Category: Books

Let’s Kill Uncle (1963): Rohan O’Grady

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★★★ ½

One warm summer, a little boy and a little girl come to a remote Canadian island for their holidays. Initially things don’t look promising. The orphaned Barnaby Gaunt, who has spent his life shuttling from boarding school to boarding school, is a foul-mouthed little heathen; while Christie McNab, who lives with her single mother in the city, is sullen, prim and spoiled. The children hate each other on first sight, of course. But, as time passes, the peace of the island and the gentleness of the inhabitants soften their spirits. There are all sorts of wonderful adventures for two children to enjoy in this paradise. In fact, there’s only one tiny, teeny dark cloud on the horizon. Barnaby’s uncle is due on the island any day now. And Barnaby knows perfectly well that his uncle is planning to kill him.

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An Accidental King (2013): Mark Patton

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★★

In 79 AD, an old man looks back over his life and prepares to write his memoirs for his granddaughter. He is Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, born and bred in the British southlands of the Regenses. Trained as a priest, he was then crowned an unwilling king, first of his own tribe and then as Great King of all the Britons, with the weight of the emperor’s authority behind him. As he remembers his experiences across three decades – from a visit to Rome with the then-general Vespasian, to the horror and fire of Boudica’s revolt – Cogidubnus meditates on the tightrope he has had to walk throughout his life: defending his people, while remaining loyal to a vast and unpredictable foreign power.

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The Liars’ Gospel (2012): Naomi Alderman

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★★★★

As a writer, Naomi Alderman is a veritable chameleon. First I read The Lessons, a tale of a fall from grace among the dreaming spires, in the manner of a modern Brideshead. Then it was The Power, a Margaret-Atwoodesque novel that veered between dystopia and sci-fi: a feminist, egalitarian cry of rage. And now, the third of her novels that I’ve read, The Liars’ Gospel is a raw and rugged historical novel. Brave, too, because it dares to confront one of the world’s seminal figures: in life, a controversial and provocative young preacher in 1st-century AD Judea; and, in death, the begetter of a cult that would become one of the dominant religions of the world. But who exactly was this teacher?

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The Midwich Cuckoos (1957): John Wyndham

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★★★½

This is one of the books, like The Stepford Wives or Rosemary’s Baby, that has become an icon of popular culture: even if you haven’t read it, or seen the related films, you know the basic premise. I spotted it in the library today and, because I have another of Wyndham’s books lined up waiting to be read (Triffids, no less), I thought this would make an interesting comparison. For some reason I’d always imagined that Midwich would be a horror story, but it’s something far more subtle and sophisticated: a creeping, chilling sci-fi thriller which places its characters in the ultimate moral dilemma.

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The Devil You Know (2016): K.J. Parker

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★★★★

This is the first story I’ve read by K.J. Parker; or rather, the first I’ve read under that name. For K.J. Parker, as everyone now knows, is a pseudonym of Tom Holt, the author of gleeful comic novels set in Ancient Greece, and (as Thomas Holt) the slightly less successful Viking epic Meadowland. I’ve enjoyed Holt’s work under his own name and so was tempted to dip my toe into his fantasy efforts, courtesy of this short novel published by Tor. I absolutely couldn’t resist the blurb. This is a novella of wit, good, evil, ambition and sheer outright nerve; despite its brevity it reads like a mashup of Faust and Good Omens. And you should know me well enough to know that I think that’s a very good thing.

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Victory of Eagles (2008): Naomi Novik

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★★★★

Temeraire: Book V

Last weekend, at the Dorothy Dunnett Day meeting in London, I was chatting to Janet about Temeraire. She mentioned the central ‘moral dilemma’ of the series, which would have an effect on all the books that followed and, at the time, I couldn’t quite remember whether or not I’d reached this point. After all, I read the fourth Temeraire book in April 2014 and quite a lot has happened since then. However, I’d only read the first few pages of Victory of Eagles before I realised, with a jolt, what Janet had been talking about. Of course. The cure…

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Murder Most Unladylike (2014): Robin Stevens

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★★★★

A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery: Book I

Were you a Malory Towers or St Clare’s type? For me it was always Malory Towers. As a child I dreamed of going to such a boarding school, with a saltwater swimming pool at the base of a cliff, midnight feasts, a French mistress called ‘Mam’zelle’, san, tuck and lacrosse. Never mind that such a school hadn’t existed since the 1950s: my comprehensive school seemed thoroughly dull in comparison. And so I fell completely in love with this delightful book – allegedly for children, but really just as enjoyable for grown-ups – which taps into this nostalgic strain of British literature with its tongue firmly in cheek.

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The Incarnations (2014): Susan Barker

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★★★★

This is a slightly retrospective post, as I read The Incarnations shortly before I went to China in September. I’d never heard of the book before, but I spotted it one day in the library and was intrigued by its elaborate cover. While I’m not usually all that keen on the ‘past lives’ school of historical fiction, this tale of reincarnation and rivalry echoing down the centuries proved to be very engaging. Unfolding among the grey blocks and smoggy air of 21st-century Beijing, it also offers a fictional primer to the last two thousand years of Chinese history, as one very ordinary man finds himself dogged by an insistent – and intrusive – ghost from his own past.

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Grotesque (2003): Natsuo Kirino

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★★★★

I’ve been meaning to read more Japanese fiction, but nothing quite prepared me for Natsuo Kirino’s twisted tale of female bitterness. It has made a great impact. Brutal and crude, it’s told in a detached manner that verges on the soulless. It’s also a sobering story of three young women fighting for empowerment and recognition in a world where the only accepted currency is beauty. The tale is grotesque; the setting is bleak; there isn’t a single sympathetic character in the whole damn book and yet, despite all of this, Kirino manages to create something completely gripping.

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A Princely Knave (1956): Philip Lindsay

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★★½

In the past year, Endeavour Press have republished at least seven historical novels by the Australian author Philip Lindsay (1906-1958). A Princely Knave, which follows the fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the English throne in 1497, is the only one I’ve read, but Helen has reviewed two of the others, Here Comes the King and The Devil and King John. Just to make matters more confusing, Endeavour are also publishing A Princely Knave as an ebook under its original title They Have Their Dreams, so be warned. First published in 1956, it’s very much of a novel of its time, in which some beautiful writing is ultimately stymied by stiffly two-dimensional characterisation.

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