Tag: Netgalley

Gutenberg’s Apprentice (2014): Alix Christie

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★★★ ½

What was the year that changed the world? We could probably argue about that until we were all blue in the face, but 1450 has more claim than most. For it was in this year, in Mainz, that a small team of artisans began work on a formidably ambitious project: the creation of the very first book printed with movable type. This novel follows the gestation of this project, drawing out all the sweat and labour of the process, under the beady eye of its suspicious, unpredictable, misanthropic begetter: Gutenberg.

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The Evenings (1947): Gerard Reve

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★★

The Evenings caught my eye because it was described as the great postwar Dutch classic, following a young man on his meanderings through the night-time streets of Amsterdam. As some of you may remember, I spent some time working out of Amsterdam a couple of years ago, and grew rather fond of the city’s laid-back spirit, so I thought I’d give the book a go. The result – and I beg my Dutch friends to forgive me – is bemusement. It turns out that one man’s classic is another man’s bafflement, and perhaps the translation is to blame, for I found little to enjoy in this unremittingly bleak tale of youthful stagnation.

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The Language of Dying (2009): Sarah Pinborough

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★★★★

This short novel is a curious beast. Its author is better known for her horror fiction and yet this is a story fully grounded in real life: in one of those two life-events we all share. Its narrator is a young woman who cares for her dying father in his last fight against cancer and, with stark honesty, lays out the pain and very earthly horror of the final days. It isn’t an easy read, but its power is astonishing.

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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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Cousins (2016): Salley Vickers

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★★★★

Despite having read only three of Salley Vickers’s earlier books, I’ve always had a soft spot for her work. I read Miss Garnet’s Angel at an impressionable age when I adored anything about Venice (as I still do), was intrigued by the romantic tension of Instances of the Number 3 (my edition had Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St Anne on the cover: a surefire hit) and remember devouring Mr Golightly’s Holiday one Christmas beside a roaring fire. Her books always seem to have come to me at the right moment, veiled with a certain sense of enigma and spiritual mystery that has always appealed. Her new novel Cousins is cut from rather different cloth, stripping away the gentle religious undertones of these earlier novels and replacing them with a sensitive, probing exposé of a family’s secrets, unmasked in the aftermath of a terrible accident.

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The Hidden People (2016): Alison Littlewood

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★★★

I was intrigued by the premise of this novel. In the 1870s, a young woman is horribly murdered after her husband and neighbours take her for a fairy changeling. Stung into action, her London cousin comes north to Yorkshire to challenge these country superstitions and to uncover what really happened to little Lizzie Higgs. Having just finished reading The Essex Serpent, I hoped for a similarly deft conflict between popular belief and scientific reason. This juxtaposition is at the heart of the novel, but it didn’t quite pan out as expected. Instead, the book ambitiously tried to combine several genres – crime, fantasy, horror, supernatural and psychological thriller – without ever really committing to any of them.

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The Wonder (2016): Emma Donoghue

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★★★★

A new novel by Emma Donoghue is always cause for celebration, and The Wonder takes us into yet another vividly realised snapshot of history. It is 1859 and Elizabeth (‘Lib’) Wright, a veteran nurse from Florence Nightingale’s army in the Crimea, has been called to Ireland on a curious mission. She knows little about her job except the name of her patient – O’Donnell – and the fact that she is required for only two weeks. Only on her arrival in an impoverished Irish village is she given her commission: a strange task that will force Lib to weigh up faith and reason, to face the griefs of her own past, and to confront the possibility that miracles may genuinely exist.

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Tremontaine: Season 1 (2016): Ellen Kushner et al.

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★★★

with chapters by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese, Patty Bryant and Paul Witcover

Apologies to all the authors I wasn’t able to show in the photo above, but it seemed a good idea to stick with Ellen Kushner. This ambitious project takes place in her world after all, unfurling the intrigues and romances that act as a prequel to Swordspoint. Here we see the city in all its familiar shades, from the dangerous alleyways of Riverside thick with thieves, rogues and swordsmen, to the elegant decadence of the Hill, where fashions, plots and chocolate are the order of the day.

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The Museum of Things Left Behind (2015): Seni Glaister

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★★★★

Somewhere on the border between Italy and Austria, in a deep gorge shielded from its neighbours’ eyes, lies the pretty little city-state of Vallerosa. Life in this sleepy country continues much as it has for decades: every evening the men gather at the two bars in the main square – the clientele of each dictated by long tradition; the women work hard out of sight; and Vallerosa’s chief glory remains the plantations where they grow their famous tea. And yet the President, Sergio Scorpioni, is troubled.

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