Book Review of Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson

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An idyll shattered on the cusp of war.

This competent historical novel, set at the beginning of the Second World War, was read and reviewed even as the opening stages of the war in Ukraine were unfolding. But the atmosphere it evokes is quite different:

Britain in September 1939 may have been about to endure a siege by U-boat in the following years, but it was not under siege yet. Wages and living standards may seem quite poor to us, but they were so much better (and so many more people were receiving them) than in the period just after the Great War or in the Great Depression that other authors (who were there at the time) would come to look back at 1939 as a mini golden age. It was even possible to fly to America (“from Southampton” i.e. by flying boat), something that had only just happened and which (though the NAZIs did not realise this in time) completely changed the balance of power in the world. On the one hand, most of the characters in the story are anxious about the impending war, but on the other hand the little luxuries that make life bearable are still widely available (after a long period where they couldn’t be afforded) even if international flights are an expensive novelty. The author captures these contrasts very well.

It is a murder mystery and the twists in the plot are quite major and come at just the right moment, rather than being constant and intended to keep the reader in a state of tension. There’s a difference, too, between feeling guilt and being guilty which is very shocking but also very true to life. The upheaval caused by the mass evacuation of children from the big cities provides an opportunity for two shocking crimes, but also an opportunity for justice to be served over other crimes which had gone unnoticed before that upheaval.

Two central older female characters are lesbians. This isn’t wokism: there were indeed lots of all female couples and households after the Great War and, unlike in the period after the Second World War, the situation was quietly understood and in general nothing was ever said. The two lesbian characters worry (only slightly) about a scandal, and it may be realistic that they should have worried, but the situation was commonplace; it was NEVER illegal and as George Orwell would one day remark, “the worst insult in the English language is ‘nosey parker!’” Or, at least it was before the Second World War and the Cold War. The author does not show people taking lesbianism for granted, but she is at least realistic in the way that none of her other characters choose to see anything amiss about two ladies old enough to have lost fiances, living together and being openly fond of each other.

This is a very good book.

Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson is published in the UK by Faber and Faber on the 19^th of May 2022

Book Review of Mammy Banter (The Secret Life of an Uncool Mum) by Serena Terry.

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Everything you need to know about parenthood but were rightly too frightened to ask about.

There are books which tell prospective parents how to bring up infants, and there are books which purport to tell actual parents how to cope with a teenager. This is a novel, set in Londonderry, which does a good job of conveying what it’s like when unplanned parenthood leads to a mid-thirties couple having to do both things at the same time. It’s a warts and all comic account, but it’s not all wart and, unusually for someone telling the story from a woman’s point of view, the device the author uses is a husband who gets things right even when his wife somewhat unilaterally realigns her life (and his) in a chaotic manner. The author presents some convincing examples of men being bastards, but her message is not “all men are bastards” and she’s courteous enough to offer a realistic depiction of one who isn’t.

Mammy Banter by Serena Terry is published in the UK by Harper Collins on the 3^rd of March 2022.

Book Review of Outside by Ragnar Jónasson (translated by Victoria Cribb)

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A meteorological thriller with a twist in the usual Icelandic happy ending.

Four friends who don’t necessarily like each other very much agree to go on a weekend ptarmigan hunt on the high moors of Eastern Icelandic. The weather is worse than anticipated. Bad weather is implicit in the words “ptarmigan hunt” because a ptarmigan’s primary survival strategy is to live somewhere too inhospitable for predators. Even in Britain, ptarmigan habitats (there are some) are not to be visited on a casual basis without sensible preparation, such as carrying a shoulder bag full of high calorie food rather than a packed lunch. The four Icelandic friends go forth onto the moors with small packed lunches of garlic sausage and dried fish, with chocolate in only one instance. With one of them being a recovering alcoholic who’s only just started drinking again, one of the others takes the interesting decision to carry a bottle of brandy as well. There are several underlying antagonisms, paranoias and secret agendas. This being a hunt, they take shotguns, though they have varying levels of competence in that regard.

With any Anglo-Saxon author, these would be the ingredients for a black comedy, but if that is what Ragnar Jónasson is about, this is an example of Nordic Deadpan, which I have encountered in real life on some occasions. Tension mounts and it goes on mounting throughout. Towards the end of the novel it looks as if there will be an Icelandic happy ending, where terrible things happen which the authorities need to be told about so things can be resolved properly, but the protagonists decide instead to live with whatever has happened and whatever the situation is. But the final sentence indicates that at least one of the surviving protagonists intends to pursue their agenda despite the implicit agreement to leave things be. I think this is probably intended to be deeply disturbing to Icelandic readers who want the skeletons to be safely locked in their closet without any fuss. Victoria Cribb has done an excellent job of translating the Icelandic text into English, but I’m not sure that the undercurrent fully translates. I can only report my suspicions as to what it is.

Outside by Ragnar Jónasson is published in the UK by Michael Joseph on the 28^th of April 2022.

Tony Blair to join the Order of the Garter: A Protest

 Just a few short words about this:

The award of such a high honour to Tony Blair devalues every honour, even of the lowest rank, bestowed on people who actually deserve them. It is a tragic miscalculation. 

Whilst serving members of the armed forces have no choice but to take part in celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, veterans, many of whom have good reason to feel betrayed by Mr Antony Charles Lynton Blair, may do as they wish.

The Order's motto is: "Shame on he who evil thinks." A good motto for those who would NOT give Mr Blair ANY sort of honour might be: "Shame on he who evil does."

Petition: this seems to be the most popular petition going at the moment; https://www.change.org/p/the-prime-minister-tony-blair-to-have-his-knight-companion-of-the-most-noble-order-of-the-garter-rescinded

Even if it's been a month or two, it's still worth signing to keep the pressure up.

Book Review of Breakneck Point by T. Orr Munro

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A thriller with two heroines and several villains

I am giving a five-star recommendation to a novel which I found difficult to read at times. Why? Well, because it gives an insight into a criminal justice system which has evolved to an unscientific state where it is normally only capable of detecting and convicting stupid people. Now, criminologists patiently tell us that most criminals are amazingly stupid. The trouble with that little factoid is that huge numbers of completely innocent persons are also a bit stupid at times, which means that they are all too easily convicted by a system which, by and large, does not believe in clever criminals, let alone scientifically-minded ones, and whose own concept of “forensic science” revolves around a determination to introduce “single particle evidence” to increase, rather than improve, the conviction rate, ignoring that it’s an axiom of science that a single particle proves nothing. A conviction rate bolstered by wrongful convictions can only be improved by being reduced.

This novel is difficult to read at times because the primary villain is a clever and calculating necrophiliac murderer who lies, skilfully and also sadistically in pretty well every conversation he joins and the minor villains are senior police officers who apply Lardarse’s Razor to every conundrum, whereby the conclusion that leads to the path of least thought and effort is always reached. The tension in the plot, and there’s a lot of it, derives from the way the clever necrophiliac interacts with institutionally-irrational senior police officers to constantly ratchet up the scale of the disaster afflicting the primary heroine and several other innocents. And this strikes a chord with me, as it will with many other readers, because you cannot live in the modern world and not know, or know about, policemen like this. There is also a well-drawn secondary villain whose most devastating tactic against those victims he seeks to destroy is to marry them. He, too, will strike a chord with many readers. It’s the grains of truth which make this novel both compelling and uncomfortable.

The author knows her stuff and she knows the Devon landscape the story is set in. She knows terrifying truths about teenage girls and isn’t afraid to tell them. The story is well-told but not gently told. The solution is as shocking as it is surprising, but it is well crafted around the limitations of the senior investigating officer.

 

Breakneck Point by T. Orr Munro is published in the UK by HQ on the 14^th of April 2022.

Book Review of The Christie Affair by Nina De Gramont

 

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A novel take on the disappearance of Agatha Christie.

This is a well-crafted novel based on a real-life mystery where the truth is unknown to anyone in the present day. As such the author can do more or less as she likes and her chosen course is an interesting one, showing the way that women tend to form alliances in stressful situations rather than making enemies. This is true, sometimes; it may even be true quite often, but it’s definitely not always true.

It will also be controversial in that the story suggests that Irish independence was, if not built on hypocrisy, far too tolerant of hypocrisy and injustice from the outset and for decades afterwards, right up to the nineteen seventies and in some cases beyond. Single mothers had fewer rights than criminals and institutions for them genuinely were worse than jails. The author tries to soften the blow by pointing out that England and the United States also had institutions of equivalent function, but these were never quite as bad, never had such a complete grip and certainly did not endure for anything like as long. Although, anyone seeking the Roman Catholic Church at its absolute worst on this particular subject in the 20^th century should look to Franco’s Spain and Galtieri’s Argentina and not Ireland.

This is a mystery story where the usual moral certainties have been altered: the men who have survived the Great War, even those in high authority, are perfectly willing to fudge the truth and even break the law in order to minimise actual harm while the “fallen” women are willing to break the law in order to obtain justice for themselves and their children, whether the latter are lost or dead. Crimes against humanity make other crimes seem perfectly reasonable.

This novel deals kindly with Agatha Christie whilst possibly taking liberties with the unknown facts, but it deals kindly from a 21^st century viewpoint. Which is why I can’t give it a five-star recommendation.

The Christie Affair by Nina De Gramont is published by Pan Macmillan (Mantle) on the 20^th of January 2022.

Book Review of Daughter of the Sea by Elisabeth J. Hobbes

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A romantic fantasy set in a recognisable Yorkshire landscape.

In the early nineteen-nineties, a famous commissioning editor proclaimed that his reading of the future fiction market was for “Erotica in a horror/fantasy landscape.” Thirty years on, this novel turns his specification upside-down.

The author allows herself only one fantastical premise (and this is a very traditional one) in that some individuals can be two different species and change forms at will, or according to their need. Pretty much everything else is solid and decently-researched eighteen-nineties Yorkshire. The landscape of this novel is born of observation and not fantasy. The local industry is correct (there was an episode of “Landscape Mysteries” by the Open University about this!) and we even see how pawnbrokers of the time manipulated prices to avoid the legal requirement to auction high-value unredeemed goods.

There are a couple of erotic scenes amidst all the Victorian morals, but while these are fantastical, they are not perverse.

The characters, regardless of species-shifting, are believable and the heroine’s heart versus head dilemma is complicated by the fact that her heart goes a bit in both directions, as does her head. There’s also a clear divide between being thoughtless or limited in scope and actual cruelty: both occur in the story but the author does not confuse the two.

The stories within this story question whether happy endings are real, but the real question is what is the heroine prepared to do for her happy ending and how does she even define “happy?”

Daughter of the Sea by Elisabeth J. Hobbes is published by Harper Collins “One More Chapter” on the 20^th of December 2021.