The Maid, by Yasutaka Tsutsui
Yasutaka Tsutsi’s The Maid takes the reader into the minds of the ordinary: the lacivious husband, the desperate to stay young wife, the family that despises cleaning. It follows the growth of a young girl who has always been able to hear the innermost longings and thoughts of those around her. It questions what it really means to know someone, and the terrible things that can hide behind the facade of everyday life.
We travel through everyday Japan with Nanase, a girl who can hear the thoughts of others. This extra sense neither excites nor inspires her. Instead:
Nanase could not recall when she first realized she had the power to read people’s minds. But not once during her eighteen years had she ever thought that it was a particularly unusual ability. She even felt that there must be a lot of people with this power, her logic being that anyone who could do this would keep it secret, as she herself had done.
Her first job takes her to a puzzle, a woman whose thoughts seem so shallow, so focused on the everyday, that Nanase cannot understand her at all. She is soon distracted from this mystery by the all too obvious thoughts of the rest of the family: the father reliving extra-marital conquests, the daughter flaunting transgressions, and the son, where the danger for Nanase lays, lusting after the pretty young maid his mother has just hired. Nanase’s response to these threats is to flee. In fact, she continues fleeing in the next story, running from too much flith and hatred. Read more
On Monsters, by Stephen T. Asma
Late on in Stephen T. Asma’s On Monsters he concedes that “one will search in vain through this book to find a single compelling definition of monster.” As he goes on to say, this is not because he forgot to include one, but rather because he does not think there is one. What qualifies as a monster in this chronological study, is simply that which has been considered as such by the age in which it appeared or indeed by subsequent ages. If this seems like a perilously loose definition, then it is one from which the book benefits. Rather than attempting an encyclopaedic account of monsters through the ages, Asma instead gives us a cultural history. He presents us with a fascinating look at the perennial human response of fear, focussing on the various manifestations it takes. These manifestations, from the mythical beasts of ancient legend up to the terrors of contemporary news reports and beyond, provide a prism through which to view shifting cultural backgrounds.
Hex Hall, by Rachel Hawkins
Rachel Hawkin’s Hex Hall stars Sophie Mercer, a girl who finds herself coming into the powers of her half-witch heritage and getting into enough trouble with a love-potion-gone-wrong that she is sent to the magical equivalent of reform school. Hecate Hall (or, as it is not so fondly known to its students, Hex Hall) is a place where it is safe for Sophie to be a witch, but where her abilities to practice the magic that is her heritage are severely curtailed. And, what is a guaranteed way to encourage teenagers to do something? Why, forbid it, of course. And Hex Hall’s emphasis on the terrors that face any witch, fairy, wizard, or other discovered by the “normals” doesn’t dissuade a bit of magical investigation on the part of its student body.
The strongest element of Hex Hall is the characters. Sophie Mercer is, above all, a teenager. Her non-Gifted mother has done her best to raise her, but Sophie’s one rebellion too many (the love potion was only the last in a long line of unfortunate attempts at magic) has landed her at Hex Hall with the rest of the “freaks”–but these freaks, while they may be witches, warlocks, or fairies, are still recognizable for what they are at the core–teenagers at a boarding school far from home. Although some of the students are only sketched in broad strokes, Sophie’s voice comes through loud, clear, and often hilarious:
Now, Sophia, would you care to tell me why you’re here by the pond instead of reporting for your next class?”
“I’m experiencing some teenage angst, Mrs. Casnoff,” I answered. “I need to, like, write in my journal or something”
Sophie’s reactions to life keep that quick and teenage voice shining through, whether she is furious at her mother for hiding things from her or pining after the cutest boy in school, Archer Cross. She’s neither a perfect student (see: her attitude) nor some sort of caricature of what a teenager might be like (see: crush on cute boy) and so her adventures feel believable because her reactions are natural and unforced. Read more
Ten copies of Blood Ninja to be won! [closed]
Thanks to the lovely people at Corvus, we have ten copies of Blood Ninja by Nick Lake to give away. Here’s the lowdown:
A fisherman’s son is snatched from home to fulfil his true destiny in this thrilling novel of ancient curses, warring emperors, forbidden love…and blood-sucking ninjas. Taro is a boy from a coastal village in rural Japan, fated to become a fisherman like his father. But in just one night, Taro’s world is turned upside down – and his destiny is changed forever. Skilled in the art of silent and deadly combat, ninjas are the agents of powerful nobles who rule sixteenth-century Japan. So why did a group of these highly trained assassins creep into a peasant’s hut and kill Taro’s father? And why did one ninja rescue Taro from their clutches, saving his life at enormous cost? Now on the run with this mysterious saviour and his best friend Hiro, Taro is determined to learn the way of the ninja to avenge his father’s death. But if they are to complete their perilous journey, Taro must first evade the wrath of the warring Lords, decipher an ancient curse, resist forbidden love – and come to terms with the blood-soaked secrets of a life lived in moonlight.
To be honest, they had us at blood-sucking ninjas! Our own Simon Appleby is reading this book now, so expect a review very soon, but in the meantime, if you want to win one of these rather spiffing paperbacks, with black-edged pages and a cover designed by the same clever people who have done album art for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, answer the following question correctly.
Real England: The Battle Against the Bland, by Paul Kingsnorth
An impassioned rallying cry against the increasing homogenisation of the world around us, Paul Kingsnorth’s book at once engages and enrages. The quest for ‘real’ England takes Kingsnorth on a journey throughout Britain. En route, he meets both campaigners fighting to save things precious to them and the corporate officials whose policies are resulting in the ‘blandification’ (to coin a phrase) of Britain, a series of encounters which give the book its structure and its vitality.
An effective communicator, Kingsnorth evokes both what he loves – an ancient apple orchard, the Oxford Canal – and what he loathes. The shiny surrealism of the vast Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent is described with the shrewd, observant eyes of a visitor from another planet. Bluewater is, he realises, a place where ‘Everything is controlled.’
Secret Son, by Laila Lalami
Secret Son, which has just been longlisted for the Orange Prize, is the first novel by Moroccan-born Laila Lalami, who has previously published a collection of short stories. Youssef El-Mekki, nineteen, with dreams of becoming a film star, lives with his mother in a one-room shack cobbled together from corrugated metal and plastic sheeting in Casablanca’s impoverished and makeshift Hay An Najat district. His father died before he was born and his mother is held in quiet contempt by the neighbours. Worse still, Morocco’s economy is decidedly moribund and though Youssef is a good student, there seems little prospect of him finding a job once he graduates. In a development that seems symbolic of Youssef’s dreams fading away, a severe flood wrecks the local cinema and a Islamic political organisation know as “The Party” takes over the building instead: they continue to show films, but insist on contextualising them after the credits roll.
When Youssef learns from his mother that his father is not only alive, but also very rich, he tracks him down at his office and confronts him. His father, whose daughter and sole legitimate child is studying abroad, warms to him and installs him in his penthouse secretly, giving him an allowance and finding work for him in one of his hotels. However, Youssef can only be maintained in this way while his father’s wife remains unaware of his existence, and his fragile, newly-charmed life, suspended between two extremes in a deeply divided country, leaves him open to betrayal and exploitation.
The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole
The Castle of Otranto is gothic, romantic, terrifying, and unbelievably over the top. It is one of those books that seems to exist beyond its pages because of the influence it has had on the literature that followed. It is worth reading on its own merits, though, and it is possible to feel the thrill of the voluptuous and hyperbolic language that serves to create an atmosphere (at least for this reader) of almost equal parts hilarity and horror–easily demonstrated in the first pages with a terrifying death and, well, feathers.
Oh! my Lord! the Prince! the Prince! the helmet! the helmet!”
Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily, – but what a sight for a father’s eyes! – he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.
It is possible that the feathers were supposed to be a chilling detail, a sort of connection to crows, ravens, and other black-feathered birds of ill-omen, but their “proportionable quantity”, while it could add to the image of dark and doom that the helmet evokes, also evoke the floppy feathers often found on women’s hats, and this combination of deep terror and unintentional hilarity continues for the rest of the novel. Read more
Win Celine Kiernan’s Moorhawke Trilogy – each book as it’s published [closed]
Bookgeeks’ Jennie Blake liked The Poison Throne, the first volume in Celine Kiernan’s Moorehawke Trilogy, so much that she wrote:
The plot is complicated, the details evocative, the characters compelling and fully drawn, Kiernan has created a world that fascinates and written a novel well worth reading and then re-reading, in order to make the wait for its sequel seem a least a bit shorter.
Well readers who want to try it can enter our competition and know that, for the winner, the wait for the sequels will be as short as possible: the first prize here is a copy of The Poison Throne now, and copies of The Crowded Shadows and The Rebel Prince sent to you as soon as they are published later in 2010. Three runners-up will receive copies of The Poison Throne.
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s sixth novel translated into English centres around a curious conceit: throughout the story, Kemal, the narrator, periodically draws the reader’s attention to certain objects – a clock, a letter, a teacup, or even a cigarette butt – and explains why he is choosing to display or exhibit them. Each one evokes a fleeting memory or feeling, they are physical footnotes to a life-defining affair. For mementos to have meaning, something must have been lost, so it is clear from the very beginning that we will watch a tragedy unfold. What’s more, this hoarding and cataloguing of objects betrays an obsessive edge to the love on offer – possession being nine tenths of it – that suggests that tragedy was an inescapable outcome.
Kemal is a member of Istabul’s extravagantly wealthy elite, betrothed if not yet formally engaged to Sibel, who is from a less affluent but still respectable family and is admired for having studied in Paris. In 1970s Turkey, where the story begins, sex before marriage is still very much taboo for women, but Sibel is willing to defy tradition with Kemal so long as she is assured that they will marry and soon. A few months before the engagement party, Kemal encounters Fusan, who works in a upmarket boutique and is a distant cousin of his. In a confused wrangle over a gift for Sibel that needs to be returned to the shop, Kemal and Fusan agree to meet at an unused apartment owned by Kemal’s mother, where they kiss and, the next day, where Kemal takes or she offers him her virginity. A relationship begins under the cover of maths tuition, but soon Fusan is seeking assurance that Kemal is not also sleeping with Sibel. When Kemal invites her to the engagement party, Fusan learns from employees of his company of his trysts with Sibel on the couch in his office, resigns from her job at the boutique and vanishes without trace from his life.
Celine Kiernan
Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Celine Kiernan (website) has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. Trained at the SullivanBluth Studio’s, her career as a classical feature character animator has spanned over seventeen years. She’s spent most of her time working between Germany, Ireland and the USA.
Celine wrote her first novel at the age of eleven, and hasn’t stopped writing or drawing since. She has a peculiar weakness for graphic novels as, like animation, they combine the two things she loves to do the most: drawing and story telling. Bookgeeks’ Jennie Blake recently reviewed her forthcoming novel, The Poison Throne, and loved it, so we thought we would ask her about what makes her tick as a writer, and how she has found the process of being published.
Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds
Two aspects of this book have provoked immediate comment: a colleague saw Terminal World sat on my desk and commented on the bleak title. Bleak, of course, is what Reynolds does as well as anyone in the SF sphere – entropy, decay, decline and annihilation are his stock in trade. The second aspect was the choice of Bernard Cornwell to provide the jacket blurb – the doyen of historical fiction, bigging up hard SF? It makes perfect sense, when you think about it – Reynolds’ fans will buy this book anyway, but praise from an unexpected direction may attract new readers who have not even considered science fiction. If they do pick it up, this is not a bad book for them to cut their teeth on.
Terminal World eschews space travel completely for the declining dystopia that we presume to be a far-future Earth. Society is fragmented, with Mad Max-like tribes battering against the walls of what’s left of civilisation: Spearpoint, the last human city. Spearpoint is far from united, though – the monstrous spire, so clearly illustrated on the cover of the book, is home to millions of people, from the low-tech denizens of Horsetown at its base to the Angels who inhabit the Celestial Levels at its zenith. This technological apartheid is not merely a function of society or a metaphor for how things are on our own Earth: it’s determined by the zones, interlocking areas in which the maximum complexity that can be achieved by technology is different – take an electrical device from a higher to a lower zone and it will be broken, forever. Humans can move between the zones with the aid of special medicines, and to the inhabitants of Spearpoint and the rest of this world, the zones are just a fact of life, something to accept and cope with. They no more understand them than they have the ability to really understand the technologies they use – this is a fading society and a fading world.
Homer & Langley, by EL Doctorow
EL Doctorow has been at the forefront of American fiction for the best part of 40 years, telling epic stories of America as it was forged in the early part of the 20th Century. Ever since The Book Of Daniel in 1971 Doctorow has mashed up fact and fiction, told of an America shaped for good and ill by the extremes of rampant wealth and rampant criminality. Ragtime in particular is a magnificent take on a country built by robber barons, Tammany Hall politicians and spat-wearing gangsters. Nowadays this is the stuff of all writers great and small but back then no-one had done it to any great effect since the great John Dos Passos and his masterwork, USA.
What then to make of Homer & Langley? Once again it’s the story of the making of America as seen through the prism of specific lives. But this time it’s very small and very specific. Here the march of time is viewed from the window of a Fifth Avenue mansion by two reclusive, snobbish brothers. Homer & Langley Collyer were real life, folk-loric hermits who lived and died amid the chaos of a lifetime’s obsessive hoarding of clutter. Indeed both were found dead in 1947 amid mountains of cardboard, one brother crushed by the collapsed weight of a booby trapped tunnel leading to a secret cardboard room. The other brother, blind and paralysed, had apparently died of starvation a few days later. Next to the Model T Ford in the dining room. Really.
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Apartment 16, by Adam Nevill
With the exception of a handful of short stories consistently high in quality and spookiness, Adam Nevill’s singular voice has been quiet in the six years since the publication of his debut novel Banquet for the Damned, which was released as a collectable slipcased hardback by PS Publishing, and more recently in paperback format through the lamentably short-lived Virgin Books horror line which Nevill helmed.
Those years of whispering silence have been fruitful as his second novel, Apartment 16 (plus a third, in-progress), have been picked up by publishing giant Pan MacMillan – an occurrence that (hopefully) has all sorts of positive implications for the genre in this country. A BIG UK publisher buying titles by a UK author? Not something that’s happened since, well, since the days of Clive Barker, and before him, Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert (synchronistically Nevill’s stablemate in horror at Pan MacMillan). From that ‘golden age’ and all that’s gone between (most of it not so nice if you’re a UK-based horror fan or writer) to now is a big gap in time, so whether you like it or not, these facts make Apartment 16 an important novel, and Adam Nevill an important writer who, I’m happy to say, establishes his status amongst today’s outstanding creators of speculative horror with Apartment 16. Read more
The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo
So here we go with The Snowman - confirmation, if confirmation were needed, that Jo Nesbo is the new King of Scandinavian crime.
For those who recently completed their Stieg Larsson and need something equally toothsome, look no further than Nesbo’s Harry Hole books. For those underwhelmed by the new Henning Mankell, relax, there are five Jo Nesbo’s waiting. To Harry Hole aficionados, plump up a cushion, take the phone off the hook and get hold of something warm and red to drink – The Snowman is, if anything, the best of all the Harry Hole books to date.
In some ways this series shouldn’t work. Harry Hole is a crime fiction uber cliche – alcoholic, maverick, driven, damaged, anti-authoritarian. Yet in Nesbo’s hands he has become the single most compelling character in contemporary crime.
The first three Harry Hole outings saw fantastically plotted stories take place against the backdrop of an overarching saga of murderous corruption within the Oslo police force. Having rooted that lot out, no wonder last year’s The Redeemer felt a little slight in comparison. Enjoyable enough, but in reality a palate-cleansing pause for breath in Harry’s world. Now with The Snowman we’re right back into the thick of it, with Harry Hole pitted against Norway’s first serial killer. And the Oslo police force.
The Poison Throne, by Celine Kiernan
Wynter Moorehawke and her father have finally returned home. Called back after five years in the Northlands, they arrive exhausted and ill, desperate for healing and the sight of family and friends. But King Jonathon’s land is no longer the safe haven of Wynter’s memories, and the politics that ripple through the kingdom represent danger, betrayal, and choices that could lead to the deaths of everyone Wynter holds dear.
The Poison Throne is the first in a new trilogy and good enough to hold its own as a standalone novel and make the reader exceptionally happy that at least two more have been promised. The setting, an alternate, slightly fantastic, version of medieval Europe is evoked with exquisite detail, and Celine Kiernan has peopled it with characters that fit their world and fascinate the reader.
The focus of this novel is Wynter Moorehawke. Her exploration of the changes in the kingdom allow the reader to learn along with her, and her passionate defence of those she loves make her a compelling and compassionate window into her world. Fifteen years old, an excellent carpenter, and, above all, an adolescent girl, Wynter is protective of her friends and family and assured in the knowledge that she can navigate the world of the court. The reality is, of course, infinitely more complicated, but watching Wynter struggle and grow adds an everyday energy to a complex and original story. Read more
The Sixth Directorate, by Joseph Hone
The second of Joseph Hone’s Peter Marlow sequence is, like the first, The Private Sector, a worthy and compelling piece of seventies spy action – like John Le Carre, Hone is more interested in the psychological effects of the cloak and dagger game on its participants, and recognises that the banal outweighs the dramatic by some considerable margin. That doesn’t stop him from starting the book with an fanciful idea: the existence of a secret liberal faction within the KGB, the unofficial Sixth Directorate of the title, existing in secret alongside the five divisions known to their political masters.
As Head of the KGB Yuri Andropov closes in on the mysterious faction, he drives its leader to go on the run and sets in motion a sequence of events that causes Peter Marlow to once more be of value to the British Secret Intelligence Service. At the end of The Private Sector, Marlow was framed as a KBG mole. Now, four years later, he is extricated from Durham prison and taken to London to be briefed: because he has a similar background and a passing resemblance to George Graham, a KBG sleeper now in British hands, he is going to be sent to the United Nations in New York to impersonate Graham and unmask a Soviet spy ring.
Win a copy of Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds [closed]
There’s not much that generates as much excitement here at Bookgeeks Towers as a new novel from Alastair Reynolds – and we will bring you a review of Terminal World soon – but while you’re waiting, here’s a bit more about it and a chance to win one of five copies, courtesy of those lovely people at Gollancz.
Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different – and rigidly enforced – level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains . . .
Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon’s world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint’s Celestial Levels – and with the dying body comes bad news.
If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint’s base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon’s own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality – and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability.
The English Civil Wars, by Blair Worden
Terrific primer of who did what, when and to whom for an inexplicably underrepresented period of British history.
You would think the years 1640-1660 would be a perma-fixture on school curriculums and pulse through the collective cultural consciousness. After all the story has everything – a despotic King, impassioned parliamentary debate, a truly uncivil Civil War, the world turned upside down, religious radicalism, regicide and power’s corruptive influence on a country sliding into dictatorship. Then from the ashes of said dictatorship, reinstatement of the monarchy and, if you run the film onto 1688, bloody revenge by a useless King leading to said useless King hopping it on a moonlight flit, while a foreign royal family swans in at the request of, well, everyone. Oh and a legacy of representative parliamentary democracy that has lasted 400 years.
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years, by Sue Townsend
I wonder if it would perhaps be possible to divide people in to people who were older than Adrian Mole when they first read his secret diary, and those who were younger. The reason for this speculation is that I can’t help feeling it makes a profound difference to how you read and relate to Sue Townsend’s enduring comic creation: as someone who was perhaps a little younger than Adrian when I first encountered him, it had a major effect on my attitude towards the business of being a teenager – I was determined not to emulate Adrian’s more painful gaffes, or his intellectual pretensions. In short, I wanted to read about Moley, but never turn in to him. Years later, I can still recite Adrian’s seminal poem, ‘The Tap’ (as, it turns out in this latest volume, can his mother), I still remember what Sharon Bott would show you for 50p and a bunch of grapes, and I am still glad I am not Adrian.
At the end of the last volume, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, things were brought to a sort of closure, with Adrian settling down with the mother of his third child, Daisy, in a coverted pigsty next door to his still-awful parents. The intention for it to be the concluding volume to the saga was fairy clear, but Townsend has exercised her prerogative to change her mind, and I for one am very glad she did. In this latest volume, Adrian is approaching middle age, yet the positives in his life seem destined to turn sour: Daisy is tiring of her nerdy husband, his mother is determined to go on the Jeremy Kyle show and address the issue of his sister’s paternity live on national television, his kind-hearted employer is ill and the business is going badly, and worst of all, Adrian is diagnosed with prostate cancer (or prostrate cancer, as various well-meaning but ill-informed characters call it).
Sons of Thunder (Raven 2), by Giles Kristian
Former popstar turned novelist Giles Kristian really hit the spot with his debut, Raven: Blood Eye, and now the Norseman with the mysterious past is back for another outing – with added guts and gore. In his first book, Kristian out-Cornwelled the master of this kind of writing, but the challenge for any pretender to the throne is how to sustain the quality and plausibility of their characters’ adventures over the course of multiple volumes. Each new volume must have something new and interesting to sustain it, the backstory must build but never at the expense of the action, and there must be a sense of progression toward an ultimate goal. Well, watch out Bernard, watch out Conn, because Giles Kristian has covered all of these bases, and produced a novel that’s just a little more raw and energetic, somehow, than what has come before.
The storyline is a clear continuation from Raven: Blood Eye – our hero, part of the band of Vikings known as the Wolfpack, starts the second book in pursuit of the English noble, Earldred, who cheated him and his comrades out of promised loot, and who brought about the death of his own son. Accompanying the Vikings are an English monk, Egfrith, and Cynethryth, Earldred’s daughter, out for revenge on her father. What breathes fresh wind in to the sails of this Viking adventure is the author’s decision to send his protagonists in to the land of the Franks. After capturing Earldred and securing the holy relic he tried to keep from them, they decide to sell it to the King of the Franks, Karolus, better known to history as Charlemagne, who by this point was ruler of much of Western Europe, protector of the Pope and committed to furthering the spread of Christianity as part of his foreign policy. In short, not someone likely to offer a warm welcome to two shiploads of pagan warriors.
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Kat Falls
Kat Falls grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and now teaches at NU, where she is continually inspired by her students’ creativity. She started writing Dark Life as a writing exercise. Knowing that her 12-year-old son loved reading about the ocean, Wild West pioneers and, of course, the X-Men, she combined his interests and created the premise for a story that kept her up nights plotting and world-building.
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The Book That...
Johnny Mains: The Book I Would Like To Be Buried With…
The twenty first Bury Me… features young whippersnapper Johnny Mains, a man who has risen to notoriety in horror circles thanks to his enthusiastic resurrection of The Pan Book of Horror Stories.
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The Bookgeeks Competition
The Richard T. Kelly Column
Richard T. Kelly
Richard T. Kelly’s exclusive monthly column, in which he addresses various matters literary, writers and their books, the publishing business and his own experiences as a writer. Richard is a novelist, screenwriter, biographer and journalist, and you can read his column exclusively on our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk.Connect with Bookgeeks
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