Van has finished reading… City Of Circles by Jess Richards

A circus troupe, a magical city and a secret in a locket. Really, what more could you want? Jess Richards’ City Of Circles is a glorious tale of otherness, outsiders, connection and belonging. A quiet one (and you know how much I like those!), it’s tense and heart-breaking, deeply emotional. There’s a dark beauty to it, exquisitely echoed in the gorgeous cover design by William Speed (@wrmspeed).

 

One thing I found refreshing about City Of Circles is that it takes its time. Sometimes fiction seems overly focused on coming into a scene late and getting out early, but Jess Richards lets her story dwell. Yes, it could be shorter, and I think it could be shorter without losing impact but there’s nothing flabby about this book. A treat is what it is, simply a little more of what you fancy, the writing sumptuous and sensual.

  The world of City Of Circles feels more inhabited than imagined with a wise blend of the extraordinary and the quotidian. Its quirkiness is never overstated nor explained, and certainly never excused with such trivialities as odd or archaic spellings. What I’m left with is a sense of something layered, far deeper than mere location, something that doesn’t necessarily carry a meaning but that suggests possibilities. Something I can (and will) think about after that final page.

  The atmosphere Jess Richards invokes, particularly in the first chapter is exceptional. It’s quite breathless. The writing holds you and the sense of proximity is almost claustrophobic – a lesson to anyone who thinks you need a first person narrative to really feel close to a character. As to the cast, it’s surprising to realise just how few main characters the whole thing hangs on. The emotional connection the author invokes with Danu, the protagonist, is exceptional. I simply can’t imagine someone picking up this book and not feeling for her, rooting for her.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so torn about an ending. Do I love it? Yes, and no. For me, it could have stopped three pages early and it would’ve been perfect. But there’s no mania for tidiness in those last words. There are still questions left hanging, and a life beyond the end to ponder.

 

Strange, poetic, gripping and emotional, it’s hard not to see Jess Richards’ City Of Circles ending up on prize shortlists, and a good many top tens come the end of the year. There’s a very good chance it’ll be on mine.

 

 

City Of Circles was published by Sceptre on 10^th august 2017 isbn: 9781473656680

 

You can find Jess on Twitter @jessgrrl or at her website jessrichards.com

 

My thanks to Ruby Mitchell for allowing me to review this book 

Van has finished reading… A History Of Heavy Metal by Andrew O’Neill

METAL! Hand in the air giving the horns. Guitar face, nod the head – though not too violently. The title of this book makes me smile. The iconography of the cover makes me smile. It’s all there in the wider consciousness, all Wayne’s World and Spinal Tap. A History of Heavy Metal. But if it were a line from Phoneshop, that other great Sutton export, it would be followed by brackets proclaiming, ‘yeah, I said it. What!’ This is no cold history, no sermon on how this is the true path nor apology for all the face paint and leather. This is brazen and unashamed, a fan laying down his love for and knowledge of his subject.

This is an invitation.

 

I’m not a metalhead, though I do like a bit of heavy. Led Zeppelin is my go-to, and on occasion friends have accused me of thinking the world stopped turning after 1980, though I like to think of myself more as a music fan, and I take to it in many shades. I have that most useful of things when it comes to music education: an older brother. My formative years were drenched in 70’s rock, in coveting Tygers Of Pan Tang album covers, wailing away to Sabbath or Rainbow and trying to outwit the springs he took from parker pens to booby-trap his tape-deck. And of course Zeppelin (which always seems slightly slower than it should; our main record player then clearly ran a little bit faster than 33^1/3). I can remember our neighbour coming to the window one summer’s day and saying something or other. When we turned it down to hear what he’d said he went away…

Oh, to be Jimmy Page. To know what it feels like to play that way! It’s guitars that I’m drawn to, (I can remember being blown away by the speed of Rik Emmett’s playing on Triumph’s Rock And Roll Machine, though listening back to it now aside from the solo it could be Abba!) and that heady mix of emotion and proficiency that moves me. These days I can find that as much in flamenco as rock, and in other instruments too. But we’re never just one thing. I wonder what the author goes to when it’s not metal he needs to hear?

 

If you like heavy music – and bear in mind that even if you’re not aware before reading just how broad a church that can be, you will be after – you’ll have been exposed to some elements of Andrew O’Neill’s world view already, and as such you’ll get more out of it. But it’s not a prerequisite to enjoyment. O’Neill’s enthusiasm is infectious. To read him describing a particular song makes me want to listen to that song. His knowledge is extensive too, tracing the many and varied (when I say varied I mean to those who know they’re varied. Currently I’m imagining a Pantone colour chart with a hundred shades of black on it) strains of metal from roots to the present. Who knew Vegan Straightedge was actually a thing! While it is a personal take on the subject there’s room too for the bands that don’t float his boat (the Whitesnake mention made me laugh; I sent a comment to a radio station once while David Coverdale was being interviewed. They read it out and he said, ‘Bite me!’). In setting his views down the author invites you to laugh too, but with rather than at him because, like all metallers (except maybe Manowar) he understands that the irony dial doesn’t stop at eleven. It goes all the way back round to zero. That’s what makes a grown man covered in Tipp-Ex pulverising an electric guitar majestic. It’s all about the commitment.

One thing that strikes is the example Andrew O’Neill’s A History Of Heavy Metal sets. It doesn’t matter what your particular genre of music is – indeed your area of art generally – if you love it, invest in it. Tell people about it by talking to them not at them. Explore its depths and know that it won’t all be for you but that’s okay, you’re not the BBC. Own it – none of that guilty pleasures nonsense. And above all, INVEST IN IT. That’s what helps it to grow.

Funny, engaging and technical, Andrew O’Neill’s A History Of Heavy Metal will appeal not just to metalheads but also to music lovers, nerds and Insta junkies everywhere. Get it while you can. It’s on Kim Kardashian’s reading list, honest!

A History Of Heavy Metal was published by Headline on 13^th July 2017 ISBN:9781472241443

You can find Andrew on Twitter @destructo9000 or on his website andrewoneill.co.uk, where you can also find a playlist to nod along to while you read

 

My thanks to Phoebe Swinburn at Headline for allowing me to review this book

Van has finished reading… The Book Of Luce by LR Fredericks

Undoubtedly there’s a shorter way to tell this story but it wouldn’t be half as entertaining to read. L R Fredericks’ The Book of Luce is… is… interesting. Lest that sounds like I’m damning with faint praise allow me, at least a little, to elucidate. The 60’s, drugs, music, ‘characters’: the things you would expect to find in a book around this era are all there. It’s borderline caricature in places but the thing that allows it to be so, the thing that keeps the reader on side is the narrator – indeed the author of The Book Of Luce (a nice touch, the ‘by the same author’ page) – who takes us through reality and hallucination with equanimity, who meets the strange and the mundane with aplomb. We have no choice but to believe what he sees, or at the very least to take it at face value until some other explanation presents itself. You can’t help but buy into it and that makes it eminently readable.

And there, for me, is the nub of the book. Are you apt to believe? Are you drawn by the esoteric? Or is it all mumbo-jumbo to you, all the ranting of crazies? Whichever way the wind blows for you, you’ll note the echoes here. The Book Of Luce is something of a mirror in which we might see those proclivities reflected. If we choose to, we can even chuckle at ourselves along the way.

 

Although this is a quest and we trip from one clue to the next as the trope dictates don’t let the wordiness fool you. The narrator’s voice is finely tuned – a hint of that received pronunciation that could open doors back then, and allied to that a sense of a mind succumbing to the effects of all those drugs, though you’re never quite sure just how lucid he is. The planning is very tight and while there is an amount of coincidence to the turn of events the very nature of those occurrences is brought into question. Is it happenstance or serendipity, cause or effect?

The press blurb cites David Mitchell meets David Bowie though for me it’s far more Herman Hesse meets Salman Rushdie: the acceptance and presentation of what’s beyond the veil as part of everyday life coupled with a scholarly grasp of the subject matter. There’s an extensive bibliography supplied to go with the many quotes in the book and I strongly suspect a good deal of it is genuine.

 

That there is something more, something better, something beyond the life we live is the oldest of stories. And surely it’s a good thing that we’ve looked, that we continue to do so. Surely it speaks to our better nature that we believe we are capable of more. Will The Book Of Luce change your mind, or open it up to that possibility? I don’t know, but you might well enjoy the journey to finding out and that can never be a bad thing.

 

The Book of Luce is published by Hodder & Stoughton on the 10^th August 2017 ISBN: 9781848543348

You can find L R on Twitter @LRFredericks or at her website, lrfredericks.com

My thanks to Jenni Leech at Hodder for allowing me to review this book

Van has finished reading…Mussolini’s Island by Sarah Day

There is something very powerful about a quiet rendering of the suffering people can inflict on one another. For all the weight of stories told about and around the second world war, for all the bravery and degradation, the great suffering and little hard-won joys it’s the quiet ones that linger in the memory. Not just for its period and location I’m reminded of Virginia Baily’s superb Early One Morning, and Lissa Evans’ Crooked Heart. Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. Sarah Day’s Mussolini’s Island is one of the quiet ones.

1939. Catania’s streets are quiet. Even before the knock at the door, he knows. For Francesco there is no escape as the police run him down, the disgust on their voices clear as he is taken. ‘Arrusu’, they call him, the word all sneer and spittle. But Francesco is not the only one. All over the city young homosexuals are being rounded up. Someone has betrayed them, but who? Once interned together on San Domino, the hunt begins for the mole while the authorities seek the perpetrator of another crime. While Francesco feels he has lost everything there is more at stake than he can imagine.

Sarah Day’s Mussolini’s Island is a sensitive, thought-provoking and wholly unsentimental story of love, loss and betrayal.

 

I love the characterisation in this book. The author’s restraint is impeccable and it’s this, I think that allows so many individuals to stand alone in what is quite a crowded cast. Impressions build over time to form a picture and this gives the imagination room to fill in around the descriptions. Nothing feels out of place, no action introduced simply to aid the plot or build a scene and, while it may not be a complete surprise come the end of the book for me it’s all the more satisfying that the journey is such a complete one. It’s this, too that allows the reader to feel not just for Francesco and his companions but for Elena too and, yes, even Pirelli at times. There’s an honesty in the rendering of these people that is truly touching.

Sarah Day sets the scene on San Domino exquisitely. She uses all her characters’ senses to paint a vivid landscape, and beyond that too the flavour of what it’s like for the island’s inhabitants to live there. Islanders and prisoners alike are hemmed by a fatalistic mien, and the shadow of fascism looms over everyone, fuelling their paranoia. War rages in Europe. Everybody counts the days until Italy will join the fray, though the ghost of defeat at Caporetto in the First World War haunts both those who were there and those who were not. Claustrophobia stalks Day’s prose.

 

It’s easy sometimes to look at stories like this with a knowing eye – to feel their power, yes, to empathise with those who suffered, but from a safe distance and through the filter of fiction. But these were real people. Okay, yes, as Sarah Day says in her author’s note, all but two of the characters are invented, but ‘confino’ is not. The idea that homosexuality could be contracted like a disease really was there. People were rounded up, beaten, interned and much worse because of their sexuality. And before we get all holier than thou about it let’s remember that homosexuality was a criminal offence in this country too, that it would be another 28 years before it was even partially decriminalised here.

But look at Day’s description of Francesco’s feelings, his fears and desires. One of the real joys of this book is his coming to terms with what he feels and how right it is, how it couldn’t be anything else, anyone else.

How is that any different to you or me?

 

Mussolini’s Island was published by Tinder Press on 23^rd February 2017 ISBN:9781472238191

You can find Sarah Day on Twitter @geowriter or at her website, sarah-day.com

 

My thanks to Millie Seaward at Headline for allowing me to review this book