Quick Book Verdicts

I thought I'd about finished packing my books away (this time I haven't been counting, because I really don't want to know), and just found a swathe I'd put aside because, having read them, I intended to post my impressions of them. Oh, intentions. You mean so little. Most of these books I read last year. I won't be able to do any of them justice now. Nevertheless.

Crandolin - Anna Tambour

buy :: author

Tambour is an exceptionally luscious, rich, textured, decadent, and enchanting writer, and this book is no exception. It is the story of a monster, which takes the form of a stain found on a page in an ancient cook book, and for which time is not linear, or acknowledged. It spans ages, this story, myriad lives in myriad cultures and walks of life. It is a thick, sumptuous affair that I found incredibly hard to withdraw from, much like treacle. Beyond this, I honestly don't know how to explain this book to you. Like a spell, it affects without letting you understand how. So very incredibly recommended.

Under the Glacier - Halldór Laxness

buy :: author

Purchased in Reykjavík after experiencing how very exalted he is in this City of Literature. He's a Nobel Prize winner, and widely translated with English copies of his works available in nearly all bookshops there. This I selected as it is blurbed by Susan Sontag as being "one of the funniest books ever written." And it is, although a very precise sort of funny which comes from being an outsider of a culture's geographical and religious history, and having only a passing understanding of how this history shapes a nation and such a people. It is one surreal and absurd event after another, with structured religion befuddled by the organic beliefs of those who live under the Glacier. Curious characters, a landscape that didn't require my own memories to be evocative, a bemusing tale. Worth reading.

A Wrinkle in the Skin - John Christopher

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I've already established a gobsmacked love of Christopher, and this book met those expectations. Brutally. Here, a massive shift in the continental plates changes the world, the shapes of the land, moving the seas and so completely destroying all infrastructure and civilisation. Following Cotter, who lived on in of the Channel Islands at the time, this book explores the various ways in we (well, the English) adapt to or fall apart when presented with the end of civilisation. It's harrowing, brutally honest and never looks away. Refreshingly minimal in sexism as well. Left it wide-eyed with horror and so excited at having read something so incredibly perfectly well crafted. Worth reading for the sake of it, also as an example of sparse and effective story telling for writers.

The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham

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Okay, my advice to you is don't read these two books back to back. In fact, don't read apocalypse books by older English writers back to back. Ever. At all. Your world view will cop a beating and you'll be left wandering around asking what the point is, we're all going to die horribly anyway, humanity is doomed, etc, etc, etc. In this one, something seems to take up residence at the bottom of the oceans, and from there, shit goes from bad to incredibly fucked up to someone is going to be extinct by the end of this. Just like Christopher, is powerful, sparse, and doesn't ever avert its eyes. I loved it, and I won't be reading anything by either Christopher or Wyndham for a long while yet. That's quite enough.

Rant - Chuck Palahnuik

buy :: author

I've always loved Palahniuk's work, so didn't fight too hard when J insisted insisted insisted I read this. As much as I feel that Palahniuk is something of a one-trick pony in that I know exactly what I'm getting in any story of his, he's an incredibly talented pony, and that trick is fucking amazing, and even so, even so, this, this, is just...wow. WOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT. It is a masterpiece in which he subverts the narrative and the reader over, and over. I just. You know, with all the reading, writing, and editing I've done I think I have some qualifications backing me up when I say this is a work of genius. The ways it can be read, interpreted, are manifold. It left me open-mouthed with astonishment and J going "You see!? You see?!" I just. Wow. WOW. No, I can't actually tell you anything else about the book. Much like Crandolin above, it defies easy summation. Read it. READ IT.

The Honey Month - Amal El-Mohtar

buy :: author (Ebooks, ey?)

Full disclosure, I am friends with and love this woman to bits. The concept behind this book is simple; she sampled a different honey every day for a month, and wrote a piece based on that. That she managed to sustain production every day for a month is amazing. That all her pieces remain fresh, individual and plump is incredible. There are fables, poems, vignettes, heart-break, joy, sadness, homes found and lost. She walks through these narratives. Her prose is wonderful and breath-taking, which is what happens when poets write stories. A rich, wonderful and warm collection. Just like honey.

Decay Inevitable - Conrad Williams

buy :: author

Full disclosure: I am friends with and love this man to bits, and have a long history of babbling delighted about his writing. This book is sneaky, in that it begins quietly, ordinarily, to the point that I forgot I was reading horror and expected crime, but the horror creeps in softly, and then, not so fucking softly. Amid all the "Oh shit oh shit oh shit-" is a truly warm and loving relationship, which I've rarely encountered in horror. The apocalypse plays second fiddle to the personal.

I really hope I don't find any more books just lying around. Oh, what do you mean I can't have that many tags? GRRRRR.

The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndham

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When did I read this? Ages ago. February. During that insane heatwave. When I was staying with Mum and Dad, convalescing after the excavation of my wisdom teeth. I remember lying on the floor boards in the hallway, in the vague hope I'd be in a position to take advantage of any breeze coming through the front door. There was no such thing. The power went out, because every single privileged bastard with airconditioning had it maxed out and overloaded the power grid. We had no airconditioning. We had desk fans and wet towels. Then we only had wet towels.

So I read to escape the heat and my square face.

This being a 52 year old classic, I don't feel there's anything I have to say about it that will be new or interesting. It has earned the title of classic, it is a masterful work of suspense and body horror, even though the phrase didn't exist at the time. The village of Midwich is unreachable for a couple of nights due to mysterious forces, and then just...comes back. Everyone wakes up not realising anything untoward had happened. The effects only reveal themselves later, when every woman in the village is pregnant.

This is dealt with in largely practical terms - in that stalwart British style - which allows the underlying tension and horror to build in a wonderfully subtle and insidious fashion. An unplanned pregnancy is scary enough, imagine if you were in fact a virgin, or with menopause well in the past. Imagine you didn't want children. Imagine something was growing inside you, and you didn't know what it was, and there was nothing you could do about it? I imagined all that very well, thank you very much, and was terrified. Dude, pregnancy is frightening enough when it's planned and you want it.

And then, everyone gave birth, and aside from some peculiarities of appearance, everything was fine.

Until, of course, it wasn't. As the children develop, a new sort of terror takes shape, no less powerful. Part Stockholm Syndrome, part necessarily illusion for the sake of your own sanity, neither of which alters the circumstances, about which nothing can be done.

Unfortunately, this incredible tension and momentum the story gains is deflated when the children finally reveal themselves, and the characters and reader become aware of their true nature. Then, as with horror movies for example, it stops being about the waiting, and becomes just a chase - and there's only ever one ending for a chase. The question of ethics does make the decisions made particularly nasty, but no longer unexpected.

What struck me most, however, was not just that no one would publish this story now, but that no one would even write it. It's lean, it disregards the passage of time with barely a nod, it does not flesh out characters more than is utterly necessary. It's from another time and another place. It works in unfamiliar ways, and makes unexpected assumptions. No one would write it.

That can only be to our detriment.