Gentleman and Players - Joanne Harris

"Audere, agere, auferre. To dare, to strive, to conquer. For
generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than thirty years. But this year the wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork, and information technology are beginning to overshadow St. Oswald's tradition, and Straitley is finally, and reluctantly, contemplating retirement. He is joined this term by five new faculty members, including one who -- unbeknownst to Straitley and everyone else -- holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Oswald's ways and secrets. Harbouring dark ties to the school's past, this young teacher has arrived with one terrible goal: to destroy St. Oswald's."

The novel is a psychological thriller, which features cunning deceits, flawed childhood, hidden identity, class distinction and revenge; the story ends with a deliciously unexpected twist at the end. There are two narrators; Roy Straitley, the Classics Master, on the eve of his century (100th) term who is affectionately referred to, by his students, as Quasi or Quasimodo as he is a trifle hunched and whose rooms are in the Bell Tower. Straitley is a Luddite; ignoring all requests to attend to his email, he swears in Latin and smokes (banned by the school) secret Gauloises in his office. The other narrator is the unnamed perpetrator who is bent on revenge for a myriad of both real and imagined slights committed by St Oswalds; a sociopath who is filled with hatred and bitterness. This perpetrator knows no rules he will not break; somehow he has infiltrated the teachers' ranks, and become one of them. 

Harris is able to evoke a real sense of place and conveys a perfect understanding of when to show and not tell, and how to fully immerse her readers in this rarefied setting. Her exploration of identity is remarkably nuanced. Age, gender, class, psychology, elitism, work ethic, personal value system... all are at play in this novel. The prose on a technical level is without fault; the tone shifts effortlessly from playful to foreboding and then back again. The mystery itself is very absorbing - despite the richness of the writing, the novel is a page-turner.

I truly loved this book. It was everything I was wanting from it. An engaging mystery, with detailed characterisation, a unique aesthetic and a nuanced interweaving of many of my favourite themes. I highly recommend it.

Age Rating 16+. Mentions of alcoholism, sexual abuse and murder. 

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak

"For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the
taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . ."

10 Minutes is separated into two parts, the Mind, with Leila recalling the moments of her life and The Body, the efforts of her friends to recover and bury her. Right there, in that two-part structure is something startlingly radical: Leila is both a mind and a body, a fully rounded woman with four decades of lived experience and a cadaver on a medical examiner’s table. Her death is not where the story ends or where it begins. Her grisly murder is not an outrage to be avenged, nor a puzzle to be solved , there is no brilliant/jaded/antisocial detective , it is simply a tragedy. A lurid death of the type so common in fiction (and upon which a whole genre has been built) – a murdered whore stuffed into a bin – but here the victim is humanised, centred, she is no plot device in someone else’s story.

It is a deeply depressing story of exclusion, sexual abuse, the fall into prostitution, the death of loved ones and an all encompassing feeling of abandonment and hopelessness. But that is not all it is. Yes, there is incredible sadness. But there is also hope, and friendship, and love. For me this book re-affirms how very special life it. What it means to be alive. How and why we can try to make changes and make the world more inclusive and loving.  Most importantly to seek out those with which you will be able to share your life with, those who are meaningful and understand you. 

Shafak's sensual writing abounds. You can smell the scents of spices, cardamom, lemon. You can feel the heat from the sky. The evening breeze on your neck. The lights of the city at night. The sizzle of the food vendor's grill. See the sun reflecting off the harbour. Hear the seagulls careening. The writing is so wonderfully descriptive. 

This is not a perfect novel by any stretch. Leila’s life story is compelling, but not remarkably so; Shafak’s prose style is undeniably lush and sensual, but also occasionally sentimental. Two consecutive chapters open with almost identical lines, which felt slightly lazy. Leila’s ‘found family’ of misfits are drawn with broad brushstrokes and feel more like ‘types’ than real people and their farcical efforts in Part Two are a bit slapstick (Part Two is overall weaker than Part One). 

But along with the mawkishness and melodrama there is poignant charm , wisdom, beauty and compassion. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is a novel that beguiles and seduces despite its flaws.

Age Rating 18+. Sexual abuse of a minor, prostitution, swearing, murder, serious mental illness. 

Another Country - James Baldwin

"Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales,
Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime."

It would be overly simplistic to say that this book is about racism. It is, in a way. But it is more broadly a book about human struggle. The struggle against the many manifold issues, pains and inner turmoil that plague the everyday human. It's about people trying to make it work and still getting it all wrong. And that's interesting, no? For a book that came out in 1962, Baldwin is unabashed and runs the whole gamut of human interaction. It is sweet, scary, idealistic, depressing, nostalgic, and sometimes downright ugly. But it's also not overblown or politicized. It never feels like it trying to make a point or tell a lesson. Baldwin is merely showing us humans, dirty, ugly, striving, beautiful humans in all their complexity. A complexity that is often inextricably linked with the social environment around them. 

It is an undeniably sensual book, as all Baldwin's work is to a point. His characteristic style of eloquent brutality and raw sensuality are at once erotic and haunting, each increasing the impact of the other. For me, the main take away of this book was the understanding of the raw sexuality of the human experience. To strip us right back, to take away race, sexuality, gender, class, all we want is to be seen, wanted and needed. That is the basic human need and to deprive us of that is to create monsters of us. 

A deeply impactful book. I cannot recommend it enough though it is at times a tough read. 

Age Rating 17+ Domestic abuse, rape, sexual content, hate crimes, suicide, depression, alcoholism. 

The Well of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall

"Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents—a fencer, a horse
rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions." 

I' m conflicted about this book. On one hand I enjoyed the writing style, it was elegant and there were some genuinely beautiful and moving passages. The subject matter of queerness and gender non-conformity is dear to my heart, and I deeply related to many of Stephan's struggles which Hall expresses and explores with skill. 

However, the plot drags in the middle, and the opinions expressed are one-sided. Stephan is at least slightly an autobiographical representation of Hall and this gives the book a great emotional weight. But it also closes Hall's ability to write other points of view. The side characters of Wanda and Valerie are fascinating and show opposing reactions to living as a queer women in the early 1900s. I thought that with their introduction, Hall would explore some of the different view-points within the queer community at the time. But no... not at all. A thoroughly missed opportunity I feel, as the side characters turn out to serve no narrative purpose at all. 

I have to be honest that I didn't feel that this was accurately categorised as a lesbian book, though I understand why it was. Our understanding of people and psychology has come along quite a ways. I personally believe that Stephan, and possibly Radclyffe Hall in extension, weren't lesbians but transgender men that didn't have the words. The book itself talks about inverts and the "normal" women that fall in love with them. This also makes sense when looking at Stephan's attitudes to gay men which is frankly down right homophobic. If you read this as a transgender man hating that these man have what they don't i.e. a male body yet are "squandering" it by being feminine, then this makes more sense. Though it is by no means condonable. 

I could not help but be shocked at some of the hypocrisy, the books striving for acceptance of a minority while at the same time there is an underlying attitude of snobbishness and chauvinism towards other minorities. Stephan had certainly taken in the classist dogma of much of the landed gentry and would have been downright awful if she had been born male as her gender non-conformity was the only thing that gave her any self doubt/ interesting foibles. 

Age Rating 14+ Nothing untoward. 

The Discovery of Witches (All Souls #1) - Deborah Harkness

"Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana
Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell."

This book genuinely put me into a reading slump. I really tried to persevere, as the plot hooks of what was in the manuscript and what happened to Diana's parents kept me engaged. However, I...I just couldn't anymore and actually had to put it down. Harkness's glacial pacing and repetitive/obsolete descriptions where enough for me to start clocking out. The descriptions of multiple wines, intimate knowledge of Diana's exercise routine and a Wattpad like fascination while wardrobe descriptions padded this book far beyond it's warranted length. I am no enemy to atmosphere, slow pacing or heavy descriptions. I have read my fair share of 19th century novels to fine with that. But none of this description actually does anything, it serves little to no narrative purpose. 

What irritated me the most, however, was Harkness's characterisation. At first, I thought that this book was going to be an intelligent Twilight for grown-ups. The female lead is Diana, is a highly intelligent woman and well respected in her field. She’s also the daughter of two powerful witches who were murdered when she was seven years old. The main character wasn't helpless, thought for herself, didn't immediately adore her bloodsucking, murderous stalker or find his abusive behaviour endearing, and didn't seem interested in losing her entire identity to the first good-looking guy who wanted to eat her. A rebuttal of Twilight, almost.

But no. Despite Diana's increasing Mary Sue-ishness as she develops every witch ability ever known, she must constantly be rescued and protected by Edward, er, Matthew.

Matthew, meanwhile, is a complete jackass. (Excuse my French) Trotting out the obnoxious "pack mentality" trope so often used in "paranormal romance" (a genre that really, really needs to be marked better so that those of us looking for "urban fantasy" won't be blindsided every damn time), Matthew is neatly absolved from all responsibility for his sexist insistence that Diana obey him as her husband and for his volatile, potentially murderous temper if and when she doesn't comply. Who doesn't want a hyper controlling boyfriend that keeps a huge amount of secrets, keeps important information away from you, uses his temper to make you obedient and says, “I might not be able to control myself if you step away” after a first kiss. Diana is the otherwise highly intelligent woman who acts like a child whenever she’s in his presence. She has to be bullied and bated into using her powers, and saved time and time again by Matthew. Despite Matthew’s continual marvelling about how powerful and strong she is, her strength is barely in evidence.

It is really unfortunate. I am a sucker for academic settings (having lived in Oxford myself), urban fantasy and the general aesthetic of this book was wonderful. Large French castles, ancient libraries, large dysfunctional vampire families (wish there was more of that), horse riding. All right up my alley, with the potential to be something really amazing. A fusion of urban fantasy and dark academia. Unfortunately Harkness's characters and pacing completely threw me off. 

Age Rating 16+. Violence, sex, threat, torture (very tame though.)

The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen

"When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ well-
appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother’s. Little does Henrietta know what fascinations the Fisher house itself contains–along with secrets that have the potential to topple a marriage and redeem the life of a peculiar young boy. By the time Henrietta leaves the house that evening, she is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge that is usually reserved only for adults."

I was unsure of what to expect with this book, as I picked it up merely because of an intriguing blurb and an aesthetically pleasing cover. What I found inside was a deeply unusual, constrained, tense yet stunningly beautiful work. This book haunts you. 

Some have said that the main characters, the 11 year old Henrietta and the 9 year Leopold, don't act like real children. I have to beg to differ. The rigid mistrust and hierarchy is very true to the experience of the inner lives of children. (Or at least to my experience of childhood.) Children don't fully understand that they are children, thus their emotions and inner lives are by no means neutered by that fact. 

The plot is relatively simple, a sad romantic entanglement between a group of friends. It's simplicity is what makes it brilliant, it allows Bowen the time and space to really explore the emotions, tensions and atmosphere of these characters. What most struck me was Bowen's writing style. Bowen’s sensibility is heightened to the pitch of a lonely woman in a big house who hears what sounds like an intruder downstairs in the middle of the night. Inanimate objects become animated and not only contribute to the tension of every passing moment but define it. The way light falls or dwindles becomes a coded text of prophecy. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the book, at once feeling melodiously slow and tensely frenetic. Bowen's primary story-telling device is dialogue, dialogue filled with hidden meaning delivered in staccato. This tempo gets even more frenetic when Bowen writes in monologue, telling a person's thoughts. Bowen covers a range of themes in a relatively short book: the creation of identity, time, secrets and lies, sexuality and sensuality, the constraints of society, death, the relationship between mothers and their children.

The most fascinating character to me was definitely Madame Fisher, the controlling and menacing matriarch. Her ever-watching presence that consumes the house with a creeping ennui. 

A story of passion and heartbreak, of sexual power and destruction - without ever being voyeuristic, it is deeply erotic. Leopold is the living personification of passion spent and lost, and his future, standing at the station in the end, is just as open as his mother's was before her path was chosen. This novel spins an intricate and horrifying atmosphere, that feels at once deeply peaceful and deeply unnerving. A book that is less enjoyed but felt. I would highly recommend.

Age Rating 16+ Adult themes and a unique writing style that might need a slightly higher comprehension to understand/appreciate. 

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

"In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by
dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two."

I picked this book up on a whim at the library. I had no idea what it was about. I had never heard of it before, and I must be honest, I didn't put the name James Baldwin together with the Civil Rights Activist I was taught about in school. So, I had no idea I was about to read one of best book I have yet read. 

This book unravelled me completely. I felt like my whole body was strung out by the sheer, inexorable weight of this story. During reading, I often found myself having to close the book and just process. Giovanni's Room is one of the rawest, most wounding and open-chested portraits of what it is like to burn with the fires of self-loathing as a result of internalized hate, and to wrestle, every day, from the webbing of a shame that stains, indelibly, yourself and everything you love. 

There is viciousness, lust, loneliness, sensuality, deception, sorrow, tenderness, despair, and ultimately tragedy that makes this book easily one of the top 100 best books I’ve ever read. Every reader will find something of themselves in this book, maybe not the part of themselves that they want to hold up to the mirror, but certainly a fragment, disdainful in nature or worthy of pity, that can not be denied.

It is classified as a "gay book." I think that is a overly simplified grouping, it is a book about doomed love. I do not think that you have to be queer to enjoy or relate to this book. You must only have felt out of place, a stranger in a strange land, to have looked at yourself in the mirror and not liked what you saw. To have felt the deep well of loneliness and meaningless desperation that comes with living as a human. Baldwin explores and expresses the torments of humanity and love, through his achingly beautiful prose that often left me breathless. David is profoundly selfish, and evasive to the attention he receives. He paradoxically wants love but cannot bear the responsibilities that go with it. He is an unlikable man, yet you cannot help but emote with him. You cannot help but feel all of his pain and regret and loathing. 

Truly a haunting read, one that will stay with you long after you have finished it. My review cannot do it justice, I merely urge you to read it. 

Age Rating 16+. An insinuations of rape, murder, execution and prostitution but nothing overt. 

Three Daughters of Eve - Elif Shafak

"Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to
a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground--an old Polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past--and a love--Peri had tried desperately to forget."

I have read Shafak's work before, more specifically her much acclaimed Bastard of Istanbul. However, while I was blown away of the Bastard of Istanbul's prose, I was left wanting when it came to plot. Three Daughters of Eve was far better in my personal opinion. This might be because the themes discussed, such as loneliness, religion and finding yourself stuck between cultures where far closer to my heart than the family estrangement depicted in Bastard of Istanbul. 

Three Daughters of Eve is a multi-layered novel that explores the feeling of being caught in between the tensions that plague the modern era - between traditionalism and modernity, between religiosity and secularism, between East and West - and the consequences of being ideologically unmoored in a polarized world. While Three Daughters of Eve succeeds in scaling down these lofty ideas into the ways they shape the everyday life of the protagonist, it also uses the rest of its characters as caricatures of these ideas, turning moments of potentially genuine connection into staged battlegrounds where the clash between dichotomies can play out. While this should have led to the characters feeling one dimensional and unrelatable, through Shafak's beautiful writing, I still related to them despite understanding what they represented on a textual level.  I enjoyed the novel for the author's skill in evoking time and place, and her depiction of the modern existential crisis that went beyond the individual and into society as a whole, while still being deeply personal. I truly related to Peri and her struggles in finding herself. 

I also adored Shafak's prose. She has a certain style that is both poetic and raw, never feeling overly florid. She cuts through human nature and it's condition in short sharp sentences, displaying a dizzying love for both Turkey and England. 

My only negative to this book is that I couldn’t help but feel that, in some places, there were build ups to scenes that were abruptly abandoned. I was also dissatisfied with the rather abrupt ending although I understood the point the author was trying to make. 

Age Rating 15+ Nothing untoward, though there is a mugging and attempted rape at the beginning. 

Everything Under - Daisy Johnson

"The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer
by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries.

One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found community and shelter with them, and all three were haunted by their past and stalked by an ominous creature lurking in the canal: the bonak. Everything and nothing at once, the bonak was Gretel’s name for the thing she feared most. And now that she’s searching for her mother, she’ll have to face it."

A truly haunting book. Something that sits with you for weeks after you have read it. 

Johnson creates a unique tale, channelling an ancient Greek tragedy, in a voice that is almost unbearable raw at times. Full of a strong symbolism, it is a novel that defies genres and labels. At the heart of the story is the relationship between mothers and daughters. A very particular, very difficult relationship, a bond that is unbreakable, a bond that, more often than not, goes horribly wrong, especially with a mother like Sarah. It is an exploration of a highly problematic childhood, a time of threat, of the moments when the roles of the mother and the child are reversed. The lack of clarity is central to the development of the story. Johnson's prose weaves and loops, hauntingly vague and allusive at times, and painfully and bluntly raw at others. Truly a writer to be watched. 

Told in 1st person through Gretel and in 3rd person through Marcus, words become jumbled, conveying cryptic messages that takes on all of the aspects of a non-disneyfied Grimm fairy-tale. As Sarah is struggling with dementia, there is an extreme confusion of words and intentions and communication is lacking. It is not accidental that Gretel is a lexicographer working on a dictionary and that she and her mother had invented a language of their own. There is also a focus on riddles, often without any provided answers and each character while being fully realised also feels recognisable to traditional fairy-tale tropes. I really enjoyed the representation of trans people, it just felt natural and unforced.

As someone who lives around Oxford it was wonderful to see my city being displayed with such wonderful literary aplomb and the creepiness only fitting the abandoned water pathways in autumn. 

Johnson weaves a tale that is impeccably rich. Piece after piece of the puzzle is discovered under layers of unspoken words and untold stories until you are slapped in the face with a plot twist that you where desperately hoping wasn't the case. We often say that one has to read a book in order to understand it. This phrase finds its true meaning in Everything Under. No one can explain the feelings it causes, you have to experience it to realise its impact. A difficult yet startlingly beautiful novel, easily the best book I have read in a while. Something I can see being studied in years to come. 

Age Rating 16+. Dark, uncomfortable and touches on mental illness, suicide, abuse, abandonment, murder, aging and incest. 

Ninth House (#1) - Leigh Bardugo

"Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman
class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive."

I really enjoyed this book, it was right up my alley. Secret Societies, Old Universities, Magic and Academia, Ghosts, Magic Tattoos, Tradition and the "Old Boys Club" being infiltrated by someone who definitely doesn't traditionally belong there. It was a bit slow to start but I, personally, enjoy slower paced books. Bardugo's atmosphere building is top notch and her plot kept me guessing and interested. There are also some really stunning writing/ aesthetic moments that, if I had any drawing skills, I would love to draw. The dialogue was fun and snappy. The character's a good mix of cliché and unique. 

I am not very fond of Alex’s character just yet, she’s indeed a hard girl to love but I think she might grow on me after a while. I already love her wits and confidence so I just need another push to be sure I love her.

I feel that Leigh Bardugo definitely seems more suited to writing more adult slanted content. There is no YA, which seems to have come to mean tweens and up, content here, okay. This really is young ADULT. 

If this book is one thing, it's violent. There are some graphic scenes that show sexual abuse, rape, drug addiction and the sexual abuse of minors. There is trauma and pain and it's not glossed over. That said, it isn’t the grimmest, or bleakest book I’ve ever read. In fact, Bardugo sometimes tries too hard for big, dramatic horror, and the violence comes off as gratuitous, her ghosts sometimes too chain-rattling to believe. Ninth House is about all kinds of trauma, yet I found that the consequences of such a monumental thing are barely brushed upon. The novel is rife with flashbacks, seen through Alex’s eyes as she passively witnesses the horrifying events of her past, but her trauma-suppressed memories seemingly only resurface whenever it's convenient for the plot, and without much of a statement being made besides. And that occasionally struck a sour note.

There’s a lot going on in this book. It is something hard to get into because the beginning is extremely confusing. The action is quite slow and not necessarily that complex, but somehow, until the end, there is something there. Something that leaves you thinking that you actually really enjoyed it. I am keen to read the second instalment when I think the magic aspect of the series will also come into it's own and we will get a better understanding of the characters. 

Age Rating 17+. As said above, quite a brutal book that includes no small amount of abuse. 

Dracul - JD Barker, Dacre Stoker

"The prequel to Dracula, inspired by notes and texts left behind by
the author of the classic novel, Dracul is a supernatural thriller that reveals not only Dracula's true origins but Bram Stoker's--and the tale of the enigmatic woman who connects them.

It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here...

A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents' Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behaviour by Ellen--a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen--and that the nightmare they've thought long ended is only beginning."

A good, simple, fun summer read. Would probably be a better fun autumn read but oh well. It was atmospheric, traditionally gothic, simple to follow and didn't require any deep soul searching. Don't expect high literature or any especially chilling horror, though there where some genuinely good moments. It often read like a silly Halloween movie with way too many vampire tropes stuffed in with little work done to try and make them feel less silly.

A fun element, for me anyway, was the opportunity looking into this book offered to dig up some dirt on the real Bram. The one piece of intel that I found most amazing was that when Bram first submitted his manuscript, it was as a work of non-fiction. Because of tender sensibilities at the time about a relatively recent bout of wide scale mortality, it was thought better to present it as fiction. In doing that, the first 101 pages of Bram’s manuscript vanished like a sated bloodsucker on a foggy night. I am itching to get my hands on the Icelandic "Makt Myrkranna."

I most enjoyed the first part with the ominous Nanny which I found to be chilling, creepy, and scary. It was the second part which, in my opinion, was slow and a little too long for my liking. The eventual back story for said Nanny was also so disappointing and cliché. I mean please, melodramatic romance gone wrong. No, no, no thank you. I also struggled with the writing itself, which at times felt gimmicky, overwrought, and not particularly of its time. If this was supposed to be a prequel to Dracula, I would have expected a closer resemblance to the language used in Dracula. This is a minor quibble, tho.

Age Rating 15+. Some scary horror moments. 

The Betrayals - Bridget Collins

 "If everything in your life was based on a lie

Would you risk it all to tell the truth?

At Montverre, an exclusive academy tucked away in the mountains, the best and brightest are trained for excellence in the grand jeu: an arcane and mysterious contest. Léo Martin was once a student there, but lost his passion for the grand jeu following a violent tragedy. Now he returns in disgrace, exiled to his old place of learning with his political career in tatters.

Montverre has changed since he studied there, even allowing a woman, Claire Dryden, to serve in the grand jeu’s highest office of Magister Ludi. When Léo first sees Claire he senses an odd connection with her, though he’s sure they have never met before.

Both Léo and Claire have built their lives on lies. And as the legendary Midsummer Game, the climax of the year, draws closer, secrets are whispering in the walls…"

This is an extremely atmospheric novel, with the abstract concept of the grand jeu, a tragic death, a nefarious government party, and elusive characters all vying for interest. There is a mysterious feeling to everything and Collin's prose is deeply beautiful and highly readable. The books main focus seems to be on the characters, which I'm not quite sure was the best decision, as this leaves the multiple outside forces not fully explored, and the story was hindered because of it.

The 'grand game' is a complex mix of music and math, philosophy, religion, and life itself, understood by the reader only in the abstract. Unlike us, the students and teachers at Montverre feel the power of the game, working to create the most intricate or clever version in competition with each other. So central is this process of creation that the game becomes more important than any character in the novel.

But its inherent emptiness and incomprehensibility is alienating, and while that's a perfectly apt metaphor for the themes in the book, it's going to leave a lot of readers dissatisfied. There's so much mystery shovelled into this book that it seems to burns all, or at least much, of the emotion out. The Grand Jeu (no real explanation given), the Rat (evidence of a past mystery and a mystery in itself), the Party (some kind of fascist government who want something abstract from the game, the school, and apparently to persecute Christians.)All of these mysteries are left unexplored or only very lightly touched on. 

The romantic element was disappointingly resolved, a beautifully depicted and unconventional relationship developed in the first half of the book turned quite mundane by the end. I did like the mystery's conclusion and the small amount of bi representation that it afforded us. 

That being said, I just could not put this book down. Something about it sucked me in and kept me engaged. I think the writing has such a charming and enveloping nature to it, that I didn't want to stop reading it.

Definitely not as good as BCs debut novel, in my opinion, but still worth reading.

Age Rating 17+ Sex, abuse, suicide, mental illness, prejudice. 

My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russel

"Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a
precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood."

This book was difficult. Difficult to read, and even more difficult to determine how I felt at the end. 

How do you best write about a fictional love affair between a teacher and a 15-year-old student that is actually a predatory relationship? There are no easy answers to that question but that is what happens in My Dark Vanessa which alternates between 2000 and 2017 as we see how Vanessa Wye is groomed and then raped by her teacher Jacob Strane. We see the repercussions she must deal with as an adult who does not allow herself to realize that the relationship was, in fact abusive. We see how a child is forced to carry the responsibility the adults around her should have assumed themselves. The delicate and fraught nature of adolescence is captured well.

This book is definitely very, very well-written and the first half is well paced. There is a strong sense of place— the landscape, the sparseness. The prose is tight and careful, intimate and descriptive. The protagonist, Vanessa, is fully realized and the author does a good job of showing Vanessa’s struggle to face what she experienced. Her point of view and how it shifts over time is expertly managed and feels honest. You see how pernicious this kind of abuse is because it makes Vanessa doubt herself and lose herself and see herself, rather than the predator, as the problem. There is an interesting and relentlessly claustrophobic quality to the prose. You want to escape the quiet horror of Vanessa’s story while also wanting to see how it all ends, if she is going to be okay. You want there to be a freeing moment of clean air without knowing if you will get it.

There is some interesting cultural context developed through pop culture references, Lolita, and the #MeToo movement. I suspect we are going to see quite a few novels doing this over the next several years as writers try to distill into fiction what has been happening culturally with regard to sexual violence. There were ways the people in Vanessa’s life responded to her that were infuriating and inadequate and that is, all too often, how these things go.

The book does run too long. After about 250 pages, there is a thematic repetition that doesn’t serve the novel well. Vanessa bites her cheek constantly. It’s like, girl, is there anything left on the inside of your mouth??? Vanessa is fully realized but most of the other characters don’t get as much depth, though they really should. 

The real challenge I had with this book is that at times, the abuse felt romanticized, eroticized. It gave me pause. As a mature reader, the way the relationship is described is quietly horrifying. However I am unsure if a less mature reader would fully pick up on the horror. As the novel goes on there were so many rape scenes (and I will always call it rape because that’s what it was), that it just felt… somewhat gratuitous. And, I suspect, that’s kind of the point, that Vanessa, particularly at fifteen, was torn between love and repulsion, that she was shaped into someone who would see the situation as romantic while, with the distance as readers, we understand the situation as appalling. Strane is clearly a horrible piece of shit. Russell makes that crystal clear. But… I don’t know. Does she go far enough?

My Dark Vanessa is certainly not an easy book and I get why some readers have found it to be over the top regarding the descriptions of abuse that the main character faces. I don’t share that same opinion entirely, but there were moments when I questioned the sheer number of rape scenes that Kate Elizabeth Russell chose to include, and/or the gratuitous level of detail they held; because even without explicitly showing the brutal assaults on Vanessa’s autonomy, her “relationship” with Strane was awful and his paedophilia was always obvious to the reader, as was its effect on 15 y/o Vanessa.

Age Rating 18+. The highest rating I think I have ever given a book. This is certainly not appropriate for younger readers. 

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

"

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience,
Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction.

In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature."

Margaret Hale, full of southern pride, finds herself suddenly placed in a northern industrial city. Having entertained a strong prejudice against the tradesmen, she views the northern mill owners to be similar uncouth men. Her pride and the misconceived notions mar her better judgment and she forms an instant dislike for Mr. Thornton. This dislike was mutual initially, but Mr. Thornton goes through gradual change; and although he dislikes her haughty ways, he slowly learns to appreciate her for her true qualities and falls in love. Margaret, though not as quickly as Mr. Thornton, too goes through this gradual change and learns to appreciate who he truly is.

Gaskell's ideas of use for these two characters is twofold. First, through these characters, one from the south and other from north, she shows us how the different views, beliefs, and misconceptions of the two ends were reconciled. The southerners saw the industrial northern cities as noisy, smoky, and full of uncouth people while the northerners saw the south as full of idle people who lacked action, depth and individuality. It was interesting to see how Gaskell expressed these clashing views of both ends through her main characters, and the final reconciliation of the two was more like a reconciliation of North and South (ehmmehm...title..ehm) where both sides come to understand and respect their different ways. Second is, of course, for the obvious reason of filling a love story. Gaskell has achieved these two-folds end brilliantly.

The broad scope of the novel, coupled with insightful depth and comment means that each reading of the book can offer something new. Read it as a straight forward (or not) love story, a fictional romantic biography. Then discover the class politics that run through the novel. Or perhaps the debate (as the title suggests) between the rapidly industrialising north and the more gentrified south. Or the sexual and gender politics that create a constant thematic pulse throughout the book... Or any other matter you choose to seek out from religion to the nature of authority and so on and so forth. 

I loved the writing style and all characters where brought to life with a subtly yet strong believability. I especially loved John Thornton's character. He was so strong yet conflicted and deeply emotional... the bloody handshake drama was almost to much for me. I also thought that his interactions with his mother were top notch. 

I have only two problems with this novel. Firstly, Gaskell's own heavily religious ideas come through strongly in the text at times, though luckily not pervading the entire novel. This can get occasionally frustrating for someone who isn't religious, however I understand that it was true to the times and doesn't detract for the overall wonderful book. 

My second issue is the last few ending chapters really slow down in pace and feel less character driven. We somehow pull-out of the emotional worlds of our two leads. There is less urgency and we just kind of wait around with Margaret for months as she grieves. This is a disappointment, especially as the pacing for the rest of the book was so excellent. 

Age Rating 14+. A man commits suicide, a slightly worrying strike, death. However all described in accordance to 19th centaury sensibility. 

The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal

"The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as

the Rothschilds, who “burned like a comet” in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.

The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.

In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves."

This is a stunningly written book. A keen sense of aesthetics and beauty pervades the pages. de Waal is a fine writer, bringing an artist’s sensibility to this other medium: a meticulous attention to the detail of language, its rhythms and its evocative potential. Read the book for its exhaustive descriptions of interiors, whether bel époque Paris or Wiener Werkstatt Vienna; for its evocations of historical moments like fin de siecle France, or Austria at the time of its annexation by Hitler and his Nazis, or immediately post-war, bombed-out Tokyo; or for its compassionate portrayal of flawed and fascinating human characters. De Waal's family history is fascinating and I was particularly interested in the link to Proust, Monet and Great Great Uncle Charles being the model for Swann, I found myself googling certain artworks to spot the family members. I loved this book from the way that is pulled you into these spaces, and made you feel the grandeur of the past. 

However I must say, there were a few things that frustrated me. A wronged sense of entitlement pervades much of the book. The accumulation of wealth is seldom a neutral thing; especially in a family of bankers. A lot of energy/ time goes into describing how the family lost most of its wealth under the Nazis (the description of the Kristallnacht mob entering the Ephrussi building and ransacking the furniture is blood-curdling). I did feel for the family, to watch your family home ripped apart and your belongings forcefully packed up and sent away. The pages describing the packing up of the father, Viktor's library, were heart breaking. However, no moral judgment is passed on how the Ephrussi had been spending their money until then, nor is the reader left any clearer as to how the Ephrussi's fortune was amassed so quickly in a few short decades only. I would have been interested in some detail about the lives of those who made them and the conditions in which they were made; and perhaps some sense of the contrast of fabulous wealth with society around them. I also felt a little uncomfortable that the servants were just referred to by their first names, could they really not find out their surnames?

The one character I genuinely would loved to have learned more about was de Waal's grandmother, Elisabeth. At a time when women were tied to the house, Elisabeth broke all glass ceilings and became a lawyer. She was one of the first women to enter the University of Vienna. Her accomplishments flare up time and again in the book and I enjoyed those bits. However, she did not play a major part in the narrative.

The book is supposed to be about the journey of the netsuke that Edmund de Waal inherited from his family. These netsuke are beautiful works of art plundered from a Japan reeling from civil war by Europeans who bought up everything cheap, and then called it their own. In a story touted as a book about objects so intrinsically Japanese there is one Japanese person in this entire book. de Waal never tries to find anything about the netsukes before they came into his families possession. It felt painfully euro-centric. Just a little bit of exploration of where these netsuke originally came from would have been appreciated. 

I understand that Japonisme was a trend and I don't expect incredibly wealthy Charles Ephrussi to give a damn about the Japanese, however de Waal talks about his own uncle buying more treasured artefacts from the impoverished Japanese at a throwaway price after the Second World War. How shameless can you possibly get? Weren't your family members just subject to the same humiliation by the Nazi's? Why would you do that to others? At least, pay the right price for what you basically stole! And you dare to write a book about your family's avarice?!

I would definitely suggest this book to anyone who is interested in art, history and beautiful things. It really was a feast for the senses. Charting history and changing social times through one family is a brilliant way of making history feel alive. I thought that was inspired. Just be aware of the drawbacks to the book. 

Age Rating 13+. Nothing untoward. 

The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl

"In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields—are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions into American minds will prove as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbour.

The members of the Dante Club fight to keep a sacred literary cause alive, but their plans fall apart when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only this small group of scholars realizes that the gruesome killings are modelled on the descriptions of Hell's punishments from Dante's Inferno. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club members must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret."

This is not a long book, but it often felt that way. Verbose, densely-written, with constant references to the state of literature, and publishing, in Boston just after the end of the Civil War. It really helps if the reader has some knowledge of the history, location, and the social and political complexities of the time. Seriously, it often assumed we all know who Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a few others are and that we are privy to a large amount of personal information about each. Because of this fact, there is unfortunately very little characterisation and growth in the characters. None of their voices felt unique, nor did I  feel like I was seeing a literary hero come to life on the page before me. Now I do know who they are, but I still mixed them up.

I'd be reading about one of them dashing off somewhere and then the scene would change to the study of a house where another was sitting, reading, perusing - and I'd think, wasn't he just running down the road? No, no, no! Get your famous, mid-nineteenth century New England, literary figures straight!

The book is a mixture of real historical facts and a well - crafted fictitious story. Most of the characters were real people and the main ones are celebrated poets. This is one of the most interesting features that I have found in Pearl's book. This feature gives realism to the story, and in this story, the poets of the Dante Club assume the role of detectives in their attempt to find a serial killer. 

However there where many side plots that weren't dealt with. The police officer of mixed-race, Nicholas Rey, is just... kind of there. We never delve deeper into his phycological state, he never says or is used to demonstrate anything interesting about the social time/ racism in Boston. There is nothing said about the hypocrisy of the Northern States who fought for the freedom of slaves but where still battling against their own racism. It would have also been interesting to see how these old rich white men would react to having to work closely with a mixed race man. 

There where also no women in this book. No main characters and not even an interesting side character that felt well fleshed out. It was frustrating and disappointing. I don't need every book to have a strong female protagonist, and watching a group of grandpa's trying to solve crime was sweet, but at least have a fleshed out supportive wife or spunky daughter/granddaughter, please. 

It was, overall, an interesting read. There were many surprising twist and turns. The historical facts relating to the time of Dante translation were quite intriguing. However, I found the flow of the story choppy, awkwardly cutting from scene to scene and the pace very, very slow. There was suspense, but it was built up so incrementally and only towards the very end. When Pearl finally does start to delve into the psychology of the killer (which was intriguing and actually my favourite part of the book), it was far too little, far too late.

Age Rating 15+. The murder scenes are really quite brutal, far more so than I was expecting from the tone of the rest of the book. 

The Otherlife - Julia Gray

"I always get away with it when I try stuff like this. Partly it

comes down to sort of assuming that I'm going to. I've got loads of confidence. And Loki got away with everything. Well, almost everything.

When troubled, quiet Ben begins at the ruthlessly competitive Cottesmore House, school to the richest, most privileged boys, he is befriended by Hobie: the wealthy class bully, product of monstrous indulgence and intense parental ambition.

Hobie is drawn to Ben because he can see the Otherlife: a violent, mythic place where gods and monsters roam. Ben has unnerving visions of Thor and Odin, and of the giant beasts that will destroy them, as well as Loki, god of mischief. Hobie is desperate to be a part of it.

Years later, Ben discovers his beloved tutor Jason is dead. And he can’t help wondering if Hobie – wild, restless, dangerous Hobie, had something to do with it…"

A surprisingly great book which has many element which I enjoy such as magic realism linking to Norse Mythology, something I absolutely love. Such a myth nerd. 

I half expected, from the blurb, of this to be a tale of jumping between worlds and being chased by an individual uncannily like Loki. But it's not and I was slightly disappointed by the fact that the Norse Gods didn't appear as often as I expected nor did Ben, one of the main characters, flit between worlds.

However what we do get, a dark academia-esque murder mystery, was very fun to read. The writing was also beautifully done, with subtle humour and realistic dialogue. As someone who has lived in England, I found the English culture that was very prevalent amusing and wonderful to read. 

The tale is told between two perspective: the diary entries of Hobie in 2008, and present time from Ben's point of view. At first, I wasn't sure where this story was going. There was one mention of the Gods in Ben's POV, then we changed to Hobie's perspective and that had no Gods in it whatsoever in the beginning. But slowly, slowly, the story built and I found myself reading faster and faster to find out the ending, to discover the truth of what happened to those boys at Duvalle Hall and how it all went so very
wrong.

Hobie is awful, but it was also incredibly interesting seeing his perspective? He's a bully, he's spoiled and he bullies his little sister into having an eating disorder. However, you can also see that he's falling apart and the cruelness is how he copes with the anger and pressure he is under. So I disliked him as a person, but seeing from his perspective was so interesting and I loved reading the POV of both boys. 

Ben on the other hand is a quiet metal head loner. He speaks old Norse, tattooed himself at 12 and is surprisingly kind and gentle towards others. Both characters felt well fleshed out, realistic and I could relate to both of them. 

The 'Otherlife' as Ben calls it is softly woven into the main story line, a kind of off-to-the-side extra that made me wonder if it was all in Ben's head or if he really was seeing Asgard and the Gods of Norse mythology. The ending of the book ties everything in nicely, giving the readers the final explanation of everything that had occurred.

This book is good but not in a nice way. It features a lot of horrible events from horrible characters and it shows a really dark side to parents/parenting who drive their children towards ambition so hard that they destroy them. It's also very much about undiagnosed mental illness and people making mistake after mistake until it destroys them.

However, I did find the book to be a little emotionally flat. I wasn't that deeply involved. However, I think that might have just been from the shortness of the book, only 225 pages on my kindle edition, rather than any lack of characterisation. I also didn't like the shoehorned romance element between Ben and Zara. There was no chemistry, no history and they felt like polar opposite personalities. 

Age Rating 14+. Bullying, eating disorders, broken marriages, academic pressure, drug addiction, death, broken family. 

The Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak

"In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her

country’s violent past in a vivid and colourful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its centre is the “bastard” of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlour and is Asya’s mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, The Bastard of Istanbul is a bold, powerful tale."

I really loved the first two third's of this book. The prose is stunning. The descriptions of Istanbul, while sparse, where rich and beautiful. The dialogue was snappy and fun, and there where just some sentences that made me stop and re-read them a few times. 

 

For example, “The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.” and  

“Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced.”

The characters were intriguing and are certainly the driving point of the story: the Aunties, each with their particularity but still had that tolerance and love that made them able to live together. 

Asya, the nihilistic bastard impressed me with her realistic teenage anger that wasn't diminished or written off as childish. I resonated with her refusal to accept the past as part of her, her wish to leave a big blank spot behind and stay in that moment with nothing to be charged for. I related to her deep and instilled anger that seems to radiate from her and her refusal to accept the world as it is.  

On the other hand is Armanoush, living with her ancestor's memories and history tied up to her present, half Armenian half American, deciding to find her roots by taking a trip to Istanbul. The city of her ancestors and their old enemies. She believes that returning there would help her find herself in between her mother's hate for Armenian culture and her father's Armenian origins.

I was surprised by, but really enjoyed the magical realism of this story. Auntie Banu's djinni were a great inclusion and where incredibly important in the plot. 

Now, onto the things that I didn't enjoy. The writing in this one was great, as I said before, but the story felt a little flat for me. It was both too much and too little. There was a lot of extraneous material as it seemed like the author was in love with this Turkish family and wanted to tell us all about them. There could have been more focus on the relationship of the characters, the Armenian genocide and the Turkish nationalisation vs Ottoman state. 

In the last third of the book, it felt like the author has taken a step back from the characters and all of the emotion left the story. It devolved to telling not showing. The great reveal as well was just so contrived and the coincidence was just... no,no. I don't like such contrived story lines that beat you over the head with the moral of the story, it becomes too didactic. The reveal of who was Asya's father, was horrifying. I am not sure why Shafak made that decision and I am not sure I can stand by it. That coupled with Asya's seeming acceptance of it by calling him "Baba" just didn't sit well with me and didn't fit with her character up till now. 

There where also a lot of story-lines left open. What happened with Asya and the Cartoonist? Who was "The Baron" that Armanoush had an online crush on? Where the Kazanci men freed from the curse? Did Banu give Armanoush the brooch? 

Overall worth a read from an introduction into the Armenian/ Turk conflict, beautiful atmosphere, great characters and lovely writing. 

Age Rating 16+. There is a rape scene,incest, mentions of heavy domestic violence, mentions and brief descriptions of genocide.