Claudius, by Douglas Jackson
Following on from his debut, Caligula, Douglas Jackson once again follows the story of Imperial Rome through the eyes of a slave: Rufus, keeper of the Emperor’s elephant. In the first volume, Rufus was intimately involved in the death of the tyrannical Caligula, and now he is mixed up in the schemes of Caligula’s apparently innocuous uncle, the new Emperor Claudius, and his conniving and manipulative freedman Narcissus. The setting for this adventure is Britain around the time of the second Roman invasion, undertaken by Claudius in search of glory as a means of shoring up his popularity in Rome. This is exactly the same period and set of events as used by Simon Scarrow at the start of his Macro and Cato novels, so it will feel very familiar indeed to some, though Jackson puts plenty of his own spin on things (starting, of course, with the presence of an elephant on the Imperial strength).
Of course, by setting the story in Britain, a British writer like Jackson aiming at a British readership can extract considerable extra mileage from the historical setting – despite the fact that they are strongly influenced by the bloodthirsty Druids, and indulge in human sacrifices, it’s hard not to root for the Brits when it comes to the battle scenes – even though we know the invasion is ultimately going to succeed. Jackson devotes considerable attention to the British leadership, including their attempts to build an alliance capable of repelling the Romans, and the sowing of the seeds of later rebellions against their ultimate victors.
The Scar, by China Mieville
China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station was a prodigious feat of imagination – a steampunk, noirish fantasy set in the teeming metropolis of New Crobuzon, a mecca for numerous humanoid races and a perfect setting for Mieville’s twisted take on vampires, monsters and artificial intelligence. In The Scar, he pulls back from his great creation, though its presence is still a touchstone for many characters, and takes in broad swathes of the magical world he has created. Bellis Coldwine is a former girlfriend of Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the scientist at the heart of Perdido Street Station’s story, and when The Scar opens she is fleeing the fallout of those events, as all of Isaac’s friends and associates are being rounded up by the security police. She is taking passage to the colonies, beyond their reach, a passenger aboard a cargo ship.
After some encounters with other passengers and some crew members (but none with the enslaved and tortured Remade who throng the hold below), Bellis, in her capacity as a linguist, is drawn in to diplomatic negotiations with the ocean-dwelling Cray people as a translator, and is well-placed to witness subsequent events: the ship is captured by pirates, led by the enigmatic warrior Uther Doul, and taken to what deserves to be considered as one of the great cities of fantasy writing, period: Armada.
Merry Christmas from the Bookgeeks!
Merry Christmas to our readers from everyone here at Bookgeeks Towers (which only exists in our imagination at the moment, but one day, will bestride the literary landscape like a colossal… well, you get the idea). We hope you have enjoyed our reviews and competitions in 2009, and we look forward to bringing you much, much more in 2010!
A nice way to round of the year was this interview with our own Simon Appleby over on Temple Library Reviews, and if you need a break from the turkey and mince pies, here are a few of the very best 2009 Bookgeeks reviews and reviewers that you may have missed:
- Some controversy between the Geeks over Neal Stephenson’s Anathem – read Simon A’s review
- Jennie Blake reviewed John Wray’s Lowboy, and we also interviewed him
- Simon A reviewed David Eagleman’s Sum, a book that later on became a word-of-mouth sensation
- Mathew was very excited by John Connolly’s latest Charlie Parker novel, the deceptively titled The Lovers
- Simon P’s review of Richard Dawkins’ latest book got a lot of attention from Dawkins fans
- Erin Britton was first to the punch with a review of the long-awaited second novel from Glen David Gold, Sunnyside
- With money seeming to mostly descend in 2009, our own Ben Parker had a timely review of Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money
- Simon A wrote a letter to the central character for his review of Sean Williams’ The Grand Conjunction
- We are very proud of how we have expanded our Young Adult coverage this year, with great contributions from Jennie, Jenny, Erin and Mathew
- We have also welcomed new reviewers Andy, James, Jon, Marina, Mario, Michaela, Nicola, Paul and Sam to the Bookgeeks fold, and hope to bring you more from all of them in 2010!
And last but not least we would like to welcome Evangeline Ruby Riley (4.53am, 11 December) to the extended Bookgeeks family!
The Blooding of Jack Absolute, by C.C. Humphreys
Ever since I made the acquaintance of a certain Richard Sharpe, I have become unable to live without the adventures of 18th and 19th century military men. In an age when serving in the British Army could see you make landfall in India, the Caribbean, Europe, North America or Africa, the possibilities are extensive, and the many fascinating anachronisms of that same army – purchase of officers’ commissions, marching to war in bright red jackets, a hidebound adherence to tactical doctrines – are meat and drink to a good historical novelist. Hence upon spying the cover of The Blooding of Jack Absolute, it was a sure bet that sooner or later it would make its way to the top of the reading pile.
The Blooding of Jack Absolute is actually a prequel to the character’s debut, but if you haven’t read that, fear not, this stands very well on its own and is probably the right place to start. We first pick up Jack Absolute in his early life in Devon, living with his vile uncle and equally vile cousin Craster Absolute – and witness a tragic event which establishes for life the enmity between Jack and Craster, and thus has a significant bearing on all that follows.
The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson
It is rare, I think, for a popular science novel to feel charming as well as informative, but Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air reads less like a strict biography than a fireside chat with someone who knows an enormous assortment of fascinating facts on the history of science and has the wit to draw them all together with an overarching theory about scientific discovery and the importance of context. Although he is not afraid to delve into the scientific and political details that made up Joseph Priestley’s life, Johnson has written a book that is not only the story of a scientist, political advisor, and religious thinker, but also a meditation on scientific method, the importance of sharing discoveries, and the interconnectedness of all things.
It is one aspect of Priestley’s nature, his willingness to share and enjoyment of discussion, that comes across most clearly in the beginning of the book. We meet Joseph Priestley as he is making what may be the most important acquaintance of his life, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, among a host of others, will be the subject of Priestley’s “The History and Present State of Electricity”, a book that was destined to become a textbook that was (in one of many bits worthy of both exclaiming over and immediately sharing with the person next to you) in widespread use for nearly a century and even had a popular science version (also written by Priestley) destined for the general public. This experience neatly sums up much of Priestley’s character, his love of science and inquiry, his equal love of discussing science and inquiry with other experts in the field, and his talent and joy at being one of the people able to share the discoveries with others.
The letters that fly back and forth between Franklin and Priestley (or Priestley and anyone else) are full of theorizing that throws the considerable intellect of all of the correspondents at questions ranging from biology to physics to chemistry to the very beginnings of ecology and the interconnectedness of all life. Priestley even writes:
We may, perhaps, learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport. Read more
The Toymaker, by Jeremy De Quidt
It’s fairly common knowledge that Frankenstein didn’t end well for the Monster. In fact, tinkering about with nature is rarely seen as a force for good in literature. It’s no surprise then that the brooding, gothic atmosphere that haunts the pages from the very beginning of Jeremy De Quidt’s debut novel The Toymaker is an ominous foreshadowing of the doom that will follow any attempt to give life to the inanimate object, even when the object in question is something as initially benign as a child’s toy.
What good is a toy that will wind down? What if you could put a heart in one? A real heart. One that beat and beat and didn’t stop. What couldn’t you do if you could make a toy like that?
The events of The Toymaker take place in an unspecified European country, during some time in the past, where popular elements of children’s fantasy fiction like mysterious circuses, plucky orphans and gentlemen villains, exist side by side with more unusual creatures like automatons. The Toymaker begins with an introduction to Menschenmacher, a toymaker extraordinaire, who created wonderful creatures that moved and functioned like no other. The great and the good bought their toys from Menschenmacher for they were great status symbols; each toy was uniquely crafted and the tiny key that wound each toy would work for no other. Not even the most diligent toy connoisseur could comprehend just how unusual Menschenmacher’s toys were since he guarded his secret so well. His toys were no mere novelties; they were true automatons, fitted out with hearts removed from birds and small animals. But however magical these toys may sound, each one was tinged with sadness since “even little dolls with sparrows’ hearts sometimes remember they were sparrows once”.
Win six signed Robert Rankin books including his newest, Retromancer [closed]
We have a Christmas treat in store for you this week: to celebrate the release of his newest book, Retromancer, the lovely, festive-spirited people at Gollancz have given us five (as in five gold rings) sets of the following books, ALL signed by the Robert Rankin:
- Retromancer (hardback)
- Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (paperback)
- Witches of Chiswick (paperback)
- Knees up Mother Earth (paperback)
- The Brightonomicon (paperback)
- The Toyminator (paperback)
- The Da Da De Da Da Code (paperback)
- Necrophenia (paperback)
All of these spiffing titles have beautiful new covers with illustrations by the maestro of mirth himself. To win this corucopia of treasures and get your 2010 off with a bang, answer the following question:
No more submissions accepted at this time.In which London suburb are many of Robert Rankin’s far-fetched novels set?
- Chiswick
- Brentford
- Islington
Terms and conditions
- Closing date for entries: 4th January 2010.
- Open to residents of the United Kingdom only.
- Entry to the competition is by completion of the above form only. Anyone submitting multiple entries will be disqualified.
- The winners will be selected at random from those correct entries received before the closing date.
- Only the winning entrants will be contacted by Bookgeeks. The webmaster’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
- The winners names may be published on the Bookgeeks website after the closing date of the competition.
- The competition is not open to Bookgeeks contributors and their families, or to Orion Book Group employees and their families.
- “The hill road wound upwards, as hill roads do, unless you’re coming down them, of course.”
Simon P’s Books Of The Year 2009
The It’s Good To Have You Back Guys Award
Thomas Pynchon and James Ellroy both did stirling work in shaking off the cobwebs with Inherent Vice and Blood’s A Rover respectively, but the award must go to Iain Pears for Stone’s Fall. Ten years after his fantastic An Instance Of The Fingerpost (probably the book I have given as a present more than any other) Pears revisited his favourite time-shifting, viewpoint changing structure to tell an epic story of the life and death of a turn of the century industrial baron. It builds brilliantly to a devastating climax.
The Mummy I’m Scared, Do I Have To? Award
I bow to few in my love of The Baroque Cycle, a 1,200 page epic about codebreaking, piracy and the rise of money across 17th century Europe. I was therefore excited about Neal Stephenson’s new one. That it turned out to be a seemingly longer book about a future society controlled by secular monks means I am now the proud owner of £25 door stop. My fault for being a wimp for sure, but life really is too short for 928 – that’s nine hundred and twenty eight – pages worth of secular monks isn’t it? Isn’t it?
The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing In The Mind Award
Well of course this could have been Richard Dawkins’ latest meisterwerk The Greatest Show On Earth, but is instead a much smaller book – at least in size. Lewis Wolpert’s Why We Live And How We Die is an incredible journey through the structure of cells and is a story that is at once hugely complex and beautifully simple. Slip one in the stocking of someone who still thinks there is such a thing as chi.
The Actually It Was Like This Award
Mark Thompson’s The White War was the incredible story of a long forgotten front in the First World War. Voodoo Histories nailed the idiocy of widely held conspiracy theories that perpetually plague and corrode current political debate. But the award goes to Peter Preston’s We Saw Spain Die, an account of the lives and experiences of reporters and novelists during The Spanish Civil War.
2009 was the 70th anniversary of the fall of the Republic and still its story resonates in our murky blurred world as a story of easily identifiable political good vs evil. Certainly liberals of many stripes still fantasise over whether they would have had the moral cojones to join the International Brigade or file copy from a bombed out hotel in Madrid. This is an incredible story of the people who really did.
The Who Would’ve Thunk It Award
Who could’ve predicted that young adult horror fans would have titles as good as The Forest Of Hands And Teeth and The Enemy to get their zombified teeth into? But my biggest surprise was Luke Haines’ Bad Vibes, a scabrous account of a never quite made it pop groop doing battle during the Brit Pop Wars of the early 1990s. Haines is a clever, self-absorbed bloke but is also very aware of the chips he carries on both shoulders and how despite himself, he is in love with the thing he most despises. The results will be chastening for anyone wanting a career as a minor pop star but hilarious for everyone else.
The Old Reliables Award
Alan Furst’s The Spies Of Warsaw was another beautiful variation of the same faberge egg he has been polishing for twenty years. The same yet different to all his others, it is a wonderfully atmospheric pre War story of wrestling conscience. Robert Wilson wrapped up his terrific series about Sevillano detective Javier Falcon in dramatic fashion in The Ignorance of Blood and Jo Nesbo cruised to the top of the Scandi Crime League with The Redeemer.
But once more it is Boris Akunin who takes the biscuit. Not this time with either of his two excellent Erast Fandorin books, The Coronation or She Lover of Death, but with the last part of his frankly weird Sister Pelagia trilogy. This is because Pelagia and the Red Rooster is marvellously strange and quite the oddest and most unsettling crime book I have read all year. Akunin really is quite unlike any other author at work today.
Book Of The Year: The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
Yes I know the year in question is 1940 but West’s tragi satire, set among a motley crew of lost souls just about clinging on to their own Hollywood dream, gets right to the essence of our times more than any contemporary book I can think of. It nails our morbid obsession with empty celebrity as driven by boredom, self-loathing and a desparate need for sensation in a way that is equal parts horrific and hilarious. If that’s not enough, The Day Of The Locust gave the world a lead character called Homer Simpson. Much as I love The Simpsons I’ll take this one as saying something profoundly funny about 2009.
Sandman: The Dream Hunters, by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell
Along with Alan Moore’s Watchman and Frank Miller’s Sin City, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is one of the most popular, as well as the most critically acclaimed, comic book series of all time. With a distinct lack of burly men in tights and voluptuous women in neon spandex jumpsuits, The Sandman was in the vanguard of titles published in the late 1980s and early 1990s that sought to break away from the traditional conception of comics through darker, more relevant storylines and so to appeal to a wider, more sophisticated audience. The Sandman follows Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, as he escapes into the modern world after spending seventy years in captivity. Having avenged himself on his captors, Morpheus sets about rebuilding his dream kingdom. As Neil Gaiman has summarised, “The Lord of Dreams realises that one must change or die, and makes his decision”.
Having run for seventy-five issues, The Sandman concluded in 1996 and is now available from Vertigo Comics in a series of ten trade paperbacks or four fabulous re-coloured slip-cased hardback Absolute editions. In 1999 Neil Gaiman returned to the world of The Sandman with The Dream Hunters, a novella illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano that told the tale of a love affair between a Buddhist monk and a fox spirit. The Dream Hunters was tangential to The Sandman comic book series and only featured a small role for Morpheus. Although Gaiman had originally claimed that the fable at the centre of The Dream Hunters was taken from Y.T. Ozaki’s Old Japanese Fairy Tales, it has since been revealed to be an original work of fiction. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Sandman, P. Craig Russell adapted The Dream Hunters into a four issue miniseries for Vertigo which ran from November 2008 until February 2009 and which has now been collected into an excellent hardback graphic novel.
Soldiers of the Queen, by Stephen Manning
Soldiers of the Queen is something of an ambitious concept from the outset. Not only does Manning promise to cover every major conflict embarked upon by the British Army during the reign of Queen Victoria, but in order to do so he draws upon an exceedingly impressive catalogue of first-hand accounts. Using this kind of primary source would be challenging enough if an author was covering a single war, however to pull together so many wide ranging regions and times would appear at first glance to be all but impossible.
The level of research put into this book is a credit to Manning’s enthusiasm for the vast project. From the mid 19th Century conflicts of the Crimea and China, to the veldt of South Africa in the 1st and 2nd Boer Wars, Manning pulls together a wide range of written sources into a fascinating and extensive piece of work. Not only does this volume cover the fighting itself, Manning also successfully breaks down the prose into well-considered chapters.
Read more
Monster Republic, by Ben Horton
Monster Republic by Ben Horton is the first book in a new science-fiction/techno-thriller action series for young adults. Full of explosions, weaponry, gadgets, battles, fury and outsider kids fighting to save the world, Monster Republic is bound to be a big hit in the difficult Boys 12+ market and in particular with fans of Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series and Charlie Higson’s Young Bond books.
At the beginning of Monster Republic, Cameron Reilly was one of those kids whose school years actually were the best times of their life; popular, handsome, captain of the football team and dating the prettiest girl in the school, Cameron had everything going for him. He was also a good guy and it was this laudable characteristic that was to ultimately land him in a whole heap of trouble. During a school trip to the Broad Harbour Nuclear Power Plant, Cameron spots school bully Carl tormenting a younger child and rushes forward to help, unwittingly placing himself directly in the path of a devastating explosion that suddenly rips through that area of the Plant.
They That Dwell In Dark Places, by Daniel McGauchey
If you’re fond of classical ghost stories such as those penned by MR James, the Benson brothers and other British masters of the genre, here’s good news for you. Habemus papam: we have found a worthy heir of that long gone tradition, today a bit out of fashion in the heterogeneous small world of dark fiction.
For some reason the name of this scottish writer, Daniel McGachey, has taken a while to stick to my memory, but when his debut collection reached my hands, I recognized him as the author of some excellent stories I had already enjoyed in a number of previously published anthologies.
Gone, by Michael Grant
Michael Grant’s Gone begins with a familiar teenage fantasy, a world where the adults have just disappeared:
For a moment he thought he had imagined it, the teacher disappearing. For a moment he thought he’d slipped into a daydream.
Sam turned to Mary Terrafino, who sat just to his left. “You saw that, right?”
Mary was staring hard at the place where the teacher had been.
But, Sam hadn’t imagined it, the teacher was gone, as were the policemen, the firefighters, the parents, and anyone else in Perdido Beach fifteen or older. The rest have been left: in schools, in cars that suddenly crashed, in charge of younger siblings, searching for a reason for the disappearance and fearing that the separation may be permanent.
Gone is one of those novels where the plot depends on a number of revelations and twists for much of its energy, so discussing what happens in the book is a dangerous prospect. However, the plot is tight and, though some of the explanations seem far fetched in the *real* world, all resonate with the reality that is present in the book and the characters that live within it. Grant does an excellent job balancing the tension that the mystery of the disappearance creates with the struggle that daily life without adults becomes. The characters are looking for reasons, but they are struggling to survive as well, and much of the story follows them as they plan, pick sides, and discover just how isolated they really are. Read more
The Duff Cooper Diaries, edited by John Julius Norwich
I like a diary. There’s something about immediacy that gives a different type of insight into people and events. Why do they do it? Motivations differ. Some diarists keep a weather eye on history’s judgment, while others settle scores with self justification often near the surface. One thing they have in common is that great diaries all require the diarist to reveal himself to the reader.
Fortunately there continues to be a fair bit of revealing and there is a treasure trove of modern-ish diaries to explore. Tony Benn’s endless entries and Alan Clark’s Rabelaisian efforts are fun, as are Alan Bennett’s and Michael Palin’s for different reasons. The best for me though, remain Field Marshall Alanbrooke’s WW2 diary and Noel Coward’s golden age diaries, which are good, old-fashioned, fly-on-the-wall accounts of high politics and impossible glamour. The Duff Cooper Diaries combine the best of Alanbrooke, Clark and Coward, and tell the story of a man who was at various times a socialite, War Minister, First Sea Lord, Ambassador to France, author and upper-crust, gambling, womanising drunk.
What an absolute hoot it is. Magnificent set pieces about world events and behind the scenes debauchery, bear testament to a vanished age of power and privilege. Even better, the usual motives of self-vindication, score settling and profit making are largely absent because Cooper didn’t want them published as he didn’t want his wife and son to read them. Understandable really, given the amount of roistering and indeed doistering he gets up to. It seems Cooper just wanted to keep a record of a life lived to the full. Good work, fella.
Read more
The Cardinal’s Blades, by Piere Pevel
Everybody loves dragons, or so it sometimes seems – the last few years have brought us Christopher Paolini’s mamoth-selling Inheritance Cycle, whose third volume was a publishing event almost on the scale of Harry Potter; Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series (the Napoleonic wars with added dragons), and the start of a new fantasy series in Stephen Deas’ The Adamantine Palace starring, you guessed it, lots of dragons. So you might think dragons have been, ahem, overdone, but Pierre Pevel begs to differ. The Cardinal’s Blades is what happens when you take swashbuckling adventures in the France of the Three Musketeers, and throw in the aforementioned dragons.
Actually, that’s doing Pierre Pevel a major disservice, because what he has done here is really rather clever: there are dog-sized, unintelligent, dragonnets, kept as pets, and wyverns, that humans have tamed and trained to carry them aloft – but in this, the first book of this series, we don’t ever get to see a proper dragon. That’s because the dragons are more than just big, gold-obsessed reptiles with an image problem – they have, over hundreds of years, learned to hide among and even interbreed with humans. In Pevel’s Europe, the dragons have come to dominate the Court of Hapsburg Spain, and extended their influence to many other corners of Europe – but the France of Louis XIII has so far resisted them, thanks to the wiles of one of Europe’s greatest statesmen of the time, the sometimes sinsister but never unprepared Cardinal Richlieu.
The Secret Symbol: The Original Masonic Documents Behind Dan Brown’s New Bestseller, by Peter Blackstock
Here is an oddity of a book, the kind that we only really get when a Dan Brown book or film remake comes out – Brown’s unique mastery of drama fiction matched equally by “the real story”.
It is hard to fault this book, in that it does what it says on the cover. But do not be fooled by the carbon copy Dan Brown graphics. This is as far removed from his conspiratorial roller coaster world as you can get. As it does say on the cover, the book is a word for word copy of the rites of Masonry, together with other experts from Masonry’s past on the theory of what the rites actually mean. This is a book clearly compiled or reprinted (I could not work out which) to cash in on a monster that is The Last Symbol.
In the book, the documents date from the mid-eighteenth century, with some reputed to be from ‘ancient times’. That rather special Mason Benjamin Franklin features heavily as does George Washington and his rather dashing apron . But as any Freemason will (or rather shouldn’t) tell you the rites and the meaning thereof are nonsensical – their meaning lost to time and circumstance and the wording antique. Perhaps they meant nothing in the first place.
We Need to Talk About Kelvin, by Marcus Chown
Wow, what can you say apart from “great title!”. Move beyond that, though, and this is a fantastic piece of popular science writing. Marcus Chown has a real talent for explaining complex scientific ideas to the layperson, and his latest offering employs the premise of using everyday observations of the world around us to explain why deeper scientific truths must indeed be a reality (and also why we take for granted some fairly remarkable things).
As in his previous book, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, there is a focus on quantum and atomic physics and how these things interact with the larger forces (for example gravity) that we instinctively understand. As in the previous book, I would say that for me, the most challenging ideas are in the first few chapters. Describing the dual nature of light as both a particle (which is infinitesimally small) and a wave (which, relatively speaking, isn’t), Chown explains that an electron emitting light waves is as surprising as opening a matchbox and a 40-ton truck emerging. Colourful comparisons such as this litter the book, and they certainly engage in a way that more prosaic descriptions could not hope to.
The American Future, by Simon Schama
This is a powerhouse of a book.
The crux of the book is that to understand the future we must look to the past. What we get is a series of interlocking biographies and episodes that illustrate, perfectly, one of Schama’s viewpoints about the history of the American ethos. We drift and rush through time and space, following the election campaign of Obama to the clearing out of the Cherokee. Though at times his prose is too flowery, the jump too great, Schama has the knack of bringing you along with him – of disorientating you and then putting you right back on his track.
The book and the stories therein are divided into four sections. War, Fervor, Internationalism and Wealth– the four horses of the American struggle. Fervour here interlocks the American experience of faith, racism and slavery – all ways in which to divide people into categories. Schama ends with now and the concerns of the day, plus the hopes of the new flowering of democracy after its decade of slumber. Thus we see in the final chapters the success story of water management in Las Vegas (and the flip side of the forced migration of Indians to barren desert). We see the oil magnate turning to production of wind farms. Most of all, just under the surface of every page is the figure of Obama. The hope of a nation and also of history is on those shoulders.
Broken, by Karin Fossum
This intriguing, daring novel is marketed as crime fiction (by which I mean it looks and feels as if it belongs in that genre) and is written by one of Norway’s leading crime novelists, but though a pivotal crime is committed, it radically subverts all generic expectations. Broken sets its post-modern stall out early: the novel begins with a haunted, borderline-alcoholic author surveying a disparate group of sorry individuals queuing on her front lawn. That these are potential characters, the subjects of as yet but mooted stories, becomes clear when one of them enters her house in the night, sits by her bed and demands that he should be permitted to jump the queue. This framing device becomes an opportunity to meditate on the lonely, obsessive nature of the writer’s profession, the fundamental importance of characters as the prime movers behind stories and the almost schizophrenic bonds of empathy that authors form with them.
The “man” that forces his way in, forces the author to confront the story she has in mind for him, is a solitary, dependable, prudent repressed homosexual who revels in his job as an art gallery assistant and diligently saves his Krone despite the fact that he is convinced he will die, as his father did, in his fifties. He relishes and is skilled in conducting his professional interactions but never forms any social relationships because he is unwilling to engage beyond perfunctory pleasantries.
Retromancer, by Robert Rankin
Along with Terry Pratchett, Robert Rankin was one of the staples of my teenaged reading life – my younger self could regularly be found chortling at the adventures of Pooley, O’Malley, Professor Slocombe, Hugo Rune, Cornelius Murphy and Tuppe. Rankin’s idiosyncratic idiom, pun-laden prose, eye-catching titles and surreal plotlines were a joy to me, especially the inaccurately named Brentford Trilogy, which ended up as five books. Then, unlike Pratchett, I rather grew out of Rankin’s oeuvre – and Retromancer is the first book of Rankin’s I have read for quite some time. It’s really rather good.
Retromancer is a tale of Hugo Rune, the seemingly immortal know-it-all, freeloader extraordinaire, and his young acolyte, Rizla. Rizla is actually the teenage incarnation of that Brentford layabout Jim Pooley, and when he awakes one day to find his beloved Brentford subtly altered in numerous disturbing ways (Bratwurst for breakfast at The Wife’s Legs Cafe?), only Huge Rune can provide the answers and suggest the means to put history right, and reinstate a world where the Nazis did not win World War II by nuking America.
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