers working out the beginnings of this world and its characters, and I’m sure my fellow reviewers are right that it improves over time. I think I’ll probably continue with this series when I have the time, just to see if it does capture some of that magic I so remember in later books.

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

I’ve been assured that this is not Pratchett’s best work, and having read exactly none of his other books (well, I did read Good Omens), I’d have to agree. A bit like Beyond the Deepwoods, this was just too episodic for me, with little time to breathe between disasters. And it was more than a little misogynist, though I sense that this changes with Pratchett’s later work. It is a parody of existing fantasy, and you can tell it’s written as such, without much original style of Pratchett’s own (yet). I will continue with the Discworld series though, relying on the rave reviews of later works.