Author: David Hebblethwaite

Christopher Fowler, Full Dark House (2003)

5th March 2011 / / 4 Comments

My second choice for the Great Transworld Crime Caper, and one that was always going to be on my list. I enjoyed Christ Fowler’s seventh Bryant & May mystery last year, and was interested to find out what the earlier ones were like. Now I’ve gone back to the beginning with Full Dark House and… well, perhaps I’m just being difficult, but now I wonder what it would have been like had I read this one first!

But there is a sense in which reading the first book out of order makes a difference to how one perceives it, because Full Dark House begins with Arthur Bryant apparently dying in an explosion that destroys the offices of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Except there are more books (set in the present day) featuring Bryant & May and the PCU following on from this, so something more than meets the eye must be going on. Knowing this meant that a certain amount of suspense was inevitably lost to me, or at least turned into something else. This was also, of course, the book that had to introduce the characters of Bryant & May, and establish their partnership – but I already knew them from Bryant & May On the Loose, and felt that I didn’t appreciate all this as much as I might have. Of course, it’s impossible to say; but it does highlight how my opinion of this novel might be affected simply by what I’ve read previously.

The main plot of Full Dark House takes place not in the present day, but at the time of the Blitz, when the rational, nineteen-year-old John May joins the PCU, partnering with Bryant – three years his senior, and of a mindset much more befitting the Golden Age of detective fiction, seeking elaborate and fanciful explanations that draw on obscure knowledge. The two investigate a series of strange murders in a London theatre which is preparing to stage a production of Orpheus in the Underworld. The cast are being picked off one by one; does it have anything to do with the faceless figure rumoured to haunt the building?

One of the things that struck me most about Bryant & May On the Loose last year was the interplay between the Golden-Age and more modern styles of detection (as exemplified by the contrasting approaches of the two protagonists): it wasn’t a case of one triumphing over the other; both were given their chance to shine. It’s the same in Full Dark House: appropriately enough for the time and place (though Bryant fears the time of Holmesian detection has passed, wartime London is presented as somewhere that could still believe in the extraordinary, because the times were extraordinary; and the theatre itself is a kind of luminal space between the outside world and the inner ‘reality’ of the stage), resolving the mystery requires a combination of both approaches. Once again, I’m intrigued by Fowler’s series, and will be reading more.

Links

Full Dark House blogged elsewhere: Fleur Fisher; Ms Bookish; The Book Jotter; Mel’s Random Reviews.

Christopher Fowler’s website

Arthur C. Clarke Award 2011: The Shortlist

4th March 2011 / / 13 Comments

The speculation was fun (though I was only a third right), but now the real journey begins, as this year’s Clarke Award shortlist has been announced. It’s a fascinating and exciting list:

Lauren Beukes, Zoo City (Angry Robot)

Ian McDonald, The Dervish House (Gollancz)

Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men (Walker)

Richard Powers, Generosity (Atlantic)

Tim Powers, Declare (Corvus)

Tricia Sullivan, Lightborn (Orbit)

(Links above are to reviews of mine.)

Some general thoughts: I’m glad that sf by women has made such a strong showing on the list. It’s good to see such a diversity of publishers, and I like that four of the authors are first-time Clarke nominees. It’s also an interesting combination of nationalities (four American writers, one from the UK, one from South Africa).

I’ve said all along that The Dervish House was a dead cert for the shortlist, and so it has proved, giving McDonald his fourth Clarke nomination (though he has never won). It’s also no surprise (in a good way!) to see Zoo City and Lightborn nominated – both fine sf titles from last year; Lauren Beukes gets her first Clarke nod, and Tricia Sullivan her third (one of which led to a win, for Dreaming in Smoke in 1999).

The other three novels on the list are perhaps more unusual nominees, and therefore deserve a little more introduction here. Monsters of Men is the third volume in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy, which – rarely for the Clarke Award – is YA fiction. Regardless of this, the Chaos Walking books are well worth the time of adult readers; it’s a pleasure to see this excellent series gaining such recognition.

Richard Powers is an author who has been on the barest fringes of my consciousness; I’m not even sure whether or not he is routinely identified as a writer of science fiction (not that it matters, of course). Generosity, in which the genetic basis for happiness is discovered, sounds interesting; and Paul Kincaid’s glowing review at Strange Horizons makes me even keener to read the novel.

Declare is probably the most surprising novel on the shortlist, because it dates from as far back as 2000. Tim Powers has been out of print in this country for many years, but his alternate-world Cold War spy novel finally received its first British publication last year, which made it eligible for the Clarke. It comes with a strong reputation (it won the World Fantasy Award, for one thing), and I very much look forward to reading it.

***

On a personal note, the shortlist presents me with ‘interesting’ questions over how to blog it, because I’ve read four of the books but only actually reviewed two of them. Zoo City and The Dervish House are already written up, and linked to above. Generosity and Declare are new to me, so those books will be my priority. And the other two…

I took part in the Torque Control discussion on Lightborn last December, and it was clear to me at the time that I lacked the frame of reference to do the novel justice. I probably still don’t have the frame of reference, but I would be interested to return to Lightborn in light of the discussion, and see what more I can find.

I’ve read all three of the Chaos Walking books, but only reviewed The Knife of Never Letting Go because, though I liked the later volumes, I didn’t feel I had enough to say about them. At this stage, I honestly don’t know whether I will revisit Monsters of Men, as these are all pretty hefty tomes, and I don’t know whether I’ll have time for all of them. We shall see.

***

Finally, some thoughts on the shortlist as a whole. The overall quality of the list strikes me as very high indeed. If I wanted to demonstrate to someone the vibrancy, vitality and quality of sf as a literary form, I could hand them the books on this shortlist. I also think that – perhaps more so than is usual for a Clarke shortlist – these books go well together as a set; I think we’ll find some interesting commonalities and contrasts to discuss amongst them. I look forward to seeing how those discussions unfold as we count down to the announcement of the winner on 27th April.

UPDATE, 28th April: Read my thoughts on the winner here.

Angus Wilson, ‘Realpolitik’ (1949)

3rd March 2011 / / 1 Comment

The bureaucratic new curator of a gallery (brought in from outside after the death of its owner) calls a staff meeting to discuss his plans, and ruffles more than a few feathers in doing so. I want to like this story more than I do; in conception, it feels remarkably modern — it could be set in the present day with few alterations. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be all that much to it: it’s a portrait of old and new ways clashing, and a stubborn man who doesn’t realise what effect he has on others; but I found nothing  — no particularly sharp insight, no turn of phrase, and not the sting in the tail — to lift it above run-of-the-mill.

Rating: **½

Evelyn Waugh, ‘Mr Loveday’s Little Outing’ (1949)

2nd March 2011 / / 8 Comments

Angela goes to visit her father, Lord Moping, in the asylum, to find another of the inmates, a Mr Loveday, acting as his ‘secretary’. Observing his apparent sanity, Angela contrives to have Loveday released — and then…

The dark humour of this tale reminded me of Dylan Thomas’s story in the anthology, though I don’t think it has quite the same range and depth of effect as that other piece. This was my first encounter with Waugh’s work, and I am certainly interested in reading more by him.

Rating: ***½

Notable books: March 2011

1st March 2011 / / 2 Comments

This month’s list of forthcoming books that have caught my eye.

Kevin Barry, City of Bohane

This novel of a near-future Ireland has been on my list of books to investigate ever since I first heard about it. After reading a sample chapter when the book was selected for the Waterstone’s 11, I was left undecided as to whether I wanted to read the whole thing; but I will be keeping an eye on its reviews.

Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination

An interesting concept — pain and illness begin to produce light.

Stuart Evers, Ten Stories About Smoking

I’m intrigued by this book for a number of reasons, from the mere fact that it’s a debut short story collection appearing from a mainstream publication, to its packaging (designed to resemble a box of cigarettes), and the fact that I’ve followed Evers on Twitter for some time and been curious to see what his work is like.

Tom Fletcher, The Thing on the Shore

Fletcher is, in my view, one of the most exciting new horror writers around. I’ve loved everything I have read by him so far; naturally, then, I’m keen to read his new novel.

Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife

This enigmatic-sounding novel would have caught my interest even had it not been selected for the Waterstone’s 11; that I liked the sample chapter so much has only increased my interest.

Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

Theme parks, alligator-wrestling, an affair with a ghost… sounds delightfully odd, and therefore right up my street.

Conrad Williams, Loss of Separation

Williams is another key horror writer, consistently excellent as far as I’ve read him; I’m very much looking forward to reading his new novel.

Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

Another of the Waterstone’s 11 that went straight on my to-read list, and one for which the quality of the sample chapter was the deciding factor.

February wrap-up

1st March 2011 / / 0 Comments

A new month begins, so here’s a look back at what appeared on this blog during the last one.

Book of the Month

I should read non-fiction more often, and I’d love it to all be as good as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot’s wide-ranging account of how one woman’s cancer cells became, unbeknownst to her family, a key tool in modern medical science. It was the best book I read in February.

Reviews

Full-length reviews:

Shorter write-ups:

… and my blogging of Volume I of The Oxford Library of Classic English Short Stories continued.

Features

Some notes on diversity

28th February 2011 / / 2 Comments

This Guardian article by John Mullan, published in advance of Saturday’s Culture Show special on debut novelists, has attracted a fair amount of comment in my corner of the bookish internet; I’ll point you in particular towards posts by Maureen Kincaid Speller, Mike Harrison, and Sam Kelly (thanks to Martin Lewis and Paul Smith for highlighting those links). More from me after the programme has been broadcast, but there is one issue I’d like to address here, which is that all twelve of the novelists selected by Mullan’s panel are white. This has been remarked upon in the comments on the Guardian piece, and Mullan has replied that the judging panel were asked to select books solely on merit. Fair enough, but there is still an issue here.

We are talking about a field which can claim Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro as key figures of the last thirty years; by now, we should be at a stage where we could expect the results of a meritocratic process like this to show some ethnic diversity as a matter of course. The Culture Show‘s process has organically produced a selection which is respectably diverse in terms of gender and age; that it has not done the same in terms of ethnicity is a sign that there’s a problem somewhere. Whether the outcome is an artefact of this particular process or an indicator of something more systemic, I don’t know; either way, it is a cause for concern. I suggest that it would not have been considered acceptable if all the selected authors had been of the same gender; it shouldn’t be acceptable that they’re all white, either.

***

I blogged last year about an issue of Black Static in which all the stories were by men; having been critical then, it’s only right and proper that I should acknowledge the good work being done in the latest issue. As well as two of the five stories being written by women, the entire book review section has been given over to works by women, as has Peter Tennant’s Case Notes blog for the month of February. Here’s a fine example of a literary institution noticing an issue with its field, and doing something to address it.

 

The obligatory Clarke Award speculation post

28th February 2011 / / 3 Comments

It’s that Clarke Award time of year again, and the list of submissions has been published over at Torque Control, in advance of the shortlist being announced this Friday. Fifty-four titles submitted, and it looks a pretty comprehensive list to me – I can’t think of any books I’ve read that have been undeservedly omitted; and the only other title of which I can think that perhaps should be there Walcot by Brian Aldiss. But it’s a very good pool all the same.

In terms of what may appear on the shortlist, it is a very open field this year. There’s only one title I’d consider a certainty to be shortlisted, and that is Ian McDonald’s excellent The Dervish House. The rest is wide open, though I’d imagine that some titles are more likely to reach the shortlist than others.  Before I make my prediction of the shortlist, I’ll go through what strike me as some of the more notable or unusual submissions.

Chris Beckett’s The Holy Machine has had a rather ‘interesting’ publishing history, and only received its debut UK publication last year, despite being originally published in 2004. I haven’t read any of Beckett’s novels, but his short fiction is excellent, and I’d imagine this book is a strong contender.

It’s left to each year’s Clarke jury to decide what constitutes ‘science fiction’ and a ‘novel’; perhaps no title amongst the 2011 submissions would have tested those parameters more than Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty, a semi-fictional history of the Soviet planned economy. It has been highly regarded, but will the judges have considered it valid for the Clarke Award?

Joanna Kavenna’s The Birth of Love, Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, and Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming are all mainstream-published titles which I meant to get around to reading last year but never did. They’ve had mixed reviews, so I’m not sure how the judges will have viewed them; but, if there are going to be any wildcard entries on this year’s shortlist, I suspect these three are the most likely candidates.

Tom McCarthy’s C of course made the Booker shortlist. It’s debatable whether it can be read as sf, but it would certainly be an interesting addition to the shortlist.

Of all the submissions, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl is the one I’ve previously tried to read and given up on doing so; I just couldn’t get into it. I’m sure it is no coincidence that the book is set in the same world as the story in Pump Six with which I struggled the most. I will give it another go at some point, though; and that’ll be sooner rather than later if it makes the Clarke shortlist.

China Miéville, of all authors, can’t be ruled out of Clarke contention; but still I’d be surprised to see Kraken on the shortlist. I think its claim to being science fiction (rather than fantasy) is more tenuous than for any of his other novels, and too tenuous for it to be a contender. Never say never, but I don’t think it’s likely.

What do I think may be on the shortlist, then? A combination of wishful thinking and what I know of the books and their reputations leads me to suggest the following:

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl

Chris Beckett, The Holy Machine

Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

Adam Roberts, New Model Army

Tricia Sullivan, Lightborn

Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

If you’d like to make your own guess, you can do so here, where anyone who guesses correctly by Wednesday night will win a copy of the entire shortlist.

Behind the scenes at The TV Book Club

27th February 2011 / / 2 Comments

Last week, I and several other book bloggers (Simon from Stuck in a Book; Claire from Paperback Reader; Keith from Books and Writers; and Cherry from Cherry Mischievous) were invited to watch an episode of The TV Book Club being filmed – the episode that was broadcast tonight, in fact. This is my little account of the day.

The sofas and chairs of the TV Book Club studio are directly opposite the set of Saturday Kitchen, and it was in front of that programme’s counter that we sat to watch the filming (doing so was what really brought home to me how small the space is; though the actual set of The TV Book Club seemed relatively large from where I was sitting, there really isn’t much more outside of what you see on screen). Two episodes were being filmed that day, and we saw the second – which was actually the first in order of broadcast. So, whilst I would have loved to witness the discussion of Even the Dogs in person, I shall have to wait until next week; today was the turn of Michael Robotham’s Bleed for Me.

Filming of the programme ran more or less in ‘real time’, and the broadcast result was not much different  from what we saw in the studio (apart from the editing-out of the moment where the panel gave too much away about the murderer’s identity in Bleed for Me). Nigel Havers was an excellent guest – great to see someone so enthusiastic about books; Val McDermid’s film, in which she interviewed her forensic anthropologist friend, Sue Black, was interesting; and the discussion engaged enthusiastically with Bleed for Me.

After the filming, we were taken to the gallery to see some of the production work, and then to the green room, where a celebration was held for the birthday of one of the production team. I also had the chance to speak to presenters Jo Brand, Dave Spikey and Meera Syal. All in all, a fine and interesting day; many thanks to The TV Book Club for inviting me along.

Photo courtesy of Specsavers: Our Intrepid Hero peruses Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; Keith and Cherry are in the background.

Links

The other bloggers’ posts on the day:

Keith

Claire

Simon

Cherry


W. Somerset Maugham, ‘Episode’ (1947)

27th February 2011 / / 1 Comment

A young student falls in love with a postman, much to the consternation of her class-concious parents. Just as they are warming to him, however, he is imprisoned for theft — and the girl resolves to stand by him, whatever the consequence. ‘Episode’ has an effectively abrupt ending; but, on the w’hole, I don’t find it nearly as satisfying as Maugham’s previous entry in the anthology.

Rating: ***

Archives

Browse posts by author, original language of book, or post category

© 2025 David's Book World

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑