Category: Book reviews

Reading ‘Emergency Skin’

My favourite reading experience of 2023 was catching up with Emergency Skin (a ‘novelette’) by N.K. Jemsin (audiobook narrated by Jason Isaacs), published by Amazon Original Stories, 2019

Jemsin is an award-winning science fiction writer and this story (only one hour’s listening in audiobook form) shows her at her most skilful. Most stories are written in either the third person (he, she, they, it etc) or the first person (I, we, us), however Jemsin has tackled this story in the second person (you). Unlike other attempts I’ve read doing this, she’s got it to work brilliantly for the purposes of this tale.

We are following a man from another planet who has been sent back to Earth to collect the cell cultures that are needed to keep manufacturing the synthetic skin used to protect the humans on the other planet. However, the story unfolds as the AI implanted in the man’s brain tells him what to do as he goes about fulfilling the mission.

‘We should begin with a briefing, since you’re now authorized for Information Level Secret. On its face, this mission is simple: return to the ruined planet Tellus, from which mankind originates. When the Founders realised the world was dying, they …. Fled to a new world circling another sun, so that something of it – the best of it – would survive. …How brave you are to walk in your forefathers’ footsteps!

No, there’s no one left alive on Tellus. The planet was in full environmental collapse …when our people left. There were just too many people, and too many of those were unfit, infirm, too old, or too young. …so we did the only merciful thing we could: we left them behind.

Of course that was mercy. Do you think your ancestors wanted to leave billions of people to starve and suffocate and drown? It was simply that our new home could support only a few.”

N.K. Jemsin, ‘Emergency skin’, p.5 (… indicates ellipted words)

And so the story progresses. We never hear what the man thinks or says but, by the AI’s responses, we know what he is communicating. The AI responses also let us understand what the new world that the man has come from is like – a world where there is only one gender (people now being manufactured), and where a disposable man (like the man in the story) doesn’t have a ‘skin’, he has a ‘composite’ covering and his reward for making this journey to collect skin samples, is to have skin made for him – in the new world only those in power have skin.

My favourite quote is the protest from the AI to the man:

‘Only a few can have everything, don’t you see? What these people believe isn’t feasible. They want everything for everyone, and look at where it’s gotten them! Half of them aren’t even men.”

At one level, we see how the man’s views radically change through the increasingly petulant hysteria of his AI. At a deeper level, Jemsin invites us to realise that to care for each other and the world is not an impossible challenge.

My Favorite Books of 2022

1.

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St John Mandel (narrated by Arthur Morey, Dylan Moore, John Lee, Kirsten Potter) – Picador, 2022

If you liked her ‘Station Eleven’ (now also a TV miniseries) then you’re going love this. Her beautifully lyrical writing weaves a number of seemingly separate events from the past, present and future together to a cosmic conclusion.

2.

The Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See – Simon & Schuster, 2020

I came to this story with woefully little knowledge about Korea during World War II and in the years that followed. Neither did I know much about the women free divers of the island of Jeju, so this story of the lives of two young girls growing up and working in their diving collection was both gripping and illuminating.

And as a bonus,

3.

Exiles, by Jane Harper (narrated by Steve Shanahan) – Macmillan Australia, 2022

It was such a delight to follow the detective we’ve met in her earlier novels in this cold case mystery.

Listening to books

The best of 2021

The books I read in print form last year were a disappointment so I won’t share the pain. On the other hand, 2021 brought me some fabulous listening pleasure with the following audio books. As usual, I flit between genres so it’s hard to present them in any particular order. Let me know if you enjoyed any of these too!

Top favourite of 2021

Slow Horses: Slough House, book 1 (2010, John Murray Publishers) by Mick Herron

(audio book narrated by Sean Barrett)

In the first book of the series, we meet British MI5 agent River as he is bungling an important training mission. For this, he gets sent to the sad and miserable dumping ground for failed spies, Slough House.  However, it is River’s boss, Jackson Lamb, who captures our attention for the series. Fat, farting, swearing, smoking, and without a politically correct bone in his body, Lamb torments River and his fellow failures. The plot is intriguing and the writing witty. Best of all, the BBC is currently filming some of the series, with the wonderful Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, in a cast that includes Kristen Scott-Thomas and Jonathan Pryce.

Best light fare for 2021—two contenders

  1. The Thursday Murder Club (2020, Viking Press) by Richard Osman

(audiobook narrated by Lesley Manville, Richard Osman, Marian Keyes)

Having seen Richard Osman being amusingly knowledgeable on British television game shows, I was intrigued to hear that he’d written a few cosy crime novels. The setting is a retirement village where (shock and horror) the residents are anything but sweet senior citizens. With a ‘Midsomer Murders’ sort of plot, this novel was very much in the style of the author’s personality: clever, warm, with a few unexpected twists and turns.

(audiobook narrated by Zara Ramm)

This is a continuation of a consistently amusing series that is among my favourites. The Time Police were the bad guys in the original ‘Chronicles of St Mary’s’ Series, which is all about historians who ‘investigate major historical events in contemporary time’ (i.e., time travel, but don’t let our heroes hear you say that). In the Time Police series, we follow three raw recruits who don’t fit the usual tough guy Time Police mold.  In this book, they’ve graduated and are doing things in their own hilarious way.

Best Young Adult fiction for 2021

The Rest of Us Just Live Here (2015, Quill Tree Books) by Patrick Ness

(audiobook narrated by James Fouhey)

What happens if you’re the teenagers in the background while the superhero kids go head to head with zombie monsters and mysterious blue lights? This novel uses this fun premise to explore sadder themes that are all too real for adolescents. The writing is tight and the characters are compelling—definitely worth a look.

Best dystopia for 2021

Metro 2033 (2005, English edition Gollancz) by Dmitry Glukhovsky

(audiobook narrated by Rupert Degas)

The novel, originally written in Russian, inspired a widely popular video game. Translated into English, I loved how ‘Russian’ it still felt. Basically, the world above ground has been destroyed and contaminated by nuclear fallout. Our hero, Artyom, lives in the Moscow Metro system where every train station has evolved into its own State while subjected to the ever present threat of the mutant monsters that lurk above. Artyom is entrusted with a quest to deliver an important message. His journey is a post-apocalyptic odyssey where new characters emerge to help or hinder the battles he must fight as he navigates his way through the underground. Warning: it is long, but then—it is Russian!

Best non-fiction for 2021

Educated (Windmill Books, 2018) by Tara Westover

(audiobook narrated by Julia Whelan)

This memoir tells how the author grew up in the back blocks of Idaho, raised in a Mormon family which was dominated by her father whose survivalist ideology became increasingly bizarre and damaging to his wife and children. It’s a grim tale, but written evocatively in a way that allows us to sense the inner resilience that burned within the author who eventually found her way out to engage with formal education and a wider world view.

And finally,

Best re-read for 2021

The Lord of the Rings (1955, Allen & Unwin) by J.R.R. Tolkien

(audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis)

Really, what is there to say? I’ve listened to a couple of versions of Lord of the Rings, but I think Andy Serkis (aka Gollum) is the best narrator. My only complaint is the songs….I confess I skip these when reading LoTR, but I can’t do that in an audiobook very successfully, and Serkis’ singing isn’t up to his voice acting level. Still, good on him for being authentic, I guess!

Quaint old age?

I blame book clubs. If you belong to a library-run book club, you may have noticed a predilection for your reading list to comprise novels with older protagonists. The age range for ‘older’ can be anything from 50 to 80 or more, which is frightening from wherever you are standing on the timeline. These characters are considered remarkable by the miracle of being both older and yet interested and active participants in the world around them. The protagonists are (pick as many as apply):

  • Feisty
  • Quirky
  • Characters (as in ‘she’s a real character’)
  • Eccentric
  • Outspoken (but with a timid sidekick)
  • Timid (but with an outspoken sidekick)

And, almost universally,

  • Stuck in their ways (but will become adventurous by the end).

This is not to say that such books don’t make an entertaining read. They are a pleasant way to spend an effortless afternoon. Amongst my fellow book club members, the consensus ratings of these books were 3/5. Such books are usually well-written and well-edited to achieve that magic page turning quality. However, it’s the underlying characterisation of age that strikes me as open to question.

Here’s a summary of 2018’s teeth-gritting reading, including their publishers’ blurbs (in no particular order):

Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers (2015, Allen & Unwin) – genre mystery/’domestic fiction’

‘Hold on to your tea cups – you’re about to fall head over heels for Hester and Harriet, whose quiet and ordered Christmas celebrations are turned upside down with the arrival of their runaway teenage nephew and a young refugee woman and her baby.’

It wasn’t until I was about half-way into this book that I realised the ‘elderly’ sisters were in their early 60s.

The Fence by Meredith Jaffe (2016, Macmillan)

 ‘Gwen Hill has lived on Green Valley Avenue all her adult life. Here she brought her babies home, nurtured her garden and shared life’s ups and downs with her best friend and neighbour, Babs. So when Babs dies and the house next door is sold, Gwen wonders how the new family will settle into the quiet life of this cosy community. …Soon the neighbours are in an escalating battle that becomes about more than just council approvals, and boundaries aren’t the only things at stake.’

Jaffe teeters between a savage and insightful recognition of the realities of ageing (for example, the care of a dementing husband) and satirical farce as events compound as the older characters behave in increasingly irrational ways.

Lost & Found by Brooke Davis (2015, Hachette)

‘At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn’t to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too. Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers. Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street. Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different. Three lost people needing to be found. But they don’t know it yet. Millie, Agatha and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about.’

This book distinguishes itself from the others by attempting to embrace the sexuality of the older person. However, when Agatha and Karl fall to their knees and make passionate love in the sandy desert, our book club members were unanimous in shrieking: not on the ground!!

The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert (2010, Berkley)

 ‘The good old ladies of Darling, Alabama, are determined to keep their town beautiful. The Darling Dahlias garden club is off to a good start until rumors of trouble at a bank, an escaped convict, and a ghost digging around their tree surface. If anyone can get to the root of these mysteries, it’s the Darling Dahlias.’

Be warned – it’s a series.

This tendency to view older people as ‘cute’ or ‘dear things’ is the reverse side to the more serious ageist coin where older people are absent, invisible, or fragile/disabled/unwell/burdensome. There has been academic scholarship and debate exploring the perpetuation of ageist stereotypes in literature that is highly relevant to the dark side of this issue. I’d suggest that the lighter side is potentially just as damaging.

Looking at the novels I have endured this year in my book club, I have developed a maxim:

“The younger the author, the quainter the older protagonist.”

The portrayal of older protagonists by older authors is strikingly different. For example, this year we also read 86-year-old John Le Carré’s brilliant return to the world of Smiley and Guillam, ‘A Legacy of Spies (2018, Penguin).

Peter Guillam may be getting hard-of-hearing and he’s not above exploiting perceptions of failing aged memory, but he remains as sharp as his mentor.

If I’m fortunate enough to live as long as Le Carré, I’d love to read the novels that quaint-ifiers write in twenty or more years’ time and see if their characterisation of their protagonists has changed.

Hunt for treasure no more

I’ve been going through a writing lull, so that means that I’ve been making the most of my subscription to Audible. Here’s a brief review my latest find.

‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, An Audible Original Drama, adapted by Marty Ross. Length 6 hrs and 26 mins. Performance release date: 17-08-2017 Publisher: Audible Studios

I’d tried reading ‘Treasure Island’ as a child, of course, but never got past the first few chapters. With my writer’s hat on, I can see now why I struggled. The story initially came out in serial form in 1882, so perhaps that explains the long first six chapters to finally get into the heart of the story to set sail for Treasure Island. Even though this dramatised version is an adaptation, I was well and truly over the rum-swilling Billy Bones by the time we heard the sound of Blind Pew’s stick approaching with the doom-laden ‘black spot’. However, this time I stuck with it, largely held by the broad accents of Catherine Tate as Jim’s mother. Her talents alerted me to the usefulness of minor characters in providing humorous commentary on the dramatic action. Another favourite minor character, old Tom Redruth—faithful retainer to the foolish Squire Trelawney—provided a similar commentary on his master in this version.

Catherine Tate

Despite my failure to finish the book in my youth, the rest of the story was familiar through movies and television. However, none of those versions had illuminated the central theme of the story. Typically, the story is told as a coming-of-age journey for Jim who sails as cabin boy on the Hispaniola commissioned by Squire Trelawny, to find the treasure on the map uncovered by Jim and Dr Livesey (played by another very recognisable actor, Philip Glenister). However, just as pivotally, the story unpicks the threads of greed through the portrayal of both the pirates and the more socially-condoned actions of the characters who represent the higher classes (the Squire and the Doctor).

Philip Glenister

Throughout this audio adaptation by Marty Ross, it is this social commentary that is emphasised. It is, of course, very much a 21st century ‘reading’ of the text, but I think it gives the story an intensity that illuminates why Jim’s allegiances shift so often by suggesting something beyond simple adolescent uncertainty or gullibility. In this version, the character of Long John Silver is not only frighteningly charismatic in his machiavellian strategies but also the sower of doubt in Jim’s understanding of right and wrong. For example, it is Silver who points out to Jim that the castaway Ben Gunn won’t receive a fair share of the treasure despite finding it and safeguarding it from others because the Squire and the Doctor will take it from him, under the guise of paternalistic benevolence. By the end of the tale, through his relationship with Silver and his experiences, Jim’s moral compass flickers with questing indeterminacy—he has become his own man.

 

Added note: A version of this appeared in the June newsletter for members of my writing group: Lake Macquarie branch, Fellowship of Australian Writers, NSW.

History Fun

What is it about history that insists on slipping out of your mind (or out of my mind, at least)? History at school was never fun because of the stubborn way that only the most trivial information presented itself at times of crisis, such as during exams.  As a child, I consoled myself with the observation of Sellar (Aegrot: Oxon) and Yeatman (Failed M.A., etc. Oxon) that:

“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.”*

Perhaps this is why we enjoy historical fiction so much—it helps bring the past alive in stories that stick. Some writers of historical fiction are so proud of their research that they desiccate their tales to the point where we might just as well read non-fiction (not mentioning any names).  Thankfully, some writers mix and bake their tales with the lightness of a soufflé and Jodi Taylor, author of the Chronicles of St Mary’s, is one such writer.

 

The St Mary’s series (nine novels and numerous short stories by 2018 and still going) is sometimes located within the science fiction genre but it has only one sci-fi premise: that time-travel is possible.  The only other general assumption is that, if anyone is going to do time-travel responsibly, then it’s an historian. The fun comes when we learn that the historians employed at St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research are entirely irresponsible in their all-consuming passion to find out what really happened. They specialise in exploring times that involve historical controversy, anywhere from the time of the dinosaur to recent World Wars. With just a soupçon of romance and sadness, these novels provide an easy way to become absorbed in the past.

They are available in hard and paperback as well as ebook and audiobook (which is how I became acquainted with them—great narration by Zara Ramm). The first of the series is titled, Just One Damned Thing After Another, although there is a short story prequel available, The Very First Damned Thing.

 

______________

*If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading ‘1066 and all that: A memorable history of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’ then I recommend the experience. Amazon has it available very cheaply and there are some free pdfs floating about the internet too.

Best audio books 2017

Redphones: Listening to music while waiting for a friend, Garry Knight, Flickr, CC2.0 licence with attribution.

While cleaning out my father’s flat after his death earlier this year, I came across the notebooks in which both my parents kept a listing of the books they had read each year. My own reading habits are not nearly as methodical.  However, new ways of consuming books do such cataloguing work for us.  I have become addicted to audio books as it allows me the chance to read and knit at the same time (unlike my mother who learned to do both simultaneously to defend herself from my grandmother’s accusations of ‘wasting her time reading’).  I subscribe to audible and they sent me a summary of my own (well-spent) 20,250 minutes of listening time this year. Apparently, my favourite genre was ‘crime & thrillers’— which suggests some new writing directions for me later.  I entirely agree with their analysis of my ratings that showed that my favourite author was Philip Pullman and my favourite narrator was Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (narrator for the delightful PC Grant detective series by Ben Aaronovitch, but I’m saving a review about that series for another post).

my top three audiobooks for 2017

 (in no particular order)

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman (hard cover and paperback published 2017 by Harper Collins). Audio book released 2017, read by Cathleen McCarron.

Written in the first person, we are taken inside the character of a fascinating woman who leads a highly circumscribed life.  This is a novel about small moments and their effects. The narrator fully captures the tension between Eleanor’s self-awareness and her lack of insight. The newspaper reviews of the book are very positive but often contain spoilers, so if you like to know more about what’s ahead have a look at these: from the Guardian, or from the Washington Independent Review of Books. Reese Witherspoon’s production company has apparently optioned the book for a movie so you could wait till then or, best of all, just dive into the book and find the treasure there.

A Legacy of Spies

by John leCarré (hard cover and paperback published 2017 by Penguin Random House). Audio book released 2017, read by Tom Hollander.

Peter Guillam is called back by the Circus to account for the past Cold War operations of George Smiley.  The reviews of the book have been unanimous in their praise, see the review by the New York Times for example.

Actor Tom Hollander is exactly the right person to read it – a master of restraint in the context of overpowering emotions. (You may remember Tom Hollander from the TV mini-series ‘The Night Manager’, and the TV series ‘Rev’, amongst many other roles.)

 

 

La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman (hard cover and paperback published 2017 in association with Penguin Random House). Audio book released 2017, read by Michael Sheen.

Philip Pulman takes us back to the very beginnings of Lyra’s life and the disturbance she brings, even as a baby, to the control exerted by The Magisterium. The heroes of the story are Malcolm and his daemon Asta who must save Lyra when the flooding of the Thames brings both corporeal and magical threats.

Actor Michael Sheen is a captivating narrator. (Michael Sheen was recently seen as Dr Masters in the TV series ‘Masters of Sex’, and you might remember him as David Frost in the film ‘Frost/Nixon’ back in 2008).

 

This is the first of three planned prequels to ‘His Dark Materials’. I, for one, will be lining up for the others. The reviews have welcomed the return to Lyra’s world, for example see the review in the Sydney Morning Herald. Like the reviewers, I look forward to the next instalment in this series.