Author: David Hebblethwaite

Finch (2009) by Jeff VanderMeer

3rd December 2009 / / 1 Comment

In his latest novel, Jeff VanderMeer brings us a mystery in which Detective John Finch — whose name is not John Finch, and who isn’t a detective (or so he keeps telling himself) — investigates a double murder. One of the victims is a man who can’t possibly be a murder victim, whilst the other is a gray cap—

If the term ‘gray cap’ is unfamiliar (and even if it’s not!), welcome to Ambergris, the setting of VanderMeer’s City of Saints and Madmen (2003) and Shriek: an Afterword (2006), which, together with Finch, form a cycle of novels – though it’s not necessary to have read the previous two (and I’d say Finch makes a pretty good entry point). I am in the awkward position of remembering enough about City and Shriek that I didn’t come to the new book cold, whilst having forgotten enough that I know I missed some things in Finch, and can’t really give a proper assessment of the Ambergris Cycle as a whole. That’s where I started from, anyway.

Finch is set a hundred years after Shriek, at a time when Ambergris has been taken over by the gray caps, the inscrutable fungoid people who previously lived beneath the city. Spores that could do who-knows-what (or who-dares-imagine) to you proliferate, such that it’s a bad idea to go around barefoot, because you never know what you’ll step on. Some of the human population are held in camps, others kept docile with fungal drugs; but there are those who’ve their lot in with the gray caps to become half-human, half-mushroom ‘Partials’ – and there are rebels, led by the mysterious Lady in Blue, though she hasn’t been heard of for six years. And there are those like John Finch, a human in the employ of the gray caps, just trying to make their way through this world as best they can.

And these are difficult waters to navigate because, as in any good mystery, there are secrets, deceptions, and masks aplenty in Finch, not least those of the protagonist himself. ‘John Finch’ is an identity he created to hide that of the person he was before the Rising of the gray caps; and, despite his profession, Finch still doesn’t feel comfortable thinking of himself as a detective. To be fair, he doesn’t get very far with actual detecting in the novel, as most of the other characters seem to know more than he does, and are keen to reveal their knowledge to Finch only on their terms, not his. The motives and intentions of the gray caps are as mysterious as ever… all of this keeps the pages turning, no question.

Something else that keeps the pages turning is VanderMeer’s compelling prose. The style of an Ambergris story has always been significant, and Finch continues that trend. This novel is written in spiky, clipped prose that often gives an impression of restlessness, of wanting to get on to the next bit. For instance:

Inside, a tall, pale man stood halfway down the hall, staring into a doorway. Beyond him, a dark room. A worn bed. White sheets dull in the shadow. Didn’t look like anyone had slept there in months. Dusty floor…

This noir-inflected idiom is in sharp contrast to the lush, flowing styles I’ve associated with previous Ambergris books; but of course it’s entirely appropriate to the setting: Ambergris is a meaner, grimmer place than it was, so the voice that tells its stories naturally has a harder edge. VanderMeer’s writing is still vivid and striking (such as his idea of the ‘memory hole’, a revolting, organic way of delivering messages), but the colours of his palette are subtly different in Finch; for example, there’s more action this time around (or it’s more prominent than it was) – and it’s very effective action at that.

VanderMeer’s style in Finch also makes the telling feel more direct, which is something of a double-edged sword. On one hand, this novel is revealing things about the nature of Ambergris that the first two kept hidden, and the style plays into that aim. On the other hand, I can’t help feeling that some of the otherworldliness is lost, that some of these extraordinary revelations become a little too matter-of-fact in the telling. I also can’t help wondering if the pace is just that bit too brisk, resulting in a similar effect.

The characterisation of John Finch is another aspect about which I have reservations. In a very real sense, we don’t know Finch; and he’s often acted upon rather than being the actor himself. These can make it hard to see him as an individual, and I don’t think that VanderMeer always manages to overcome that. When he does, though, it makes for some powerful moments. For example, there’s the time when Finch is pleading with his lover, Sintra, to tell him something about herself – not out of idle curiosity, but because he’s desperate for something in his life to be real, and he wishes it were her. At times like this, one feels the burden of living in a world of secrecy.

In the end, then, I don’t think that Finch is entirely successful; but it is an interesting – and gripping – fusion of noir and fantasy. It takes unexpected turns, and ends at a point that may seem too early in some ways, but is actually quite appropriate – because it’s the point at which the story of Finch can no longer be told, and the style of Finch can no longer tell its story. But Jeff VanderMeer can go on telling his stories; and I hope he does, because they’re like no one else’s.

Snow Patrol @ Palace Theatre, Manchester, 29 Nov 2009: Culture Revival review

2nd December 2009 / / 0 Comments

I went to see Snow Patrol at the weekend, and what a great night it was. A brilliant performance, and even a surprise guest appearance by Elbow (it was as much a surpise to Snow Patrol as anyone else). My review of the gig is now up at Culture Revival, and you can read it here.

Video: ‘Just Say Yes’ (live)

Spoiler warning?

1st December 2009 / / 4 Comments

This post is about the inclusion (or otherwise) of spoilers in reviews, and was partly inspired by two posts on the subject (here and here) by Paul Kincaid (‘partly’ because I’ve had these thoughts in my mind for a while anyway, without writing them down; and also because this is not intended to be a direct response to Kincaid’s thoughts).

I don’t like spoilers in reviews, and I try to leave them out of mine; but there’s an issue, I think, over what exactly constitutes a spoiler. In my view, revealing plot points or character developments does not equate to spoiling per se; it depends on why a reviewer makes the revelation. I think that a review should try to illuminate the work under discussion, to enrich the reading experience for someone else; and I’ve been known to go as far as quoting the final sentence of a text, with that aim in mind.

What a review shouldn’t do is detract from the reading experience; if it does, that’s what I’d call a spoiler. But here we tread in uncertain waters because, as Kincaid says, people read books in different ways, and what may be a major revelation to one reader may be something another reader has seen many times before. I’ll try to set out my view by using a specific example – The Lord of the Rings.

Is it a spoiler for The Lord of the Rings to say that, by novel’s end, the forces of Sauron are defeated and the One Ring destroyed? I would say not (except perhaps for the most inexperienced of readers), because it’s a convention of this kind of story that “the heroes” will triumph – we expect it to happen, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that it does.

Is it a spoiler for The Lord of the Rings to say that Gollum, not Frodo, is the one ultimately responsible for destroying the Ring, or that the hobbits return to the Shire to find it ruined? I would say yes, because these are events which, to an extent, subvert our expectations of what will happen. Equally, though, there may be readers who would be happy for these to be revealed as illustrations of some of the book’s themes.

Is it a spoiler for The Lord of the Rings to say that Frodo’s resolve is tested whilst he bears the Ring, or that the ultimate defeat of evil is more problematic than the characters could suspect?. These comments hint at the points made above without stating what happens outright; and this is the kind of thing I prefer to do in my reviews. I don’t think these are spoilers, though of course others may disagree.

In the end, we all have to decide where to draw our own line when it comes to spoilers. Personally, I’d be wary of revealing major developments, even if they did help explore a point; but I’m also interested in testing the limits of what I think it’s acceptable to reveal. I would always hope, though, that what I write about a book will not spoil it for anyone.

Robert Holdstock, 1948-2009

29th November 2009 / / 0 Comments

Very sad news: as reported by David Langford, Robert Holdstock, author of the World Fantasy Award-winning Mythago Wood, has died at the age of 61. I’ve read only a couple of his books, but enjoyed them venry much; and, when I met him briefly at one Fantasycon, he was as friendly a person as he was good a writer. This is a sad day for literature in general, and the fantasy field in particular.

Links: 25th November

25th November 2009 / / 2 Comments

Okay, this is my first attempt at doing a links post. Hopefully, over time, these will become more frequent, and the links more numerous; but, for now, you may find these pages of interest:

  • Adam Roberts reviews Transition by Iain Banks, and doesn’t think much of it.
  • Niall Harrison reviews three books, and reminds me that I really need to get around to reading The Ask and the Answer.
  • Lija from The Writer’s Pet interviews David Vann.
  • A few months old, but well worth reading: John Grant champions the good stuff.
  • Gav from NextRead asks what reviews are good for.
  • And, finally,  just because: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as you’ve never heard it before.

Two Stories: Nightjar Press

23rd November 2009 / / 3 Comments

‘What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night’ (2009) by Michael Marshall Smith
‘The Safe Children’ (2009) by Tom Fletcher

Nightjar Press is a new venture by the writer Nicholas Royle, specialising in individually-bound short stories. They’ve launched with two titles, one by a well-known writer, the other by a newcomer. Very handsome volumes they are — and, more importantly, the stories are also very good.

The well-known writer is Michael Marshall Smith, whose name is pretty much a guarantee of a good read, and ‘What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night’ is no exception. It’s narrated by a little girl named Maddy who hates the dark, so (she tells us) made a deal with her mummy that she could keep the light on all night, as long as she didn’t disturb her parents. But tonight, Maddy has woken up in darkness; what’s happened to her light?

The first thing to say about this story is that Smith gets Maddy’s voice pitch-perfect: with all the breathless sentences and repetitive structures, it feels as though this is a small child addressing us. And it’s the naiveté of Maddy’s viewpoint which is key to the success of the story. It becomes clear as the tale progresses that something strange is happening — and, all credit to Smith, it was something I didn’t see coming.  But we get some idea of what’s going on, even though Maddy doesn’t; the gap between her knowledge and ours generates great poignancy. It was with something of a wry smile that I closed the book, having read Maddy’s final words: ‘Mummy and Daddy do not talk much any more, and this is why, if you wake up in the night, you should never ever get up out of bed.’ There’s a lot going on behind that sentence which I can’t reveal without spoiling the story — and I’d hate to deprive anyone of the superb reading experience I had with Smith’s tale.

Nightjar’s second launch title is the beautifully harsh ‘The Safe Children’ by a young new writer named Tom Fletcher. Set in western Cumbria, it follows James Thwaite as he travels to his new job as overnight security guard at a factory which makes… well, that’s a secret. The plot leads towards the revelation of the factory’s purposde, which is appropriately nasty — but that revelation isn’t enough, by itself, to make the story stand out.

What does make this tale stand out for me is Fletcher’s prose, the way he captures the fundamental bleakness of his setting. The story is set in the near future, and perhaps its main theme  is that of the promise of a shiny new tomorrow versus the failure of reality to deliver. Here, for example, is how James describes his train to work:

All of the seats are ripped; all of the tables are black with cigarette burns. Somebody is playing music on some portable device and it sounds like an insect trapped behind glass. The train moves slowly. I just stare out at the sea. Some things haven’t changed at all.

There are flashy, hi-tech trains and suchlike in this future world, but only in rich areas; where James lives, a couple are lucky if they can afford for both to eat at the same time — and the only hint of that shiny tomorrow is the shimmer of wet sand on the beach. The real horror of ‘The Safe Children’ is not the factory itself, but the socio-economic conditions that allowed it to come into being, and made people desperate enough to take jobs there.

Fletcher’s story is not without its flaws: the background details aren’t always integrated as naturally as perhaps they ought to be; they end up feeling ‘crammed in’, as though the story doesn’t give them enough space. Overall, however, ‘The Safe Children’ is an effective piece that marks Fletcher out as a writer for whom it’s worth keeping an eye out; he has a novel due to be published next year, which is now on my to-read list.

Also on my to-read list is anything that comes from Nightjar Press; if all its publications are going to be as good as these, they’ll need reading.

Pump Six and Other Stories (2008) by Paolo Bacigalupi

19th November 2009 / / 1 Comment

I have heard a lot about Paolo Bacigalupi, much of it good; and I thought it was about time I got acquainted with his work. I’ve started with what built his reputation – his short fiction. Pump Six is a collection of ten stories, presented in chronological order of publication, and dating as far back as 1999. From reading it, I’ve discovered that (with a few reservations), Bacigalupi’s work deserves to be spoken of so highly.

Right from the start, Bacigalupi shows himself to be a writer of great texture; he knows just how to bring his worlds to life. Here, for example, is an extract from the book’s very first page, describing the construction of a new ‘biologic city’, which is being grown as much as built:

It grew on lattices of minerals, laying its own skeleton and following with cellulose skin. Infrastructure strong and broad, growing and branching, it settled roots deep into the green fertile soil of the Sichuan basin. It drew nutrients and minerals frmo the soil and sun, and the water of the rancid Bing Jiang; sucking at pollutants as willingly as it ate the sunlight which filtered through twining sooty mist.

(‘Pocketful of Dharma’)

Time and again, Bacigalupi captures this disorientating sense of the future’s being alien-and-yet-not. And the futures he creates are typically under stress: a problem from now stretched into a crisis and beyond, until it shapes the world. So, in ‘The Tamarisk Hunter’, water shortages mean there’s a bounty on the stuff, and good money to be made by anyone willing to seek out the plants that store large amounts of it. In ‘The Calorie Man’, the problem is energy: with traditional sources (presumably) depleted, we have turned entirely to biofuels. In this world, crops have effectively replaced money, so even the smallest amount of energy is expended with caution – and the scale and structure of society have naturally been affected by this.

A particularly harrowing example of Bacigalupi’s futures is the world of ‘Pop Squad’, whose key problem was one of population. The solution was ‘rejoo’, a technique which halts the ageing process – with the side-effect of infertility. But who’d want to reproduce, when they could be immortal? Some still do, apparently, even though it’s illegal and (effectively) a death sentence – but there are ‘pop squads’ for dealing with the results of that.

This piece is a very effective portrait of a pop squad member questioning his assumptions. Bacigalupi’s control is superb, as the tale progresses from the initial shocking moment, through the growth of the protagonist’s doubt (though the ending doesn’t have quite the same impact). I also appreciate Bacigalupi’s refusal (as I see it) to reduce the issue of rejoo to a simple choice between good or bad (though I think the story is more of the opinion that it’s a bad thing). Leaving aside the issue that the utterly reprehensible pop squads were created because of it, there are both advantages and disadvantages to accepting or rejecting rejoo; and ‘Pop Squad’ is a stronger story because of that.

Another characteristic common to a good number of the stories in Pump Six is that they show how people have become distorted by what’s happened to the world, and often in ways that are deeply troubling to us. We see this in the protagonist of ‘Pop Squad’, and also in the altered humans of ‘The People of Sand and Slag’.  In this tale, environmental change has precipitated the development of ‘weeviltech’, which enables people to heal from even extreme injury (severed limbs can just grow back), and  to eat rocks and mud – but their mentality and ethics have become so far removed from ours that reading about them is a highly discomforting (though powerful) experience. It’s not really necessary for Bacigalupi to have one of his characters ask ‘If someone came from the past, to meet us here and now, what do you think they’d say about us? Would they even call us human?’ and another reply, ‘No, they’d call us gods,’  because the narrative itself makes the same ironic point forcefully enough. But it’s an arresting point all the same.

Bacigalupi’s characters with alien mentalities don’t all reside in the future. ‘Softer’, the one non-sf story in the collection, is narrated by a man who has just killed his wife – they were in bed, she nudged and chided him for not doing  the dishes, he retaliated with a pillow, and… well, there you go. What’s so chilling about this story is that the narrator is so casual about what he’s done; and that he convinces as a character, even though his thought processes are unfathomable.

And it’s not just minds which are transformed in these stories – so are bodies. ‘The People of Sand and Slag’ is one example, of course; but the physical transformation is perhaps even more dramatic in ‘The Fluted Girl’. Here, we find a society which has organised itself into fiefdoms, one of which is ruled by Madame Belari, an actress with ambitions to become an entertainment mogul, as it were.

Her star attractions are Lidia and Nia, twins whom Belari enslaved as children, and forced to undergo treatments that arrested their physical growth, sculpted their bodies, and left them with brittle bones. It’s the slow, elegant unveiling of the situation that makes this story work, along with the subtextual examination of the desire for ‘fame at any price’, and the effect it may have on others.

‘The Fluted Girl’ is hardly a rosy vision; but there’s a kind of cautious optimism towards the end, with the possibility that Lidia might be on the way to breaking out of her present circumstances. And this is an example of something else that features in several of Bacigalupi’s stories: characters and lives on the cusp of change.

Take, for instance, ‘Pump Six’, a somewhat uneasy but interesting fusion of two different kinds of sf story. It starts off reading something like a spoof of old-school sf, wherein our narrator has a few casual digs at the women in his life, then tries to work out why one of his city’s sewage pumps isn’t working – then the tale mutates into something rather more solemn, and we discover that this world is not as we thought it was. I don’t think ‘Pump Six’ is entirely successful – for example, the protagonist’s dismissive attitude towards women doesn’t get the comeuppance it warrants, which makes its inclusion more problematic – but I was certainly surprised where (I assume) I was meant to be surprised; and, in that sense, the story does its job just fine.

What can I say about the stories of Pump Six as a whole, then? They don’t make for easy or light reading; yet they’re not unwelcoming, either. They are snapshots of worlds and people in the midst of difficult times – one might even say at times that difficulty has become a way of life – but not without a sense of resilience. Life (or at least the world) goes on. I’m glad I discovered the work of Paolo Bacigalupi; if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend you do the same.

Three of the stories from Pump Six are available to read on Paolo Bacigalupi’s website:

‘The Tamarisk Hunter’

‘The People of Sand and Slag’

‘The Fluted Girl’

The Little Stranger (2009) by Sarah Waters

15th November 2009 / / 7 Comments

The Little Stranger is my first Sarah Waters book, and one about which I’ve heard mixed opinions. But the proof of the pudding is, of course, in the eating (or, in this case, the reading) – and, wouldn’t you know, I’ve ended up with a mixed opinion myself. Thinking about it, though, that’s quite appropriate; because this is, in a quite literal sense, a mixed book.

Our narrator is one Dr Faraday, a GP in rural 1940s Warwickshire, who becomes involved with the affairs of the Ayreses, a family struggling to keep the estate of Hundreds Hall, going; just as they’re struggling to find a place in the modern world. A series of strange events — the family dog biting a young girl, a mysterious fire, and yet others — puts the household under further strain. The occurrences become stranger still: is there a rational explanation for it all, or could Hundreds Hall be haunted?

The Little Stranger is, then, at once two things: a ghost story, and a portrait of the decline of the landed gentry in post-war Britain. Its problem, I think, is that these two aspects sit awkwardly together — and, at times, may even work against each other. As an evocation of a point in history, I find the novel to be very good: Faraday’s rather stiff narrative voice places the reader effectively in the period — I, for one, never caught a whiff of anachronism — and Waters lays bare some of the pressures (social, economic, and otherwise) at work; be they pressure on the Ayreses to sell off land for property development, of the awkwardness and difficulty of moving between social strata, as Faraday did when he became a doctor.

No, it’s the ghost story which is problematic. Waters keeps things ambiguous — which would be fine, except I can’t quite believe in the ambiguity. For it to work, both the rational and supernatural explanations must be plausible and implausible at the same time. The rational explanations put forward by Faraday and others achieve this: they’re plausible enough to account for what’s reported (Faraday never witnesses anything unequivocally supernatural himself); yet they also seem increasingly strained attempts to explain unusual events away.

The supernatural explanations, however, don’t have the same duality. I can believe, from the evidence in the text, that Hundreds Hall isn’t haunted supernaturally; but I can’ t quite believe that it could be. The house is described as decaying, but it never feels (to me) to be as though it’s more than just a decrepit old house — it never feels truly malevolent. And that makes it hard for me to believe that we’re (possibly) dealing with a haunted house.

But there’s more to this than ‘the ghost story doesn’t quite work’, because the issue cuts to the very metaphoric heart of The Little Stranger. I think Waters is trying to set up a structure where the ‘haunting’ of Hundreds Hall is a reflection of the way that the house has become a millstone around the necks of the Ayres family — in other words, the ghost-story aspect of the novel and its decline-portait aspect should intertwine, should work in harmony. However, since the ghost story isn’t as strong, statements like, ‘This house has sucked the life out of [us]…It wants to destroy us, all of us’ (spoken by Roderick Ayres, the son of the household) come across as heavy-handed attempts to drive the metaphor home (I suspect this statement might seem heavy-handed anyway, but it’s particularly so given the circumstances).

I’m not sure how well the ‘haunting’ fits in general as a metaphor for the family’s misfortune, actually. Hauntings perhaps best represent acute problems — exorcise the ghost, and healing can begin. Yet the Ayreses’ troubles are fundamentally chronic: they’re caused by social changes, for which there can be no ‘exorcism’. So, instead of going hand-in-hand with the tale of decline, too often the ghost story seems like a distraction from it. All of which is to say that The Little Stranger doesn’t work for me as an aesthetic whole.

Yet there are still ways in which the novel does succeed. To give one example, I’ve mentioned its historical portrait; to give another, Faraday is an interesting creation, by turns both a rounded individual and an empty vessel. Sometimes he’s barely there, just a window through which we can view the events at Hundreds Hall; yet the halting growth of his attraction to Caroline Ayres (the daughter of the household) takes a convincing course. In some respects, Faraday mirrors the Ayres family, as his life too is threatened by changes in society (he fears that the coming National Health Service spells the end for private practice); and, in the end, he becomes so bound up with Hundreds Hall that Faraday can be seen as ‘haunting’ the place himself, in a way.

That was my first Sarah Waters book, then: how did it go? I don’t think she achieves everything she set out to in The Little Stranger; but what she does achieve suggests to me that Waters is a very good writer when at her best — so I’ll be reading more of her work in the future.

In This Way I Was Saved (2009) by Brian DeLeeuw

11th November 2009 / / 0 Comments

In his début novel, Brian DeLeeuw brings us a story about two boys. One of the boys is real, while the other isn’t – but you may have a hard time deciding which is which. Our narrator is Daniel, who met Luke in the playground, when the latter was six. Luke is the only person who can see him; yet Daniel seems no common-or-garden ‘imaginary friend’, having apparently attained consciousness. Daniel returns home with Luke, to find a household under strain: Luke’s mother, Claire, is fragile, still affected by her own mother’s suicide; when an incident brings matters to a head, she leaves, taking Luke with her.

One day, Claire has a surprise for Luke – she’s bought him a pet dog. This new friend starts to take Daniel’s place in Luke’s life, so much so that Daniel finds his very self disintegrating. In a bid for survival, Daniel tricks Luke into poisoning the dog with some of Claire’s medication. She, of course, doesn’t believe her son when he says that Daniel told him to do it, and takes Luke to see a psychiatrist. Soon after, Luke is able to restrain Daniel, eventually locking him away inside his head, for twelve whole years. But, when Luke is eighteen, Daniel re-emerges – with his own ideas of what Luke should do, who Luke should be.

In This Way I Was Saved is quite a difficult book to evaluate. How do you judge characterisation, for example, when you can’t even trust that the narrator is – well, is, full stop? Well, let’s see: DeLeeuw has created a chilling presence in Daniel, a narrator who’s just that bit too knowing, whose voice is that bit too articulate. Not to mention that his opinions are also pretty vile; Daniel has little patience for humans and their messy emotions: when Luke finds a girl in whose company he can relax and forget his cares, Daniel just takes the view that Luke is being insincere – and the situation Daniel then engineers is not a pleasant one. As a portrait of such a cold individual, the book is a great success.

Yet there’s ambiguity here, too, as it’s possible to read Daniel as being entirely a product of Luke’s delusion. This is a more difficult reading to make, because the narration naturally invites us to view Daniel as a separate entity; and I’m not sure that the novel sustains its ambiguity through to the end. But it’s fascinating to read a scene and see it happening in two different ways simultaneously; DeLeeuw interweaves the possibilities well. The reading of Daniel-as-delusion also deepens the book’s portrait of people and lives unravelling; it’s harrowing for characters and readers alike.

In This Way I Was Saved is not without its flaws. I feel a sense of distance in the progression of the plot – as though it’s happening rather than being made to happen – which I think arises because neither Luke nor Daniel is able to truly drive the story directly. Nevertheless, I am impressed with what DeLeeuw has done in his novel. It’s easy to assume, from the first few pages, that you know who Daniel is and what has happened. I read most of the book thinking, it can’t be that simple – and, happily, it’s not.

No more of that, though, for it’s the road to spoilers. To conclude: In This Way I Was Saved is an intriguing puzzle of a book which takes you into a mind that’s not a comfortable place to visit, but that visit is compelling all the same. Whose mind is it, though? There’s a question to ponder…

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