I thought this would make an excellent end-of-summer read. It centres on the Bastion, a commune – and possible sex cult – on the Italian coast. We seeI thought this would make an excellent end-of-summer read. It centres on the Bastion, a commune – and possible sex cult – on the Italian coast. We see its story play out through the eyes of three women: Zoey, who runs her own spiritual festival and is there on a research mission; grieving Charlie, whose world has fallen apart with the sudden death of her partner; and Lila, a long-standing member who cut off her parents to join. The plot is solid and I liked the approach of multiple narrators (including the Bastion itself as a collective); the rapid-fire switching between them gives it something of an oral history vibe. The story, while a bit too long, is structured well, and Dimitri is good at throwing in small-but-tantalising mysteries: why is one member of the group referred to only as ‘the Nameless’? What the hell are Oddballs?
It was the language that proved a repeated stumbling block for me. The characters come from all over the world, yet all use the same distinctive variety of English that blends American phrasing and grammar with British slang and some conspicuously odd word choices. I spent about 30% of the book thinking it was awkwardly translated, only to find (after coming up against a sentence that just didn’t make any sense) that it isn’t translated at all. I gather English isn’t the author’s first language, so this would be completely understandable in a first draft, but this is not a first draft and it doesn’t seem like it’s been properly proofread....more
After his wife has a miscarriage, an increasingly unhinged would-be dad gets obsessed with an old pram, not stopping to question where it might have cAfter his wife has a miscarriage, an increasingly unhinged would-be dad gets obsessed with an old pram, not stopping to question where it might have come from. An uninteresting concept, flatly executed, though there are a few entertaining touches such as the neighbouring community of ‘Sin-Planters’. I was planning to read all the stories in Amazon’s ‘Creature Feature’ collection, but this was so banal that it put me off the idea....more
(3.5) After a tumultuous childhood, Rose has settled into a sensible job and steady relationship. Her flighty sister Cecilia has done no such thing: s(3.5) After a tumultuous childhood, Rose has settled into a sensible job and steady relationship. Her flighty sister Cecilia has done no such thing: she’s never truly grown up and has spent her life bouncing from place to place, obsession to obsession, taking up with eccentric new friends or lovers only to quickly discard them. When Cecilia vanishes while Rose is planning her wedding, it seems pretty typical. Then Rose uncovers her involvement with a cult-like group, Avalon, and becomes concerned. So she joins Avalon herself. Soon Rose is in way too deep – lying to her fiancé, having secret meetings with Cecilia’s estranged husband, entranced by Avalon’s charismatic followers...
I liked but didn’t love Here in Avalon, and I feel bad about it, if only because Tara Isabella Burton’s previous novels are both among my favourites of all time. There’s an odd tension in this book, and I struggled with it: while everything deliberately feels fantastical, it emphatically isn’t, the point being that Avalon purposely manufactures this atmosphere, creating the impression – only the impression – of an escape from real life. Even away from Avalon, though, the characters seem as exaggerated as figures in a fable. This is especially true of Cecilia, who it is impossible to picture as a real person. She’s reminiscent of Ava in Mona Awad’s Bunny (and if you’ve read Bunny, you might understand why that’s a problem). Her wimpy husband is barely more credible.
In her non-fiction book Strange Rites, Burton writes about the obsessive fandom surrounding immersive theatre, her own involvement in that scene, and her theory that such performances are (one example of) the modern equivalent to a religious ritual. It’s easy to see how this has fed into Here in Avalon, but I wonder if the author’s enchantment with the idea is the reason it lacks an essential spark on the page. I suppose it’s easier to imagine being bewitched by an interactive cabaret if you’ve got personal experience of that. I’m afraid to say that for me, nothing about Avalon seemed particularly interesting or beguiling. Instead I just felt utter frustration that Rose was risking her career and relationship to dance on a boat with a few people in costumes. Maybe that means I’m not open enough to the suggestion of magic or something, and that’s probably part of the problem here: I couldn’t meet the world of the story halfway. It’s just... if I’m reading a novel about a seductive cult, I want to feel that I too could be seduced. I don’t want to have to try too hard to see how it might happen.
You know when you watch a film and the production values are amazing, sets and costumes all stunning, yet there’s no chemistry between the actors? That’s what this book is like. The plot flows smoothly and Burton’s prose is as gorgeous as ever; it just doesn’t quite click. An engaging story, for sure, with moments worth revisiting, but I’d recommend both Social Creature (more compelling) and The World Cannot Give (more emotionally resonant) over this.
I must say, though: I loved the little Easter egg-style details in Here in Avalon that confirm all Burton’s novels take place within the same universe.
I received an advance review copy of Here in Avalon from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
At the End of Every Day is set in a curious Disney-esque theme park that’s closing down in a halting, indistinct kind of way; long-time employee DelphAt the End of Every Day is set in a curious Disney-esque theme park that’s closing down in a halting, indistinct kind of way; long-time employee Delphi and her boyfriend Brendan are two of the few remaining staff tasked with completing the shutdown. The blurb promises a dark, literary horror novel ‘about the uncanny valley, death cults, optical illusions and the enduring power of fantasy’, and there’s a bit of that, but too little too late for my taste. Delphi and Brendan are the kind of oddball characters who always test my patience. The way they’re written wobbles all over the line between charming and irritatingly quirky (the whole section about Brendan’s first girlfriend! interminable!) and Delphi in particular seems so vapid and immature I couldn’t help picturing her as a teenager, though the character is definitely supposed to be older. (There’s a... plot twist that arguably explains this, but in some ways only makes it odder.)
All of which makes it even more frustrating that everything about the park is just brilliant. The chapters are punctuated by letters between a brother and sister, discussing the design of an earlier incarnation of the park, and I was fascinated by these – racing through Delphi’s ramblings just so I could get to them. The setting itself is real feat of imagination, described in amazing detail. The cult, the bots, there is so much good stuff here! A lot of potential. Yet when the climactic scenes come, when the narrative actually starts digging into the mysteries of the park, the descriptive language falters; I found I really couldn’t picture what was going on.
The characters and pacing reminded me a lot of A Touch of Jen (and I’d definitely recommend it if you enjoyed that book); elements of the story have shades of Archive 81 and FantasticLand. I liked the concept a lot. And I would still like to read more from the author, ideally short stories with more focus on plot/ideas and less on character.
I received an advance review copy of At the End of Every Day from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
I don’t quite know how Janice Hallett manages to write such long, complex, high quality books so quickly, but I’m really glad she does, because I cannI don’t quite know how Janice Hallett manages to write such long, complex, high quality books so quickly, but I’m really glad she does, because I cannot get enough of her writing and plotting. More in the vein of The Appeal than The Twyford Code, this is another irresistibly page-turning mystery, this time following true crime author Amanda Bailey as she attempts to revive her career with a book about a cold case. The ‘Alperton Angels’ were a tiny cult in the early 2000s; after several members died, their manipulative leader was given a life sentence. Amanda’s new angle is to track down a baby rescued from the group – the child will now be 18, and an exclusive interview would launch her book with a splash. But her search runs into so many baffling dead ends that it seems a conspiracy is afoot...
What ensues is told as a patchwork of text messages, emails, transcriptions, extracts from books and scripts, etc. This is a format I simply never get tired of; it’s as moreish as a box of chocolates, and it allows for the narrative to be funny and irreverent as well as gripping. And in the end, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels is a story about deception, resentment and professional rivalry as much as it is a crime novel. It relies not so much on plot twists but on shifting the reader’s perception of what the story is really about. Oh, and there’s also a very entertaining creepy/quasi-supernatural element thanks to the unexplained events surrounding the cult. A clever, unpredictable and extremely enjoyable book.
I received an advance review copy of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels from the publisher through NetGalley....more
We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Come Join Our Disease in this dark, ultimately tragic tale of a family locked in time. Four elderly sWe Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Come Join Our Disease in this dark, ultimately tragic tale of a family locked in time. Four elderly siblings – Milly, Agatha and identical twins Ellen and Esther – live together in the squalid remains of their family home (along with George, who’s confined to the cellar). They have rarely left the property, and in old age they are still naive about most aspects of ordinary life, clinging instead to memories of the few youthful outings that comprise their only experience of the outside world. Milly’s narration unravels their history: the death of their mother, the cruel dominance of their controlling father, how George came to be part of the family, and how exactly their self-imposed imprisonment began. Milly’s voice is a perfectly balanced combination of tender nostalgia, dark humour and sinister threat: it shouldn’t work, but it does, brilliantly. Despite their seclusion and eccentricity, and the disgust provoked by their filthy living conditions, I wanted to spend more time with these characters....more
In the world of Girl One, a scientist named Joseph Bellanger succeeded in engineering human parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilisation, i.e. In the world of Girl One, a scientist named Joseph Bellanger succeeded in engineering human parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilisation, i.e. no need for a father) in the early 1970s. Nine ‘miracle’ children were born, all girls, on a commune known as the Homestead. The first of them (hence ‘Girl One’) was Josephine Morrow. The experiment ended in ignominy when a fire, allegedly set by a preacher who’d been an outspoken opponent of the ‘virgin births’, destroyed the Homestead, killing one of the girls along with Bellanger, who took the secrets of his scientific method to the grave.
17 years later, in 1994, Josie is a young woman studying medicine and hoping to follow in Bellanger’s footsteps. Like most of the other ex-Homestead residents, she’s largely disowned the controversy of her birth and has been trying to live a quiet life with her mother, Margaret. When Margaret disappears, however, Josie’s efforts to find her turn into a sort of road trip, visiting each surviving mother-daughter pair, and in the process unearthing plenty of secrets... including the crucial revelation that some of the women appear to have superpowers.
I feel torn about this book. I really liked the author’s debut, The Possessions, and I went into Girl One with high hopes, interested in both the premise and Josie’s voice. On the other hand, I’m not generally a fan of novels that combine science fiction with earnest liberal feminism – especially not when the plot deals extensively with reproduction and motherhood, as here – so perhaps I should’ve known it wouldn’t quite be my cup of tea. Although there are enough mysteries and twists to keep the plot engaging, my reading pace slowed as it went on, and I didn’t feel a great deal of investment in what ended up happening to Josie or the 'Girls’, most of whom I found slightly annoying. Oddly, Bellanger is the most compelling character despite not actually being present for most of the book.
It’s also one of those books that feels like it’s been written with one eye on the idea of a potential TV or film adaptation. I get why – I can see this story making a great miniseries – but what might work well on a screen can be very clunky on the page. The characterisation of each of the girls is implausibly broad, and you can see virtually every plot twist coming from a mile off, including a forced, inauthentic romance that develops between two of the main characters.
I received an advance review copy of Girl One from the publisher through Edelweiss.
When I'm lining up forthcoming books I want to read, I tend to think of some as definites and some as maybes. I had Catherine House on the 'maybe' pilWhen I'm lining up forthcoming books I want to read, I tend to think of some as definites and some as maybes. I had Catherine House on the 'maybe' pile. I thought: elite university; newcomer with a secret; idyllic environment in which Things Are Not As They Seem – these are themes and tropes I like, but they've been done a million times, and there's a good chance this will bring nothing new to the table. Boy, was I wrong about that: this is such a rich and intoxicating novel, and it turned out to be the perfect escapist read for these dark times.
Catherine House is an exclusive institution – 'not a college, exactly', but something similar; a 'community of minds'. It's shrouded in mystery, but also well-respected, and has produced renowned inventors, prizewinning artists, and two US Presidents. Students choose a 'concentration', but the classes they take are esoteric, with titles like 'Literature of War' and 'Electricities'. Catherine provides clothes, toiletries and lavish meals as well as education and accommodation. The catch is that, for the three years they study there, Catherine residents cannot leave the campus or communicate with the outside world. This suits our narrator, Ines, just fine. She's on the run from a troubled past; for her, the ability to hide is just as appealing as Catherine's exceptional reputation.
There's also a science fictional element. Catherine is home to a highly secretive and experimental research discipline known as 'new materials'. Working with 'plasm', these researchers can – so the rumours say – make broken objects whole again. Places in new materials classes are highly sought after, but other students learn little of what they involve. Even so, thermometer-like instruments called 'plasm pins' are used on people too, seemingly to draw out memories and/or reconfigure one's attitude.
It all adds up to an exciting, addictive confection. I sailed through it, totally immersed. It is easy to read, but quite beautifully written, balancing on that line between gorgeous and overly whimsical. Every description of food is indulgent, and the details of Ines's golden days made me ache to be there. Ines is an interesting choice of protagonist: stories like this are typically narrated by an outsider, but she's very much part of the in-crowd – someone who really finds her place at Catherine and seems to be accepted and liked by everyone. I enjoyed what Thomas did with her character: giving depth to someone who, on the surface, is not all that likeable or relatable; cleverly making us understand that her frame of perception is being shifted by outside forces, all while holding us within it.
Catherine House has a lot in common with Mona Awad's Bunny: it's less gory, but the wild strangeness and lush language are similar. There are also shades of Lara Williams' Supper Club (all that sumptuous food) and, as the sci-fi ingredient, Sara Flannery Murphy's The Possessions. It's lovely and weird and abundant, and I enjoyed it a lot.
I received an advance review copy of Catherine House from the publisher through NetGalley.
The premise of Catherine Lacey's third novel is simple and interesting. In a small town, in an uncertain time period, a homeless drifter wanders into The premise of Catherine Lacey's third novel is simple and interesting. In a small town, in an uncertain time period, a homeless drifter wanders into a church and spends the night there. The next morning, they're discovered beneath the pew by a family of churchgoers. It's difficult for anyone to figure out anything about this person: they do not speak, and their gender, race and even age are indeterminate. They're given the nickname 'Pew', and the community takes on the task of caring for them, shuffling them from household to household. Pew's silence often encourages people to tell their stories, and Pew listens. But in time, their refusal to reveal anything about themself – their seeming inability to do so – provokes the ire of the townspeople. Acceptance turns to resentment.
I hadn't expected that the book would be narrated by the character of Pew – I wouldn't have thought such a thing could work, since we have to accept that they know so little about their own identity. In fact, the uncertainty is beautifully managed, and the disconnect between body and being – Pew's, but also people's in general – becomes a central principle of the novel.
I took off my clothes... I looked over at the water, then down at this body. Did everyone feel this vacillating, animal loneliness after removing clothes? How could I still be in this thing, answering to its endless needs and betrayals?
Through snatches of overheard news reports, we become aware of a spate of disappearances across the United States. Is Pew one of 'the missing'? There are also ominous references to a festival that takes place in the town, an event, one woman says, that 'outsiders don't always understand'. There's something strange at work here, it seems – something a little outside reality. The result is tension, a tension that mounts throughout the book; I feared for Pew, though I didn't know why.
I loved Lacey's last book, The Answers, and I was intrigued by this one: I thought it sounded a little like Tiffany McDaniel's The Summer That Melted Everything, in which a boy who claims to be the Devil appears in a small Ohio town and becomes an avatar for the locals' fears. I wasn't entirely wrong about this; there is a similar Southern Gothic vibe to Pew. But the style is something different altogether. Lacey's writing here is clean and precise, and she leans into the Shirley Jackson parallels already suggested by the plot.
The story reaches its crescendo on the day of the 'Forgiveness Festival'. The ending is both anticlimactic and revelatory – not what I expected, yet absolutely perfect for the book. Pew is a brief, effective, haunting fable. It's a little unsettling and somehow also comforting. It confirms Lacey as a fascinating and unpredictable novelist.
I received an advance review copy of Pew from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Impossible Causes is set on an island called Lark, population 253. Like Rebecca Wait's The Followers, it depicts an isolated, cultish community existiImpossible Causes is set on an island called Lark, population 253. Like Rebecca Wait's The Followers, it depicts an isolated, cultish community existing in the present day – with all the attendant questions and implausibilities that idea throws up. Like Catriona Ward's Little Eve, it begins with a girl sitting in a stone circle in the aftermath of a tragedy.
Along with her mother, the girl – Viola Kendrick – is a relative newcomer to Lark. The Kendricks' arrival coincides with that of a new teacher, Ben, as well as an outburst of uncharacteristic misbehaviour from the island school's three oldest students, Britta, Jade-Marie and Anna. The Lark islanders practice Christianity, but more pagan beliefs persist too, so the suggestion that the girls are dabbling in dark magic is quickly taken seriously. Fascinated, Viola cooks up a scheme to join their group. Meanwhile, Leah Cedars, a Lark-born teacher, is getting involved with Ben.
Part of the book is told from Leah's point of view, and it is through her that the reader comes to understand the intricacies of Lark society. She is an appealing character whose naivety (believable but not limiting) is handled well. However, Viola's narrative is badly paced and suffers from character problems: Viola seems like an annoying brat, there is little sense of how her family's trauma has affected her, and the 'Eldest Girls' are more like symbols than people, lacking any individual personality at all. What makes this particularly frustrating is that Mayhew writes Leah so well – perhaps if some of the younger characters had been given first-person narratives, they might've been more compelling. This is important; while Leah's voice dominates, the girls are at the heart of the story being told here.
The blurb for Impossible Causes promises a tale of witchcraft and murder ('The Crucible meets The Craft'). In fact, it turns out that events on Lark are a sort of analogue for recent sexual harassment/abuse scandals and in particular the Me Too movement. This approach is clearly well-intentioned but comes off, as such stories often do, as somewhat heavy-handed. I was perplexed, too, by the ending, which is devoid of any real sense of justice for the victims, any freedom for those who escape. It leaves the vulnerable either stuck in the same place they were abused and deceived (with inadequate support), or attempting to survive alone in a world they have no experience of.
I am drawn to stories about cults and remote communities, yet when I look through my reviews of those I've read, I notice a pattern: I'm often underwhelmed, and even those I enjoy (Little Eve, The Rapture, Foxlowe) tend to prove unmemorable. This is my note-to-self to stay away from them for a while. Impossible Causes is intriguing, and it held my interest well enough (I read the whole thing within 24 hours), but at the end I just felt a little... deflated.
I received an advance review copy of Impossible Causes from the publisher through NetGalley.
Having dropped out of her PhD and moved back in with her parents, Mackenzie feels lonely and directionless. She’s also fleeing some sort of difficult Having dropped out of her PhD and moved back in with her parents, Mackenzie feels lonely and directionless. She’s also fleeing some sort of difficult situation that, for the first half of the book, remains mostly unclear: something to do with a reality TV show and a controversy on social media; something that’s resulted in Mackenzie receiving hate mail and threats, and has cost her a lot of friends. So when she meets an idealistic group of friends – Louisa, Beau, Chloe and Jack – she’s in exactly the right place to be influenced and manipulated. It isn’t long before she agrees to join their latest project: setting up a self-sufficient commune in some woodland cabins owned by Louisa's family.
The five friends call their experiment ‘the Homestead’. They will forsake capitalism and technology as much as possible, surviving by trading homegrown goods at local markets. There’s no electricity, no running water and one shared vehicle. Their conversations touch on a whole smorgasbord of topical issues: climate change, GM crops, post-2016 politics, anti-capitalism, whether small-scale activism can make a difference. But they’re still a bunch of privileged twentysomethings, and they're still distracted by sex and jealousy. And in case we forget this is all happening in the 21st century, the narrative is also laced with references to online magazines like The New Inquiry and recent films such as 2015’s The Witch.
It’s a strong idea, and that’s half the problem. It feels like the concept came first, and everything else was forced to fit around it – there’s nothing organic (pun not intended) about these characters. Mackenzie’s history is obfuscated for (I assume) plot-driven reasons, but that happens at the expense of her plausibility. When the nature of the TV-show incident is revealed, it isn’t clear why it’s been kept from the reader for so long. Indeed, I could’ve done with the context of her academic interest in ‘closed communities’ to help me understand why such a (self-described) meek, introverted person would ever want to compete on reality TV. With few other identifiable personality traits, Mackenzie feels less like a believable human and more like a vessel for the ‘millennials start a commune’ plot idea.
There’s the introduction of a historical parallel: a century earlier, the Homestead was home to a group who’d escaped from a larger commune – the real-life Oneida Community – and Mackenzie makes a study of them. There’s a chapter in which Mackenzie goes home for Christmas and realises exactly how much her outlook has changed. There’s a brief bit of intrigue involving a neighbouring commune. These diversions, all interesting, unfortunately demonstrate how much better and fresher the narrative is when it moves away from the Homestead.
The group’s discussions of their motives always seem so shallow, and I’m not sure what to make of that – is it a deliberate attempt to mock and satirise millennials? Or are we meant to take their venture as an admirably earnest, if flawed, attempt to reject the demands of 21st-century living? The characters never really figure it out themselves, and maybe that’s the point, but it often makes for a frustrating read. Almost every subplot is ultimately pointless or irrelevant; I came away from the book feeling a bit cheated. If this review sounds unnecessarily harsh for a three-star rating, it’s because I’m annoyed at the squandered potential: We Went to the Woods is enjoyable and absolutely worth reading, but so many of its best ideas are thwarted by uneven characterisation, redundant plot points and puzzling word choices.
I received an advance review copy of We Went to the Woods from the publisher through NetGalley.
Take the idiosyncratic female-centric community at the heart of The First Book of Calamity Leek; add the bleak and isolated setting of Little EveTake the idiosyncratic female-centric community at the heart of The First Book of Calamity Leek; add the bleak and isolated setting of Little Eve and the shifting, muddy nature of Everything Under; and you’d end up with something like Cala. This is a strange, slippery novel, a cacophony of creative language that only occasionally comes into focus.
Cala is a farmhouse on the Hebridean island of Pullhair. It’s home to a tiny commune consisting of ex-lovers Muireall and Grace and teenage cousins Euna and Lili. The relationships between the four women are tangled and odd, their rituals obscure and apparently random. (Others believe them to be a coven of witches.) The text seems to skip over much of what, in another book, would be the pertinent details. Yet jewel-like sentences kept catching my eye: Under the world’s grey roof, she was the only bright furniture.
The plot follows Euna as she grows dissatisfied with the coven and travels to the mainland in search of a new life. As I read on, it became obvious that the strange relationships were not confined to Cala itself, but are in fact a hallmark of the book. Everyone behaves so bizarrely and implausibly, and often in ways that are borderline disturbing, towards everyone else. I often felt like I was reading a fantasy novel set on some far-flung planet, not a story situated in modern Scotland.
I made it to the 40% mark and couldn’t take any more of the characters’ weird interactions. I do think this book has the potential to be really popular, though. It possesses a poetic and emotive style that’s in vogue at the moment, a way of evoking myth and magic within a nominally contemporary narrative.
(3.5) I zipped through this entertaining historical novel, which tackles one of my favourite subjects for fiction: weird cults. Even more intriguing, (3.5) I zipped through this entertaining historical novel, which tackles one of my favourite subjects for fiction: weird cults. Even more intriguing, this particular weird cult has its basis in fact. The Panacea Society was founded in 1919 and was led by Mabel Barltrop, aka Octavia, who claimed to be the Daughter of God. Almost all the members were women; Dilys, the protagonist, was one of them. McGlasson's version of her life is heavily embroidered, but many other details are drawn from real-life accounts of the Society.
Dilys never quite feels she's able to meet Octavia's exacting standards. Members of the Society are required to observe their fellow 'believers' and report on any possible sins, transgressions or secrets. Unlike Octavia's increasingly powerful right-hand woman Emily, Dilys is often found wanting. A meeting with a stranger, Grace, offers Dilys a valuable chance to redeem herself by offering up a new recruit. However, when Grace joins the Society, the relationship between the two women heads in an unexpected direction, putting them both at risk.
The ending is rather opaque, but I nevertheless found it satisfying in light of Dilys's escalating unreliability. It's a clever way to manage the difficult task of creating a fictional story around a real person.
I received an advance review copy of The Rapture from the publisher through NetGalley.
I don't read an awful lot of historical fiction unless it has a particular hook that appeals to my tastes (usually horror), and this reminded me why –I don't read an awful lot of historical fiction unless it has a particular hook that appeals to my tastes (usually horror), and this reminded me why – which, I hasten to add, is not supposed to sound as harsh as it does. This is a good story, just not a book for me. The Doll Factory is a well-written and atmospheric take on Victorian London, most likely to appeal to fans of recent popular historical novels such as The Miniaturist, in which shop-girl Iris dreams of becoming an artist. She escapes Mrs Salter's Doll Emporium for a new life as model, muse and student of Louis Frost, a fictional member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. However, Iris has also – unknowingly – caught the eye of lonely, disturbed taxidermist Silas Reed. The bulk of the narrative is more concerned with Iris's emancipation than Silas's obsession, which is a commendable narrative choice, but limited its intrigue for me. The main attributes – the 19th-century heroine who thinks like a modern feminist; the similar plot points to John Fowles' The Collector – felt like things I've encountered before. Still, definitely entertaining, with a richly realised setting.
I received an advance review copy of The Doll Factory from the publisher through NetGalley.
Sophia's life in London is a bit of a mess, and after an ill-advised hook-up with a married colleague that threatens to jeopardise her career, she fleSophia's life in London is a bit of a mess, and after an ill-advised hook-up with a married colleague that threatens to jeopardise her career, she flees to her parents' country home. There, she finds an unimaginably horrifying scene: her mother has repeatedly stabbed her father, leaving him in a coma, before taking her own life. Sophia can't believe her mum, Nina, could do this, but the police confirm they are treating the case as an attempted murder-suicide.
In the aftermath of this shocking event, Sophia finds out Nina has written a book – a memoir. Not only that; she's got a publishing deal. Thereafter, the bulk of the narrative is made up of extracts from Nina's memoir, and alongside Sophia, we learn the hitherto-unknown tale of her past. After dropping out of her studies at Cambridge circa 1989, Nina becomes part of a commune named Morningstar, led by charismatic rock star Aaron Kessler. She is quickly drawn into a carefree, hedonistic way of life and an intoxicating relationship with Aaron. But this idyll can't last, and the fallout will reverberate over decades, ultimately wending its way to Sophia in the present day.
I liked Everything Is Lies, but I think it says a lot that I can remember very little about it less than a week after finishing the book. As with Callaghan's debut Dear Amy, I can't shake the impression the author has been asked to shape her narrative in a certain way, the better to make the resulting book slot into the domestic thriller market. There's a lot to appreciate in Nina's story, and with more detail and care, this could make a compelling novel in its own right – something in the vein of Linda Grant's excellent Upstairs at the Party. The murder-suicide part doesn't really need to be there, and the present-day storyline about Sophia's job is completely redundant.
I probably wouldn't have finished reading this if I wasn't on holiday, and that's how I'd recommend it – fine as a throwaway holiday read; otherwise, there are better versions of this story you could seek out. As well as Upstairs at the Party, try The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly, The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood, The Predictions by Bianca Zander, or The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse.
I received an advance review copy of Everything Is Lies from the publisher through NetGalley.
After loving her memorable debut Rawblood, particularly the hallucinatory brilliance of its climactic chapters, I knew I would want to read whatever CAfter loving her memorable debut Rawblood, particularly the hallucinatory brilliance of its climactic chapters, I knew I would want to read whatever Catriona Ward wrote next. That turns out to be Little Eve, a gothic tale of two girls' lives within an isolated cult. It begins in 1921 with a scene in which Jamie, a butcher in the small town of Loyal, takes a delivery to the Castle of Altnaharra, reached from the Scottish mainland by a causeway which the sea swallows at high tide. The gate is open, and Jamie ventures inside to find a horrific scene: four corpses – each with an eye cut out – and a girl barely alive. This survivor is Dinah. From there, the story flips back and forth between 1917 and 1921 to reveal how this gory sacrifice came about, honing in on the conflicting accounts of Dinah and Evelyn.
Evelyn and Dinah grow up in the castle. Led by John, aka 'Uncle', the group on Altnaharra also includes two women, Alice and Nora, and two more orphan children, Abel and Elizabeth. Knowing no better, the children subscribe to the dubious religion peddled by Uncle: worshipping snakes, performing the ritual known as 'benison', regarding outsiders as 'impure'. Yet you may come to wonder whether these beliefs are quite as ridiculous as they seem. In particular, Evelyn's accounts of inexplicable visions make it difficult to entirely discount the possibility of some otherworldly influence.
Catriona Ward has a wonderful way with words, and her distinctive style suits these eccentric characters perfectly. There's not a moment of this book that drags or a scene that doesn't propel the story forward. But then again, there's nothing powerful enough to match the most striking scenes from Rawblood, and I guessed every twist way ahead of its reveal. I enjoyed Little Eve a lot while I was reading it, but having come to the end I find myself wishing Ward had written something more innovative – something as thrilling as the best bits of her debut, as unique as her way with language – and I doubt I'll remember it for very long.
The front cover declares that this is 'The Loney meets The Girls' (interestingly, this just seems to be a marketing tagline and not an actual quote). I can understand why these books have been used as reference points, since most people will be at least vaguely familiar with what they're about, but Little Eve is nothing at all like The Loney, and not much like The Girls either since that book was barely about life within a cult. Rather, it strongly resembles Jess Richards' Snake Ropes – the two share similarly isolated settings off the coast of Scotland, an idiosyncratic 'religion' observed only by those on the island, and a story told mainly from the viewpoints of two young women. I'd also compare it to Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg and The First Book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz, both of which focus on girls who have been so thoroughly assimilated into cultlike communities that they refuse to reject their practices. There was something about the tone that reminded me of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, too.
Ultimately, this is material that many other novels have explored, and I can't help but feel a little let down by the lack of originality. Ward's writing elevates it, though, and it is rarely less than exciting. I wish I'd read Little Eve in more suitable conditions; a heatwave doesn't really lend itself to tales of wild imaginings in a rain-lashed, water-bound castle. My advice is to save this one for a dark and stormy night and read it under the covers.
I received an advance review copy of Little Eve from the publisher through NetGalley.
What I thought this book was: A literary novel (maybe that elusive thing, a 'literary thriller') about a teenage girl who is sucked into a sinister cuWhat I thought this book was: A literary novel (maybe that elusive thing, a 'literary thriller') about a teenage girl who is sucked into a sinister cult, based on the Manson Family, and how the rest of her life is shaped by the experience. What this book actually is: A coming-of-age story about a lonely, unloved girl in late-60s California, with the cult, with which the protagonist is only intermittently involved, as more of a backdrop to the process of growing up and abandoning the naivety of childhood. I'd have liked this more, I think, if there was no difference between the two.
The story begins with Evie's first sighting of the girls of the title. They're noticeable in a strange way, 'like royalty in exile... They were messing with an uneasy threshold, prettiness and ugliness at the same time'. Evie is mesmerised, seeing a glimpse of something weird and exciting. She is the child of wealthy parents - her grandmother was a famous actress - but she is neglected, has few friends, and feels eternally clueless. Though it happens more slowly than you'd think, she eventually manages to befriend the girls (or is recruited by them) and is drawn into the orbit of the Manson figure, Russell. (I should probably mention here that her story is actually told in flashback - in an unspecified later time period, while a middle-aged Evie is staying at a friend's house, an encounter with two young people brings memories of her adolescence flooding back - but the 'modern' sections don't have much of a plot or really add anything to the story.)
The premise itself makes for a certain level of detachment. Evie's involvement with Russell and the girls has to be enough for her to have a story worth telling - but she's never at the heart of things, the point being that she slips under the radar, evades suspicion, and is able to live out the rest of her life in what passes for a normal way, without media attention. As a result, there's a frustrating lack of focus on what life is really like within the cult. Evie is too peripheral to really know, and whole stretches of the story concentrate instead on her home life. Russell is portrayed as a magnetic person, but beyond having a charismatic personality, there's little about what exactly he does to instill rapturous devotion in his followers.
That's true to how Evie feels, though: rather than being a devotee of Russell, she admires, is possibly in love with, his closest acolyte, Suzanne. I think that unexpected perspective was what I liked most about The Girls. Evie's determination to cling to Suzanne, no matter what, is made wholly believable. Suzanne herself is an utterly fascinating character, beautifully depicted, just fleshed out enough to keep her intriguing but enigmatic. You can never quite see every side of her.
Let's talk about the way the book is written. The Girls employs a style that seems to be increasingly popular in contemporary fiction, though I'm not sure exactly how to categorise it, nor what the source of it might be. Words with superficially pleasing rhythms are absolutely everywhere, words like 'skittered' and 'scudded'. Movement is evoked all the time, every emotion described as if it has a physical manifestation. Instead of explaining that a boy she knows has friends who have gone to fight in Vietnam, Evie says, obliquely, 'he had older friends who'd disappeared in sluggish jungles, rivers thick with sediment'. She describes eating 'in the blunt way I had as a child - a glut of spaghetti, mossed with cheese. The nothing jump of soda in my throat' - which, yes, is an evocative/creative way of describing something very simple, but also kind of unnecessary and not quite logical. Likewise 'the air was candied with silence' - a pretty sentence, but what does it (what can it) mean? I could go on.
I don't completely hate this sort of writing, and it's perhaps unfair to single this book out when this style is so popular, and my annoyance with it is largely down to having encountered it so many times. But I can't write this review without mentioning the fact that it irritated me all the way through. It seems unlikely the real Evie would think about or write her own story like this; it's so unnatural, like every line has been rewritten with a thesaurus close at hand, and it gets exhausting. Just once I'd have liked a straightforward description instead of some weird metaphor or string of unusual adjectives.
I enjoyed The Girls as a quick bit of fluff. It hooked me easily, it's got a powerful atmosphere, and of course the premise is interesting. But I found it all a bit thin and overwritten, and it feels as though it's been shaped to conform to certain trends - the past-and-present narrative structure, the flowery style. I love cult stories, but this didn't tell the story I wanted to read. Go in expecting a coming-of-age tale, and I suspect you will feel more richly rewarded.
I received an advance review copy of The Girls from the publisher through NetGalley....more
I completely breezed through this debut novel, swallowing it practically whole (I like food/eating metaphors for reading; they always feel incredibly I completely breezed through this debut novel, swallowing it practically whole (I like food/eating metaphors for reading; they always feel incredibly apt to me somehow). It's about a girl who's raised in a small commune at Foxlowe, the ancestral home of one of the group's founders. As is often the case in books like this (see: The First Book of Calamity Leek, to which this bears more than a passing resemblance), the protagonist, Green - that's her suitably hippyish 'Foxlowe name' - is the one who is fiercely protective of 'the Family' and refuses to rebel when the the other children start to reject its practices.
The story is addictive (it helps that I'm a huge fan of stories depicting cults/communes) and it's easy to get swept up in the atmosphere. The relationships are well-formed, and Foxlowe itself is balanced so effectively: on the one hand there's the horror of the gruesome punishments Freya inflicts on the children; on the other, the community has an idyllic, enchanted air; there's something haunting and oddly beguiling about the way it's portrayed. Once Green leaves Foxlowe, the plot develops in ways I didn't anticipate. You can see exactly why she would have trouble letting go of her past; her new life is scarcely better than the old one, it's just that she's restricted in completely different ways. (view spoiler)[It's weird, given the absolutely horrible fate of Blue, but I found Mel's suffocating behaviour towards Jess the most disturbing thing in the book. (hide spoiler)] The contrasts - and, in the first half, the question of what happened to Foxlowe - make the whole thing incredibly tense and gripping.
If you don't like child narrators, you might not get on with Green's rather naive language, particularly the substitution of very randomly chosen words with Foxlowe-specific equivalents (for example grown/ungrown instead of adults/children), a device which seems rather contrived when the members of the commune use proper English for almost everything else. And indeed, it's easy to question Green's eloquence when she has supposedly never learned to read or write properly. But I'm nitpicking; once I got swept up in the story, I forgot about all this.
This is one to watch out for; I couldn't put it down, and stayed up way longer than I should have so I could finish it. The ending is delicious - (view spoiler)[though again extremely similar to Calamity Leek(hide spoiler)].
I received an advance review copy of Foxlowe from the publisher through NetGalley....more
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine begins as a chronicle of the smallness and aimlessness of everyday life, something that might seem very recognisableYou Too Can Have a Body Like Mine begins as a chronicle of the smallness and aimlessness of everyday life, something that might seem very recognisable to many of us. Remaining unnamed for the entire story, our narrator worries about her creepy roommate, B, and the empty relationship she has with her boyfriend, C. She watches TV advertisements. She goes to work, part-time, at a local office, where she sits in a cubicle designated for freelancers and proofreads copy for obscure magazines with titles like New Age Plastics and Fantastic Pets. She observes the neighbours across the street - an ordinary lot, until the day the whole family abandons their house and troops off clad in white sheets, leaving the words 'HE WHO SITS NEXT TO ME, MAY WE EAT AS ONE' daubed on the garage. Along with B's bizarre behaviour, this is an early indicator that the story may be something a bit more twisted and inventive than it initially appears.
Images of consumer culture are significant in You Too..., particularly a series of adverts for Kandy Kakes, an entirely synthetic sweet snack. The TV commercials all feature the brand's mascot, Kandy Kat, who chases the animated Kakes ever-more-desperately through a series of different scenes and situations. Kandy Kat's endlessly fruitless pursuit is an idea familiar from old cartoons - Tom and Jerry, or Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner - but his physical appearance takes on disturbing aspects more suited to a 'lost episode' creepypasta ('the bones and tendons of the arm show starkly... the stomach distended and throbbing through the thin cover of skin... he was biting so hard that his teeth cracked'), while the accompanying slogans are ripped straight from a nightmare ('KANDY KAKES: WE KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE').
The narrator is initially afraid that B is emulating her, trying to take her place, but it slowly starts to seem as though the opposite might be the case; the narrator destroys B's makeup and vandalises her room, then begins to stalk C in the same way she'd earlier described B harassing an ex-boyfriend. The narrator's quest to track down Kandy Kakes mirrors the antics of Kandy Kat; her physical deterioration, too.
Other important elements of the plot include: Wally's, a supermarket chain where every member of staff wears a giant foam head, the aisles are frequently shifted in nonsensical ways to keep customers confused, and a chandelier made of food spins in the lobby; a phenomenon nicknamed Disappearing Dad Disorder, which involves men vanishing from their families' lives only to resurface months later in a different, but similar, place, often living with a replacement wife and children; Michael, a man who develops an obsession with stealing veal from food stores, and becomes a celebrity - and has his image used to advertise the meat - after he is caught; and a reality show named That's My Partner!, in which couples compete in bizarre tasks to determine how easily they can recognise their partner in disorientating situations (example: groping a roomful of naked strangers), and the losers are forced to split up. Finally, and ultimately most significantly, there's a sinister organisation known as the Church of the Conjoined Eater, which brings all the other elements together towards the end in a really rather ingenious manner.
I thought at first that You Too... would be an American counterpart to Alice Furse's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, something about the sort of directionless life many of us find ourselves in during our twenties and thirties, still trying to figure out some sort of identity, doing a bearable job but not yet having a career, etc. And there are times when the narrator's cynical comments fit perfectly with that expectation - that's part of what balances the story so effectively. But the quiet horror and creeping surrealism of its details, eventually, reminded me more of the stories of Robert Aickman, or what I was hoping for when I had a go at reading the Welcome to Night Vale book.
This is a strange and surreal novel. I don't think I can overemphasise that - I'd read reviews of it before I started, and an excerpt, and I was still surprised at exactly how weird (and I mean that in the sense of the phrase 'weird fiction') it was. I've been scanning back through some of those reviews, and I think maybe I was surprised because so many of them focus on aspects like the relationships between the narrator and B and C, or whatever the whole Kandy Kakes/Church of the Conjoined Eater arc has to say about body image, and when I was in the thick of the story, I didn't (or couldn't) read those elements that literally, or even see them as analogous to real life. I liked You Too... better the further it divorced itself from reality. It's entirely possible that I was reading it wrong, but either way - this is a brilliant story, and more subtle than it has any right to be given the often outlandish images it throws up. 2016 is only just beginning, but I've already found a favourite....more
Dietland is a distinctly weird book - I loved it, but it's quite hard to explain why, perhaps because there are so many different ways to interpret itDietland is a distinctly weird book - I loved it, but it's quite hard to explain why, perhaps because there are so many different ways to interpret its odd mish-mash of dark feminist satire, conspiracy thriller, brash comedy, and feelgood tale of body positivity. In short, it's about Plum, who is deeply unhappy and desperate for weight-loss surgery until the fateful day she notices a girl following her. This leads to her induction into the world of Calliope House - something like a women's refuge crossed with a secret society - and then in turn to her involvement with a feminist terrorist group called Jennifer. It all works because it has Plum, a warm and believable character, at its heart, which helps to ground the story when it ventures into absurd territory (and that happens quite a lot). Some will love it, some will hate it, but one thing's for sure: I've never read anything quite like this before. ...more
