Category: re:View

re:View – The 2017 Bookshelf: June

June came and went, and I managed just two books. I don’t know what’s wrong with me this year. Ok, I do know; I’ve been on a bit of a personal roller coaster ride and just haven’t had the mental space to focus on a book for the past few months.

Well, the ride is over now and I’ve got my head screwed back on tightly, and I’m finally in a reading mood again. This month’s bookshelf is starting to look pretty good already.

But first, here are the June reviews.

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Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
I’m going to get flames for this, but I’ll say it as it is: Margaret Atwood has lost her edge. The Heart Goes Last from a couple of years ago was already a big missed opportunity, and let’s not even think about Angel Catbird. With Hag-Seed I again felt all the frustration of a potentially great book that just didn’t reach its full potential.
The set-up is so promising: Celebrated theatre director Felix gets betrayed and ousted by his right-hand man, loses his family and his life, and spends 12 years as a voluntary outcast plotting his revenge. (It is a re-telling of The Tempest, after all.) Working part-time as a literature teacher in a prison and staging Shakespeare’s plays with the inmates, he finally takes his stab at vengeance with a somewhat modified production of The Tempest when his former theatre enemies – who have since rise to the ranks of politicians – show up for a ministerial visit to the prison’s theatre club.
It could have been a good story and it’s so well written – the story of Felix’s fall and his lonely life as a social outcast, with only the imaginary ghost of his dead baby daughter for company, is gorgeous and heartbreaking in the best of Atwood’s signature style. But the momentum just doesn’t last. Too quickly you figure out that there’s a plot underway, and she bigs it up way too much, so that when the day of vengeance finally comes and goes you’re lost with that “Oh, that’s it?” kind of feeling. As showdowns go it’s as bland as it gets, and the resolution that follows is just too predictable and cheesy as it gets. I am the biggest fan of Margaret Atwood’s past work, but I barely made it to the end of this book and I couldn’t find much to love about it. This is no tempest; it’s barely a gentle breeze.
Pens: 3 out of 5

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
I picked this up completely at random in a gorgeous sci-fi room of a Hay bookshop, based on the title and the fact that it’s by Douglas Adams. I hadn’t heard of Dirk Gently but really enjoyed the Hitchhiker books. This one’s written in a similar style, beautifully observant and utterly hilarious – that very elegant form of comedy that pretends to be innocently nonsensical but actually cuts right to the bone of human nature. It’s the same style that made me fall in love with Terry Pratchett, and I think Douglas Adams is the only other author I’ve come across who’s playing in that league.
So in this book, a check-in terminal at Heathrow Airport mysteriously explodes and a random music producer mysteriously ends up minus his head. Dirk Gently investigates using his trusted holistic (i.e. completely nonsensical) methods, and before he knows it he finds himself caught between the fronts in a war of gods. Literally. It’s a fast-paced and funny story. The ending is a bit of a letdown, rather than the epic showdown I’d hoped for, and doesn’t quite make sense, but otherwise this is a really entertaining read full of little laughs and gorgeously fine-tuned language.
Pens: 3 out of 5

re:View – The 2017 Bookshelf: May

After a not very bookish start to the year, May almost put me back on track – although I cheated a bit and read lots of graphic novels. So here we have a very strange collection of apes, lowlifes, cat-owl creatures and a good old-fashioned demon hunter.

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
This is one of those books the universe just kept telling me to read – I don’t usually go for history books but recommendations kept coming in from all sides until I gave up and picked it up. It’s a fascinating and informative account of (as it says on the tin) the history of homo sapiens, charting our rise through the cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolution. The book takes a pretty general approach, and in terms of the hard facts I’d say you’ll probably know most of it if you’ve paid attention in biology and history class back in school. But Harari takes an interesting approach to interpreting the consequences of our evolution in light of the question: How did we benefit from it? As in, are we really better off in our civilised, industrial society than our ancestors were in their hunter-gatherer lives? In that regard the book really made me think and gave me a perspective on history that school didn’t really offer. Well written and engaging, Sapiens was certainly more enjoyable than I expected a history book to be.
Pens: 4 out of 5

Sin City, Volume 6: Booze, Broads, and Bullets by Frank Miller
It’s Sin City, I thought, so what could possibly go wrong? Well, this one’s more like a scrapbook of fragments and odd pieces, many of them recycled from other stories, that make for a bit of a lame “short story” collection. It was probably a money-making exercise: The franchise is selling, so lets stick whatever bits and pieces we’ve got left over into a collection and market that as a new book. It shows… This volume is distinctly lacking coherence, thrills and pretty much everything else that made Sin City what it is. I’m keeping it merely for the sake of having the full collection, but I doubt I’ll ever so much as glance over it again.
Pens: 2 out of 5

Sin City, Volume 7: Hell and Back
The final instalment offers us a proper story again, and a pretty good one at that. A troubled artist / hit man / war hero saves a girl from suicide only to see her kidnapped, and when he goes after her he accidentally blows up a massive conspiracy involving people trafficking, organ harvesting and other unsavoury activities. It’s dark, it’s brutal and it’s beautifully illustrated, featuring by far the biggest colour palette I’ve seen in any Sin City book. The style really has evolved over the seven volumes, and after a few low points in the middle Miller finishes strong with one hell of a graphic novel here.
Pens: 3 out of 5

Angel Catbird by Margaret Atwood
So I was really excited about this. A graphic novel. About cats. By Margaret Atwood. It’s bound to be AWESOME. Right? Wrong. I still don’t know what this is, but it reads like the deluded ramblings of your granny who’s trying to be down with the kids. Some scientist has an accident with a Secret Formula that mixes his genes up with his dead cat (and an owl, for good measure), turning him into some weird flying half cat. He promptly stumbles into a war between other half cats and some crazy professor who’s trying to take over the world with his army of rats. So far, so good – the whole thing is aimed at young readers, after all. What makes it really weird is the amount of incredibly cringe-worthy innuendo (boy half cat and girl half cat are so sex crazed for each other they can barely manage to keep their pants on), and the random informative foot notes about responsible cat-keeping that are sprinkled in among the action. Basically, the whole thing is so weird, cringe and embarrassing that I can only hope Atwood intended it as some elaborate practical joke. That, or she has decided she’s so famous she can write whatever the hell she fancies these days and get away with it. But seriously. WTF!
Pens: 1 out of 5

Hellblazer: Original Sins by Jamie Delano
Here’s a confession. I got sucked into watching the super cheesy US adaptation of the John Constantine graphic novels. When I commented on how gloriously bad it was in the office, a colleague brought the book in for me, attempting, I assume to further my education. This is certainly very different from the all-American TV show – darker, grittier, and (thankfully!) a whole lot more British. In loosely connected episodes we follow the demon hunter from Liverpool around the world as he tries to keep the unsavoury elements of the underworld from causing havoc with people’s lives above ground. Granted, he fails mostly, being the troubled and flawed character he is. But some of the demon-hunting is pretty epic. I’m not in love with the illustration style and colouring; it comes across very chaotic and the changing reading order of the panels adds confusion, to the point where some pages actively put me off wanting to read them. But the stories are great and John Constantine is a really well-made character, so overall a pretty decent graphic novel.
Pens: 3 out of 5

re:View – The 2017 Bookshelf: April

I don’t know what it is with this year, but I just can’t seem to stick with a book. My reading volume has dropped to the lowest in years and I don’t like it. I could blame my new boyfriend, but he’s actually massively into books, took me to Hay-on-Wye on our first weekend break, bought me more books and loves to cuddle up with a book. (So it’s definitely not his fault…) I guess I’ll just have to blame the fact that I’m flat hunting again and spending more time than ever in the gym. Or something.

EXCUSES. Get back to reading, girl.

In April I did read two really good books though. It’s a start.

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Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Not quite what I expected, Gaiman’s latest takes on the story of the Norse gods in a short collection of episodes – so if you’re expecting a modern epic you’ll probably disappointed. It’s certainly a great introduction to the subject for someone who doesn’t know a lot about it (like myself) as well as young readers, and I think even if you’re a bit familiar with Norse mythology this is still a very interesting interpretation as Gaiman pieced it together from bits and pieces as told in different versions over time. In one way, this makes the stories very rich and detailed, but at the same time they don’t go much beyond the bare facts. There is very little emotion, and not much actual storytelling – the style is brief to the point of feeling clipped, and the gods remain fairly one-dimensional, described over and over by their same old characteristics. But then again I guess ancient gods don’t undergo much character development in general, and they don’t necessarily have human traits or feelings. I’d probably file this one under ‘informative and entertaining’ rather than a memorable and breathtaking read.
Pens: 3 out of 5

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I tried Dorian Gray before and gave up a few pages into the first chapter, somewhat put off by the pretentiousness of Basil and Henry’s conversation about art. A few months later I started dating someone who proclaimed it his favourite novel, and promptly bought me a copy, so I decided to give it another chance – and actually quite enjoyed it. I kind of expected it to be a lot more scandalous, but I guess it must have been pretty shocking in its day. I found it strangely reflective of our own time actually. When you think about it, Dorian’s obsession with his appearance and the constant conflict he faces between his own self and the version of him reflected by the portrait isn’t a million miles off the identity struggles created by today’s selfie culture, where any photo must be obsessively run through a number of Instagram filters and retouched by beauty apps before we feel confident enough to share it across every social media channel. In a sad reversal of the Dorian Gray concept, it’s usually the perfectly edited picture we present to the world, while our self-esteem becomes the nasty thing festering in the attic. Our views on aesthetics and morality may have changed since the days when this book was a true shocker, but for as long as we’re human we’ll always struggle with vanity, appearance and the conflict between our true identity and the image we’d like to show the world – and I think in that regard Wilde’s story will remain absolutely timeless.
Pens: 4 out of 5

re:View – The 2017 Bookshelf: February / March

Two books in two months – that’s a new low. In my defence I will say neither has been particularly good, to the point where they actually put me off reading, and I just need to stop being so bloody stubborn and accept that sometimes you have to give up on a series.

So, consider Laurie R. King’s Mary Russel & Sherlock Holmes stories abandoned. It’s a shame because I really enjoyed the earlier books, but King kind of lost her momentum after three volumes.

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The Moor by Laurie R. King
In what is basically a re-telling of The Hound of the Baskervilles minus any of the thrills offered by the original, we spend some 300 pages following Mary Russell traipsing around Dartmoor in the rain. She gets wet, she gets muddy, she gets annoyed, and repeat. Instead of a hound there’s a phantom carriage (potentially accompanied by a phantom hound); some people that nobody cares about get killed; the case is about as flimsy as it can be; Sherlock Holmes shines mainly through his absence from all of this. The author doesn’t even bother with building a mystery anymore and if you’re hoping for a big, exciting showdown at the end, you may as well not even start the book. There’s a great little chapter about a witch and her pet hedgehog, but that’s the best thing I can say about this book.
Pens: 1 out of 5

O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King
Poor Mary Russell. After spending weeks dragging herself around the rainy, foggy, cold moor in the previous volume, she gets dumped in Israel this time and promptly spends weeks dragging herself around the dusty, hot desert and eventually through the streets of Jerusalem trying to uncover another half-arsed mystery involving a bunch of early-day terrorists. If you make it through the first 200 pages of constant whingeing about sore feet, bad food and the general misery of traipsing around the desert you are rewarded by an almost exciting showdown on the roofs and in the underground aqueducts of the holy city, which may or may not end up with everything being blown to bits. I actually enjoyed this book towards the end, but it wasn’t quite enough of a reward for the drudgery of getting through the first two thirds.
Pens: 2 out of 5

And with this I’m closing the book on Mary Russell – in fact I’ve donated the lot to the charity shop in the hope they will find a new reader who can love the a little bit more.

re:View – The 2017 Bookshelf: January

Bookworms, I’m back. And I’m finally excited about books again! I’m catching up with the back catalogue of some of my favourite authors (James Ellroy, Margaret Atwood, Patrick Dennis) and looking forward to a whole load of books coming out soon. I mean, the first novel from George Saunders?! Sign me up for that. Also hitting us soon are Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, a feminist manifesto by Gillian Anderson, and the third part of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic.

But enough about books of the future. Here are the books I’ve read in the past month.

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re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf: November / December

Sooo 2016 has been a pretty bad year for reading. I’m not even sure what it was, but I somehow had to drag myself through book after book (with few exceptions) and almost lost the love for it. Partly, it’s because I went through a massive life change in early summer, breaking off a six-year relationship and having to move house and build up a whole new life. Then I really enjoyed this new single life and ended up spending a lot more time out and about, training and meeting friends, so there just wasn’t much time for books. I also hit a string of uninspiring books around the middle of the year which didn’t exactly drive me back to the bookshelf looking for more.

On the plus side, I started a few books in December that have been absolutely brilliant and re-ignited my book lust. More about those at the end of January, but for now here are the pathetically slim contents of the November and December bookshelf.

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Connected: The Call & The Shift (Author’s Cut) by Michelle Medhat
Connected is a two-part sci-fi thriller that plays out on three levels: on the stage of world politics, where the emergence of a globally connected terrorist organisation threatens all life on earth; on a personal level, where we follow MI6 agent Sam and his wife Ellie as they risk everything in a dangerous plot to save the world; and on a much higher playing field, where a secret overseeing force wages a timeless battle between good and evil with the very existence of Earth at stake. As the story unfolds, every player has to take their side. But with an entirely new brand of terrorism shaking the most powerful nations to their core and unseen forces manipulating events to pursue their own sinister agendas, can Sam and Ellie really pull off the impossible and shift the world off its course of destruction? This book weaves together an interesting mix of genres. It’s a secret agent thriller at heart (think Jason Bourne backed up by James Bond’s tech lab), but the futuristic technologies imagined by the author also firmly places it in the sci-fi arena – and there’s a supernatural element to it as well, plus a good dose of steamy romance. It’s probably not a book I would have picked up, but was too intrigued to resist after meeting the author. A fast-paced read with a visual style and lots of action, Connected comes along like a big-ticket Hollywood blockbuster.
Pens: 3 out of 5

Genius by Patrick Dennis
Patrick Dennis, master of the hyperbolic character study, takes us on a hysterically funny ride through Mexico City’s American society, where director Leander Starr – Hollywood wonder child of yesteryear and now on the run from Uncle Sam’s tax department, various ex wives and assorted other parties he owes money to – stirs up everybody’s quiet summer retreat with his mission to produce a budget movie that will redeem him with the big studio bosses and his creditors alike. Of course Starr, in the best tradition of Patrick Dennis characters, is a scoundrel and a dreamer, and of course his attempts to string together a masterpiece starring burned-out film industry veterans and produced by the shadier elements of the Mexican business world unleashes chaos on the lives of everyone involved. Brilliantly observed by Dennis himself as an author-turned-character (turned accessory to mischief), this book is both a beautifully rowdy old-school comedy and a merciless look behind the facade of the elite of its era.
Pens: 4 out of 5

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
I haven’t read Alice since I was around six. My mum used to read it to me a lot before I could read. I didn’t actively dislike it at the time, and it didn’t exactly scare me, but I always felt vaguely uneasy about this story. Thinking back now, I realise it gave me a feeling that’s very similar to the way chaos and nonsense make me feel now. So I probably shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t massively enjoy reading it as an adult, either. I just don’t enjoy logic, so the endless discourse between the various characters annoyed the hell out of me. And I dread chaos. Nonsense is basically chaos, and deliberately nonsensical plots are kind of the worst thing you can do to me with a story. It makes my brain bleed. I love a lot of the elements of Alice that have been adopted into pop culture, but I’ll never be able to enjoy the book.
Pens: 2 out of 5

re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf: September/October

My year of not reading very much continues. I don’t know what it is this year – maybe I’m just not picking very good books, but I’m just not in much of a reading state of mind. Of course, it may also have to do with the little fact that I’m single for the first time in many years and just really enjoying having the time and freedom to do my own thing and work on some new projects. That, and being able to pick what I want to watch on TV rather than reading my way through somebody else’s choice of evening entertainment. In any case, the bookshelf has grown by a few more books, so here they are.

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Super-Cannes by J. G. Ballard
The master of everything that’s fucked up about the human experience turns his attention to the business park – that clinically clean, highly secure and perfectly isolated enclosure of human progress where abominations fester below a perfectly landscaped surface. Retired pilot Paul and his young clinician wife Jane move into Super-Cannes, the business park to end all business parks in the hills above the French coast, where the world’s most brilliant minds live and work in luxury – until one amongst them goes on a sudden murder spree, executing several people and killing himself. Bored out of his mind with nothing to do, Paul investigates the events and becomes obsessed with the motivation behind the massacre, in the process uncovering a sinister secret that could bring down the multi-billion empire of Super-Cannes. I so wanted to love this book because it seemed to feature absolutely everything I loved about High-Rise and Ballard’s other studies of human nature. But somehow I just didn’t get into it. The book takes way too long to get to the point, building and furnishing a (not very atmospheric) atmosphere while hinting at a massive plot revelation that happens too late, and too unconvincingly. The only thing that Ballard does get across very well is the deadly ennui of a person being stuck in the perfect workplace with absolutely no work to do.
Pens: 2 out of 5

Blood on the Moon (Lloyd Hopkins #1) by James Ellroy
Ooh, this is very early James Ellroy. This is baby James Ellroy, and as such quite fascinating. Having read (and obsessed over) his later works that earned him a cult following (the L.A. Quartet and Underworld USA trilogy), I really enjoyed going back to his older books and getting an insight into his brilliant author mind as it evolved. The Lloyd Hopkins books have everything that makes his later work stand out – the obsessively detailed profile of the conflicted police detective, the gruesome and twisted case he investigates, the particular shade of noir that would later become Ellroy’s trademark style – but it’s all there in traces, it’s all just evolving. For a seasoned Ellroy fan these early novels are more like a study of an author in the making. Ellory introduces the book by saying that it was written at the same time as Red Dragon and that his own work is far inferior to “Thomas Harris’ brilliant and ground-breaking novel”. However, I would argue that Ellroy produced a pretty decent first attempt at a serial killer novel, which has everything from a perfectly twisted killer to an incredible range of imaginative murder scenarios, as well as a memorable detective character. It pales in comparison to his later books, but it’s still a very good, fast-paced and enjoyable noir thriller.
Pens: 3 out of 5

Because the Night (Lloyd Hopkins #2) by James Ellroy
Having gotten off to a pretty good start with Blood on the Moon, Ellory seems to lose the plot a little bit in the second Lloyd Hopkins book. The idea for the story is, again, very solid: a psychologist who is equal parts genius and madman uses his powers of manipulation to rope unsuspecting patients into a series of horrendous crimes, which eventually leads to a duel of the minds when he crosses the (by now very well established) character of the detective. But despite the brilliant characterisation and some pretty outrageous criminal action, the story seems to lag, taking a lot of unnecessary corners that were probably meant as plot twists but largely serve to confuse the reader. The book is important for the continuity of this series, but not necessarily worthy of reading as a standalone novel.
Pens: 2 out of 5

Suicide Hill (Lloyd Hopkins #3) by James Ellroy
After a mediocre middle part, the Lloyd Hopkins trilogy picks up the pace again for a memorable finale. Wrecked emotionally by the events of the previous two cases, Lloyd is taken off his duties and faces early retirement, when he sniffs out a series of bank heists that turn into one of the biggest investigation in the LA police force. What’s particularly enjoyable about this book is that it most of the action takes place on the side of the bad guys and as the story unfolds (as opposed to after the event), which creates a very compelling counterpoint to Hopkins’ police work. While Ellroy’s look into the minds of serial killers and offenders in the first two parts look pretty dated by today’s standards, the crimes in this story seem to originate from social circumstances and the very human desire to build up a life against the odds, which engages the reader on a whole different level. Overall, I think this trilogy is a very good early work and certainly holds up against other examples in the genre from its time.
Pens: 3 out of 5

re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf: August

The August bookshelf is a bit of a mixed bag, featuring brilliant children’s books, some bad choices, and some good advice. See if you can guess from the covers which book proved particularly crap.

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Momo by Michael Ende
My great-aunt gave me this book for my first communion and I re-read and treasured it all through my childhood. I recently rediscovered it going through some old stuff at my parents’ house, and amazingly, it’s still every bit as wonderful and magical twenty years later. In an unspecified city, in an unspecified era, life is disturbed by the arrival the the mysterious Men in Grey, who live off the lifetime they steal off humans. Momo, an orphan girl living in an old amphitheatre on the edge of town, is the only one who knows about their secret undertaking and ends up having to save the entire city from an army of supernatural, life-sucking creatures. This book is a wonderful example of fantasy for children with a serious undercurrent. The time-stealing baddies are, of course, a metaphor for modern life, which has left us leading incredibly busy lives. It reminds us of our obsession with saving time, and argues that all this time we save is essentially time lost. An absolute classic of children’s literature and also a very good book for any adult who wants to be reminded what really matters in life.
Pens: 5 out of 5

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re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf: July

So, after ending a six-year relationship and finding a home for myself and my two kitties in the first half of the year, I will admit it has taken some time to settle back into a new routine. And with all the moving and sorting out a new flat, books moved pretty close to the bottom of the priorities list – temporarily, of course. Just managed to stick with my book-a-week minimum once again. And a rather random selection at that!

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A Greedy Man in a Hungry World by Jay Rayner
You may know Jay Rayner as the slightly annoying food critic from the Guardian and Masterchef, and I have to report that while he makes some interesting points in his book, he’s also a bit annoying as an author. Greedy Man is part very good and party very annoying. The good part: it told me a lot of things I didn’t know about the UK’s food industry (and the supply chain in the wider world) and as someone who cares about what I eat and where it comes from, I found those things both informative and though-provoking. The bad part: Rayner’s an opinionated bastard (I have a hunch he would take this as a compliment) and won’t miss a single opportunity to get on his soap box. Fair enough so far – it’s his book after all. And I do like a good rant, actually. However, some of his opinions seem just a little too self-congratulatory to be enjoyable, and too obviously aimed at causing insult to come across as sincere. This bit I can forgive him; it’s an occupational hazard that comes with journalism. But when it comes to the structure and planning of the book, I won’t take any excuses – because he is a journalist. Greedy Man suffers as an overall product from a lack of coherence, sitting in between the essay collection and the memoir without really being either. While both the essays and the memoir episodes are enjoyable reads individually, the way they’ve been stitched together doesn’t make sense and detracts from the focus of the book. A lot of Rayner’s personal memories are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and you keep asking yourself why exactly you’re reading pages and pages of personal memories that just don’t get to a point. I actually skipped a few of those towards the end. If this book had been firmly rooted on the journalism side, without trying to awkwardly straddle memoir as well, it could have been great. As it is, it leaves a bit of a bland aftertaste.
Pens: 2 out of 5

The Terminal Beach by J.G. Ballard
Ballard is always good for a doomsday nightmare, but in this collection of short stories from 1964 he’s taking a particularly gloomy perspective, exploring death from all kinds of angles. From a demented ex-pilot roaming a nuclear wasteland to a giant human body decaying on a beach, and from a remote-triggered mass suicide to individual lost souls drawn into natural disasters, every story leads up to the inevitable in some bizarre form. However, the story that terrified me the most isn’t even about death. Billennium imagines a near future where the world’s overpopulation has grown to such an extent that each person is granted a legally prescribed maximum of 3.5 square metres of living space. That’s maximum, yes. I read this story while commuting home from my central London office to my tiny flat and Ballard’s account of frantically crowded city pavements and claustrophobic living quarters made me so anxious that I had to stop reading, get off the train and finish the story on a quiet park bench. The way things are going with living conditions in London, I can fully imagine such a scenario happening not too long after my lifetime. Overall this is is a brilliantly imaginative – if somewhat depressing – collection of early Ballard that deserves a place in any collection of speculative fiction.
Pens: 3 out of 5

Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Ranpo
I love Japanese fiction for so many reasons, but mostly because it generally feels so much more subtle and delicate than most of Western fiction. I found the same to be true for this collection of mystery and horror stories, which are rendered all the more terrifying by their subtleness. Dealing mostly with the mind and the terrors of guilt, regret and psychological abuse, these stories made my hair stand up more than any graphic account of horror ever could. From perverse fantasies to cold-blooded murders, this collection is a thrilling and intelligent homage to Rampo’s literary idol Edgar Allan Poe.
Pens: 4 out of 5

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Fay
The first part of Fay’s Timothy Wilde series follows one of NYC’s first policemen through the early days of the New York Police Department as he deals with the fallout from a fire that destroyed his face and his life while investigating a series of racially and religiously motivated murders. I picked up this book because I was hoping that it would bring alive the world of its period (in the way James Ellory’s books bring alive the underworld of LA), but it wasn’t quite as exciting as that. Think murder mystery rather than fully fledged police thriller. It’s still an enjoyable and entertaining book – great for a casual holiday read I would imagine – but it was a little too predictable and tame to really blow me away.
Pens: 3 out of 5

re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf: June

June was all about moving flats, so my contact with books was mostly limited to packing them in boxes, carrying them and buying new book storage. Managed to squeeze in a few reading hours though. You could say this edition of Bookshelf is all about monsters – human, superhuman and in between.

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The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
This was my first book by Atwood outside the realms of sci-fi / dystopia and I struggled a bit initially when I realised this was all going to be about relationships – but Atwood’s brilliant style soon won me over. In many ways this is a long and mostly sad story of three women who didn’t have a lucky start in life and put themselves on an even unluckier path by choosing the wrong kind of men. Initially we are led to believe it’s all the fault of the mysterious Zenia – the Robber Bride, the Jezebel, morally decayed to the bone, seemingly born without a conscience, without any sense of female camaraderie – who lies and cheats her way through the lives of these three, bent on stealing their men and ruining their happiness. But as the story of each woman unfolds you can’t help but wonder if Zenia didn’t indeed do them a favour by relieving them of cheating husbands that were only preying on their gullible nature, helplessness or financial security. I still can’t decide whether I found this book uplifting or depressing. True, the women all come out of the encounter with Zenia stronger, if not necessarily happier, but all the female characters are either infuriatingly gullible and spineless, or else the embodiment of all female evil. It’s a bit like a war of different types of femininity in which nobody wins. However, Atwood’s writing style and world view is delightful and irresistible as always, so I still loved this book overall.
Pens: 4 out of 5

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