I’m planning to reread this later in the year, and will write more then, but for now, I love LOVED it – a stunning spin on ‘dark academia’ tropes, a sI’m planning to reread this later in the year, and will write more then, but for now, I love LOVED it – a stunning spin on ‘dark academia’ tropes, a story that turns itself upside down and shakes everything out. Not only is it a story about privilege and obsession and envy, it gets to the heart of something about why we are so endlessly fascinated by these stories. An instant favourite, to sit next to The Party, The Bellwether Revivals and Engleby....more
I’ve been putting off writing about The Borrowed Hills; I’m worried I don’t have the ability to do it justice. My notes are crowded with ecstatic but I’ve been putting off writing about The Borrowed Hills; I’m worried I don’t have the ability to do it justice. My notes are crowded with ecstatic but useless phrases like ‘the real deal’ and ‘holy shit, this is a BOOK’. And in some ways I’d like to leave it at that. For better or worse, however, I like to pick apart why I loved things. So, first: this is a novel about a man, Steve Elliman, and his inheritance – not so much a literal inheritance as a way of life (shaped by centuries of farming knowledge) and character (the particular stoicism of the rural working class). It’s about how he is inexorably drawn back to the Lakes, to a volatile friend/neighbour/rival, William Herne, and to William’s wife Helen.
So many of us have a complicated love-hate attachment to the places we grew up in. What Preston does beautifully here is to capture that in a way that feels universal, but also makes it specific to the Lake District Steve knows. This is a place where farms stay in families for generations, tradition is still meaningful, and locals deride the ‘offcomers’. It’s wildly beautiful, yet bleak and hostile – a world away from the curated tourist image of the region. Every moment of The Borrowed Hills is steeped in the gristle and mulch of farming life. Some early scenes take place as the Elliman and Herne farms are afflicted by foot and mouth disease, and after reading them, that cover illustration of a sheep amid flames takes on a much more sinister significance.
Some of the language is a tough nut to crack; Steve peppers his narrative with dialect words that don’t come clear except with time and context. This creates the sense that the story, like its characters, is guarded and defensive, unwilling to letting an outsider in. (For example, the chapter titles use yan-tan-tethera, a method of counting sheep which mixes dead language with Cumbrian dialect. This is never actually explained anywhere, so it didn’t even occur to me that these titles were numbers until I was some way into the book and I realised none of the words had appeared elsewhere, so couldn’t be, as I’d vaguely supposed, place names.)
The Borrowed Hills is also a story about the violence of men alone. We’re always seeing ‘individualism’ spoken about as a modern ill; what Preston shows us, through Steve, is not so much robust independence but something more ancient; solitude as an ancient survival instinct. What can a sense of community even be, when you make your home in so remote a place? And what happens if something goes wrong within that tiny group? In a different story, Steve’s dangerous pull towards Helen might only destroy his fragile truce with William, but here it (along with the arrival of a violent new influence) becomes a threat to a whole way of life.
I read parts of this book at the same time as I was reading another, less-good book. The contrast was illuminating: while the other book disappeared from my mind as soon as I closed it, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Borrowed Hills and felt fully immersed in its world. All this bleak horror contrasting with the beauty of the landscape. There’s a central sequence that is just so exciting and tense – you feel the exhaustion, the way it never seems to end, yet how critical it is to keep going, and I read it in the same way, reluctant to put the book down until it was over.
The themes of The Borrowed Hills reminded me of knotty modern fiction about masculinity such as Ross Raisin’s Waterline and Rob Doyle’s Here Are the Young Men. But I also really think fans of Tana French need to get on this. While it’s not a crime novel (although in some ways it is?), I haven’t read anything else that approximates the same combination of a real sense of a place and a people with writing that is simultaneously lyrical, expressive and down to earth.
I received an advance review copy of The Borrowed Hills from the publisher through NetGalley....more
The Terror meets Heart of Darkness; a blood-soaked, frostbitten treat. Years after an infamous failed expedition, a captain with a sullied reputation The Terror meets Heart of Darkness; a blood-soaked, frostbitten treat. Years after an infamous failed expedition, a captain with a sullied reputation must return to the Arctic in search of a lost party that includes his former lieutenant. Wilkes has a masterful command of description and detail, so while this is not a quick read, it is thoroughly immersive and enthralling at every level: setting, atmosphere, character. I wanted to follow William Day forever, and the mental image of ‘Fort Stevens’ will stay with me for a long while. Gory and gorgeous.
I received an advance review copy of Where the Dead Wait from the publisher through NetGalley....more
It’s funny to think I might never have read this – while I loved Spider, it didn’t make me immediately want to go out and buy everything else the authIt’s funny to think I might never have read this – while I loved Spider, it didn’t make me immediately want to go out and buy everything else the author had written. I only picked up Dr Haggard’s Disease because I found a copy in one of my favourite charity bookshops. Now I’m kicking myself. I think it might actually be a masterpiece. Why isn’t it better known, more widely read? And have I been sleeping on the rest of McGrath’s books?
Edward Haggard is a man who has led an extremely limited and suppressed life. Now a country doctor, he mostly keeps to his isolated, windswept house and tries to cope with the pain caused by ‘Spike’, the metal pin that holds his hip together, legacy of an old injury. His sole relationship seems to have been an affair some years ago. He was a promising young registrar; she was the wife of a senior pathologist. Haggard is already utterly consumed by memories of this woman, but they really explode back into his life when he receives an unexpected visit from her son, a young RAF pilot. Soon, it appears the obsession is transferring itself from mother to son in unique and disturbing fashion.
I’ve mentioned many times that I dislike the trope of a person being obsessed with a short relationship many years in the past. It’s often used as a lazy way to demonstrate a character’s emotional immaturity, or a plot point to bring them back into contact with someone or something. But here is a rare example of a story in which it works beautifully. It’s painfully obvious to the reader that the affair was much more significant to Haggard than to Frances – a fact of which, even after so much obsessive reflection, he appears unaware. The depth of his obsession has overridden reality (as we see when he claims to have manifested a haunting by her, a disturbing hint of what’s to come). Then there’s the uncomfortable fact that Haggard narrates the whole tale of the affair, including many intimate details, to his lover’s son. This always-disconcerting background hum rises to a crescendo when Haggard’s beliefs about James – his ‘disease’ – reach their apotheosis. It’s a revelation that paints our protagonist as not just disturbed, but truly deranged.
Yet worse is to come. That final scene! That last line! That hideous, indelible image! Has any novel of obsession ever segued quite so effectively into psychological horror?
The books I love can be roughly sorted into two categories: those that thrill me with the skill of the writing, and those that seem to speak to my soul. Dr Haggard’s Disease was both. It’s an immaculately written, riveting, unsettling novel, one that immediately felt close to my heart....more
An utterly perfect novella for me. It’s so clever, all of it – the use of ekphrasis, the title, the nature of the painting, how they all play into eacAn utterly perfect novella for me. It’s so clever, all of it – the use of ekphrasis, the title, the nature of the painting, how they all play into each other – but absorbing and readable at the same time, never too smart for its own good. One of the closest things I have read to Nina Allan’s short fiction, somehow seeming to embody the spirit of her fractured novels: I’m thinking especially of Stardust/Ruby, of ‘Wreck of the Julia’, as well as ‘Four Abstracts’ and Maggots. Reminded me of Aliya Whiteley too: the mystery of Skein Island’s premise, the cyclical nature of Three Eight One. As a horror reader, a lover of strange stories, and someone who’s enjoyed Tuttle’s contributions to anthologies, it’s probably embarrassing that it’s taken an NYRB edition to turn me on to her work. Even worse, in the past I’ve been put off by the covers (the design for A Nest of Nightmares, for example, makes it look exactly like the type of horror I like least). My Death is a revelation: subtle, grounded, yet indisputably weird. I will certainly read more now. And I’ll read this again....more
(4.5) Absolutely disgusting... I loved it! I could not put Brainwyrms down – I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next, I galloped thr(4.5) Absolutely disgusting... I loved it! I could not put Brainwyrms down – I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next, I galloped through it, even though at times I was nauseated and/or cringing away from the page. This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of thrilling writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and whatever it means to be virtuous, if it even means anything. I know it sounds basic and borderline patronising to call it ‘fearless’, but it really is fearless and so brilliantly weird. Especially when it takes turns into more experimental style choices, with the stage play section (active monsters) being a particular high point. Brainwyrms confirms Rumfitt as one of our most important contemporary horror writers. It’s a book that gets right under your skin (sorry). Never before have I immediately and desperately wanted to reread a book that repelled me.
I received an advance review copy of Brainwyrms from the publisher....more
Imagine Tana French writing a folklore-infused horror novel, and you have Knock Knock, Open Wide. This is a book that won’t be for everyone, simply beImagine Tana French writing a folklore-infused horror novel, and you have Knock Knock, Open Wide. This is a book that won’t be for everyone, simply because there is just a lot of stuff in it; it’s not one neat storyline, but a bunch that overlap and entwine, and there’s a lot of character work, details that could feel irrelevant if they weren’t so beautifully crafted. For me, it was one of those reading experiences where my delight increased as the story went along, where I thought more and more this was written for me! the more I read.
It’s about Etain, who is involved in a freak accident that leads her into a series of bizarre horrors, and how that night changes the rest of her life. It’s about Ashling, her daughter, and the woman Ashling falls in love with. It’s about a long-running TV series remembered differently by everyone who watched it (the kind of plot device I find irresistible even when done lazily – used unusually well here). It’s dark and sinister, but full of life and love, too.
I’d like more time to sit with Knock Knock, Open Wide but I am hopelessly behind on reviews with no prospect of catching up in the near future, so this will have to do for now. This is a book I absolutely adored, an instant favourite and a world I will return to.
I received an advance review copy of Knock Knock, Open Wide from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
I read The Last Language in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze Jennifer duBois has created here. The narroI read The Last Language in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze Jennifer duBois has created here. The narrow perspective is such a clever way to tell this story because it so closely parallels Angela’s facilitated communication with Sam. When all we have is her account, how can we ever know what is true? Who has the ability to decide whether Angela is speaking for the ‘real’ Sam or simply ventriloquising through him? Are her final words defiant denial or a kind of confession? I will be coming back to this one, but for now: wow, what a superb, riveting, disturbing novel. I loved Cartwheel – which, like this, was based on a real-life case – but The Last Language surpasses it.
I received an advance review copy of The Last Language from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
What a wonderful and surprising gem of a book! I came for the combination of a ‘lost film’ plot and elements of horror – a recipe guaranteed to snag mWhat a wonderful and surprising gem of a book! I came for the combination of a ‘lost film’ plot and elements of horror – a recipe guaranteed to snag my interest – but I stayed for the incredibly well-researched portrait of old Hollywood, the brilliantly world-weary heroine, and the fascinating detective story. In the framing narrative, set in 1967, a man arrives at a middle-of-nowhere desert hotel in search of a legendary silent horror film, The Devil’s Playground. For most of the book, though, we’re with studio ‘fixer’ Mary Rourke in 1927 as she experiences the Devil’s Playground curse first-hand, starting with the death of leading lady Norma Carlton. This is an elaborately plotted historical mystery, rich in fascinating detail; the horror stuff is fun, but – surprisingly – far from my favourite thing about the story. One of those books I enjoyed so much that I immediately bought another of the author’s novels (The Devil Aspect) and am so looking forward to getting stuck in.
I received an advance review copy of The Devil’s Playground from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
Just when you think the first-person novel of disaster/breakdown/mental unravelling has had its day, something comes along that reinvents the whole idJust when you think the first-person novel of disaster/breakdown/mental unravelling has had its day, something comes along that reinvents the whole idea. Hydra feels entirely fresh, though it’s difficult to pinpoint why exactly. Maybe it’s protagonist Anja’s job at an auction house. Maybe it’s the story’s main setting: a derelict cottage on the wild fringes of a naval base with a dark history. Maybe it’s the extracts that appear throughout: taken from an investigative report written thirty years earlier, they chronicle strange incidents – with a supernatural cause? – on the same naval base. But most of all, I think, it’s the distinct voice Howell creates for Anja. Her narration, liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks, is delightfully idiosyncratic; her wry tone rings out from the page.
There are whole swathes of the book where I could just quote everything Anja says. Her professional rival, Fran, is ‘a girl who’d forgotten she was a woman’; she bemoans her boss with his ‘orderly procession of pretty fuckboys’, and the ‘decaying boyish smile’ of a toadying colleague. Anja on Queen Anne furniture: ‘a design period so feminine one could imagine menstrual blood seeping from the furniture’s joints.’ Anja on the increasing coldness between her and erstwhile best friend Beth: ‘growing apart from me also meant growing apart from herself – best to let me be the whore.’
At first, our antiheroine seems to be on the up: she’s well on her way to securing the coveted position of ‘specialist’. (Anja on the prospect of Fran beating her to it: ‘If I didn’t make specialist before her, I’d die.’) But then, in quick succession, comes a series of disastrous events: the death of Anja’s mother, the breakdown of her marriage, and – most ruinously – a dramatic incident at an open house. Anja is rendered jobless and disgraced in one fell swoop. Desperate for an escape, she buys the aforementioned derelict cottage on impulse. Which is when things get weird – and we start to understand the connection between Anja’s narrative and the investigative report.
I know a lot of people are fed up of ‘unhinged woman’ novels, and I have been losing my patience with them too, but Hydra really is a cut above. The style definitely has shades of Ottessa Moshfegh, but it’s wittier – at times, Anja’s one-liners are reminiscent of Emma Jane Unsworth’s Animals – and Hydra also feels like a book twin to the film Tár. When the history of the cottage is revealed in full, and when Anja makes her triumphant, deranged and utterly career-crippling return to the auction house, the message is the same: wildness and violence are never as far away as you think....more
I was attracted to the idea of this book – a horror novel disguised as a non-fiction book about the many strange incidents surrounding a cursed and/orI was attracted to the idea of this book – a horror novel disguised as a non-fiction book about the many strange incidents surrounding a cursed and/or haunted mountain – but even so, I was surprised by how much I loved it. I had the absolute time of my life reading this: it’s simply so enjoyable, so moreish. When I had it in my hands, I couldn’t stop reading, and when I was away from it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Each section of the book focuses on a different inexplicable event on or around Mynydd Du, literally Black Mountain, through history (the chapters were originally released as ‘episodes’ in individual ebooks). There’s the failure of an ‘executive community’ made up of Futuro-style pod houses; the strange disappearance of a popular uni student; the ‘beast’ that terrorised a mining community – even the tale of a Roman general whose troops meet with a seemingly unbeatable foe. There are multiple layers of storytelling here: journalist Rob Markland sifts through the papers of doomed writer Russell Ware, and later we also get a certain Simon Bestwick jumping into the narrative. And in between the work of these characters, there are various interview transcripts, articles, diary entries, letters, forum posts, etc.
Many books of this type resort to a more conventional approach when it’s time to tie all the threads together, but in Black Mountain the montage-style narrative is sustained to the end. This – along with the thoughtfully written recurrence of various characters – makes the story feel not like a series of discrete segments, more like a rich and cleverly woven tapestry. Had I not already known, I would never have guessed it was originally published episodically. The fact that it seems so complete also really helps its effectiveness as horror. I’ve read/watched so much horror that I rarely find it unnerving anymore, but this gets genuinely creepy at times; after certain scenes, I kept thinking I could see something lurking in the shadows... It’s the book equivalent of a found-footage film in which you can’t help but be persuaded that a real threat lies beneath even the most unlikely of sequences.
Points of comparison for me are John Langan’s The Fisherman, the podcast The Magnus Archives, the film The Empty Man,the Six Stories series and Eliza Clark’s forthcoming Penance. If you like found-footage horror, mixed-media narratives and stories about cursed places, this book is for you. (Don’t be put off by the cover, I know it’s not the best, that’s so often the way with genre fiction published by small presses.) MANY more horror fans should know about Black Mountain....more
I remembered, I did not remember. And the strange thing was that, in the end, it came to exactly the same thing.
Just one of the best dark character stI remembered, I did not remember. And the strange thing was that, in the end, it came to exactly the same thing.
Just one of the best dark character studies™ I’ve ever read. Like The Collector and God’s Own Country in that we’re entirely immersed in one person’s dishonest and unreliable viewpoint, with direct glimpses into their victim/target’s perspective (in this case via the letters and diaries Engleby steals from Jennifer) underlined by an undertone in the storytelling (Engleby speaks of Jennifer as though she’s a friend, yet there’s never any dialogue between them). But this is also the story of its narrator’s whole life, and at points – especially when Engleby becomes a journalist and has some bizarre meetings with famous politicians of the 1980s – it felt like I was reading some unhinged alternate version of Any Human Heart. Faulks is also incredibly good at threading cutting insights into the bile: Engleby can be droning on about something and suddenly there’s an observation so arresting it stops you dead. I never wanted it to end....more
From the moment I started reading Death of a Bookseller, I was absolutely lost to the story – sucked down into it so completely I couldn’t think aboutFrom the moment I started reading Death of a Bookseller, I was absolutely lost to the story – sucked down into it so completely I couldn’t think about anything else. Alice Slater has written a novel that sinks in its teeth and refuses to let go; I buzzed for days after finishing it.
Roach has worked at a beleaguered branch of Spines, a chain of bookshops, since she was a teenager. Solitary and obsessed with true crime (specifically the killers rather than the victims, whose stories she generally finds boring), Roach scoffs at ‘normies’ and spends much of her time listening to podcasts about famous murders. When a new team are brought in to reverse the shop’s fortunes, she meets a very different type of bookseller: the wholesome, stylish, friendly Laura. Fixating on the fact that Laura also reads about serial killers and writes poetry with dark themes, Roach starts fantasising about a friendship. But the two women’s clashing views about the ethics surrounding true crime turn Laura against her... something Roach is very reluctant to accept.
The narrative switches between the perspectives of the two main characters – a surprise to me, as from the blurb I’d assumed Roach would tell the whole story. At first, I was sceptical: could Laura’s viewpoint possibly be as interesting as Roach’s cynical, scathing voice? Would the story become lopsided? But Laura’s chapters bring a depth and complexity to her character that ultimately unlocks the power of the story.
Sometimes Roach sounds like such an insufferable not-like-other-girls, sometimes Laura sounds like a tryhard London literary type – there are points where both of them will make you roll your eyes. Yet as dark as Roach’s story gets, it’s hard not to extend compassion to her, because the narrative is always extending compassion to her too. It’s the same thing with Laura: she’s often an absolute mess, and we see how her behaviour parallels Roach’s in ways she’d no doubt be reluctant to admit – but we get why. If at first it seems clear that Roach is the dark and Laura the light, somewhere along the line both characters are painted such similar shades of grey that they blend and bleed into each other.
Something I also want to mention, that might easily get lost amid the irresistible momentum of the plot, is the power of the settings. I particularly loved Roach and Laura’s workplace, the bookshop itself. I could truly feel the atmosphere of the place: both cosy and decrepit. The story unfolds in the run-up to Christmas, and the writing absolutely nails the magic and the horror of being wrapped up in non-stop work at that time of year. (It’s also so good on the specifics of working in retail that it unlocked memories I hadn’t thought about for over a decade.)
My literary recipe for Death of a Bookseller would involve: the razor-sharp character studies and themes of obsession and envy in Looker and Kiss Me First; the heady atmosphere of The Poison Tree; the deliciously nasty underbelly of Boy Parts and Eileen; and the spiralling, unstable mood of Animals or Problems – especially as the story reaches its climax and the protagonists seem bound for disaster.
This is, naturally, a bookseller’s book. But it’s also for anyone who considers themselves a reader; likes true crime; anyone who hates it, or is disdainful towards it; anyone who has ever worked in a shop, or in customer service. And it’s also stealthily a book about grief. Like its characters, Death of a Bookseller contains more layers and subtleties you might first assume. This is a thrilling story of obsession with a dark, sticky soul – and it’s also so much more.
I received an advance review copy of Death of a Bookseller from the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton....more
I’ve been eagerly awaiting another novel from Laura Sims, and How Can I Help You is everything I wanted and more. Like her excellent debut Looker, thiI’ve been eagerly awaiting another novel from Laura Sims, and How Can I Help You is everything I wanted and more. Like her excellent debut Looker, this is a sharp, nuanced character study about identity and obsession – but here, the stakes are altogether higher.
At the Carlyle Public Library, two women are not quite what they seem. Margo, who’s been a circulation clerk for two years, has a dark past, one that Sims wastes no time revealing to us. Her new colleague Patricia – a younger, more glamorous reference librarian – has somewhat bitterly given up her preferred career as a writer, having failed to sell her novel. Each woman senses something unaccountably intriguing in the other. Soon they are locked in a strange dance, trying to pry information from one another. Margo attempts to hide her true self, her mask slipping with increasing regularity; Patricia finds a new muse in her prickly coworker, and begins writing again. But this uneasy dynamic can’t last forever.
At points in the book, Margo and Patricia both find themselves transported by reading or writing – Margo with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (a book she, a non-reader, is drawn to because of Patricia’s love for it), and Patricia with her own manuscript (a fictionalised account of Margo’s life that is more true than she can know). I felt similarly enthralled by How Can I Help You, any thoughts of my own totally erased by the story. Margo in particular is a superb creation: repellent yet, in the oddest of ways, sympathetic; a villain with thrilling layers. Patricia’s fascination with her is entirely understandable. The community of the library is so well realised, too: the familiar patrons, the other staff with their own difficult relationships. These background characters contribute much to our understanding of the world Margo and Patricia inhabit.
If you loved Death of a Bookseller then this should be at the top of your wishlist; the energy between Margo and Patricia also reminded me of Eileen. It’s an utterly propulsive feat of literary suspense: gripping, complex, and unpredictable to the last (I thought I’d guessed how it would all end – and I was completely wrong).
I received an advance review copy of How Can I Help You 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
Nina Allan is my favourite writer and I love everything she does – everyone knows this – but Conquest is a truly extraordinary novel, possibly even thNina Allan is my favourite writer and I love everything she does – everyone knows this – but Conquest is a truly extraordinary novel, possibly even the best of her career.
The plot revolves around the disappearance of a man, Frank, after he goes to meet some online friends in Paris. The situation is more complex than it first appears: Frank holds a variety of esoteric beliefs about a secret ‘supersoldier’ programme and a incipient war between aliens and humans; the friends are people he knows from a forum dedicated to discussing these ideas. Dismissed by the police, his girlfriend Rachel enlists the help of Robin, a private detective. By bizarre coincidence (or something else?), Robin shares a particular interest with Frank – an obsessive passion for the music of J.S. Bach. Compelled by both Frank’s story and her attraction to Rachel, Robin starts investigating, but the more she follows clues, the stranger the trail becomes.
Conquest is a story about many things: conspiracy theories, mental illness, the similarities between music and code, obsession, ambition (and apathy), love, legacy, belief; how information is corrosive, like acid – once you touch it, you’re changed by it, and how choosing not to believe in something you know to be true is an act of self-destruction. It shows how the lines between faith and doubt, between reasonable scepticism and fervid delusion, are thinner and more tenuous than we tend to believe; it shows what happens when someone falls into the cracks. It’s told from a number of perspectives – Robin and Rachel and Frank, but also an essay by one of Frank’s forum friends, a concert review by another, documents that illuminate both the characters’ individual stories and the broader themes of the novel.
At the heart of everything (including the book itself) is ‘The Tower’ by John C. Sylvester, an obscure 1950s sci-fi story which becomes one of Frank’s obsessions, a ‘sacred text’. It tells of a pioneering architect, a character like something out of Ayn Rand, who builds a vast, monumental tower out of an alien rock, only to discover it is both alive and contagious. Ultimately, the story seems a possible key to both Frank’s disappearance and his beliefs. ‘The Tower’ is a marvel in its own right, an unsettling tale that simmers with strange possibilities.
Conquest combines the speculative elements and missing-person angle of The Rift with the ‘fractured novel’ approach of the author’s earlier books and the detailed investigation central to The Good Neighbours. It’s strongly reminiscent of the haunting novella Maggots, my favourite of her shorter works, and also made me think of the short stories ‘The Silver Wind’ and ‘A Princess of Mars’. (As ever with Allan’s writing, I’m not sure whether I’m making connections that aren’t really there. But this – the connections, the not-knowing – is part of the pleasure of reading her work, and feels particularly appropriate for a book so much about hidden links and obscure connotations.)
As soon as I finished Conquest, I wanted to read it again. It’s a towering achievement (pun only slightly intended): a deeply complex and layered work of speculative fiction that rewards (and deserves) close reading yet is also incredibly enjoyable. I’ve tried to cover some of its ideas in this review, but the truth is that Conquest can’t be summarised neatly because it is about everything, about life. I have no doubt that when I revisit it, I will find completely different meanings and mysteries in the text.
I received an advance review copy of Conquest from the publisher through NetGalley....more
While I was reading Liar, Dreamer, Thief, I felt like I was living inside the world of Katrina Kim, its infinitely loveable heroine. She’s a college dWhile I was reading Liar, Dreamer, Thief, I felt like I was living inside the world of Katrina Kim, its infinitely loveable heroine. She’s a college dropout with a terrible job, a mess of a life and an arsenal of questionable coping strategies. One of them is a definitely-unhealthy, apparently random obsession with a coworker, Kurt, who she’s essentially stalking. Another is her tendency to retreat to the mental safe room of her ‘kitchen-door world’, an imagined universe based on her favourite children’s book. When Kurt suddenly vanishes – leaving a cryptic note that seems meant for Katrina – things spiral even further.
This is a cosy book. At the same time, it gets horribly real about the nature and effects of its protagonist’s mental health problems. (Going into detail about my own issues/diagnoses in a Goodreads review is not something I have any interest in doing at this point in my life, but I can confidently say Maria Dong’s portrayal of Katrina and her obsessions is extremely accurate, and I enjoyed and appreciated it a lot.) The writing is sometimes awkward, sometimes brilliant, and it suits the character perfectly – it feels like this is Katrina’s voice rather than a novel. It’s difficult to explain just how much I loved reading about her fascination with Kurt and her hunt for clues to his disappearance.
The story is always shifting and transforming. I felt like I was constantly being kept on my toes not just about where the plot was going, but about the nature of the book. Is it a conspiracy thriller, an ‘unhinged woman’ narrative, a story about a fractured family coming back together? It’s all three and more – a glorious Technicolor starburst of a novel. The closest comparisons I can think of are Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network and the stories in Elizabeth Tan’s Rubik and Smart Ovens for Lonely People. It’s funny and poignant, colourful and wonderfully weird, totally immersive, and a book I know I will want to return to.
I received an advance review copy of Liar, Dreamer, Thief from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
One of the things I really love about reading is discovering a new(-to-me) author whose work makes me think: YES. This person writes exactly the way IOne of the things I really love about reading is discovering a new(-to-me) author whose work makes me think: YES. This person writes exactly the way I like, and exactly the kind of fiction I crave, and I want to read everything of theirs I can get my hands on. That’s what happened with The Teardrop Method, a quietly haunting speculative novella, accompanied in this edition by an equally spellbinding short story.
In the title novella, Krisztina, a musician, hears the songs of people’s souls. She follows them around wintry Budapest, and in doing so realises someone – a man in a strange mask – is following her. This is a story that’s both disconcerting and beautiful, suffused with melancholy. It contains wonderful evocation of music: its sound and power. The atmosphere is perfect, the setting palpable, and there’s a terrifying/tragic villain, and even a story within a story. But, as Krisztina mourns her late partner and reconnects with her father, it also has that grounding in reality and human connection which I think is essential to good uncanny fiction.
In the linked story ‘Going Back to the World’, we’re with Susanna as she returns to the house she once shared with her ex, Dave, after his suicide. (Dave appears, sort of, in The Teardrop Method; he’s a music journalist who interviews both Krisztina and her father.) There’s arguably a stronger flavour of horror to this story – it’s certainly quite a bit creepier – but it retains the humanity of The Teardrop Method, as well as that sense of quietness that is, somehow, both unnerving and comforting.
This book positions Avery as an obvious heir to Joel Lane – at times I felt I was reading a Lane story. And to be clear, I don’t think Avery is copying Lane’s style at all, more that they both have the same – rare – ability to capture and pin down an ethereal, unsettling mood. I loved The Teardrop Method so much that I’m already prepared to proclaim Simon Avery as a new favourite.
Lotti Coates is the eldest daughter of an acclaimed painter and his beautiful muse; she’s accustomed to glamour and success. So when her family move tLotti Coates is the eldest daughter of an acclaimed painter and his beautiful muse; she’s accustomed to glamour and success. So when her family move to Canberra and she starts attending a new school, she’s determined to be one of the in-crowd – a plan that’s jeopardised when her parents allow her classmate Kyla Tyler, a notoriously strange and unpopular girl, to stay at their house. Lotti hates Kyla, whose odd looks and coarse manners horrify her. Yet as time goes on (and to Lotti’s disgust), Kyla seems to become increasingly entangled with the Coates. In the present day, the adult Lotti, now a doctor, returns to Canberra and – with a retrospective of her father’s work due to open – is forced to reckon with memories of those years.
Initially, I couldn’t help but compare We Were Never Friends to Emily Bitto’s The Strays, another Australian novel which features many similar plot points: an artistic family with three children taking in a disadvantaged girl; an unequal, obsessive friendship; complicated family dynamics and emotional neglect; a narrative structure that involves an adult reflecting on their childhood. But after a while, Bearman’s book pulls way ahead of Bitto’s. The writing is brilliant at the sentence level, and those crisp sentences illuminate Lotti’s world with startling colour – the settings are vividly portrayed, as is the emotional landscape of adolescence. I thought at first this would be an easy read, and while I certainly got through it quickly (I couldn’t put it down in the second half), it’s much bolder than I had imagined. Whenever I thought I knew where the story was going, it did something even more daring.
I would have liked to know a bit more about present-day Lotti, whose concerns aren’t fully elucidated. I also found it slightly jarring that past-Lotti and friends are pre-teens – a lot of their experiences, along with their language, feel too ‘old’ for girls who have just left primary school – but that’s probably a lack of similarity with my own experience more than anything else. Aside from those quibbles, I (somewhat unexpectedly) loved this book....more
