August, 2022 Books: "August arrives in the dark/we are not even asleep & it is here..."

The full W.S. Merwin poem in the thread title:

NOCTURNE II

August arrives in the dark

we are not even asleep and it is here
with a gust of rain rustling before it
how can it be so late all at once
somewhere the Perseids are falling
toward us already at a speed that would
burn us alive if we could believe it
but in the stillness after the rain ends
nothing is to be heard but the drops falling
one at a time from the tips of the leaves
into the night and I lie in the dark
listening to what I remember
while the night flies on with us into itself

-WS Merwin, "Nocturne II", from THE SHADOW OF SIRIUS

Starting out the month with fiction and non-fiction, trying to keep my summer reading momentum going.

Finished HERETICS AND HEROES, another installment in Thomas Cahill's "hinges of history" series.

His thesis is that there are key epochs in human history when we make an exponential leap in our development...and makes the case that the almost simultaneous appearance of the Reformation and Renaissance was one such interlude.

I've read a number of his books and find his ideas convincing and well-argued.

Just finished The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt. What an odd book. Paranoid and hallucinatory. Reminded me a bit of Cortazar because of the existentialist vibe. Afterwards I read that Bolaño was a fan. Of course. This is the type of messy, defective book that he loved. This is proto-Bolaño. The parts that want to shock have lost some power. The more paranoid, conspiratorial parts have currency. Published in 1929, which is pretty remarkable.

THE SHADOW OF SIRIUS by W.S. Merwin.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

From the latter part of his life and, as my book journal notes, "the poet has lived long enough to experience profound loss, which has rendered him all the more human and imparted grace to his carefully chosen words".

Impressed, as you can likely tell.

Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz. Babitz's writing is very vivid, full of energy, intelligent, fun. Her concerns were of her age (she was in her late 20's when she wrote this) and of the time (sixties, early seventies). Very girly. Very LA. Easy read.

One wonders if as she matured she became aware of how similar she was to the Hollywood girls she so disdained. There's some social awareness here but no politics. Plenty of fat shaming, and name dropping. Kind of snobbish at times.

Balzac And the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie
Audiobook narrated by B D Wong
5*****

What a delightful book - beautifully written - poetic. During China's Cultural Revolution, three young men are sent to a mountain villages for re-education. The area is near the border with Tibet, and the local peasants subsist on treacherous terrain. The high mountain passes make travel from one town to another difficult and dangerous. Two of the boys are settled in Phoenix in the Sky, where they live in a stilt “house” that is really the village’s storage facility. Their friend, “Four eyes” is in a different town, and they discover that he has a secret horde of books. They are captivated by the books and also by the little seamstress, daughter of the district’s tailor.

The boys proceed to try to win the little seamstress – and her protective and watchful father - with their story-telling, relating the works of titans of Western literature: Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, etc. The outcome is not what they had expected.

Sijie gives us descriptions of the harshness of the terrain and of their forced labor. The scenes in the coal mine were particularly harrowing. But there are many humorous scenes, as well.

I have read this little gem of a novel several times. It is luminously written, and even makes me want to read Balzac (although I still haven't done so). For me, it answers the question, "Why do you read so much?"

The audiobook is masterfully performed by B D Wong. He really brings these characters to life.

There is also a movie, originally produced in French (Sijie who, himself, was “re-educated” during the ‘70s, now lives in Paris and originally wrote the book in French). I saw it as part of a film festival. The cinematography is gorgeous. But the ending is different and was a huge disappointment to me.

THE PUMP by Sydney Warner Brooman.

Connected short stories set in a fictitious northern Ontario town.

The water is contaminated, causing hideous rashes, the beavers outside the town are feral man-killers, everyone is looking to escape but few seem to manage.

Intriguing first effort by a young author. Not without its charm.

Time to catch up on what I've read recently...

A Model World, Michael Chabon - a collection of short stories originally published in The New Yorker, which is probably why they're all very similar. I find Chabon at his best when he's writing about something - the history of comics, Jewish adventurers, an alternate Israel - and not just writing straight-up literary fiction. This is the latter, so more of a miss. But Chabon still has an oeuvre worth exploring.

Skyward Inn, Aliya Whiteley - shortlisted for this year's Clarke Award. I think Whiteley is a very good writer, but I'm not convinced the mix of sf and quotidian fiction entirely works here. The title refers to a pub in Wales, which is now a separatist anti-technology zone. The woman who runs the pub spent several years exploring an alien planet, and her partner is a native of that world. One narrative details how a strange disease seems to be affecting the people of Earth, and another events on the alien world - and, of course, one is a consequence of the other, and tied into the real nature of the aliens. I've seen similar stories before in sf and this one suffers a little in comparison. It reminded me a lot of Paul Park's Coelestis, which is a much much better novel. In fact, in parts Skyward Inn felt like a missed opportunity to interrogate first contact tropes, instead preferring to tell a story about an Earth that seems little different to here and now.

Sourcery, Terry Pratchett - the fifth Discworld novel and I'm pretty sure I'm now reading ones I've not read before. In this one, a seventh son of a seventh son, which is like magic to the seventh power, is taken over at birth by his father, and the child then heads to Ankh-Morpork, takes over the Unseen University, and begins to make over the Discworld to his own wishes. Trying to stop him are Rincewind, the useless wizard from the first two Discworld novels, and Cohen the Barbarian's lethal daughter, who just wants to be a hairdresser. Good stuff - a fantasy pastiche with plenty of humour and a little social commentary.

Islands of Mercy, Rose Tremain - I've read a few of Tremain's books over the years and thought them good, but a year or two ago I decided to read more of them. Happily, she often appears in the Kindle daily deal, and that includes her most recent novels. This one is historical fiction, as indeed are many of her novels, and set in mid-Victorian times. A young woman who works as a nurse for her father in Bath accepts an offer of marriage from the young doctor who works with her father, even though she's more drawn to women as lovers. The young doctor's brother, meanwhile, is in Borneo, exploring the flora and fauna there, and staying with a "white rajah" who is being manipulated by his Malaysian catamite. I thought Tremain's novel prior to this, The Gustav Sonata, was a little dull, but this one is much better.

Beyond the Hallowed Sky, Ken MacLeod - the first of a new trilogy, the Lightspeed Trilogy, in which an English mathematician defects to Scotland, which is in the EU, after discovering FTL. But, for some reason, the EU does nothing with it, and it's only later, after someone discovers the US/UK has had FTL for 50 years, that a small Scottish submersible yard builds a FTL-capable spaceship. Meanwhile, US scientists on an exoplanet have discovered some sort of rock-like alien intelligence, and it appears there are outcrops of this alien on both Earth and Venus... There's some nice ideas here - the AI-managed EU versus a neo-fascist US/UK alliance (Union vs Alliance, a nod to Cherryh?), both of which appear benign from within (tho I know which one I'd sooner live in) is a pretty cool near-future; and the section of the novel set on Venus is good, too... But the main antagonist, a one-off android, feels far too powerful, and the rock monster has been done before. Still, quality sf, and I'm looking forward to the next book.

A Symphony of Echoes, Jodi Taylor - the second book in The Chronicles of St Mary's series, and it's more of the same: disorganised historians travel back in time and get themselves in myriad, often near-lethal, scrapes. Every now and again, the books throw up some interesting historical titbits - in this one, it was the life of Mary, Queen of Scots - but on the whole the wit doesn't offset the pointless violence and high bodycount. It makes it all seem a little juvenile.

10,000 Light-Years from Home, James Tiptree Jr - Tiptree's first collection, I believe, and it contains some stone-cold classics and personal favourites. I've always loved 'And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side', but 'The Man Who Walked Home' is also an absolute stonker. The stories are all very much of their time and place, with a prose style in many that reminded me of Heinlein - although, fortunately, the subject matter and sensibilities did not. One or two are not especially memorable, but the collection did remind why I've always admired Tiptree's fiction and persuaded me I need to read more of it.

The Green Man's Challenge, Juliet E McKenna - the fourth instalment of a rural fantasy series starring Dan Mackmain, the son of a dryad - which means he can see, and interact with, various folklore creatures. Such as the Green Man who appears in the title of each book. In this one, Mackmain is sent by the Green Man to defeat a giant - think the Cerne man - who has apparently awoken. Mackmain is assisted by his girlfriend, Fin, who is a Swan Maiden (she can turn into a swan, obvs). This is an excellent series, extremely readable, with likeable protagonists, fascinating deep dives into elements of English folklore, and, in this case, a story that's actually impacted by the pandemic. Cannot recommend these highly enough.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Vignettes of the relation between grandmother and grand daughter living in a small island of the coast of Finland. Very minimalist, very quiet, very intimate. The best sections are evocative and poetic. Other sections are a bit too precious. Some sections were just lost on me. Exceptional writing throughout all the book, however. I was left with the impression of a very intelligent writer.

My summer of thrillers continues, this time it's SLEEPWALK by Dan Chaon.

The central character employees a variety of names as he criss-crosses America, doing odd jobs (murder, people smuggling) for his mysterious employers.

Take it to the beach, prop yourself up, have fun.

More poetry, Paul Celan's BREATHTURN, a lovely little volume from Green Integer Press.

Celan continues to baffle and intrigue me--at times I'm totally out to sea and then there are flashes where I feel a kinship with him as I do few other poets.

Pierre Joris' translation and end notes, as always, peerless.

>11 CliffBurns: I'll second that feeling about Celan; I'm continually blown away, for example, by "Fadensonnen" and "Todesfuge"—and then so much else leaves me with the suspicion that I'm too shamefully dense even to be in the room.

Joris, Celan's best, most diligent translator (I think so anyway), wrote of the frustrations and difficulties of rendering his complex poetics into English in the commentary accompanying BREATHTURN:

"These minimalia (referring to his commentary) function more as a map of ignorance than as a showcase for knowledge regarding Celan's late poetry".

The deeper I dive into Celan's work, the more lost and adrift I feel. Is that a good thing? Dunno, but I keep coming back to his verse, an itch I can't quite scratch.

Artemis – Andy Weir
Book on CD performed by Rosario Dawson
4.5****

I wondered if Weir could possibly top The Martian, or at least equal it. Well, now I know. And I love that this time he features a feisty, intelligent woman as the lead character.

Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara has lived practically her entire life in Artemis, the city constructed on the moon and run by a Kenyan conglomerate. She could have joined her father’s welding business, but teenage rebellion led her down a different path and now she’s a porter – delivering goods to residents, including contraband she smuggles in. Smuggling is a relatively prosperous endeavor, but Jazz is still living on the edge. And then she is offered a unique opportunity.

I love a good crime caper, and this is one. Lots of twists and turns that kept the action moving and my interest high. Lots of obstacles to this “impossible task” that our heroine must figure out how to overcome, and even when she’s covered all the basis … well, if things CAN go wrong they WILL go wrong.

I really liked how she put together a very unlikely team of helpers.

My favorite quote: “I left without further comment. I didn’t want to spend more time inside the mind off an economist. It was dark and disturbing.” I live with an economist, so that really resonated with me … LOL!

Rosario Dawson is fantastic performing the audio. She really brings Jazz (and the other characters) to life! 5***** for her performance. Brava!

DUBLINERS by you-know-who.

Remarkable collection--I'd read a number of the stories individually over the years but I had never read the book from cover to cover.

Glad I corrected that oversight.

An in-depth look at life in turn of the 20th century Dublin. The classes, religious and political question; the dialogue consistently excellent, the characters expertly drawn.

Deserving of its reputation.

THE TWILIGHT WORLD by Werner Herzog.

The perfect author to describe the incredible life of Hiroo Onada, a lieutenant in the Japanese army who believed World War II never ended and evaded capture in the Philippine jungle for decades.

Read this book in one sitting this afternoon.

Highest recommendation.

The Peregrine by J.A. Baker. It's not really about bird watching, it's about something else that is left as a mystery. It has many moments of exquisite writing, almost prose poetry.
Unfortunately the text doesn't really work as an audiobook for a variety of reasons so it was a bit of an ordeal.
But what a unique, deeply original book. Unlike anything else I've ever read.

>17 mejix: Werner Herzog loves that book.

>18 CliffBurns: From what I've read, he worships the book, yes. And with good reason. I hope to reread it again soon, but the print version.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton– Sara Collins
Digital audiobook narrated by the author and Ray McMillan
4****

“I used to be called Frannie Langton before I was taken from Paradise to London and given by Langton as maid to Mr George Benham, who then gave me to his wife. It wasn’t my choice to be brought here, but very little in my life ever was. I was Langton’s creature. If I pleased him, I pleased myself. If he said something was to be, it was. But Langton was a man who’d named his own house Paradise despite all that went on there, and named every living thing in paradise too. What more do I need to tell you about him?”

This work of historical fiction looks at slavery, colonialism, drug addiction, medical experimentation and lesbianism in early 19th century England. Frannie is a slave / housemaid and narrates her story. Collins begins the novel in 1826, with Frannie writing her “confession” from prison in London. And then goes back to 1812 in Jamaica as Frannie remembers her youth as a slave on a sugar plantation, and her transformation and education as an assistant to her master. All this leads to her current situation: accused of murdering both Benham and his wife, Marguerite.

This is Collins’s debut novel and it’s an ambitious one. Frannie is a marvelous character – educated, observant, loving, strong and yet vulnerable. Her race dooms her to a life of servitude and a lack of opportunity, and yet she finds ways to feed her mind and her soul. I really can’t say more without giving away key plot points, but Collins drew me in and kept me in her grasp. The story was as addicting as the laudanum that Frannie and her mistress relied on .

The author narrates along with Ray McMilan. Collins does a fine job of bringing Frannie to life, while McMilan’s role is to narrate the official court transcripts that are sprinkled throughout the story.

RED DOG by Willem Anker.

A South African novel shortlisted for the 2020 Booker...but it was a controversial choice, especially after the author was accused of plagiarizing Cormac McCarthy.

Certain passages may seem eerily reminiscent of McCarthy, that much I allow, but the book is also a ripping good one, evoking its era and environs with a sense of real authenticity.

Recommended.

PAUL CELAN: SELECTIONS, edited and with an introduction by Pierre Joris.

Essential volume, methinks, for those folks who admire Celan but are also frustrated and daunted by his difficult, hermetic poems.

Invaluable intro by Joris, plus essays by Cioron and Derrida, and even some personal photos and correspondence.

Lovely volume.

Time for another batch of recent reads. Apologies for the length of these. If you'd sooner I only did a couple of books per post, let me know.

The Magic Cottage, James Herbert - young artistic couple (she illustrates children's books, he's a session guitarist) buy a cottage in the woods. Everything seems idyllic - the local wild animals are astonishingly friendly, problems with the cottage seem to fix themselves, and the couple both experience bouts of intense creativity. But then they meet the occultists living in the manor nearby, and everything starts to go horribly wrong... Herbert was the master of the horror potboiler, and this book is no exception. The plot runs on well-oiled rails, everything is familiar from a thousand books and films, and the plot twist is so obvious it's barely worth the name. Still, you get what you pay for - Herbert's prose is not so much polished as it is smoothed completely flat.

City of the Horizon and City of Dreams, Anton Gill - I read the first of this trilogy way back in the early 1990s, and liked it enough to hunt out the other two books. But I never got around to reading them. And then earlier this year, the trilogy was on offer for 99p each as ebooks, plus a further three books written by Gill in 2015. The stories are set during the reign of Tutankhamun - in fact the main character, Huy, was a scribe in the court of Akhenaton, the Eighteenth Dynasty monotheistic pharaoh, but once Akhenaton dies, the old guard are back and all of Akhenaton's followers are either executed, exiled, imprisoned or, as in Huy's case, forbidden from practicing their profession. So he gets involved in solving crimes. The two I've read so far are cleverly-plotted, and the setting is fascinating. Worth reading.

The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter - I've read a number of Carter's novels and collections over the years, but not this one. I'm not a big fan of fairy tales, re-told or otherwise, and some of stories in this collection rely a little too much on a deep knowledge of the source tales. Still, this is good stuff - a little florid for my taste, but still good - and the title story in particular is extremely effective. I've been meaning to read more Carter for a while, and reading this collection has only reinforced that. Recommended.

A Second Chance, Jodi Taylor - the third and, for me, final, book of the Chronicles of St Mary's. There are plenty more in the series, but I'm not going to bother with them. I liked the set-up - academic institution uses time travel to research history - but not framing the whole thing as a running war between St Mary's and a "rogue" ex-member. This time, the historians are researching Troy and the Trojan War, and it's interesting stuff (especially the novel take on the Trojan Horse), but all the other stuff, and the weirdly high body-count, spoils it for me. Enough.

Galileo’s Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson - have had this in hardback since it was published, but of course it's in storage. I've been picking up ebook copies of the unread books I have in storage when they're cheap, although this one was a birthday present. Anyway. Not entirely sure what to make of it - a fictionalised retelling of the life of Galileo Galilei, plus his adventures among the Galilean Moons several centuries later, having been pulled there through time at various points in his life by future people. The central conceit is that Galileo followed Giordano Bruno to the stake, but the people from the moons of Jupiter in the future want to change history so he survives into old age. Which, in actual history, he did. This is because Galileo is considered the first scientist, and had he been burnt at the stake, the RC Church would have set back science by centuries (well, even more so than they did). It's interesting stuff, but strangely quite uninvolving and dull. I'm not sure what the problem is - perhaps a lack of real momentum in the plot (it does, after all, have to get through Galileo's not exactly exciting life). I esteem KSR's novels, and while their quality is uniformly high, they're not always that engaging.

Farmer in the Sky, Robert A Heinlein - Bob being very didactic, although you might be hard-pressed to pick exactly which juvenile from this period is actually the "didacticest", if that's a word. Teenage boy and widowed father move to Ganymede to become farmers on brash new frontier. It's all very icy, and over-subscribed, because of course the people back on Earth are doing it on the cheap. And then there's a disaster and everyone on Ganymede has to pull together to overcome unforeseen extreme hardship... The late 1940s science is spot-on, but unfortunately very little was known at that time about Ganymede. Or indeed Jupiter. So no mention of Jupiter's intense radiation. Or any actual real depiction of Ganymede. Which is basically Alaska during a bad winter. The problem with Heinlein's fiction is not that his attitudes and sensibilities are problematic in the twenty-first century, or indeed were even in the last decades of the twentieth century, but that his fiction evidences a sincerity it's hard not to admire despite its faults. He was also a master craftsman, and that deserves respect. His books should be read as historical documents - and many of them are impressively well-made historical documents.

Sorry, no Medium reviews this last month. Summers in Sweden are... odd. Everyone goes away on holiday - and I think my motivation to write long book reviews went with them. But things are slowly returning to whatever passes as normal here.

Got a couple of blog posts up at https://expositrix.wordpress.com/ that use two of this month's selections as inspiration: (Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life in the earlier one, and Diane Seuss's Four-Legged Girl in the more recent piece.

My last book of August, Gerald Kersh's MEN WITHOUT BONES.

Enjoyable and well-written collection of dark fantasy and weird tales--marred by typos and formatting errors.

The proofreader should be shot at dawn. Really shameful treatment for an author of Kersh's caliber.