I reviewed this book in a piece about how I spent a lazy few days in the country and the writer (whose Twitter presence as @CandyKorman is regularly entertaining) didn’t notice the review. “Serves her right for not reading your wonderful blog carefully enough!” I hear you cry. But I try to be nice, so here it is again, with a few words about one of her other books as well.
Bram Stoker’s Summer Sublet
Out in the country without TV or internet, I was lucky to have taken a copy of Candy Korman’s Bram Stoker’s Summer Sublet, a gloriously silly spin on vampire stories, set in today’s New York. Wilhelmina (obviously cursed from birth with a name like that) is recovering from the shock of finding her fiancé in flagrante with another woman and has decamped to a stranger’s house to pet-sit her dog and strangely loquacious parrot, while her now ex-fiancé enjoys the honeymoon they would have spent together in Italy. She is in an understandably emotional state – the sort of emotional state where you might easily decide that your next door neighbour is a vampire. Having another neighbour whose name is Dr Van Helsing probably doesn’t help keep her imagination in check. Or is it all her imagination? (I’m not telling – you’ll have to read it for yourself.)
Candy Korman has a lovely prose style and writes with a strong sense of place. I felt I was in New York – quite an achievement isolated in the middle of Wales. Ms Korman has written several books based around old-school monsters and I’ll definitely be reading another.
Poed
This novella is a wonderful pastiche of Poe’s writing with lots of sly (and not-so-sly) references to his stories. Like the residents of The Usher Institute for the Study of Criminal Psychopathology, it’s nuts. But, unlike the assembly of killers hidden away in the Institute, it’s nuts in a good way. A great, short, fun read.
This isn’t a book review site, but 2019 saw around two dozen books reviewed. It seems sensible to give a quick summary here, with links to the original reviews for anybody who wants to read more about them.
At the end I do ask if people have any thoughts on what they would like me to write about next year. Please take a quick look at that and use the ‘Comment’ boxes to give me some feedback. Thank you
Historical novels
Because this is primarily a history blog, most of the reviews are of historical novels. I’ll sort them by time period.
17th and 18th century
Some authors made repeat appearances in 2019. Two of Deborah Swift’s books featured: The Gilded Lily, and A Plague on Mr Pepys, both set during the Restoration and both excellent reads. The Gilded Lily will appeal more to Young Adults, but both can, in my opinion, be enjoyed by all age groups.
There were also two books by M J Logue, also set in the Restoration: Abiding Fire and A Deceitful Subtlety. Both are enormous fun and I do recommend them.
Also sort of in the Restoration is Jemahl Evans’ Of Blood Exhausted. The action of the book takes place during the Civil War, but the narrator is telling his story from the time of the Restoration. It’s the third of a series that starts with The Last Roundhead and you do need to read them in order to have any idea of what is going on, but if you’ve enjoyed the first wo, you will enjoy this one.
Moving towards the present day, we have The Wolf and the Watchman set in Sweden in 1793. This is a truly remarkable book, though not a pleasant read. Definitely one of the best things I read last year.
19th and early 20th century
Only one of the books I reviewed this year was set in the Napoleonic era: Lynn Bryant’s An Unwilling Alliance. It centres on the British attack on Copenhagen in 1807. It works well as historical military fiction, but it is also an excellent love story. For once, love story and adventure yarn manage to complement each other in a way that seems to give many authors a lot of difficulty. (There’s a reason why there’s not a lot of romance in my Burke series.) Lynn knows her history and she can write. Recommended.
Burial Rites is one of those books where very little happens but which is absolutely gripping. It’s set in Iceland in 1828 and apparently based very closely on an actual event. I can’t sum it up in a couple of sentences – read the review and then I hope you will go on to read the book. Another serious contender for my book of the year.
I reviewed a couple of books that described themselves as Victorian mysteries. Both were competently written. Jean Stubbs’ The Painted Face is more an exploration of the mind of one of the protagonists than it is a conventional detective story and I’m not sure it quite comes off, but it’s provides pleasant enough descriptions of Parisian life in 1902.
Marilyn Todd’s Snap Shot is set at pretty much the same time. The plot bowls along with plenty of gruesome deaths and a little bit of sex to keep the pages turning. Finding out whodunnit came as a surprise, but not so much of a surprise as to make me feel cheated. It’s frothy and it’s fun and it has a convincing historical background.
In a world outside of history as we know it
The Castle of Otranto isn’t your regular historical fiction, but I reviewed it after a visit to Strawberry Hill House, Walpole’s fantasy Gothic castle which was designed to reflect the setting of the story. Published in 1764, it’s widely regarded as the first Gothic novel. It’s a curiosity piece rather than a book you would read for its literary merit but it is fun and worth a look. (It’s very short, so it’s not going to take long to read.)
Historical non-fiction
I reviewed three works of historical non-fiction in 2019: Rees-Mogg’s book on the Victorians, Tony Gould’s Imperial Warriors and Weirder War Two, a collection of weird facts or nearly-facts or might-have-been facts about the Second World War.
Gould’s history of the Ghurkas and their role in the British Army is easily the best of the three. Rees-Mogg’s book got a lot of critical attention, but you can make a decent argument that Weirder War Two is the better piece of historical writing. It’s certainly more fun to read.
Other fiction
Thrillers
It’s all very well reading the odd literary masterpiece, but, like a lot of people, what I really like to do at the end of a day of reading serious stuff about old generals and suchlike is sit down with a good thriller.
Lots of people are quite snooty about thrillers. In fact, it’s really difficult to write a good “bad” book. Scandinavians seem pretty good at it (too many long nights with not enough to do?) and I had a couple of Scandi-noirs on my list this year: The Cabinand The Island.
Away from Scandinavia, the British writer, Sally Spencer (who does some nice historical mysteries as well) has taken to setting stories in the USA. Violation is an enjoyable read, though the subject matter (assaults on very young girls) is a bit disturbing for what is essentially a lightweight work.
The last book that fits more or less in this category this year was Tannis Laidlaw’s Half-truths and Whole Lies. It’s a bit different from the usual thriller, being a story of Machiavellian professors lying and twisting their way up the academic greasy pole. It’s a lot of fun. albeit with the required melodramatic conclusion. (If you’ve never worked in academe, you may think it’s an improbable tale but it really isn’t.)
Terry Tyler
Terry Tyler is one of those self-published authors who give the lie to those who say that everything worth reading has come through a conventional publisher. In fact, Terry encouraged me to move into self-publication myself with Dark Magic and I have been pleasantly surprised by how much freedom this gives a writer.
Terry has written a range of different kinds of book, from short stories and light romantic fiction to dark post-apocalyptic fantasies. The common thread to all of them is that Terry is just a very good writer. She doesn’t produce high blown literary fol-de-rols but solid light prose which makes her books easy to read and keeps you turning the pages. It’s a hugely underrated skill.
Book of hers I have reviewed this year are Round and Round(fantasy/romance), Hope (dystopian fiction, which reminds me a bit of 1984) and Blackthorn (post-apocalyptic)
Poetry
I don’t usually review poetry, but I took up an invitation from Australian poet Frank Prem to read his “blank verse memoir” Small Town Kid and, rather to my surprise, I loved it. I went on to read two more of his poetry collections, Devil in the Wind and The New Asylum. All three are astonishing. Devil in the Wind, about the Australian bush fires of 2009 has a particular resonance right now. I do strongly recommend it.
My final mention is for a book of non-fiction about how we respond to messengers rather than messages. In the decade that brought us Trump and Johnson, this should have been a fascinating book but, sadly, I found it irritating – neither an easily read series of anecdotes nor a serious academic study, it repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. It’s a subject close to my heart, though, so I’m afraid I wrote quite a long discussion of it. If you read that, you can probably skip the actual book.
My books of the Year
It’s impossible to pick out one book. Even amongst those I have reviewed, there are so many different kinds of writing . Three, though, did stand out as particularly worth reading. They were (in no particular order):
What do you want to see in 2020? I started out just reviewing historical novels, but occasionally I get sent books for free (especially through the rather wonderful NetGalley, which I do recommend) and these come with a sort of implicit expectation that they will be reviewed. That means that they find their way onto my blog where they are not necessarily a natural fit. But people do read them and I imagine some writers (although not all) appreciate the additional exposure. But, honestly, my views on a thriller like The Cabin are no more valid than yours and what I enjoy reading won’t necessarily appeal to you and vice versa. Do you read the reviews? Do you enjoy them? Would you like to see more? Or fewer? I’m thinking I might focus more closely (though far from exclusively ) on historical novels next year. What do you all think?
Terry Tyler’s latest, Blackthorn, is another dystopian novel set in the world she initially established in the Renova trilogy, but it stands up perfectly without you reading the others.
Blackthorn
explores a Britain (and probably the rest of the world) that has collapsed and
is being rebuilt with England having a tribal structure. A few small towns
dominate the countryside with villages and other communities gradually falling
to bands of travelling outlaws. Blackthorn is one of the most successful of
these towns.
This isn’t a political book and a political theorist would, I suspect, struggle with the economic basis of Blackthorn. It isn’t quite a feudal system, because it’s not based on ownership of the land, but it does reflect the feudal era in that there is a strict hierarchy within the village with a hereditary leader supported by guards (equivalent to nobles) and then skilled workmen working its way down to people who are essentially serfs. There is a lot of exposition of the nature of the society, which made the book hard for me to get into. It also has an enormous cast with lots of minor characters and I initially found it quite difficult to keep track of everybody.
Fortunately, not that many of Terry Tyler’s readers are likely to be political nerds and once the story really gets going we begin to focus on a more manageable number of characters. The characterisation comes alive in a way which seemed unlikely in the opening chapters. I began to wonder if the characters had taken over from the author, because the plot, too, becomes much livelier. We move away from the details of the village economy, with its peculiar currency of chips and crowns (surely eaten away by inflation in any real-world economy expanding at that rate) and its tightly defined social structure and start getting into something more interesting, centred on the strengths and weaknesses of the people living there.
I had started reading almost with a sense of duty, but, as the plot picked up, I was increasingly drawn into it and by the end I was sitting up late to find out what happened next. This is encouraged by Terry Tyler’s prose style which is, as always, fluid and engaging.
I’m not going to say anything about the plot because it’s
almost impossible to do so without spoilers. At first I
thought it was boring and predictable, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
That’s all I’ll say and that’s probably too much.
There are a lot of people who will be put off this book, with its dystopian background, its detailed invented society, and its discussion of religion, but they, like me, will probably find that it draws them in if they stay with it.
I’ve been very enthusiastic about Frank Prem’s first two books of poems, so he kindly sent me a copy of his latest, The New Asylum.
I’ve taken a while to read it and I’m finding it quite a difficult book to review. When I was at university I spent one summer vacation working in a psychiatric hospital. It says a lot about the period that the official name of the hospital was the – Hospital for the Mentally Subnormal and Severely Subnormal. I doubt it’s still called that these days, although the cruel bluntness of its name was at least honest, unlike the weaselly ‘learning difficulties’ of today. I was on a ward for ‘psychotic and disturbed’ patients. Daily life could include violent attacks, trying to reassure a paranoid patient that the others didn’t all hate her, and dealing with random chaos. A tutor at university said that I described behaviour that was already unusual as the increased availability of effective drug treatment meant that patients seldom exhibited such florid symptoms. Perhaps part of the problem was that we had only limited access to drugs that could be used for acute interventions because they had to be administered by a qualified doctor and there was only one on duty in the whole hospital. By the time he got round to our ward in response to an urgent phone call we usually had the patient in a straitjacket (yes, we still used them) and the immediate crisis was over. Despite all this, though, it was a happy summer. I won’t say I made firm friends, but I did go back to visit patients I remembered with affection. There was the woman who was being prepared for a half-way hostel. “What do you want to do when you get out?” “I want to rob gas meters, Tom.” I wished her luck. She was a pleasant person and it’s good to have a goal in life. And the lady who thought she was the Pope always tried to be nice. “Do you want to hear a dirty joke, Tom?” “Go on then.” (It was always the same joke.) “A white horse down a coal mine.”
Why am I telling the story of my summer instead of reviewing Prem’s book? Because his poems took me back to that summer, which I haven’t really thought about for decades and it has aroused emotions I had forgotten. The hospital, by today’s standards was (like Prem’s) a dreadful place. And (like Prem) I had no idea what I was doing. The nurses had little formal training and relied on experience and instinct. They were wonderful and, like Prem, I am amazed at how they just kept on dealing with the blood and the mess and the violence and, despite everything, created a safe and, astonishingly, kind place for the people who lived there. The doctors (noticeably absent in Prem’s poems too) were never around, leaving the nurses and the nursing assistants (that would be me) to cope, and we despised them. But we got along and nobody died. (Given that we had actual murderers on the wards, this wasn’t something you could take for granted.)
Take it away, Frank:
today they’re okay on this day at the start of october I’m proud
this crew of mine a random ragtag of workers has pulled together to make it through the shift
it wasn’t without drama sickness left our numbers down experience was light on the ground and there was madness in the air
…
but today the shift held up they worked for each other for the people they’re here for and it went okay
I feel proud
A good poem can touch the heart and take you to places you may have lost and it can bring back the sad things and the happy. These are good poems. I found them difficult to read, but I’m glad I did. They may not have as much effect on you as on me, but I hope you read them. Frank has things to say and it would be good to hear them.
in aftermath it seems so clear
there are few mental-health happy endings
and there are no simple cures
there’s just the risk of cynicism among repeat offenders with bad habits
and minds that won’t take the time to learn
there’s only so much before enough of trying to change worlds
enough of listening catching flak and shouldering tears
of bearing other people’s burdens
there is no room no role for heroes
there is only mental health and all it requires is you and I to be its creatures
Terry Tyler’s move into dystopian novels has led her into
increasingly political territory and Hope
is a straightforwardly political book. It foresees a world where a right-wing
government uses draconian powers to round up the economically inactive and,
effectively, imprison them in camps where they are fed contraceptives with the
intention being that the unemployed will eventually die out. There are
sideswipes at lots of other things as well: the surveillance society; state
initiatives to make people live healthier lives; the ubiquity of social media;
the elimination of independent shops by huge chains; the increasing power
exercised by the USA over Britain’s affairs.
Terry Tyler makes a good case that this could happen here, but whether or not
you are convinced probably depends on your political opinions. It’s not a book
you want to give to that aunt of yours who is a stalwart of the local Conservative
party
Like a lot of agitprop (and that’s a word we’ve heard a lot
less of since the 1990s), characterisation is very definitely in second place
to plot. Reading this has made me revisit 1984
and it’s clear that the slightly sketchy drawing of all but the main character
is in a long tradition of books like this, and if we don’t hold it against
George Orwell, we shouldn’t hold it against Terry Tyler. But is her story up there
with Orwell’s classic?
Probably not. Tyler is a talented writer and her prose kept
me going but her opening (an email providing the background to the plot) is
hardly, “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking
thirteen.” Orwell captures the misery of life in 1984 with acute observation of
detail. Here he suggests that the food available is inadequate.
By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Terry Tyler is more specific but somehow fails to capture
the sheer misery of the situation quite as well.
Our induction means we’re late, and there’s not much left. I eat pasta with a vaguely tomato tasting sauce, with a few things in it that might be courgettes.
The world Terry Tyler describes is not quite as grim as in 1984. The possibility of escape exists
and the ending (slight spoiler) is not as remorselessly negative, although I
was pleased that Tyler had resisted the temptation to provide a
straightforwardly happy ending either.
Hope has a lot to say and it says it well. I’ve found myself reviewing it by comparing it with what must surely be one of the most influential novels of the 20th century and that suggests that Tyler must be doing something right. Hope is not 1984, but it is worth reading and thinking about. It ends with the country waiting for the results of a general election. Try to finish it before 12 December.
Lynn Bryant writes stories of war and love in the Napoleonic
era. One day I may make her hero, Paul Van Daan meet my James Burke just as,
with a sort of inevitability, Lynn and I met up at various conferences about
Napoleonic military history.
Lynn has written several stories about Van Daan’s adventures
in the Peninsular War, but she has now branched out into another series
featuring the exploits of Captain Hugh Kelly, one of the stalwart sailors who
kept Britain safe from Boney. It should be an interesting series. It’s
important to remember that, at the time, the Navy was much more highly regarded
than the army and the war in the peninsula was seen as a bit of a sideshow. The
real land fighting was being done by other countries further north in Europe while
the Navy was engaging French vessels on a regular basis. In fact, our land
offensive in Spain was possible only because of British control of the western
coast of Iberia, maintaining our lines of supply and, in the early days of the
war at least, constantly harassing French positions near the coast.
An Unwilling Alliance
is set in the year before the start of the Peninsular War and centres on the
British attack on Copenhagen in 1807. This is one of those military engagements
that the British prefer to forget all about. British ships bombarded the Danish
capital when Denmark was a neutral country. The aim of the exercise was to make
the Danish fleet unavailable to Napoleon if, as expected, he invaded Denmark.
However, there were inevitably considerable civilian casualties and nowadays
the attack would almost certainly be seen as a war crime. Even at the time (as
reflected in Lynn’s book) there was considerable disquiet about the action.
Unlike me, Lynn is a “proper historian”
(shortlisted for the first Society for Army Historical Research fiction award,
no less) and she provides more military detail than I do, with a lot of very
precise factual information about the deployment of particular regiments and
brigades. I remember reading her fictional account of an action in the
Peninsular War and then later coming across a contemporary description of it in
my own research and realising how well I understood the situation from Lynn’s
story. She really is very good and weaves the detail into her fictional
narrative. But An UnwillingAlliance is not just a convincing war
story. It is also a romance. In fact the opening chapters are almost entirely
devoted to Hugh Kelly’s pursuit of the girl who is clearly destined to become
the love of his life, Roseen Crellin.
I can get very irritated by Georgian romances. A
particularly annoying example was the recent TV adaptation of Sanditon. Young ladies meet unsuitable
men in the peculiar absence of chaperones. Introductions are sloppily informal.
Any real Georgian woman behaving in this way would promptly be labelled a tramp
and unfit for decent society. So I could easily have given up by the end of Chapter
1 as Roseen Crellin wanders unescorted across the hills of the Isle of Man in
contravention of every rule of decent behaviour. However, Lynn gives Roseen a
convincing back-story to explain her behaviour and, more importantly, the poor
girl is shunned by decent society and
we see the social cost of breaking with convention.
When Roseen’s ill-considered behaviour destroys her budding
romance with Hugh Kelly and threatens to ruin her life, the story catches
something of the reality of the limitations that the world placed on young
women back then. And because the social environment and the character of Roseen
have been so well established, when an even more outrageous breach of decent
behaviour results in a near miraculous reuniting of the lovers, I was perfectly
prepared to accept it. This is, after all, as much a romance as a war story
and, though I won’t give the game away with the details, as soon as Roseen sets
out on a particularly inappropriate venture we all have a pretty clear idea of
where it will end up.
Lynn writes in fluid prose. The exciting bits are exciting,
the romantic bits are romantic and the whole thing has a wonderful sense of
place. Lynn is a proud resident of the Isle of Man and her love of the island
comes through. It made me want to visit, and what better recommendation can you
have for a writer’s descriptive powers?
All in all, I found this a book that is difficult to fault.
If you like Georgian romances, Napoleonic war stories, or just a dashed good
read, I do strongly recommend it.
(Some people will think that I’m only saying this because I know Lynn. Any writer friends who’ve been on the wrong end of a criticism of a book that I didn’t like will be happy to disabuse them.)
