The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron

The myth of Mars and Venus - a set of gender-related beliefs popularised by authors such as John Gray and Deborah Tannen, or, in the more upmarket version, Simon Baron-Cohen or Steven Pinker - maintains that men and women are different enough that they almost belong to different species. Some of its champions justify these differences through biological imperatives; others through cultural determinism. But at the end of the day, the conclusions they reach are about the same: women are caring, nurturing, good at empathising and communicating, and emotionally articulate. Men, on the other hand, are analytical, dominated by their ‘urges’, not good at listening or talking about their feelings, and cannot reasonably be expected to have anything beyond the emotional awareness of a toddler. These are the “facts”, and we are powerless to change them. The sooner we accept our different abilities and adjust our aspirations, the happier everyone will be.

In The Myth of Mars and Venus, Deborah Cameron does a kind of work similar to that of researchers such as Janet Hyde, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Mark Liberman or Cordelia Fine: she challenges this myth, drawing from several sources in the process. Cameron is a linguist at the University of Oxford, so her specific focus here is on sociolinguistics and on the widespread belief that men and women communicate very differently. This includes assumptions such as: women talk more than men, women talk to build relationships and men to obtain information, women are averse to direct commands or requests whereas men are blunt and straight to the point, and so on and so forth.

Deborah Cameron checks the references of several popular books on gender differences and uncovers such interesting things as “facts” that have been simply made up (for example, the figures often cited to support the aforementioned belief that women talk a lot more than men were drawn from an author’s imagination rather than from any sort of empirical research). She also explains something that Cordelia Fine christened “file drawer syndrome” – the phenomenon that leads research uncovering gender similarities to linger unpublished in file drawers, either because researchers don’t see it as containing relevant results or because they know it to be unpublishable due to lack of interest. Furthermore, she cites metanalyses that show that the differences within groups of men and women are much larger than across genders; she challenges the BECAUSE CAVEMEN circular logic of evolutionary psychology; and she refers to methodologically sound and peer-reviewed studies that clearly contradict the myth of Mars and Venus.

Another thing Cameron does is draw attention to the often dishonest way proponents of the myth frame their point of view. Sadly, the tendency to gain credibility by casting oneself as the lone voice of dissent is every bit as common as it is infuriating. As Cameron puts it,

Writers in this vein are fond of presenting themselves as latter-day Galileos, braving the wrath of the political correctness lobby by daring to challenge the feminist orthodoxy which denies that men and women are by nature profoundly different. (…) Yet before we applaud, we should perhaps pause to ask ourselves: since when has silence reigned about the differences between men and women? Certainly not since the early 1990s, when the previous steady trickle of books began to develop into a raging torrent. By now, a writer who announces that sex differences are natural is not ‘saying the unsayable’, he or she is stating the obvious. The proposition that men and women communicate differently is particularly uncontroversial, with clichés like ‘men never listen’ and ‘women find it easier to talk about their feelings’ references constantly in everything from women’s magazines to humorous greeting cards.

Acceptance of the myth of Mars and Venus is actually as far from a controversial stance as possible. It is in fact the dominant mainstream opinion, and its hold on popular consciousness is as profound as it is troubling. One of the most worrisome consequences of the acceptance this myth is its influence on the way rape cases are popularly perceived. To cite Cameron once more,

For example, the belief that ‘male-female miscommunication’ is an endemic problem is increasingly influencing the way we deal with crimes of rape and sexual assault. Defence lawyers can now argue that because the sexes communicate differently, a man may genuinely, and through no fault of his own, have understood a woman to be consenting to sex when by her own account she was doing no such thing. If this argument is accepted, the defendant may be acquitted or punished less severely on the grounds that he did not intentionally disregard the woman’s wishes, he simply misinterpreted them.

The portrayal of men and women that emerges from the myth of Mars and Venus is not really flattering to either gender. And unlike what its champions would maintain, its widespread acceptance so far seems to only lead to further unhappiness and steeper social inequalities.

The Myth of Mars and Venus does for sociolinguistics what Delusions of Gender does for the neurosciences. It’s not as detailed a piece of work, but what it does cover, it covers extremely well. And it belongs to a tradition of books I wholeheartedly embrace: books that combat the ideological biases in science through better and more rigorous science. Can we have more of these, please?

Other interesting bits:

Most research studies investigating the behaviour of men and women are designed around the question: ‘is there a difference?’—and the presumption is usually that there will be. If a study finds a significant difference between male and female subjects (in other words, a result which statistical tests show could not have been produced by chance), that is considered to be a ‘positive’ finding, and has a good chance of being published in a scientific journal. A study which finds no significant difference is less likely to be published. This mean that some negative findings are never even submitted for publication. It also means that if a study has examined a large number of variables and found positive results for only one or two of them, it will be the least typical, positive findings which researchers emphasize.

These generalisations present a range of problems, but one problem they all have in common is that they treat ‘men’ and ‘women’ as internally undifferentiated categories. Regardless of its substance, any claim about men and women that ignores the existence of differences within each group is bound to oversimplify the picture, because it is taking a telescope to something that needs to be examined with a microscope.

They read it too:
Eve’s Alexandria (An excellent and detailed review which I recommend that you all read.)

(You?)

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The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a wonderful combination of picture book and traditional narrative. Set in 1931, it tells the story of an orphan, Hugo Cabret, who works at a busy train station in Paris as a clock keeper. Hugo started out as an apprentice to his uncle, but ever since his disappearance he’s been trying to make it look like his uncle is still around, or else he will be out of a place to live. Hugo’s life changes when he crosses paths with an old man who runs a toy booth at the station; with the man’s bookish granddaughter, Isabelle; and with an old automaton, which Hugo hopes will provide a link to his deceased father.

The reasons why I loved The Invention of Hugo Cabret were different from the reasons why I usually love a novel, but then again that’s hardly surprising, as Selznick’s work is very much unlike most novels. While I tend to be primarily drawn to characterisation and theme, what hooked me here was first of all the visual feast Brian Selznick’s artwork provides. Then there is also the superb evocation of the time period: Selznick’s drawings and his brief but vivid descriptions do a wonderful job of bringing 1930’s Paris to life.


The Invention of Hugo Cabret is inspired by the life and work of early filmmaker Georges Méliès, which means that as the story progresses, it also begins to evoke an earlier time period: the turn of the twentieth century and the many artistic innovations that characterised it. This is the world of favourite books of mine such as The Children’s Book or The Hare With Amber Eyes, so it’s really not surprising that I was immediately hooked.


The Invention of Hugo Cabret is most of all a love letter to early cinema. It does a wonderful job of conveying how revolutionary, surprising and wonderful early twentieth-century filmmaking was, and how much it did to change how people thought of art in general. Brian Selznick includes several references to real films throughout the book, and also to anecdotes and myths surrounding early cinema – for example, the legend surrounding the first showing of the Lúmieres’ “L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat”, according to which the audience panicked because they believed they were truly in the way of a moving train.



The most famous image from Georges Méliès’ 1902 Le Voyage Dans La Lune, which plays a key role in the story.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been adapted into a movie named “Hugo” by Martin Scorsese, which will be released in November this year. I’m not always the biggest fan of book to movie adaptations (I tend to get too attached to the story as I first encountered it), but in this case it seems only fitting. You can see the trailer below:


More than anything else, I hope the movie keeps the book’s evocative and pitch-perfect tone and its unique feel.

Other points of view: Distant Voices and Flickering Shadows, The Avid Reader's Musings, Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Books, You've GOTTA Read This, The Novel World, Becky's Book Reviews, Booklust, Rebecca Reads, Lakeside Musings, The Written World

(Please let me know if I missed yours.)

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The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibboston

The Dragonfly Pool opens when Tally Hamilton is sent from London to a boarding school, Delderton Hall, to be safe from the bombings that are sure to come when WW2 breaks out. Delderton Hall turns out to be a very unusual school, and Tally is quick to make friends among pupils and teachers alike. When the school principal is invited to send a group of students to a folk dance festival in the Kingdom of Bergania (to foster goodwill among European nations at a time of mounting international tensions), Tally jumps at the chance. There she ends up befriending Karil, the prince of Bergania. And sooner than any of them could have imagined, circumstances throw them together and irrevocably change their lives.

The Dragonfly Pool is actually a lot more awesome than I’ve just made it sound. This is because the plot is complex and has a lot going on, and I couldn’t really do it justice without giving too much away. But trust me when I say that this book has it all: child evacuees, boarding schools, a fictional fairy tale-like European kingdom where real WW2 politics nonetheless play out, a folk dance festival, plenty of humour, memorable main and supporting characters, lovely and moving subplots, adventure and suspense, d’aww moments, and Jenny’s seal of approval. I knew from page one I would love it, and I was not disappointed in the least.

Journey to the River Sea made me suspect as much, but The Dragonfly Pool absolutely confirms it: I have found a perfect new comfort author in Eva Ibbotson. Her books are excellent pick-me-ups: they have fairy tale-like structures; slightly unlikely plots that you’re nevertheless perfectly willing to embrace; plenty of gentle but nonetheless pointed satire; and mostly happy, comforting endings that still leave room for nuance, for complications, for bittersweetness, for the bad things that often do happen to good people to be acknowledged.The Dragonfly Pool has genuine WW2-related sad moments, which not only feel real in their own right but prevent the book’s comfort elements from every becoming facile or cheap. The happy resolution at the end feels real and earned.

If I have one complaint, it’s the fact that in Tally, more so than in Maia from Journey to the River Sea, I could see what Christy meant about Ibbotson’s too-perfect heroines. But this didn’t really spoil the book for me because there were plenty of other interesting characters, and also because despite being a little too good at everything, Tally was still convincingly human.

More than anything else, what really charmed me here was Eva Ibbotson’s sensibility. I love that her allegiances are clearly with kind, genuine characters; I love that despite this, she still treats her villains with a degree of generosity; I love her tendency to unapologetically poke fun at snobbishness, pompousness, self-importance, and any other excuses people use to treat others as less than real human beings. It’s a real pleasure to spend time with a mind like this.

I think I’ll pick up The Secret Countess next. That one has the Memory seal of approval, which is also a very good indicator that I’ll love it. And after that, I’ll surely but slowly read everything Eva Ibbotson has ever written.

Other points of view:
Jenny’s Books, Bookshelves of Doom, Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover, Once Upon a Bookshelf, Library Queue

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After the Armistice Ball and Death at Wentwater Court

I entirely blame Jodie, who got me hooked on Downtown Abbey and interested in 1920’s set TV series The Grand, for my recent compulsion to read novels set in the early twentieth-century and/or in country mansions. After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson and Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn are both high-society historical mysteries set in the 1920’s, and both of them feature unconventional female sleuths. In After the Armistice Ball, Dandy Gilver, a Scottish society lady of a certain age, is asked by a friend to discretely look into the matter of the disappearance of the famous Duffy diamonds, as this friends has reasons to suspect insurance fraud. The plot thickens considerably when a member of the Duffy family dies in mysteries circumstances, and suddenly Dandy finds herself involved in something far more sinister than she had imagined.

In Death at Wentwater Court, our sleuth is Daisy Dalrymple, a young woman determined to support herself through her writing and photography rather than depend on her rich but less than pleasant family. Daisy goes to Wentwater Court to write the first in a series of articles about stately homes for Town & Country magazine. While she’s there, one of the Earl’s guests, a Lord Stephen Astwick, meets an untimely death while skating on the lake. What Daisy cannot help but wonder is: could the convenient death of someone everyone at Wentwater Court had reasons to hate truly have been an accident?

After the Armistice Ball and Death at Wentwater Court are similar enough in terms of overall structure and period detail that I almost wish I hadn’t read them so close together – I rather suspect that a few months from now I might be getting the details mixed up. However, if there’s one thing that completely sets them apart it’s each novel’s tone.

After the Armistice Ball is narrated by Dandy herself, who is humorous, self-aware, and prone to referencing Sherlock Holmes. But for all her sense of humour, Dandy is also sensitive to other people’s feelings, and regardless of her privileged status she remains socially conscientious. The mystery in After the Armistice Ball turns out to be closely tied up with unfair inheritance laws, gender inequality, and social trappings that particularly affect women – and the meaning of these things doesn’t escape Dandy’s notice. I hope I’m not making her sound like a modern day feminist in 1920’s attire: Dandy does have her blind spots (some of which are quite crucial to the resolution of the mystery), but even what she takes for granted or fails to question is quite visible to the reader. This isn’t necessarily easy to achieve with a first person narration, so kudos to Ms McPherson.

I also have to mention how absolutely gripping After the Armistice Ball was: I’m the kind of mystery reader who tends to be more interested in what else is going on in the novel besides the mystery – setting, character dynamics, social commentary, and so on. McPherson’s novel does deliver on all these fronts, but the mystery itself really grabbed me. I couldn’t wait to find out what was really going on.

Death at Wentwater Court seems far more solemn at first, but it actually turns out to be a far frothier and less meaty novel. Though I enjoyed the book overall, there were a few things that put me off. The first is that Carola Dunn uses close third person at first and tells the story through Daisy’s point of view; but when Scotland Yard inspector Alec Fletcher enters the scene there’s an abrupt shift to his point of view, and readers suddenly find themselves looking at Daisy from the outside. From then on, there are several sudden and inconsistent shifts whenever Alec is present. If this seems an odd thing to complain about or even to notice, that’s exactly my point: point of view shifts should be smooth enough that readers won’t even notice them, rather than unexpected and awkward enough to pull us out of the story.

Secondly, even though not all the characters in Death at Wentwater Court are exactly conventional (there’s Daisy herself, for example, and her “confounded scribbling” as one male character puts it), Carola Dunn’s readiness to make use of stereotypes made me a little uncomfortable. This is far truer of the secondary characters than the main ones, but still. For example, she has the maids going around giggling and gossiping, and police constables be dense enough to say, after getting a phone call from a coroner, “I couldn’t say for sure, miss, ‘cepting he’s doing some tests as he’ll have the results of come morning. Such long words them doctors use, you can’t rightly make head nor tail of ‘em”. Regardless of what I know to be true about class, education and accent during this period, it all seemed a bit much.

Finally, I had trouble suspending my disbelief regarding Daisy’s involvement in the investigation at all: Alec, the Scotland Yard inspector, is all too ready to let a perfect stranger be involved in police matters. The setup of After the Armistice Ball – where a well-connected society lady is asked to discreetly look into something by a good friend who suspects someone of taking advantage of her husband’s insurance company, but doesn’t want to risk scandal or blow the whistle without further evidence – is far more convincing.

As you might except from any novel set in the 1920’s, the impact of the Great War echoes through both After the Armistice Ball and Death at Wentwater Court. Dandy Gilver was fortunate enough not to have lost a close family member, but as the novel opens she confesses how bored she is, now that the opportunities the war opened up for women like her are closed again and she’s expected to simply resume being a lady of leisure. Daisy, a younger woman, lost both her fiancée and her brother. The exact circumstances and implications of theses loses are only alluded to slightly, but I expect that this background story will be explored in more depth as the series progresses.

If there’s one thing a good mystery needs it’s a satisfying ending, and After the Armistice Ball certainly does have one: it’s one of those endings where a final chilling realisation by our sleuth adds new implications and a whole new layer of meaning to the story. In the case of Death at Wentwater Court, however, I’m afraid that the ending was a bit too the-rich-and-powerful-can-get-away-with-crimes-and-anyway-killing-a-very-unpleasant-person-is-not-really-that-bad for my liking. This is of course something that happens in reality to our day, let alone in the 1920’s, so I have nothing whatsoever against mystery fiction portraying it. And I also agree with Daisy that the law and justice don’t always go hand in hand. But I felt that the implications of what happens (in terms of power, privilege and social justice, for example) were only considered very superficially, and this unfortunately gives the whole book a hollow, facile tone. It was this superficiality, rather than the lack of a clear criminals-shall-be-punished moral lesson, that let me down. I realise that the book never pretends to be anything other than a cosy mystery, but I still wanted a little more complexity.

Having said that, I can see people enjoying these novels equally for different reasons. However, to me Catriona McPherson is the superior writer. Furthermore, her interests, focus and sensibility seem far more aligned with my own than Dunn’s, which made it easier for me to feel at home with her writing. While I don’t feel compelled to pick up the next Dandy Gilver mystery immediately, I expect I will read it at some point. As for Daisy Dalrymple, I’m not so sure whether we’ll meet again. Life is too short, and there are far too many other series out there. I have to confess that even the more enjoyable After the Armistice Ball made me wonder why I wasn’t reading the next Mary Russell instead.

They read them too:
If You Can Read This (After the Armistice Ball)
Bride of the Book God (After the Armistice Ball)
GeraniumCat’s Bookshelf (After the Armistice Ball)
Books & Other Thoughts (Death at Wentwater Court)
Beth Fish Reads (Death at Wentwater Court)

(You?)

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Nerds Heart YA! Dirty Little Secrets versus A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend

First of all, many apologies for the double post today, folks (though as it’s just turned midnight here, I could perhaps pretend this doesn’t really count as a double post?). I’m afraid this is what happens when you neglect to use Google Calendar or a diary of any sort and get your dates mixed up¹.

Nerds Heart YA is a bracket-style book tournament with an emphasis on diversity, focusing on Young Adult books that “represent one of a series of relatively under publicized categories: Person(s) of Color (POC), GLBT, Disability, Mental Illness, Religious Lifestyle, Lower Socioeconomic Status and Plus-size”. The tournament was created by Renay in 2009, when I had a lot of fun judging the final along with my friend Chris, and is currently run by Jodie. This year I’m a second round judge along with the awesome Cass from Bonjour Cass!, and the books we’re judging are Dirty Little Secrets by C.J. Omololu and A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner.


Dirty Little Secrets is about Lucy, a high school student whose mother is a compulsive hoarder. Lucy has managed to keep her mother’s mental illness a secret from everyone outside her immediate family, but this of course means she can’t let anyone too close to her. Things are starting to change, though – Lucy has a best friend, Kaylie, and the guy she has a crush on is starting to show an interest in her. So when something happens that Lucy believes will expose the truth about her mother and the house they live in, Lucy panics. Dirty Little Secrets follows her over a period of 24 hours as she takes increasingly desperate measures to keep the truth from ever being discovered.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend is about Cass, whose best friend Julia died in a car accident the previous school year. The story follows Cass as she and the rest of Julia’s friends attempt to stage a musical Julia wrote, Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad, as a tribute to her memory. In addition to this story arc, we have flashbacks to the previous summer, when Cass attempted to deal with her grief by going all the way to California on her bike. Along the way, Cass tries to make sense not only of her recent loss, but also of her sexual orientation, of the nature of her feelings towards Julia, of her increasing loneliness and estrangement from her other friends, and of what the physical and psychological challenges of the journey mean to her.

Cass and I decided to compare Dirty Little Secrets and A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend when it comes to our initial impressions, to the characterisation, to the plot development, to the books’ themes, and to their conclusions. Below you’ll find our discussion of the first two of these points. For the rest, and for our final decision, just head over to Cass’s blog. Here goes:

• First impressions (title, cover, premise)

Dirty Little Secrets:

Cass: The morose girl on the cover, coupled with the exploitative title, set me on edge. I was intrigued by the publisher’s summary, though, and I was hopeful the mental health aspect would be treated well. BUT I WAS NERVOUS.

Ana: I’m not a fan of the title either - and to make matters worse, the tagline on my edition is: “You can only hoard your troubles for so long.” Um :| But like you I was hopeful, because I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel that extensively deals with how a teen is affected by a parent’s mental illness.

Cass: Nothing invites a bad pun like hoarding! I know I’ve got hoards of them. *rim shot*

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend:

Cass: This is a ridiculous title as well, in that I was worried it was going to involve NECROPHILIA. Or, you know, zombies. Luckily, no. The cover itself is creative and appealing.

Ana: Haha. I had no thoughts of necrophilia, fortunately ;) The title gave me the impression that Horner was going to go for Goofy Yet Serious, which is a kind of tone that isn’t always easy to pull off successfully.

• Characterisation/Characterization (ahem)

LSSMDBF:

Ana: The main character, Cass, is also the narrator, and I would say she’s a well-developed character. Her former nemesis, Heather, is also reasonably well-rounded. But I did feel that Cass’s other friends were at times almost interchangeable. I realise there’s only so much backstory and secondary character development you can fit into a 260 pages book, but they seemed to function more as a plot device than as real characters. I did like how the story portrayed Cass’s impression that these were more her best friend Julia’s friends than her own friends and her loneliness and alienation after her death. Watching Cass deal with all those thoughts and feelings was moving at times, and I really liked the resolution of the trip to California subplot. BUT. The whole thing would have had far more of an emotional impact on me if her friends had been given more screen time and readers had been allowed to get to know them better.

Cass: First of all, may I just say that the main character has the very best name I’ve ever heard? A+ to the author on that one. While I agree with you that Cass’s journey, both literal and figurative, was moving, I have to disagree about Heather. I found her, and the story line about her (avoiding spoilers here), to be cliched and unimaginative. Cass’s group of friends seemed to be more relevant and important as a group, rather than as individual characters, which made it difficult to connect with them. The only character that stood out for me was Jon, who is out as gay but has a complicated relationship with his faith.

Ana: Good observation about the character’s name ;) I think maybe the fact that I’m not as well read in this particular kind of story (also trying to avoid spoilers) was what made Heather’s story arc seem fresher to me. Also, excellent point about Cass’s friends working better as a group than as individuals.

Cass: I would also like to mention that I found it rather unfortunate that Cass’s coming out--to herself, since everyone else seemed to “know”--seemed to be based more on her impression that everyone thought she was gay, therefore she was, instead of, you know, her having a more internal understanding of her own sexuality.

DLS:

Ana: I have such mixed feelings about the characterisation in this book. I liked that there was at least an attempt to make Lucy’s mom - a compulsive hoarder - into a real human being rather than a cartoonish ghoul. Omololu uses flashbacks to show Lucy’s mother in other contexts, namely her job as an oncology nurse, where she’s competent and caring and the very opposite of everything she is at home. The problem is that flashback, unless done extremely well, is a really forced technique. As a result, these scenes have flashing neon signs all over them saying, “Look! Look! She is a Real Person with both positive and negative traits! She’s Complex and Human!” It’s all a bit too heavy-handed to actually work.

Cass: I agree that the flash-backs were heavy handed, but I’d go a step further and argue that even the attempts to show Lucy’s mother as a more complex character were stalled by the underlying emphasis on what I’d like to term as “teh crazy.” Showing her being a compassionate, over-zealously clean nurse seemed to be a way to emphasize her lack of love for Lucy and to stand opposed to “teh crazy” she acted on at home. The book ends up portraying the mother as more of a “Hoarder Case Study” as opposed to an actual person.

Ana: As for Lucy herself.... there are two angles I could consider here: how sympathetic or not she is and her believability. And obviously I have to tread carefully, because I have never known anyone directly affected by hoarding. There’s a lot I don’t know, and that makes me hesitate to say that Lucy’s thoughts and feelings didn’t feel real (the plot is another matter altogether, but we’ll get to that soon). I could understand Lucy’s very mixed feelings about her mother, even if they lead to extreme actions that sometimes halted my suspension of disbelief. I don’t want to dismiss her rage and her feeling of entrapment, even if they shock readers at times. But at the same time, there were all these little things about her that kept stopping me on my tracks. The main one is perhaps the fact that she comes across as a bit of an excepto-girl: all too ready to look down on her peers for dressing “slutty” and being traditionally feminine. Example:

“I envied Vanessa not because most of her butt was hanging out of her skirt -- that just made me colder -- but because she truly never cared what other people thought of her.”

These are many other examples of this mixture of compliment and derision directed at other girls, and it just makes Lucy come across as mean-spirited.

Cass: Lucy is definitely an excepto-girl; her mother’s mental health issues seem to be the sticking point of standing in her way from being the absolutely Perfect Person.

Again, for the rest of our conversation, head over to Cass’s blog!

¹Dear Jodie: please don’t murder us with an axe in our sleep. Love, Ana and Cass.

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Chime by Franny Billingsley

Franny Billingsley’s Chime opens with the narrator, seventeen-year-old Briony Larkin, confessing to being a witch and declaring herself guilty of everything. “Everything what?”, you wonder. Well, that’s a question that the story takes its sweet time answering. All we know at first is that Briony has a twin sister, a dead stepmother, an estranged family given to silences and with a history of mysterious illnesses, and memories of a fire in the parsonage where she lives where all her books – and her own writing – were destroyed. There’s also a handsome stranger, Eldric, recently come to town, and a persistent suitor, Cecil, that Briony doesn’t quite know how to get rid of (but not really a love triangle, worry not).

As you can imagine, Chime is more than a little vague at first: this is one of those books that you keep reading just to make sense of what’s going on, and then before you know it you’re completely hooked, even if nothing much has been clarified. The initial confusion is well worth wading through, though, because the payoff is huge. Leila from Bookshelves of Doom compared Chime to Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and I can very well see what she means. Don’t worry, by the way: this is not a spoiler. The books aren’t really similar plot-wise. But there are several parallels in how the story unfolds and how quickly it grabs the reader.

There’s so much about Chime worthy of being discussed that I don’t even know where to start. First of all, the setting: Chime seems to be set in an alternate early twentieth century England. Cars and telephones are novelties, and there are mentions of London, Manchester and other big cities. The town where the story is set, Swampsea, is very much a community on the brink of modernity. There’s a clear conflict between a traditional, semi-pagan and ecologically balanced yet socially restrictive community, and all the changes that being opened up to the world will bring. Briony embodies that conflict herself: she loves the swamp, yet she resents all the restrictions that being the daughter of the local parson puts on her, and she craves access to the wider world.

There’s so much more I could say about Swampsea and the world of Chime: as in The Folk Keeper, Franny Billingsley makes wide use of symbolism and creates a world that feels far bigger and deeper than the glimpses of it we catch in the story. It feels… organic and real and like it will go on existing once we close the pages of the book. In short, the worldbuilding does pretty much everything it’s supposed to do, and on top of that it does it with astonishing restraint and economy.

Another thing that will not surprise readers of The Folk Keeper is Billingsley’s unique use of language. Her writing is like nobody else’s, and in the case of Chime I especially loved how much the characters’ unique language patterns contribute to the worldbuilding: how they give the reader the sense that this was another place, a place with its own culture and history, with such subtlety and ease; how much they add to the story’s mood and tone. I was strongly reminded of what Margo Lanagan does in Tender Morsels in that regard.

As for the plot, well, Chime is a highly spoilable book, so there’s only so much I can say. But readers will soon realise that Briony is an unreliable narrator, and that what is really going on is only slowly being revealed. Of course, as with any first person narration the storytelling and the character development are closely interlinked. It was quite moving to see Briony slowly come to the realisation that she’s a human being and as worthy of love and acceptance as anyone else. But that’s the tip of the iceberg, really. What’s going on here is far more complex than Girls Regains Her Self-Esteem.

I loved that the solution to the mystery at the heart of the book relies on a defiance of perceived gender roles. Excellent points are made about women’s creativity and how it’s not usually acknowledged or perceived as important. But I’m afraid I really can’t say much more about that without spoiler. Another thing Billingsley does is explore the traps and challenges of traditional masculinity. Eldric and Cecil embody two very different ways of being a boy, and this has a direct bearing on how they interact with Briony and perceive the women in their lives. Finally, gender also plays a key role in why it is so easy to shame Briony; on why she comes to perceive not only the recent mysterious events but her whole life the way she does – and why deconstructing this narrative is such a difficult process.

In sum: Franny Billingsley proves her awesomeness once again. Despite a cover that makes it look like so much else out there (sorry: I’m trying to keep my continued grumbles about covers with pictures of real people to myself, but when I compare this to the covers of The Folk Keeper I cry inside), Chime is quite unique and an absolute gem of a book.

Bits I particularly liked:

There are several kinds of silence. There’s the silence of being alone, which I like well enough. Then there’s the silence of one’s gather. The silence when you have nothing to say and he has nothing to say. The silence between you after the investigation of your stepmother’s death.
We’ve never spoken of the inquest, at which the coroner testified that Stepmother had died of arsenic poisoning. Of the inquest, at which Father testified that Stepmother had taken her own life. Of the inquest, at which I testified that Stepmother would never have taken her life.
Not ever.
The air shattered; Rose’s screams had begun. The others jumped, then looked about, wondering if they should pretend not to notice. But I was still thinking about silence.
Father’s silence is not merely the absence of sound. It’s a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your guts like a worm.
Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.
No, our family doesn’t talk much.

When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolves into a picture.
That’s what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it’s all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You’ll end up with a lunatic scribble.

The crowd rustled behind us. They’d be staring, of course, at the reverend’s peculiar daughter. I don’t mind the disapproving ones so much. It’s the tolerant ones I can’t stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gentle. They don’t realise how very intelligent Rose really is. They’re just terrifically pleased with themselves. Look at me! they all but shout. See how broad-minded I am! How wonderfully progressive, how fantastically twentieth century!

Other points of view:
The Book Smugglers, Steph Su Reads, Janicu’s Book Blog, Bookfoolery and Babble, A Garden Carried in the Pocket, My Favourite Books, Reading Rants!, Bookshelves of Doom

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Who Are We by Gary Younge

This is the vexed terrain this book seeks to explore: to what extent can our various identities be mobilised to accentuate our universal humanity as opposed to separating us off into various antagonistic camps? At what point does refusing to acknowledge the importance of difference become an indulgent and insidious obstruction to what could potentially unite us? When can identity inspire, how can it inflame, what drives it, whom does it empower and what does it enable them to do? These are questions that go beyond philosophy to the central issue of power – who has it, how do they wield it and in whose interests do they use it?

Who Are We – and Should it Matter in the 21st Century? is a combination of memoir, personal reflections, and detailed sociological and political commentary on the topic of identity. Gary Younge, an Afro-Caribbean British journalist, draws on his experience of growing up in a place where he didn’t feel he truly belonged, and of later living in France, Russia and the United States, all places where his racial identity was perceived very differently, to better illustrate his point about how one experiences identity differently depending on one’s circumstances. Younge also draws examples from recent political events and from communities from all around the world, alternatively focusing on how gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality or religion affect how people think of themselves and how they are perceived by others.

Who Are We is more a collection of questions than a set of clear answers, but then again, that’s one of the main points Younge is trying to make in this book. When it comes to identity there are no easy answers, and the best we can do is become accustomed to considering the questions complexly. For example, Younge is well aware that there is the risk that identities may become fortresses into which people retreat – and the more alienated and disillusioned they become, the deeper this retreat will be. But the way this risk has been dealt with politically by Left and Right alike often involves completely dismissing differences and points of uniqueness that do matter to people.

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that they should matter, yet holding on to certain non-sanctioned identities has frequently been constructed as a sign of stubbornness, ingratitude or self-exclusion, which of course only adds to the problem. One of the reasons why I decided to pick up Who Are We was exactly because I was frustrated with other writers’ tendency to throw away the baby with the bath water and altogether dismiss people’s rights to think of themselves as different (including Robert Winder, even though I generally did enjoy his Bloody Foreigners). Fortunately, Gary Younge does not disappoint in this regard.

Younge very clearly points out that despite all the current loudly expressed fears about lack of social cohesion and impending Armageddon scenarios, diversity is never a bad thing in itself. He’s also prepared to analyse the role that economic uncertainty and social exclusion play in pushing people into fortresses-like identities. Surely it is not reasonable to expect members of excluded groups to believe nobody sees them as different when all around them they see the role privilege plays in the creation of and access to social and economic opportunities.

I’d recommend Who Are We to anyone interested in identity, power, privilege, intersectionality, and the role these play in society and politics. To get a taste of the book, I’d suggest reading Salon.com’s excellent interview with Gary Younge (many thanks to Amy for bringing it to my attention). I particularly liked this bit:

As much as anything, this book is an attack on essentialism, because one thing essentialists have always tried to do is suggest there is a fixed notion to who and what we are. Actually, we are many things to many people while also being one thing to ourselves.

Favourite passages:

On the one hand, we’re all more alike than we are unalike. (…) The ‘other’ is rarely as foreign or as threatening as we are led to believe. Growing numbers of us watch the same shows, eat the same food and wear the same brands. Never have we travelled as much, interbred as much or conversed as much.
On the other hand, the ways in which we are unalike matter. For all that is common in the human experience, the differences are stark and, in some respects, getting starker, and it is these differences that are increasingly creating the framework for political activity, public anxiety, and, at times, moral panic.

It is in no small part because the borders of our identities are so porous and fluid that some seek to police them so rigorously. Appeals to the innate, fixed, pure and essential nature or any identity are the stock-in-trade of any fundamentalist and generally have the same effect – to isolate one particular group from the rest of the human race.

Values change, societies develop and their language and behaviour evolve with them. That’s not political correctness but social and political progress. It was not imposed by liberal diktat but establish by civic consensus. Those who are unwilling or unable to move on are welcome to their words and views. But like anyone else who engages in antisocial behaviour, once they act on these impulses they must live with the consequences. Those who struggle with this are not so much living in the past as struggling to accept the present. For what they are really arguing for is the right both to be insensitive and for that insensitivity to go unchallenged. The first is their right – but, like all rights, it comes with both responsibilities and ramifications. The same freedom of speech that allows you to disparage large groups of people also allows those people to mobilise public opinion and legislation against you if you do so.

When it comes to identity, there is always a wolf lurking somewhere. There has never been a time in human history when someone hasn’t been trying to rally one group against another on the basis of their differences.
That’s not the fault of difference itself. The problem is not that diversity exists; it is what we choose to make of it. In short, do we understand our various identities as being an integral part of our common humanity or as something separate, above and beyond it?

There are no straightforward answers and few basic, universal truths as to when the politics of identity may be elevated to great and worthy purposes and why it may descent into venal, vile bigotry. This is not the stuff of broad brushes.
But there are some general principles. First and foremost, this is not simply about understanding people better. It’s all very well creating dialogue, but when people come to the table they have to have something to talk about. Identities are about how we think about ourselves in relation to others. But those thoughts do not come out of a clear blue sky. Identities are rooted in material circumstances. In certain circumstances, whether you are British, black, gay, Iraqi, Hindu or female can be the difference between life and death, poverty and wealth, citizenship and statelessness. Power, resources and opportunity are in play in how we choose to understand (or misunderstand) the value of ourselves and others.

(Have you posted about this book too? Let me know and I’ll be happy to link to you.)

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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making began its life as a book inside a book: in Catherynne M. Valente’s excellent adult novel Palimpsest, one of the characters, November, names it as her favourite book growing up and refers to it several times throughout the story. This connection between the two books, however, doesn’t mean that Fairyland doesn’t stand on its own.

Fairyland is the story of a girl named September, who lives a comfortable and predictable life surrounded by teacups and small amiable dogs. But comfort and predictability are not what September craves: on the contrary, she wants adventure. So when the Green Wind comes along offering to transport her to Fairyland, September says yes – and she never looks back.

I read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making with Kelly from The Written World. We each came up with three discussion questions that we’ll both be answering. To see Kelly’s answers to all six questions, just click over to her blog. Here are mine:

Me: One of my favourite things about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making was Valente’s very conscious use of a Edwardian/Golden Age of Children’s Literature narrative voice. What did you think of the narrator and of the book’s classic feel? What do you think it adds to the story?
Well, obviously I’m going to agree with myself here and say I thought it was awesome. In Palimpsest, Fairyland is a book from the 1920’s, and when she went on to actually write it Valente made sure she kept the period feel consistent. The book’s narrative voice has echoes of even older children’s authors such as George MacDonald and E. Nesbit, which gives it a warm, familiar, cosy and grandparently feel – but not without its hints of danger. That and the metafictional elements of the story very much make Fairyland a book for book lovers. I loved the fact that this is a story that clearly exists within a tradition that it nods to and acknowledges at every turn, and yet at the same time it’s a story that is not at all afraid to be itself. The second passage I share under “bits I liked” at the end illustrates what I mean perfectly: September knows how stories work, and clearly the narrator assumes readers have the same knowledge. But none of this means everything is going to be predictable and safe. Stories can be wild things, and clearly this is one where every possibility remains open.

Kelly: September met a lot of characters along her journey. Which was your favourite? Why?
Definitely the Wyvern. Perhaps it helps that he’s the first friend September makes, and so we get to spend more time with him. But there’s also the fact that he’s so absolutely charming and immediately gained a place in my librarian heart. He believes he’s part library! And I believe him too, because why not? This is Fairyland, after all. His parentage may remain a mystery, but the way he thinks of himself is very much real.


One of the many gorgeous illustrations by Ana Juan
Me: What did you think of September herself? What was your favourite thing about her?
I loved her loyalty to her friends. I loved her taste for adventure. I loved her bravery, which is not the same as fearlessness. She has moments when she feels lost and helpless and afraid, but she always finds a way to help herself, and she always carries on. And most of all I loved the fact that she was active rather than passive. This is her story, and clearly she’s in charge. As Valente herself put it,

Too often in books like this, (especially in the classics of the genre) girls are acted upon, rather than actors, their choices are few, reflecting the real world, where a girl’s power is often located purely in her ability to say no: to suitors, to her social inferiors, even to herself. I wanted my girl to choose, to find power in saying yes, to make her own story–and of course her own ship.

Kelly: What did you think of September’s thoughts on the war being fought at home? She believes her father has abandoned her and her mother is often not at home. Do you think this reflects how many children felt during the World Wars?
This is a particularly interesting question to me, because I don’t feel I paid as much attention to this angle of the story as I could have while reading the book. I do think September’s feelings are probably an accurate representation of what many children would have experienced, yes. But at the same time, Valente does something a little different here: Fairyland is not an escape. I didn’t get the impression that September said yes to the Green Wind because there was a war on and she felt neglected by her parents – on the contrary, she would have said yes anyway. And once she gets to Fairyland, she doesn’t get a reprieve from all that’s dark about the world. She finds… more of life. The full spectrum of experiences, only more intense. And this is why she continues to say yes. She was never after a Fairyland-shaped theme park. She wanted to seek out real experiences, not run away from them. Which is exactly what she gets.

Me: I’m not sure if you read Catherynne M. Valente’s Big Idea post at John Scalzi’s blog, but to me her final paragraph perfectly sums up what I loved about Fairyland. She says:

I wrote a book about a girl who never said no. When she first enters Fairyland, it isn’t because she falls through a hole in the earth or wanders through a closet or chases a rabbit. It’s a choice, and however dark her journey becomes, she never wishes to take it back. The Green Wind shows up at her door riding a flying leopard and asks if she wants to go. If she wants more than she’s been given. If she wants to leave this world and grasp for another, a mad and gorgeous place, sight unseen, results uncertain.

And she says yes.

What are your thoughts on this?
Why yes, self, I did read that post. I think this ties in with what I was saying in my previous answer about Fairyland not being an escape, and also about September being active rather than passive. The whole novel is a tribute to saying yes to life – more specifically, to a girl wanting things and saying yes to life. How could I not love it for that?

Kelly: What did you think of this book overall? Did it compete well with other Valente books that you have read?
You know what, the only other Valente book I’ve read is Palimpsest, and it wouldn’t be fair to compare them because they’re entirely different creatures. But I did love Fairyland: it’s smart, bold, charming, original yet not afraid to insert itself into an old storytelling tradition, dark in all the right places, occasionally funny, and wonderfully written. I think the only reason why I don’t yet list Valente among my favourite authors is because I’ve let her books gather dust on my shelves for far too long (especially The Orphan’s Tales duology). I’m going to have to do something about that.


Bits I liked:

“We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that’s all.”

The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvellous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

“Am I to save Fairyland, then? Did you choose me to do that? Am I a chosen one, like all those heroes whose legs are never broken?”
The Green Wind stroked her hair. She could not see his face, but she knew it was grave.
“Of course not. No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a Leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back and to make friends with a Wyvern. [Abridged for spoiler-avoiding purposes] And twice now, you have chosen not to go home when you might have, if only you abandoned your friends. You could have had a lovely holiday in Fairyland and never met the Marquess, never worried yourself with local politics, had a romp with a few brownies and gone home with enough memories for a lifetime’s worth of novels. But you didn’t. You chose. You chose it all. Just like you chose your path on the beach: to lose your heart is not a path for the faint and fainting.”

They read it too:
Libri Touches, The Book Smugglers, Booklust, Good Books and Good Wine, Carol’s Notebook, Tempting Persephone, Charlotte’s Library, Just Booking Around

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Millions Like Us By Virginia Nicholson

As Virginia Nicholson explains in the author’s note, the goal of Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War and Peace 1939-1949 is to recount “not only what [women] did in the war, but what the war did to them and how it changed their subsequent lives and relationships.” To do this, Nicholson focuses on the lives of women from all walks of life: some came of age during the war years; others were middle aged mothers worried about soldier sons. Some were privileged and well-off; others were no strangers no hard work. Some joined the FANNYs or worked in munitions factories; others struggled with housekeeping and childrearing at a time of increasing shortages. Some were to become well known diarists or memoirists, such as Nella Last, Vera Hodgson, Helen Forrester; others remained anonymous. Some lost loved ones and experienced terrible grief; others found the war years the most exciting time of their lives.

The range of experiences portrayed is exactly what gives Millions Like Us its greatest strength: there is no typical experience; no example put forward as a representative of wartime women. Instead, what we see is a group of human beings as diverse as any other reacting to momentous historical events in the myriad ways human beings are bound to react. And the sheer humanity of their emotions and reactions is something that frequently surprised these women themselves. The stereotype of the caring woman who craved domestic bliss and wanted no involvement at all in public affairs had a real hold on the minds of those brought up between the war to live up to this ideal, and as such many women did not expect to find themselves wanting entirely different things.

At one point Nicholson quotes from Virginia Woolf’s essay “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid”, in which she links peace with femininity and “the maternal instinct”, and says:

It may even seem surprising to hear Virginia Woolf, a childless feminist, refer to the material instinct as ‘women’s glory’. But one has to remember that seventy years ago in Britain the attributes she ascribes as being innate among men and women would have been entirely accepted – indeed taken for granted – not only by the vast majority of the population but also by her intellectual readers. And if the pre-war iconography of the maternal angel endures even for Virginia Wolf in Bloomsbury, how much more so for Clara Milburn in the Midlands, Nella Last in Barrow, the Noble family in Lewisham, the Chadwyck-Healeys in their Somerset gentlemen’s residence? Looked at in the light of Woolf’s dissection, women’s experiences of, and writings about, the Blitz illustrate an extreme moment in history – a moment when the weaponless woman was completely at the mercy of men. But perhaps it was a moment, too, when women revealed how far the pre-war stereotype fell short. The men did not surrender their guns, and Woolf’s hope that she mind would triumph was perhaps overly optimistic. But, in 1940 and ’41, in fear of their lives, women demonstrated that they were cleverer, braver, angrier, more articulate, more enterprising, more robust and altogether more complex than even they themselves had ever guessed.

This is quite an important point throughout Millions Like Us: as much as these women were breaking away from their foremothers’ restrictive moulds, expectations of what constituted proper feminine behaviour had a real bearing on their lives. Therefore, moving away from traditional roles often involved being prepared not only to defy convention, but also to revise their self-perception and their very sense of identity.

Another thing I found particularly interesting was the fact that Millions Like Us focuses not only on the war years, but also on what came afterwards. What happened when all the women who had spent the war working outside the home were told to return to the domestic sphere? What happened when the possibilities that seemed to be opening up were suddenly snatched away?

Millions Like Us shows that the conflicting accounts of exhausted women who wanted nothing more than to return home and of women feeling entrapped in domesticity once they had had a taste of the wider world are actually both true. As tempting as it is to privilege one or the other to make a particular political point, no experience can be read as representative of what women “really” wanted – they were individuals, and as such they wanted both.

Still, privileging one narrative over another is by no means only something we do in retrospect. The war years were followed by a retreat into tradition as a backlash against imminent change, and women who did want something other than marriage and children were once again made to feel selfish and unnatural. To make matters worse, 1945-9 was also a time of delayed emotional breakdowns for many women, as the terrible things they had witnessed or endured finally caught up with them.

But Millions Like Us is not just an analysis of what this decade meant in terms of gender roles: it’s also an excellent nonfiction narrative, and it’s full of memorable episodes. For example, there’s a story about a distressed soldier who received a telegram from his wife, who he hadn’t seen in two years, saying the baby had been born and everyone was okay. It took until the next letter for the clarification to come: the baby was his new little brother, born to his widowed mother. There are also many stories that made me realise for the first time the real implications of the silk stockings wartime shortage one hears so much about. At a time when both trousers for women and bare legs were socially prohibited, a lack of stockings represented a real conundrum. Women who worked in offices, for example, were threatened with dismissal if they failed to conform to increasingly unrealistic dress codes. The solutions they found included a sort of make up applied to the legs to simulate stockings – and of course, suffering terribly from the cold in wintertime.

Millions Like Us is comprehensive, detailed, gripping and wonderfully written. Singled Out and Among the Bohemians made me suspect as much, but this book really cements Nicholson’s position as my favourite writer of social history. Her belief that “the personal and idiosyncratic reveal more about the past than the generic and comprehensive” really shows in her work, and the result are stories that are as intimate as they are illuminating.

Interesting bits:

A Bristol woman working in an aircraft factory told herself that every rivet she hammered into a Spitfire was another nail in Hitler’s coffin; in one week she broke three hammers. In such reactions one can begin to see the breakdown and collapse of familiar models of womanhood. Tender-hearted passivity and stoicism had their limits; stress found outlets where it could.

At moments of the most terrible bombing, expressing love physically was an act of defiance against the ruptured bones, the crushed guts – the living urgency of sex a kind of triumph over the gory imperatives of war. The available evidence suggests that fear, loss and destruction seem (to some extent) to have precipitated the sexual liberation of both men and women. Compared to the years before the war, in 1939-45 more women were having sex both before marriage and with men other than their husbands, more of them were sing contraceptives, and women’s knowledge of the facts of life increased. The divorce rate also increased at this time.

(Have you posted about this book too? Let me know and I’ll be glad to link to you.)

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West of the Moon by Katherine Langrish

West of the Moon is a revised one-volume edition of Katherine Langrish’s Troll trilogy: Troll Fell, Troll Mill and Troll Blood. As the folklore and fairy tale lovers among you no doubt gather from the title, the story is set in a mythical alternate version of Viking Scandinavia. This is a world of seafarers, fishermen and farming communities, but also a world where trolls, selkies, and other beings from Norse myth and folklore are very much real and frequently become involved in human affairs.

West of the Moon opens when Peer Ulfsson loses his father and is taken from the village where he grew up by an unknown and unkind uncle, Baldur Grimsson. His uncle lives in a mill with his equally unpleasant brother, and Peer’s life with them is absolutely miserable. But he takes comfort in his friendship with Hilde, the daughter of a local farmer. It is with Hilde’s help that he manages to get to the bottom of the sinister plot his greedy uncles are orchestrating. It’s difficult to summarise the plot further without giving too much away, so suffice to say that parts two and three of West of the Moon continue to follow Peer and Hilde’s adventures as they move towards adulthood and learn more about their world, themselves, and each other.

West of the Moon is more fantasy than historical fiction, but I appreciate the fact that the world Langrish evokes feels like it could have existed. Obviously I don’t mean to imply that this is never the case with secondary world fantasy, but the combination of carefully researched historical detail and folklore results in something that is likely to appeal to fans of both genres. Creating a world where creatures from folklore and legend are real is by no means a new premise in fantasy, but it’s made fresh here by the fact that the folkloric creatures are actually fleshed out and turned into interesting characters in their own right, rather than being mere world-building devices.

Take the Nis, for example –the Brownie-like house that Peer gets to know at his uncles’ mill. He was probably my favourite character in the series altogether: he’s responsible for several moments of comic relief, but at the same time he’s vulnerable, good-hearted but prone to making mistakes, and impossible not to cheer for when he goes off on his own adventures in part three.

One of my favourite things about West of the Moon was the balance between good old-fashioned adventure and domesticity. This is a world where men would go on adventures in Viking ships and women would stay behind to manage a farm and look after small children on their own, and Hilde’s family reflects these power dynamics. But at the same time, I loved the subtle gender politics – I loved that although Langrish is never heavy-handed, attention is drawn to this state of affairs, and Hilde’s mother’s own brand of heroism is celebrated and allowed to speak for itself.

I also really liked the fact that the characterisation is complex enough to leave room for nuance, often in ways that tie in with gender issues. In part two, for example, a new mother and family friend named Kersten disappears into the sea in mysterious circumstances, but not before pressing her baby daughter into Peer’s hands and leaving her behind. The sadness of this particular story arch is never downplayed, but at the same time Kersten is humanised. Hilde’s mother admits that as much as she loves her family, there were times when, finding herself alone in a house full of screaming children, she perfectly understood what could make someone walk away.

Part three introduces a character named Astrid, a mysterious young woman who is married to a much older man and is suspected of being a witch or worse. Astrid’s story has more to it than meets the eye, but when all is said and done she too could easily have been villainised. She could easily have become a heartless, scheming woman to whom Hilde is contrasted to emphasise her own good nature. But fortunately Langrish makes things more nuanced than many writers would have, and the result is a story where people are complicated and often have conflicting motivations – just like in real life.

They read it too:
Serendipity
Geraniumcat’s Bookshelf (Troll Fell and Troll Mill)
Charlotte’s Library (Troll Fell)

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Kraken by China Miéville

Billy Harrow is a curator at London’s Natural History Museum who specialises in molluscs. One day, when leading a tour of the adjacent Darwin Centre, he is shocked to discover that “Archie”, the giant squid specimen he helped prepare for preservation, has impossibly disappeared. There are no cartoonish giant squid-shaped holes on the walls, of course, and simply no way the tank containing the squid could have been taken without anyone noticing. And yet this is only the first in a series of impossible events – Billy’s efforts to recover the squid are about to drag him into an alternative London filled with giant-squid worshipping cults, sarcastic police officers with supernatural knacks, Londonmancers who cut the city’s entrails to read the future, sentient and malevolent tattoos, familiars who demand better working conditions, disembodied union leaders, two terrifying villains by the names of Goss and Subby, and an eminent, chaotic, and seemingly unpreventable apocalypse.

Kraken is nothing if not a strange and even somewhat messy book, but this strangeness is clearly intentional and even celebratory. This is a story about the wonderful weirdness of the world – it’s filled with a sense of wonder, though wonder of a darker sort than most of us are used to; of the potential behind the surface of things; of the hidden stories lurking behind everyday places and objects. While reading it I was frequently reminded of Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami, two authors I absolutely love. This should give you an idea of how much I enjoyed this book.

Kraken is also filled with dark humour and infused with a constant sense of fun, and above all, it’s excellent and extremely compelling storytelling: I devoured its almost five hundred pages in only two days, and in the process may have finally been cured of my long-lasting reading slump. It had been a long while since I felt this immersed in a story, and it was wonderful to finally have this sort of reading experience again.

As in the previous novels of his that I’d read, China Miéville treats London almost like a character. He celebrates the city’s history, geography and architecture, and doesn’t so much infuses it with magic as drags out the strangeness already there and pushes it a little further. The result is an urban landscape that’s every bit as familiar as it is original. Also, as I said when I read Un Lun Dun, what Miéville does with words is an absolute joy: his language is playful, vivid, and not in the least bit afraid of neologisms or not-quite-words or humorous over-the-topness.

But beneath all this action and fun, there’s also a serious examination of the nature of belief, of memory, of history, and of the criteria we use to decide what’s ridiculous superstition and what are valid and reasonable narratives around which to organise our existences. The concept behind Kraken is very consciously Lovecraftian, but the execution is miles away from Cthullu’s cosmic terror. Yes, if you stop to think about it for five seconds, you cannot miss how absurd the cult of the Kraken really is. But then again, the same could be said of many of the stories we tell ourselves about the world. Miéville combines playfulness with an execution that actually takes this premise seriously and treats it with respect, and that’s one of Kraken’s greatest strengths.

They read it too:
Page 247, Chasing Bawa, Susan Hated Literature, Steph & Tony Investigate!, Just Book Reading, Bibliolatry, Rat’s Reading, The Book Smugglers, Just Add Books & Book Gazing, Lady Business (Renay)

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