Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

It'll turn out all Wight in the end

The difficulty with coming across a "serial" character so late in the day is that it is difficult to feel particular empathy with their problem (and all serial detectives seem to have a "problem" these days).  In the case of DI Andy Horton, it is the fate of his disappeared mother, something which takes up an awful lot of his internal processes during the course of this book without making any significant progress towards a solution - very frustrating for the new reader.

While this is all going on, a somewhat overcomplicated case involving a transvestite corpse found bobbing in the sea off the Isle of Wight is being solved and an important lesson is learned - that I don't really enjoy police procedurals as much when they are not written by Ed McBain.

Unputdownability :  Every time I did, I had to backtrack when I picked it up again, just to clarify who was who.

The yellow, black and purple of the Gollancz covers were the first things I learned to loook for when I moved up to the adult library. That, and the PG Wodehouse "Signature" edition jackets from Jenkins.
So I was delighted when I saw a bunch of them in a bookshop, all wrapped aropund ten classic SF novels, and I decided to reintroduce myself to an old favourite; "Dune". I last read this in 1974, just after I started work - it got me through quite a few Tube journeys, books weren't usually that thick in those days.   It bears re-reading nowadays, for the grand scale and the dashing (and sometimes slapdash) plotting.  The writing is surprisingly old-fashioned - the omniscient narrator who can tell you wahat every character in the room is thinking has long fallen out of fashion, but once re-accustomed to it, it becomes bearable if not over-used.  I am left, as I was many years ago, with the impression that Herbert started out with a swashbuckling story of interplanetary fueding, and ten found his story taking over - it becomes more psychedelic the further you get into it, and more portentous and (occasionally) more pretentious. 

Oh well, if you are going to delve into SF's back catalogue, you might as well go for The Master.

Actiually, by this stage of his writing, RAH was far too interested in showing how clever he was, and how well constructed his philosophical arguments were.  So the story itself is episodic, disjointed, and less than satisfying by modern standards (but in its day won, I think, a Hugo for Best SF Novel of the year).

It is astonishing the extent to which Heinlein's world of 5000 years in the future has changed so little from the world of 1960, but RAH isn't there to construct a future technology, merely a future quasi-stratocracy (not actually a military rule per se, but a democracy where only ex-military can vote) and a vehicle for his less than right-on views.  Sometimes I think the only liberal view RAH had was concerning intra-familial love;  Time Enough For Love and Farnham's Freehold both have characters and situations which espouse (*ahem*) "close and loving family relationships".

Never mind.

Don't read this expecting all the excitement of the Vehoeven movie, or the CGI cartoon "Roughnecks" that graced breakfast TV about 15 years ago - don't even expect all the characters to have the same gender.  And take it all with a pinch of generous salt.  Thems was different days, after all.

Unputdownability:  Another day, another chapter.

Thirteen years in the writing
according to the publishers, and they offer a money-back guarantee if you don't "love" the book. 

I really wish that I did - thirteen years is a long time to commit to telling a story, but I am not sure that this one is quite as epic, or deep, or meaningful as its gestation period might suggest.  

A family wins a lottery.  Two feckless young men decide to get themselves a big slice of that pie.  One of them develops delusions of religious grandeur.  A semi-retired cop suspects.  

I know that there are probably some big themes, and that the author has something to say.  Sadly, for me, the characters are underdeveloped, or too crudely sketched, or lack a coherent sense of purpose and personality.  There is no moral centre. Tension is largely absent;  will the old cop get fired or will he uncover the truth?  Will the blackmailers get away with it all?   This reader didn't really care one way or the other.  I kept reading, but more to find out whether things reached a satisfying conclusion or not.  

Unputdownability : Thirteen years to write;  I suppose I had better give him a chance.

Don't let the stickers put you off.
The ones that say "Channel 4 Book Club" and "Bathtub Best Read Award" and "HobNobs Recommended Teatime Novel".  OK, I might be making some of them up, but it did take me about ten minutes to scrape all the various shouty stickers of the front of this one.  The "Man Booker Shortlist" blurb can also be a bit off-putting - is this going to be a "worthy read" or a populist?

Neither.   Funny, touching, sad, happy,  the Oddessey of the two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters (murderers for hire), across America in pursuit of their nominated victim is highly episodic but always driven towards the final confrontation (and beyond).  Eli begins to dream of a different life but cannot turn his brother from the path of relentless violence.  They gain fortunes.  They lose fortunes.  Eli falls in love.  Repeatedly.  He even waxes affectionate about his broken down old nag.  Eventually they catch up with their intended victim.  And that's where the fun really starts.

They're gunna get you!

The language is exquisite, clever without ever being intrusive.  The dialogue is great - mannered and natural.  And the narrator's voice never once falters.

I doubt that I shall read a better book in the rest of 2012.

Unputdownability:  I read from page 1 to page 325, and went straight back to Page 1 again.

So many recommendations and good reviews so I thought I would give this one a spin, and it probably falls under the heading of  "biggest disappointment of the year".  Michelle Paver is a children's writer, and I'm sorry to say that it really shows.   It is as if she has set out with a warning from her publishers not to frighten anybody too badly, and there's no chance of any bad dreams being initiated by this novel.

An amateur research team set out for the Arctic wilderness, and a string of misadventures reduces their number to one who carries on the project while waiting for the others to join back up with him.  He feels lonely.  He thinks he sees a ghost.  Someone tells him the place is haunted.  He does see a ghost.  He runs away from the ghost.

The research is thorough and unfortunately, it tends to show - Paver doesn't miss many opportunities to shoehorn in a brand name, or a contemporary reference.  But good research doen't necessarily make for good storytelling, and not for good adult storytelling. There is insufficient tension, the pace is frightfully slow, there is little real sense of menace, the "reveal" is in a dream, and even then only fitfully related so that the true horror is
so concealed as to be almost Lovecraftian, and not in a goosd way - you know how HPL was fond of saying that things were so gruesome that he couldn't describe them?  Well, a bit like that.

Unputdownability : I only didn't put it down because I so dreaded having to pick it back up again.

Not a good representation of the contents

The Ragged Edge...
was the US title of  John Christopher catastrophe-survivors novel.  As with "The Death of Grass", Christopher telescopes time to show us the descent into feudalism and lawlessness that follows a natural disaster, in this case world-wide seismic activity.

It might be possible to suggest that earthquakes of the magnitude Christopher describes would cause much more damage, and that the effects would not be a few mere aftershocks, but instead a continuous upheaval that ensured that no life survived, but at the end of it all the science doesn't matter.  What counts is his depiction of people at the ragged edge of civilisation, some of them intent on making a niche for themselves as rulers of new micro-kingdoms, some intent on create a more harmonious communal existence.

This was one of the first "science fiction" books I ever read and, of course, it isn't "science fiction" at all, but a story of people under extreme conditions.  And forty five years after that first reading, I still remember vividly so many of the scenes and incidents;  a tribute to John Christopher's writing powers.

Unputdownability : desperate for the hero's salvation, but afraid to turn the page in case something nasty happens.

When you think that no-one could find a fresh angle on the Arthurian myths...

 Philip Reeve finds one.  This is a the story of a servant girl caught up in a raid carried out  by the war chief Arthur, and used by his fifth century spin-doctor cum PR man Myrddin to create the myth of the Lady in the Lake.  This is no fantasy world of swords in stones, fulfilled prophecies and magical powers.  Instead it is a group of all too real humans, with their politics, lusts and weaknesses, being manipulated by a single man who wants to see the Britons united and opposed to the saxon invaders.

Reeve's strengths are many - great plotting and pacing, and distinctive voices for his characters.  And his ability to write from the standpoint of a young girl (a strength also demonstrated in the "Mortal Engines" and  "Fever Crumb" series) is quite remarkable - never mawkish, infantilised or patronising.

Unputdownability : I was up at four o'clock reading the final chapters.