Van has finished reading… The Revolt by Clara Dupont-Monod (translated by Ruth Diver)

In 1173, Eleanor Of Aquitaine instructs three of her sons to overthrow the King of England, Henry Plantagenet. Their father, her husband. When the unstoppable force meets the immovable object in an epic struggle for supremacy nobody will walk away unscathed.

Seen through the eyes of Richard The Lionheart, Clara Dupont-Monod’s The Revolt (translated by Ruth Diver) examines the life of Eleanor Of Aquitaine. Shrewd, wealthy and beautiful, Eleanor was admired, pursued, divorced from French and married to English royalty. In a world where loyalty is everything, where does it all go wrong? On whose side will her children stand?

 

The writing is a little more tell than the show you might be used to but that’s no criticism (and if ever there’s a story to convince you that rules are for other people it’s got to be Eleanor’s). This is after all a story being told, the style lends itself accordingly and informs that sense of hearing it all from someone in the know, from someone who was actually there.

It seems odd to talk about characterisation when you’re dealing with real people. If anything I would imagine it’s a bigger hill to climb than fiction. There will be people out there with very definite ideas on what Eleanor was really like! For someone with no definite idea I’m happy to say Clara Dupont-Monod’s The Revolt delivers. Although we’re seeing the world (mostly) through Richard’s eyes we get a deep and rounded sense not just of Eleanor and Richard but of all the main personalities in play.

For me the really interesting choice is that of perspective. Since the book is effectively Eleanor’s story, why tell it from her son’s standpoint? There are at least x good reasons for doing so. First and most obvious is that more people will recognise the name Richard The Lionheart than Eleanor Of Aquitaine. For those of us not steeped in history’s minutiae (yes, I count myself among that number) this gives us a frame of reference – albeit for some that might be a little skewed by Robin Hood. When you consider just how much influence Eleanor held it also underlines how patriarchal our view of history is (Eleanor who? Oh, Richard The Lionheart’s mum). How much attention has history really paid to so visible a woman? But there’s also a statement that threads oh so subtly through this premise too: how well do we really know the person behind the cult of personality? Seen through Richard’s eyes we get beyond the clamour for wealth and beauty, the dominions, the royal marriages. Through Richard we can glimpse the strategist, the politician, the adventurer, the warrior, the mother, the woman. In a time when the received wisdom is that women were effectively chattels, and a means to secure a son’s future here is a woman who understood power and influence. She denied all bonds and restrictions, was keenly aware of what was expected of her, and ruthlessly efficient at turning that expectation to her own ends. And when it comes down to it it’s not that she was prepared to defy a King that is so extraordinary, not that she was so coveted, loved, mistreated or marginalised. The thing that really sings in all this is that she was a woman in an archetypal man’s world, and she was better at it than all of them.

 

The Revolt was published by Quercus on the 6^th August 2020 ISBN:9781529402889

You can find Ruth Diver, who translated The Revolt, on Twitter @ruthldiver

My thanks to Corinna Zifko at Quercus for allowing me to review this book.

Van has finished reading… Latitudes Of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup

 

 

In 1948 on the far-flung post-partition Andaman Islands, botanist Girija Prasad is confronted with the unfamiliar terrain of married life. As he strives to understand his extraordinary bride who speaks to the trees he studies, he comes to learn too of the precarious geology of his beloved island home. Their happiness rests on a Faultline, and when change comes it is instant and devastating. Events will take us from islands to mainland, from sea to mountains through a chain reaction of people and places, each affecting the next, each of them searching, longing for something lost.

 

Shubhangi Swarup’s Latitudes Of Longing is a rare find indeed. An immersive read, the prose is lush and vivid, the trajectory original, the research evidently detailed, though very lightly worn. I come away with the impression the author could – indeed would – talk happily at length on the geology, history, botany or ethnography of this region. There is a palpable love of her subject that thrums in these pages where the world we live in is a much a character in the list of players as any of the people we meet along the way.

As you might expect from the title it’s a bit of a devastating read, though for all its heart-breaking moments there is something joyous about it. It’s something I find hard to pin down. It’s not that it’s uplifting as such, more that it’s persistent, that the joy is there to be found, that there are wonders in this life, if we only take the trouble to find them.

Of the four sections it’s the first, Girija and Chanda’s story, that really shines. Shubhangi Swarup seems to revel in her characters and the setting with lush and emotional writing. Past and present, fantastical and quotidian blend in a way I found reminiscent of Salman Rushdie as the author guides us through a truly epic sweep of history. For all it’s a human story we’re watching unfold, the landscape is always there and it’s in this that the prose finds its tremulous air. With the explosive backdrop of history as geography you never quite feel sure in your footing, disaster lurking a mere paragraph away.

 

Shubhangi Swarup’s Latitudes Of Longing is lush and lyrical, a heart-breaker and a joy-bringer. It’s a world – our world – to get lost in. Do yourself a favour and take the time.

 

Latitudes Of Longing was published by riverrun on the 19^th May 2020 ISBN:9781529405132

You can find Shubhangi on Twitter @shubhangisapien

 

My particular thanks to Ana McLaughlin for allowing me to review this lovely book.

Van has finished reading… The Naseby Horses by Dominic Brownlow

 

Seventeen-year-old Simon’s sister Charlotte is missing. The lonely Fenland village the family recently moved to from London is odd, silent, and mysterious. When Simon is told of the local curse of the Naseby Horses he’s convinced it has something to do with Charlotte’s disappearance. Simon is epileptic, and his seizures are getting worse. Despite this, despite resistance from the villagers, the police, even his own family, Simon is determined to uncover the truth, and save his sister.

Under the oppressive Fenland skies and in the heat of a relentless June, Simon’s bond with Charlotte is fierce, all-consuming, and unbreakable; but can he find her? And does she even want to be found?

 

Some books have the gift of putting you at ease right from the off, settling you into the story and letting you know you’re in good hands. That’s not Dominic Brownlow’s The Naseby Horses. The feeling of being in good hands will come but you’ve got to get to grips with Simon’s world first, and Simon’s world is a short circuit of the senses. Cue some very immersive writing, and here is where Dominic Brownlow’s debut really shines. The author takes the time and trouble to explore what Simon sees, what he smells, what he tastes, taking the reader into each scene so we experience that jolt of difference. As if that’s not enough, Dominic Brownlow manages to do all this whilst driving the narrative ever onwards, keeping the reader guessing, raising the tension. And then there’s Simon’s memory, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the way Simon experiences time. This is the thing above all else that really unsettles, that makes the book read like a fever dream – but ultimately the thing that really lets you know you’re in good hands!

At the heart of the narrative is an ancient curse and something of a whodunnit, and the fact that it begins with Day Three and ends with Day Six gives you some idea of the level of tension involved. Throw into the mix the fact that your narrator is compromised and you’ve got a plot that will keep you guessing all the way to the end (I would have loved to say, ‘yes! I knew it!’ but come the end I wasn’t even in the same county). Who do you believe, that’s the question, and not just in the narrative but in a wider sense for the book, too. The local history Brownlow includes, the curse – and where there’s a curse you have to have religion. It feels like there’s a debate bubbling away in The Naseby Horses. Where does hearsay end and fact begin? Who writes the history? Who decides what’s true? And with his flawed protagonist, it’s the question Dominic Brownlow is asking you with every word. Who will you believe?

 

The Naseby Horses was published by Louise Walters Books on 5^th December 2019 ISBN:9781999630560, and is published in paperback on 24^th August 2020 ISBN:9781999630539

 

You can find Dominic on Twitter @DominicBrownlow

My thanks to Louise Walters for allowing me to read and review this extraordinary book.

Van has finished reading… Our Fathers by Rebecca Wait

It’s been twenty years since Tommy Baird left the Scottish island of Litta, twenty years since his father took a shotgun and killed his brother, his sister, his mother, himself. Twenty years of trying to escape what happened. Twenty years of wondering why he survived. Now he’s grown, and he can’t run anymore. Tom Baird is coming home.

 

In Rebecca Wait’s Our Fathers, the atmosphere is everything. There’s a rising sense of tension throughout the book. It’s like a guitar string being tightened and tightened until everything sings under the strain, and you wonder whether the bridge will rip out before the neck gives, the string snap or the peg head tear loose. There’s a sublime scene involving a dinner at which the casual mention of a name will have you looking around to see which bit gave out!

The prose is lean, perfectly weighted for the harsh beauty of the island, the elemental shaping of both this rock and the islanders who inhabit it. If you’re looking for comfortable you’re not going to find it here. Though the island in all its ruggedness and beauty is central to the shape this story takes it’s the people and how they’re shaped by it that’s the real tale being told. We see men and women in quite traditional roles, and there’s a distinct hierarchy between islanders and incomers, even when those incomers have been settled for decades. When we really see the characters as individuals it’s frequently in what they carry, in what’s been lost to them. At every turn what’s not said weighs more in the balance than what is, something that repeatedly put me in mind of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13, and there’s an echo there too of nature and time, of the relentlessness and the guilt of being the one left behind.

Rebecca Wait’s Our Fathers is a novel to be felt, a psychological excavation in search of answers where none will suffice. It’s a book to immerse yourself in, a tale of isolations in a time of isolation.

 

Our Fathers was published by riverrun on the 23rd January 2020 ISBN:9781529400052

You can find Rebecca on her website rebeccawait.com

My thanks to Corinna at riverrun for allowing me to review this book.

 

Van has finished reading… Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann (translated by Ross Benjamin)

Out of the village, past the tree where the Cold Woman waits, into the forest where things unspeakable lurk in the darkness, young Tyll Ulenspiegel waits through the night with the wagon and his fear. Come morning he will never be the same.

Escaping the ordinary village life laid out for him, Tyll will become legend, outrunning cannonballs on the battlefield, outwitting the wise in the courts of Europe, even outfoxing death in the depths of the earth. With his jester’s costume and his crooked smile he will see us all and make us laugh – but it’s he who will laugh longest.

Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll (translated by Ross Benjamin) is exquisite. From the get-go Kehlmann sets a febrile tone. We get an eye-witness account of Tyll’s arrival at a village, the masterful performance he gives as the villagers are swept up in excitement and fear, and the carnage he leaves in his wake. It’s the quiet dread that lingers though, the thought that he might turn his gaze on you.

Tyll is a dream of a character, irresistible and irrepressible and Daniel Kehlmann’s writing carries him superbly. Where much of the supporting cast could easily have become caricatures it’s in their words, beliefs, actions that the author reveals the folly of their various stances. Just as Tyll’s juggling is a triumph of him imagining himself doing it, so we see scholars, politicians, even royalty finding proof of their station by believing the evidence to be there, of having written their futures before they’ve even arrived. And there’s a small wonder in the midst of all this, that Tyll isn’t a likeable character – if anything he should be the complete opposite of likeable – yet you can’t help but root for him, can’t help but want his always to be the upper hand. There’s humanity in his portrayal that is unexpected, and consequently all the more profound, and in amongst all the cold and darkness and horror it’s the thing that shines brightest.

 

It seems entirely fitting that reading Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll feels a little like being part of a performance, that the reader picking out the very tidy little ‘in-jokes’, working to place this peculiar history, place the people in it, becomes one of the players. Or perhaps it’s that history itself is somehow reduced (or one might say elevated) to a series of scenes within acts, and that we’re part of a play within a play. Or maybe it’s simply that Tyll is laughing at me now, fallen as I have for his little ruse, and that what you’ll learn is that life, dear reader, is something akin to a jester’s wicked prank, that Tyll’s closing words are all the wisdom you’ll need.

 

Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll (Translated by Ross Benjamin) was published by riverrun on 6^th February 2020 ISBN:9781529403657

My especial thanks to Corinna Zifko at riverrun for allowing me to review this extraordinary book.

 

Van has finished reading… Roots Of Corruption by Laura Laakso

 

On the night of Samhain, the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, and ancient magic runs wild in Old London.

When Lady Bergamon is attacked in her Ivy Street garden, Wishearth turns to Yannia for help. Who could have the power to harm Lady Bergamon in her own domain? While Yannia searches for the answer, nature herself appears to be killing Mages in Old London. Yannia and Karrion join forces with New Scotland Yard to solve the baffling Mage deaths. But wherever they turn, all the clues point back towards Ivy Street.

Yannia’s abilities are put to test as she races to save Lady Bergamon’s life and prevent further murders. But with the lines between friends and enemies blurring, she must decide who to trust and how much she’s willing to sacrifice for Old London and its inhabitants…

 

Laura Laakso’s Roots Of Corruption is the third book in the Wilde Investigations series. As with Echo Murder, the second book in the series, there’s no let-up for Private Investigator Yannia Wilde, the pressure to solve the case coming in right at the start – and this one will call into question her closest relationships. The premise allows a deeper probing of what makes Yannia tick, and particularly how Yannia and Karrion fit together. The emotional tension is ever-present and that taut you could probably play a tune on it, and one of the things I really like about Laura Laakso’s writing is the extent to which she’s prepared to put her characters through the ringer. You might go into some books with a sense of everything working out fine in the end but that’s not the feeling I have with the Wilde Investigations series. This is definitely true of Yannia’s friendships, and in Roots Of Corruption they are stressed to breaking point.

 

As with the first two books (Fallible Justice and Echo Murder) the world building is excellent, and aside from a new realm opening up to us in Roots Of Corruption, our knowledge of how magic works also broadens. There’s sense and reason in every decision, and also signs of some very interesting rabbit holes too – it only remains to be seen which ones Laura Laakso will choose to investigate in future episodes!

While the tension levels continue to rise there’s also a good deal of humour in Roots Of Corruption. Karrion continues to say inadvertently hilarious things at entirely the wrong moment (his timing is perfect) but his comedy crown might just be up for grabs in the shape of Mery, a chain-smoking, eye-rolling new edition to the cast that, according to Laura, might well make an appearance in future episodes. I can only hope so!

 

Roots Of Corruption is everything I’ve come to expect from Laura Laakso. Tense, funny, absolutely gripping and ultimately very satisfying. And with three books in the series, there’s never been a better time to meet Yannia and the magical world of Old London.

 

Roots of Corruption is published by Louise Walters Books on the 26^th March 2020 ISBN:

 

You can find Laura on Twitter @LLaaksowriter

 

My especial thanks to Louise Walters for allowing me to review this fantastic book. Support a great Indie publisher and buy it here.

Van has finished reading… The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

 

It’s June, 1931, in colonial Malaya, and it’s a time for strange gifts. A British doctor receives the gift of a young Chinese houseboy as a bequest from an old friend, and Ji-Lin, an apprentice dressmaker and part-time dancehall girl is left with a gruesome souvenir at the dancehall. As fate weaves a web to draw these unlikely allies together, a tiger stalks their trail – though it is said that a man-eating tiger, if it eats enough, can take on the form of a man and walk among us. Perhaps it’s not a tiger after all!

 

Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger is a stealthy tale indeed, drawing the reader into a lush and captivating world. With romance, the supernatural, a bit of whodunnit, a twist and a perfect ending, there’s something for just about everyone along the way, and the further in you go the harder you’ll find it to put down. The blending of the supernatural with the everyday is perfect, Yangsze Choo always giving just enough for the reader to connect the dots, and so feel the chills. While rational explanations might sometimes be the order of the day, there’s always plenty of scope for the unbelievable to be what lingers in the foreground. The writing is vivid and I found myself coming out of some scenes with such a clear image I could almost believe I’d seen it on a screen.

I was particularly taken with the way the range of characters move through the story, and how the fact of colonialism shapes their various worlds. Albeit an ever-present fact, it’s something Yangsze Choo appears to have kept in the background, allowing to be a subtle part of the overall flavour.

The characterisation is excellent. Tied into the idea of the Confucian Virtues with consummate skill, each of the main characters carries the yin and yang of their Confucian names, and none more so than Ji Lin. One of the two narrators, she’s a great protagonist, though impulsive to a fault, and I fully expect you’ll be shouting at the pages every time she takes a fateful turn. The other narrator is the houseboy, Ren. Wiser than his years and sharper than his station, Ren is an absolute gift of a character. He is the heart around which all else revolves, and he’s the one above all others you’ll be wishing, praying, rooting for.

 

Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger is a confection. Vivid and gripping it’s a joy of a book to read.

 

The Night Tiger was published by Quercus in paperback on the 7^th January 2020 ISBN: 9781787470477

You can find Yangsze on Twitter @yangszechoo

My thanks to Ana McLaughlin and Corinna Zifko at Quercus for allowing me to review this book

Van has finished reading… A Long Way Off by Pascal Garnier (translated by Emily Boyce)

Sixty-year-old Marc is on the road. With a cat and his grown-up daughter along for the ride he’s heading for, or maybe running away from…something. Though things start well, as their journey progresses events take increasingly darker turns, and a trail of destruction blazes in their wake.

 

You know it’s Noir when your first instinct is to laugh, and even as you do you know you really shouldn’t. I think it’s the recognition that does it, that connection to the situation, that sense of solidarity – after all, we’ve all been there before to some degree. Though in Marc’s case you’ve got to hope the degree is small. His disconnectedness is acutely drawn, the deadpan being the foil that highlights the ludicrous around him, or perhaps reflects his own. The sense that things are going to get messy is palpable, though I guarantee you’ll be surprised just how messy that is, and Pascal Garnier’s characterisation is perfect. Even the cat never puts a paw wrong.

 

Pascal Garnier’s A Long Way Off (translated by Emily Boyce) is sublime. It’s a slim volume that punches well above its weight. Very dark, very funny and scarily relatable in our increasingly fractured world.

 

A Long Way Off is published by Gallic Books in March 2020 ISBN:9781910477779

My thanks to Isabelle at Gallic for allowing me to review this book

 

Van has finished reading… Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Called from the cane field to serve at the master’s table, eleven-year-old Washington Black measures his future in mortal fear. This night will affect that future in ways he can’t begin to imagine as possibilities open before him, but in the 1830’s will the world allow a young slave to dream, let alone strive to achieve it?

 

Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black is not the novel you might expect, given the first half-dozen chapters. You might start out thinking it’s a book about slavery but while books about slavery are also books about freedom, Washington Black is very much a book about freedom that’s also about slavery. The calculated cruelty and obscene privilege of the plantation owners, the anger and desperation, the futility of the slaves’ situation – it’s all there in those opening chapters, exquisitely rendered in tense descriptive prose. But as things take a turn for Washington, so the story takes flight, extends not beyond the possible but certainly to the outskirts of the probable, and you, dear reader will be glad you’re along for the ride. From the Indies to America to the frozen North to Europe and North Africa, Washington’s journey is a dizzying adventure.

Freedom, and the lack thereof is the prism through which Esi Edugyan shows all the main players – though it might be described as freedom with a small f that features largest as it’s each character’s own sense of liberty which directs. Big Kit is a formidable presence (at times putting me in mind of Caryl Phillips obeah woman, Christiana, in Cambridge), and the relationship she has with Washington is beautifully complicated. There were echoes in that relationship with Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, and also Tucker Caliban and his legendary ancestor from William Melvin Kelley’s A Different Drummer. Kelley’s A Drop Of Patience chimes too, in the nurturing of Washington’s talent and his striving to find a place in the world, which is ultimately a striving to find peace in himself. To that end, the novel’s ending is perfect.

Though in the modern parlance it’s easy to view the white characters’ issues as first world problems, barely a single player enters the stage without some coercing will driving them from where they might otherwise be happy. The men of the Wilde family are flung far from home, while their mother, stoic in her unhappiness, struggles to maintain the family pile. Even the slave catcher, Willard, is driven to extremes by the things he cannot shake off.

 

Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black is a treasure. Captivating characters, exquisite prose and a story that will have turning page after page after page. Read it, enjoy it, then put in your shelf alongside Ellison, Baldwin, Whitehead, Kelley.

 

Washington Black was published by Serpent’s Tail in August 2018 ISBN:9781846689598

Van has finished reading…Abigail by Magda Szabó (translated by Len Rix)

In Budapest in 1943, Gina’s cosseted and carefree existence is about to change forever. Her father, a General in the Hungarian army, having already sent her beloved governess back to France, sends Gina to a boarding school far away from the capital. Ensconced in a very strict religious institution, with any and every instinct towards individuality repressed Gina rebels. But with rebellion comes punishment, and not only from those in authority. Alienated from staff and pupils alike, she finds herself truly alone for the first time in her life. Alone except for Abigail, a statue in the grounds who pupils confide in through handwritten messages. Can Gina find a way to navigate this alien world she finds herself in? Can she see beyond her selfishness to understand those around her? And can she find out who is the mysterious figure behind the statue and the legend of Abigail?

 

There’s little doubt you’ll have come across coming-of-age stories set in boarding schools before, and possibly ones hinging around wartime but that’s no detriment to how enjoyable a read Abigail is. You get all the things you would expect – the pupil shenanigans, the adult-pupil power plays, the firm friends and sworn enemies – but into the bargain there’s the author’s immaculate plotting, the casually-discarded breadcrumbs that raise the reader’s eyebrow, and the expert timing that never once delivers a pay-off until a good few pages after you expected it to arrive. Where there’s mystery Magda Szabó keeps the possibilities alive so you’re never entirely sure you’re on the right track until the moment of truth.

One of the real joys of reading Magda Szabó’s Abigail is the balance of awareness. What the reader sees in the wider context, and what each of the characters know or believe or choose to believe in spite of everything is central to the whole thing ticking like a well-tuned clock. I don’t doubt you’ll find yourself willing Gina to listen more closely, to see more clearly, to understand better. But then how many of us were just like Gina in some way at that age, and with so much less at stake! Perhaps it’s this that touches us in the reading, the wish that we could’ve been, can still become the best of ourselves.

 

It’s no wonder Abigail is Magda Szabó’s most popular book in Hungary. It’s a novel that wears its wisdom lightly. A story that holds the attention, it is funny, and sweet, and very human. It is urgent, heartfelt and honest without once leaning toward sentimentality. It really is a joy to read.

 

Abigail is published by MacLehose Press on 14^th January 2020 ISBN:9780857058485

My thanks to Corrina at MacLehose for allowing me to review this fabulous book.