BOOK REVIEWS: A writer's opinion of the books she's read since last month

 Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

 

The fifth in the Jackson Brodie series of detective novels, this one finds Jackson living on the North Yorkshire coast, occasionally with his son while his actress ex-partner Julia films a TV series (about a fictional detective, because Atkinson loves that sort of Russian Doll technique) in the area.

              Jackson Brodie is not really a very successful detective, and Atkinson’s genius is in highlighting his flaws by telling most of the story from the viewpoints of various characters who are directly involved in the current crime du jour, this time a very nasty ring of human sex traffickers. We frequently know much more about what is going on than Jackson himself does, and he stumbles across the crimes often serendipitously.

              Atkinson loves to undermine the detective genre formula, using narrative devices that often teeter on the edge of magic realism while never fully falling over the precipice. In this book, Jackson’s urge to protect the vulnerable leads him to try to save at least two people’s lives before he becomes fully involved in the major crime going on nearby. There are numerous references to events from previous episodes in the Brodie saga, so if you haven’t read them you will find some elements of this novel confusing. There is Atkinson’s trademark humour, her characteristic moments of sly wit or unlikely coincidence. The two young women police officers are called Ronnie and Reggie, for instance, and one happens to have saved Jackson’s life in a previous novel.

              I love all this stuff. As I have said before, I consider Atkinson to be a fabulous writer, though I am increasingly recognizing her stylistic devices. She often has characters thinking something but other characters responding as if the thought has been spoken aloud, for instance.

              What I really love about her work is her ability to create and present characters who are highly distinctive, highly memorable, both intensely realistic but also often so eccentric that they are simultaneously unconvincing. She jumps from character to character, giving us glimpses of the central story from different angles, and she controls the various voices, the different viewpoints, deftly, skipping from one to another with great skill and confidence. And she does it so quickly and succinctly. I found myself really caring about many of the characters as if they were real people – the Polish girls who are rescued from the hell-hole created by the triumvirate of evil ‘businessmen’ at the heart of the story, the possibly gay, sensitive son of one of those men, poor naïve Vince who has no idea about what his ‘golf-friends’ are up to and whose life is slowly falling apart around him. Atkinson likes to break down stereotypes. Beautiful, over-made-up Crystal, once an exploited teen escaping from a brutal care home into an even more brutal world, now the wife of rich Tommy, who treats her like a mixture of domestic servant and sex doll, turns out to be much more intelligent, moral and brave than you’d expect.

              Jackson himself doesn’t feel like the central character in the book. He rarely does. Yet his basic human decency, his old-fashioned sense of what is right and what is wrong, beyond the exigencies of the law itself, his physical courage, his ‘Luddite’ qualities, his awkward relationships with his children and his ex-partners, his loneliness, his love of dogs – well, he is a vivid presence throughout, a thread that holds the narrative in place. Many of Atkinson’s novels feature dogs – her first success, Behind The Scenes At The Museum, was set largely in a pet store. Dogs pop up here and there, as they do in life, plodding through the action, indifferent or confused, often inconvenient. Jackson himself has had a dog in previous books in the series, and was once almost killed by a dog. Here, he is looking after the phlegmatic Dido, Julia’s elderly Labrador, in a novel which also features Brutus, Tommy’s scary-looking but actually very gentle dog, and Lottie, the family dog whom Vince misses more than he does his ex-wife.

Atkinson also creates a wonderful sense of place. The seaside resorts of the north east – Scarborough, Whitby, Bridlington – are brought to life from their sordid theatres and amusement arcades to their majestic hills and beaches. The novel opens with the famous miniature sea battles enacted on the lake at Peasholme Park in Scarborough, and mentions Whitby’s abbey and Robin Hood’s Bay and the gypsum mines and the long coastal path, once a disused train line. For someone like myself who knows the area well, I could taste the salt in the air.  

What can I say? I loved it.

 

*****  [Highly recommended]

 

Unraveller by Frances Hardinge

I am a big fan of Frances Hardinge. She writes superb fantasy fiction, highly imaginative, beautifully written, intelligently-plotted. If you like to be taken to new worlds, Hardinge is the woman to guide you. Her stories are dazzlingly original, presenting us with imagined places that are unlike anything else I’ve read, yet they are also, like all the best fantasy, works which are at their core morality tales. They are mostly aimed at a YA audience, as are many of the greatest fantasy novels, but they are sophisticated enough to appeal to older readers.

              This one is about Kellen and Nettle, two teenagers who live in a world where curses are real. Mysterious and sinister spiderlike creatures from The Wild, known as The Little Brothers, give some people the power to curse others. Cursers cannot be cursed themselves, and their curses can only be reversed by a skilled unraveller like Kellen. Cursers cannot be cured, and can only be restrained by being imprisoned in a literally ironclad jail, as iron dampens their powers.  Nettle was cursed in the past, being transformed into a heron by her evil stepmother, but was later de-cursed by Kellen, and has been left with a strange connection to The Wild.

              As you can see, there is an element of the fairy tale about this story. However, don’t let that put you off. Hardinge might weave such ideas through her plots but the intricate details of the characters’ lives, the richness of the worlds she creates, the naturalistic dialogue, the twists and turns of the plot, the sheer brilliance of her set piece scenes and the effortless quality of her ideas draw you in and raise her novels to the top level of fantasy fiction. Winner of the Costa Prize for her novel The Lie Tree, this is not a novelist whose imaginative powers are in any way fading. If you haven’t discovered her yet, read this – she has a large back-catalogue of other equally surprising and equally gripping novels to explore once you are hooked.

 

***** [highly recommended]

 

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

I realise this novel is now old news and Osman has since written several more. I bought it for a friend when it first came out, and I read the first chapter at that time and quite enjoyed the mildly witty style. Osman’s voice came through strongly and I actually thought it was quite entertaining and I intended to read the rest at some time.

              However, the fact that I didn’t get round to it until this year maybe suggests that I wasn’t as drawn in by the narrative as I thought. Also, I joined Audible earlier this year and downloaded Osman’s novel as my first, free, Audible book, so I listened to Leslie Manville reading it, rather than reading it for myself. I thought I’d enjoy being read to, and it was certainly quite a convenient way of keeping myself entertained while doing the housework. However, I can’t say that I was ever completely enthralled by the novel, and I’m not sure whether this was due to the novel itself or to Leslie Manville’s narration.  There was an interview with Richard Osman at the end, I think by Marian Keyes, which was a nice addition for fans.

              Anyway, as a novel, it is firmly in the genre of ‘cosy fiction’ – a bunch of elderly, affluent, middle-class ex-professionals get together to solve a crime. There are red herrings, false clues, unexpected detours, occasional insights into the central characters’ individual lives, unorthodox detective-ing, and a few implausible twists and turns. The characters are a tad stereotypical but generally likeable. It is mildly amusing, poignant in places, and I think I could have worked out whodunnit relatively easily had I been paying full attention. However, one thing I found with Audible is that my mind wanders in a way it rarely does when I am reading to myself.

              Overall, a pleasant middle-of-the-road cosy detective novel which will pass a few hours pleasantly.

 

***  [will pass a few hours pleasantly and easily, without offering anything more]

 

 

 

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet by Charlie Holmberg

 

Charlie N Holmberg is an US author who has written numerous successful fantasy novels. I first came across her when I read ‘The Paper Magician’ and several of its sequels, about ten years ago. She is one of a large number of excellent young female fantasy writers, and I would recommend her highly if you like this genre.

              I listened to half this novel on Audible but I found the American narrator unbearable after a while so I read the last half myself on my kindle. Holmberg has an excellent imagination, original, quirky and enjoyable. This novel is a stand-alone story about a young woman with no memory of her past. Maire is a baker who can instil emotions into her cakes. She can make cakes which make people feel loved, content, excited, angry, whatever. Set entirely in a fantasy universe, the story follows Maire’s adventures which are often very grim indeed, until she finally remembers her true identity.

              Weaving in fairy-tales such as Hansel & Gretel and The Little Gingerbread Boy, and creating at least one particularly creepy character, Holmberg writes beautifully, on the whole, creating a magical atmosphere. I found the final chapters a little tedious, though they are necessary to tie up the loose ends of the plot. I won’t recommend the Audible version as I hated it, but the novel itself is definitely worth a read if you like this sort of thing.

 

**** [recommended]