More Than We Can Tell

 

I borrowed Brigid Kemmerer's More Than We Can Tell because it includes a teenager who makes her own online game, but unlike Slay, the online world plays only a relatively minor role in this story. This novel is a kind of sequel to Letters to the Lost, and the characters of Juliet and Declan reappear here. However, the novel centres on a different pair: reclusive, damaged Rev (aka the Grim Reaper, because he's always shrouded in a hoodie) and Emma, torn between her distracted computer geek father and her critical, driven doctor mother.

Emma's game features because she's being harassed by a player called Nightmare; she's also befriended by a supportive player called Ethan (we never discover if they are, in fact, the same person). Her parents' marriage is dissolving, and in the midst of all this, she strikes up a tentative friendship with 'weirdo' Rev. We learn that Rev has many reasons to be weird, mostly connected with his estranged, abusive father. These two defensive characters have to overcome their inner demons to help each other.

I quickly became hooked by More Than We Can Tell. It's a very YA novel; especially early in the book, I felt like shaking both Rev and Emma and urging them to just tell their parents how they were feeling -- it would have saved a lot of drama! But I can imagine adolescent readers gobbling up this tortured romance with a spoon. 

I think I was most horrified to learn about Lucky Charms, allegedly a breakfast cereal, eaten by Rev and his foster brother, which consists of MARSHMALLOWS and 'frosted oats.' It sounds horrific, and definitely not something anyone should eat for breakfast.

Slay

I originally borrowed Brittney Morris's 2019 novel Slay for research into role playing games (more on that later, perhaps), but it actually turned out to be a lively, nuanced story about race and identity. From the first page I was plunged into an unfamiliar Black American culture, which sent me scurrying to the internet for a crash course in terms like twist outs, Hotep and Ebonics.

Our protagonist Kiera has a secret life: after enduring racism in other video games, she has developed and runs a safe online community where thousands of participants duel using cards based on Black culture (skating over how plausible this is for a high school student with a lot of other commitments and a limited budget...) But when one of the players is murdered in real life, (white) people start to ask questions, and Kiera starts questioning herself. Is Slay a safe space, or is it racist and exclusionary? Is it a violent place, or a place of safety and support? Kiera's own vehemently pro-Black boyfriend is against the game, but he doesn't know that Kiera invented it.

Slay is a hugely engaging, pacy novel that confronts important issues in a complex and relatable way; it would make a brilliant class text. Not surprisingly, it's been immensely popular, and despite the necessary suspension of disbelief, I was totally caught up in it.

Ghost Wall

I saw Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss recommended by Penni Russon, who teaches it at uni, and instantly grabbed it from the library. Penni assured me I would love it, and I did. For such a short novel (less than 150 pages), it's incredibly powerful, weaving together questions of class and privilege, power, gendered violence, history and politics, into a seemingly simple but deeply charged situation.

Seventeen year old Sylvie is camping with her family, a handful of students and a professor, attempting to re-enact Iron Age lives -- fishing, foraging, hunting rabbits. Somehow the adult men end up doing the more exciting activities: hunting, drumming, constructing a 'ghost wall' hung with skulls to frighten the Romans away. Meanwhile, Sylvie and her mother, and the single female student, Molly, are stuck with washing the dishes, cooking, and searching for berries. But Sylvie's father, a bus driver with an unsavoury passion for what he imagines to be a more 'pure' British past, is simmering with frustration and the need to impress the professor, and violence is not far away.

Ghost Wall is a masterclass in tension -- even the first couple of pages are brimming with horror -- which builds like summer heat. References to the recently fallen Berlin Wall locate it in the early 1990s, perhaps a less informed time, when concepts like consent were not at the forefront of consciousness. Sylvie's dad is horrible, but he's also a fully rounded character, denied the privilege of a 'proper education' by entrenched class prejudice, trapped in a job that prevents him from spending time outside. I felt for her mum, too, walking on eggshells and longing for a 'sit down' (something Sylvie doesn't appreciate!)

Above all, Ghost Wall is shot through with the eerie presence of those former inhabitants whose lives the re-enactors are trying to imitate. This is a political and domestic novel, but it's also very creepy. Loved it, loved it, loved it.
 

A Company of Swans

I recently read another novel by Eva Ibbotson, The Countess Below Stairs, so I pounced on this ex-library copy of A Company of Swans. Originally published in 1985 as an adult romance (like The Countess), it was reissued in 2013 by Macmillan Children's Books. I feel this was a... dubious... decision. Certainly from the look of this cover, and the others in the Macmillan series, the casual browser would probably take A Company of Swans to be a conventional ballet book, a suitable follow-up to Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, or Lorna Hill's Sadlers Wells series. But it's not.

A Company of Swans is a sweet, frothy romance. Young adults could definitely read it in safety, and no doubt that was what Macmillan intended. However, to my eye, it is clearly marked and packaged as a children's book: a children's book that features, as the kids say these days, 'some spice.' We have brothels, seduction, naked breasts and an instance of heartbreaking child neglect. It also has an exotic setting -- South America in 1912 -- with some potentially awkward colonialist overtones. However, overall, it's a delightful romp, with a noble hero, a kind, determined heroine, and an array of stiffly respectable adversaries whose defeat is a joy to witness.

I think I know exactly what to expect from Eva Ibbotson now, and I'm looking forward to reading more.
 

Song For a Dark Queen

I read quite a lot of Rosemary Sutcliff in high school, and I vividly remember the 1977 TV series of The Eagle of the Ninth. Sutcliff's books usually portray Roman Britain from the Roman point of view, but Song for a Dark Queen for once shows events from the other side. Song For a Dark Queen is told by Cadwan, who is Boudicca's Harper and therefore close by her side throughout.

This is a slim novel (I found it in a street library), less than 200 pages long, but it's grim, poetic and intense. Sutcliff adopts the theory that the Iceni tribe was matrilineal, the Queen and her daughters sacred to the Mother Goddess, and her consort the King chosen as a warrior. Of course this would have been completely foreign to the patriarchal Romans, who decreed that after Boudicca's husband was killed, leaving no son behind, that was the end of the royal line, and the lands of the Iceni could be absorbed into Roman governorship.

The horrors of the treatment of Boudicca and her daughters is not explicitly dwelt upon, but it's not shied away from either. Song for a Dark Queen contains rape, slaughter, ritual execution and descriptions of hand to hand battle. I don't know if I'd recommend it to children, though it was chosen as a Children's Book of the Year in 1978! These days it would definitely fall into the YA category, but even for YA, it's pretty dark, and there is no happy ending here.
 

Fire and Hemlock

When I was doing my recent Diana Wynne Jones binge, I remembered that I used to have a copy of Fire and Hemlock, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared (I must have lent it to someone). Anyway, I bit the bullet and bought myself another copy and plunged in.

You would think that, having read it before, I would find the plot easier to understand. I did not. What did help immensely was finding a blog post from someone which explained the 'problematic' ending and the rest of the story while they were at it. This is an extremely clever, deeply layered, intelligent book which draws on several different legends, most obviously the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, in which the Fairy Queen takes a mortal as her king for ten years, after which he is supposed to be sacrificed, but is saved by the heroism of his mortal lover, Janet. In Fire and Hemlock, Thomas Lynn takes the part of Tam Lin while Polly is his saviour -- a female hero, loyal, brave and imaginative.

The actual mechanics of the deal that Mr Lynn strikes with the Fairy Queen and her minions, and the way Polly finally overcomes their bargain, are too complicated to explain (maybe I still don't fully grasp them :), but this doesn't at all get in the way of a deeply engaging, playful and original story which races along in a most satisfying way. 

This is not to say that the novel is without flaws. The growing friendship between Polly, aged ten at the start of the book, and adult Mr Lynn, is uncomfortable to read, especially as he really is, in a sense, grooming her. By the end of the story Polly is nineteen and Tom is, at the very youngest, twenty-nine -- still a big gap but not an impossible one -- but still... In fact, most of the relationships in the book are uncomfortable in one way or another, except for Polly's grandmother, who is fantastic.

Fire and Hemlock is not an easy read. It's about as sophisticated as young adult literature gets, considerably more sophisticated than the 'adult' murder mystery I was reading at the same time. And it's definitely a book I will reread in the future.

Fireweed and Lapsing

 

Jill Paton Walsh is an author I discovered relatively recently, and I am still actively collecting her novels. Quite coincidentally, I found two of her books within a week or so of each other. I found Fireweed in a small op shop in Euroa, with a tiny collection of YA books for sale (I gasped audibly when I saw it on the shelf). Lapsing turned up, appropriately enough, at a church book sale in the city among many books about theology and missionary travels, and it only cost me a dollar.

I loved Paton Walsh's Wimsy sequels, and I also relished her Imogen Quy mysteries, but of her standalone novels, I definitely liked these two best (so far). Fireweed is very short (even by Paton Walsh's standards) but it tells a vivid and moving story, of two teenagers from very different backgrounds camping out alone in London in the middle of the Blitz. The Blitz setting is breathtaking in its brutal detail; Paton Walsh thanks 'everyone I know who was old enough to remember 1940,' and the novel very much has the flavour of lived memory.

The same is true of Lapsed, though this is a very different kind of novel; it feels autobiographical in parts. It centres on Tessa, an Oxford undergraduate in the 1950s (like Paton Walsh herself), a staunch Catholic who finds herself being courted by several young men and who makes a choice that is consistent with her beliefs, but which will probably baffle a modern reader. Shot through as usual with philosophical and moral struggles, Lapsed feels unusually heartfelt (unlike A School for Lovers, which was much lighter, almost farcical in tone). Like Tessa, Paton Walsh was also a Catholic. She formed an attachment to another man while already married; she did eventually marry the second man, but only after the death of her first husband, who was also a devoted Catholic; so we can only guess how much of her own experience was poured into Lapsed.

Finding Phoebe

Finding Phoebe by UK writer Gavin Extence was a recommendation from my book group. I'm not sure I would have picked it up on the strength of the cover, because Phoebe (presumably) looks quite miserable, and that's not the tone of the book at all, though there are definitely moments of sadness and stress and confusion. What makes this novel distinctive is Phoebe's voice: she has ASD, she is extremely articulate and observant, but the disconnect between her intellectual precision and her misunderstandings of social interaction and subtext is where much of the humour of the book resides. 

It took me a couple of chapters to ease into Phoebe's voice but once I was there, I was utterly charmed and delighted to spend more time in her company, which mirrors the character's own social experiences. She is 'weird,' but she is also very intelligent, kind and insightful. I loved that this is mostly the story of a friendship between two girls -- Phoebe and Bethany have been friends all their lives, and when Bethany gets into trouble, it's Phoebe who comes to the rescue in all sorts of ways. That's not to say that Phoebe is perfect -- she reacts strongly, she doesn't always recognise her own emotions, and she is clinging to some illusions about her own family that she has to learn to let go.

Extence says he wrote this book for his own ASD daughter, who is not yet a teenager but is coming up to it fast, so that she would have a character to relate to. But I think everyone, and not just young people, would benefit from seeing the world through Phoebe's eyes for a while.

Some Shall Break

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a HUGE fan of Ellie Marney, and I gobbled up her previous FBI novel, None Shall Sleep, with ravenous glee. Inspired by Mindhunter (which I also loved) and set in the 1980s, these books feature earnest Travis Bell, trainee FBI agent; damaged but resilient Emma Lewis, who escaped from a serial killer; psycho but charismatic monster, Simon Gutmunsson, and his oddly charming twin, Kristin. Some Shall Break sees our team on the track of a copycat, and ends on a beautiful loose end which I'm sure will be the subject of book three (thanks to social media, I know that Ellie is working on book three right now!)

The Shall novels hit a particular sweet spot for me, in that they deal with horrific crimes (rape, murder, abduction, torture) so the stakes are always very high; but they are not so graphic that I get disturbing images seared into my brain. I don't enjoy reading about real world pain and suffering, and I don't enjoy reading about imagined pain and suffering either. But perhaps because these novels are YA, they skirt the margins of the worst crimes, leaving the details mostly to our own imaginations (or not, if preferred; which I do).

I cannot wait for book three. Crack on, Marney!

Gender Queer

I went to the Athenaeum Library intending to restrict myself to borrowing two books. Needless to say I came away with four... Gender Queer was one of them. I was aware of Maia Kobabe's 2022 graphic memoir vaguely as one of the most banned books in America, and there are some elements of this book that might be a bit 'graphic' for younger readers, but honestly, most teens will see much more explicit content than this on the internet every day.

Gender Queer is a detailed, honest and moving account of Maia's journey through questioning eir gender identity and sexuality (Kobabe uses Spivak pronouns, e, em and eir, which I wasn't aware of before, but which I quite like). It was super easy to read -- I almost finished it on the tram on the way home -- funny, engaging and very relatable. It really makes plain that every person's experience is different and nuanced, and it underscores the ridiculously arbitrary nature of the boxes we put ourselves into. (As an old school eighties feminist, I probably incline more towards the ideal of removing the boxes, rather than creating more and more of them, but that seems to be the way society is moving.) Maia doesn't feel comfortable identifying as a woman, but also doesn't see emself as a man -- ey are looking for gender balance, are attracted to androgyny, and are delighted when people aren't sure if ey are male or female.

I really enjoyed Gender Queer. I don't think it's anything to be afraid of, and I certainly don't support it being banned anywhere. I found it a helpful, enlightening and fascinating story, clearly and simply told. More power to you, Maia.
 

Across the Barricades

So this was the missing volume in my Kevin and Sadie series -- I'd picked up The Twelfth Day of July from Brotherhood Books, and found volumes 3, 4 and 5 in a street library. But Across the Barricades is the crucial book, the linchpin on which the whole series turns. This is the book where Kevin and Sadie, three years on from The Twelfth Day of July, meet again and become a couple.

Now Kevin is eighteen going on nineteen, and Sadie (I think) is sixteen or seventeen. Their relationship is very innocent: they go for walks up the hill, they catch the bus to the seaside, and eventually they meet each other at Sadie's former teacher's house, where she has a job as a cleaner. But the opposition they face, as a Catholic boy and Protestant girl, is fierce. Kevin is beaten up, Sadie is the subject of cruel gossip, but in the end it's their friend Mr Blake who pays the highest price for their love.

This is a very unsentimental book, in fact no one does use the word love. Deaths  and injuries mostly happen off screen. The most romantic line we get is when Sadie and Kevin admit they 'feel right' together. Knowing the difficulties they will face in the future, and the troubles they are leaving behind, it really is miraculous that they stick together, but the reader never doubts their loyalty to each other. In the later books, the Troubles are mostly far away, but this book brings them to shocking life. No wonder they decided to run away. 

I'm really happy to have collected the whole set, though I'm not sure the later books, when Kevin and Sadie are married with kids, even count as young adult! But these two always seem older than their years. Even at the start of Across the Barricades, they are both out of school and working for their living. At first I wondered if contemporary young people could relate to this world -- but then, they are well aware of conflict elsewhere. Recast Kevin and Sadie as an Israeli and a Palestinian, and it would be the same story today.
 

A Proper Place and Hostages To Fortune

I've really enjoyed my time with Kevin and Sadie. Joan Lingard has created such an appealing young couple ; they are realistically impatient and frustrated with each other at times, but they always manage to come back together. They are a good team -- Kevin, steady and reliable, Sadie, bubbly and cheerful. I genuinely found myself admiring the way that Sadie makes an effort to make new friends wherever they go and embed their little family into the community.

A Proper Place opens with the couple (plus new baby Brendan) living in a couple of run-down rooms in Liverpool, before Kevin lands a job on a farm and they all move to the country. Hostages to Fortune finds him, alas, losing that job and the couple take to a camper van (I'd never heard one referred to as a 'caravette' before!) and picking up work where they can, before finding a prospect of a home where they might be able to settle down for good. While Kevin and Sadie's relationship is strong, it's sorely tested at  times by the difference in their religion, something they've managed to dodge until now, and especially by their families. Sadie's mum barges in to visit from time to time, much to Kevin's discomfort, while Kevin's mother has gone downhill rapidly since his father's death (it seems as if she's succumbing to dementia) and troublesome siblings turn up on Kevin's doorstep for him to deal with. His mother never brings herself to even acknowledge his marriage, and can't understand why he can't just come home to help her.

I think my favourite part was when new hippie friends Matt and Angelica suggest that Kevin's wayward sister 'just needs love,' which a modern reading of the text definitely supports, but which just bewilders Kevin and Sadie! Hostages to Fortune left some loose ends (particularly regarding that difficult sister) and I wonder if Lingard ever intended to continue Kevin and Sadie's story -- by this time, though, they were probably getting too old to justify being in YA novels, even under the imprint of Puffin Plus.

Into Exile

A few months ago I read The Twelfth of July, the first volume in Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie series, about a pair of star-crossed lovers in Belfast during the Troubles. And then the other day I was walking past a street library and saw volumes 3, 4 and 5 just sitting there. It was like a sign...

So now I've read volume 3, Into Exile, which sees Sadie (17) and Kevin (19) married (!!!) and living in London. Obviously I've missed the events of volume 2 which have seen them fall in love, against the opposition of both families, and run away together (references in Into Exile hint at the cost of this decision). Published in 1973, it's an extraordinary time capsule: Sadie is working in a department store, spending most of her days bored and idle behind the counter; Kevin gets a job in a radio repair shop (radios barely exist anymore, let alone repair shops). I loved the portrait of multi-cultural London, with families from India, Pakistan and the West Indies jostling in the couple's lodging house. They don't have a telephone in their single rented room. When Kevin is called back to Belfast, they can only communicate by letter or telegram; there's no chance of a chat to smooth over misunderstandings. And they are so young! And so isolated, far from home and family.

At the end of the book they are reunited in Ireland, and Kevin has made the agonising choice between the needs of his family, and his commitment to his young wife. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Kevin and Sadie.

The Camelot Betrayal and The Excalibur Curse

The story that began in The Guinevere Deception continues in The Camelot Betrayal and concludes in The Excalibur Curse. Kiersten White is an experienced young adult author, and she hits every beat with precision. There is mystery, magic, stolen kisses, the old cuddling-in-a-cave-to-warm-up-after-almost-drowning scene, hair-raising escapes, and primarily a struggle for Guinevere to discover her true self. Is she really Merlin's daughter, as we were told in Book 1, or something far more complicated?

I did sometimes find myself reeling slightly between the Dark Queen, the various Ladies of the Lake, and Morgana -- it could be hard to separate them at times, though the focus on female power is welcome. Guinevere magically 'possessing' her nearest and dearest also became a little bewildering! It's refreshing to read a version of the Camelot story where Merlin is an out and out villain, and Guinevere is the centre of the story. Guinevere's sense of herself being in the wrong body will also surely resonate with some readers. I appreciated the way Mordred arranged for the magical women of Camelot to find a new home on an island, though it's not named as Avalon until the final volume. 

The story spanks along and there is plenty to reward readers familiar with the Arthur legends, though I think young readers who don't already know the myths will appreciate it as a female-centred fantasy tale. The ending was nicely optimistic, though perhaps a little ambiguous for those who do know how the three cornered relationship between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere traditionally ends! My one quibble is that, to me, the love between Lancelot and Guinevere felt 'told' rather than 'shown.' But maybe that's just me. This trilogy was a really enjoyable excursion on my Camelot adventures.
 

The Guinevere Deception

Back on the King Arthur bandwagon, and what a fabulous version Kiersten White's Camelot Rising trilogy seems to be! I actually started reading the third volume, The Excalibur Curse, first, but I was totally lost and decided I really had to go back to the beginning.

White's premise in The Guinevere Deception is genius: the real Princess Guinevere is dead, and in her place, Merlin sends his own daughter (we don't learn her original name, at least not in this book) to protect Arthur from magical attack. Merlin himself has been banished from Camelot, and all use of magic has been outlawed there, rather against Arthur's own wishes. So our Guinevere is immediately in danger on two fronts -- her identity as Merlin's daughter must be kept secret, and also the fact that she is using her own magic to guard Arthur. She is also terrified of water -- why, exactly, we're not sure yet. 

I love the fact that Guinevere's magic uses knots, and later we discover another feminine version of magic using sewing -- a clever, almost invisible, female form of enchantment. In this version, Lancelot, the Queen's champion, also holds a secret, which is a nice surprise. I also enjoyed the twist that because Arthur and Guinevere's marriage is a sham, there is no sex and therefore no heirs will be produced -- a very good explanation for their traditional lack of offspring.

Naturally The Guinevere Deception ends on a cliffhanger, and I'm looking forward to part 2, The Camelot Betrayal.

After the Lights Go Out

I'm a big fan of Lili Wilkinson, both as a person and as a writer (full disclosure: she lives a couple of streets away from me), but I think After the Lights Go Out might be her best novel yet. Lately I've read a few slightly underwhelming kids and YA books, but ATLGO is bloody near perfect. It's solidly constructed, tightly plotted, and smoothly written. It combines drama, romance, fraught family relationships and dystopian catastrophe with hope, kindness and compassion. Even though I'm not a massive fan of apocalyptic stories, I was carried along on the ride on the strength of the characters, and especially the appeal of the capable yet vulnerable protagonist, Pru. The scenario, which Wilkinson admits probably takes some scientific license, feels plausible yet horrifying, and its consequences unfold naturally but not predictably.

Pru's father is a doomsday prepper, and when his dire predictions seem to have come true, his daughters' first reaction is to groan that he will feel so smug. And yet his training proves to have been life-saving... up to a point. It's ironic that when this book was published in 2018, the real global catastrophe was still a couple of years away, and it took a very different form -- a pandemic rather than a massive electronics-frying electromagnetic pulse. And yet the same questions raised by ATLGO were so relevant to all of us -- how to strike a balance between protecting ourselves and helping others; what risks were worth taking; how much could we rely on outside agencies, and how much did we have to take care of ourselves; the ever-tilting seesaw between community and family and self-interest.

After the Lights Go Out is a fantastic read and it's restored my faith in young adult fiction! I note it was shortlisted for plenty of awards but annoyingly didn't actually win any. Grr.

Piranesi

 

Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi has been on my radar for a while, but I had a vague impression that it might be long and abstruse and difficult to penetrate, so I didn't go out of my way to get hold of it until a friend from book group (thanks, Pam) told me she thought I might like it. And I did! 

Piranesi was none of the things I feared it might be -- it was fairly short, entertaining, engaging and original. It takes the form of a diary, of a young man who lives in a vast house, empty of everything but mysterious statues and the in-rushing sea, and the Other, whom he sees from time to time but who is busy on his own researches. The mystery of this young diarist's identity, the nature of the House and how he has ended up there, unfold in an intriguing speculative fiction that has magical and philosophical elements, but is ultimately grounded in the real world. As more visitors appear in the House (which seemingly stretches for kilometres in every direction, made up of immense Halls and Vestibules, and the odd abandoned skeleton), 'Piranesi' comes to question everything he has taken for granted, and his whole reality is turned upside down.

Piranesi is beautifully written and elegantly designed and I was sorry when my wander through its majestic, mysterious and chilly halls was over. I'm counting it as adult fiction, but it could be young adult, too. One of the best books I've read this year.

Catch Up

 

Okay, I'm not sure how this happened, but I've got terribly behind in my posting. So I'm going to lump together a whole lot of books in one hit.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason -- borrowed from one of my book group ladies (I'm not actually sure who it belongs to, it's been passed around!). This is such a marvellous novel, a funny and dry story about mental illness -- not just what it's like to suffer from it, but what it's like for the support crew of the sufferer. Brilliantly written, moving, sad, clever but also often laugh out loud funny. Ooh, I've just discovered that despite this book being set in the UK, Mason is an Australian author. Yay! I need to read more of her work.

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman -- as you know, I am a sucker for pop psych nonsense like this, but in this case (I always say this) I believe there is a grain of truth to the idea behind it. It's another weirdly Christian self-help book for couples with the emphasis on sticking it out no matter what, which I found very uncomfortable in one chapter in particular where the wife (why is it always the wife??) is advised to basically love-bomb her unresponsive and unpleasant husband in his preferred 'love language' until his 'love tank' fills up and he begins to reciprocate. She has to do this for six months before she has permission to give up! Apparently it worked, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. Having said that, I do think that people express and receive love in different ways and it's just as well to be aware of whether those in your life prefer 'acts of service,' 'words of affirmation,' 'physical touch.' 'quality time' or 'receiving gifts.' I know I am definitely NOT in the last category.

The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. I bought this funny little book for my Dad who is a cloudspotter from way back. Written by the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society (don't laugh, it has over 50,000 members in 120 countries), this is a clear and simple guide to the basic cloud types, explaining the science behind their formation and including plenty of whimsical trivia along the way. The best chapter is the last, in which the author travels to remote outback Queensland to experience the Morning Glory, a truly magnificent cloud phenomenon which glider pilots can surf like a breaker. Look it up.

Knight's Castle by Edward Eager -- it occurred to me that this book, by one of my old favourite children's authors, might have some King Arthur content. Alas, it was more Ivanhoe-centred than King Arthur. Not one of Eager's strongest titles, I'm not surprised I couldn't remember much, or indeed anything, about it, and it owes a huge, and acknowledged, debt to E. Nesbit's The Magic City.

The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller -- another category of book I have a weakness for, the reading diary, reading self-help book, reading memoir, call it what you will, but this one was better than I expected (my edition has a particularly dull cover). Miller was in a stagnant period of his life when he decided to use his work commute for reading rather than Sodoku, resolving to knock over those classic novels he always claimed to have read but never had. Achieving this goal kicked off an examination of his whole life, with diversions into his reading childhood, his career, his marriage, a bizarre passionate rant about an obscure book on German rock which captures the peculiar euphoria of the book written for you. A strong example of the genre.

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch -- the most recent installment of the Rivers of London series. I have given up trying to keep track of continuity in this series, and Aaronovitch seems compelled to add more new characters with each volume, which means less and less screen time for the old favourites. Personally I would be quite happy with a story that featured only Peter, Nightingale and Beverly, but hey, it's not my world. I raced through Amongst Our Weapons and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Goldengrove Unleaving by Jill Paton Walsh -- a somewhat problematic book by my new favourite writer. Tracking down this volume (in fact two companion novels) has been my quest for some time and I was so thrilled to find it, both books in one volume. Originally published as young adult, I think they are properly adult novels, though they centre on teenagers. Clearly Paton Walsh felt a strong attachment to the St Ives area in Cornwall, because these books are also set there (like The Serpentine Cave) and her descriptions of the sea and the coast are beautiful. I did wonder, in the second book, just how so many bodies could be crammed, with apparent ease, into this one old house! And I had a massive problem with the way the character of Molly, a young girl with Down Syndrome, was portrayed, to the point where it interfered with my enjoyment of the book. I suspect this element might be the reason why a book described by the New York Times Book Review as 'a beautiful novel and an enduring one' has been so difficult to find. There was a lot of philosophical debate in Unleaving, which reminded me of Knowledge of Angels, written twenty years later. I'm left with mixed feelings.

The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling

What a lovely book! I was late to the party on The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling, but I'm so glad I made the effort to catch up with it. It's a love story, and a story about mental illness, and a story about growing up between two cultures; a story about family, and work, and anxiety. Anna is the eldest child, torn between being a surrogate parent to her siblings while her mum is 'in bed' and her father is busy running the family restaurant, and trying to keep up at school. It was refreshing to read a young adult novel where the solution isn't an escape into academia -- instead Anna finds her greatest strength in helping her father in the family business.

Wait Chim has written a beautiful, warm and engaging family story, shot through with moments of genuine fear, helplessness and fury. Living with a family member who is suffering from mental illness is no joke, and I appreciate that Chim has resisted the temptation for a simple happy ending. The road to recovery can be long and complicated and Chim doesn't shy away from that reality, but she also shows how families and friends can pull together to support each other, as well as the person with the illness. This is a book about feeling responsibility and overcoming shame as much as anything else, and I loved it.
 

What I Read on My Holiday

Dear reader, I had a holiday. First time since 2016. And I gloried in READING for a whole week (as well as swimming and walking along beaches and through rainforest, eating yummy food and spending quality time with my mates and my husband (and dealing remotely with various disasters unfolding at home, but that's enough of that!)). I read beside the pool, I read beside the sea, I read on the deck of the rainforest retreat, I read in an air conditioned room we dubbed 'the Singapore Sling Room' for its cane furniture. And I also read on the plane and in the airport.

I quickly whipped through the three books I'd brought with me. First up was Merlin's Harp by anne Eliot Compton, a King Arthur tale from the refreshing point of view of Fey woman Nivienne, whose life intersects with Arthur's at crucial moments. Like The Mists of Avalon, this novel puts women's experience front and centre, with the added twist of Nivienne's Fey powers giving her extra insight -- she can see auras, and scry the future in water and flame. At times there were odd repetitions that gave the feeling that the story had been written over a long period of time and the author had lost track of the joins, but this was a fresh and lyrical take on the Arthur story that I very much enjoyed.

Next I finished Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, by American surgeon Atul Gawande. This is his first book, though I read Being Mortal first. Complications is more of a collection of essays on various medical topics -- weight, nausea, mistakes, mysterious cures -- and Gawande takes us behind the Staff Only doors to witness the pressure, the care, the ambition, the stress and the glories of a doctor's daily routine. Gawande's clear, calm, engaging voice makes him an ideal companion through this difficult terrain, and I hope he keeps on writing.

My third book was a re-read of an old favourite that I found in a street library but weirdly didn't own already: Dorothy L. Sayers' Clouds of Witness. This is a relatively early Lord Peter Wimsey novel, about his brother being accused of murder, set before Peter meets Harriet, but it was hugely fun to read. It was odd to reflect that it's almost exactly a hundred years old, and that Wimsey flying back across the Atlantic with vital evidence was a feat of death-defying courage, not a routine commute!

Time for a visit to a secondhand bookshop (luckily Cairns has several), where I picked up the haul you can see in the photo above. I rapidly finished off Personality Plus for Couples by Florence Littaeur and spent the next couple of days telling my holiday companions whether they were Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Melancholy or Choleric. Littaeur's books are very heavy on Jesus, and God's plan (which seems to be that all couples should stay together no matter what, which I cannot endorse) but if you can get past that, I actually think the personality stuff is spot on!

Next was the second of Jill Paton Walsh's Imogen Quy (rhymes with why) mysteries, A Piece of Justice. I settled happily into this Cambridge-set cosy mystery, centred on a residential college in the 1990s and featuring quilting, which was a nice feminist twist! I immediately bought the first volume in the four book series, The Wyndham Case, on my Kindle, and read almost all of it on the plane on the way home (sob). Another good thing about Imogen Quy books is that they are nice and short. I can definitely see why Jill Paton Walsh was the right person to take up Dorothy L. Sayers' mantle and finish Peter and Harriet's story.

Finally I hoed into Kevin Crossley-Holland's retelling of Norse legends with Norse Myths: Gods of the Vikings. I don't know much about the Norse gods and I've only watched one Thor movie, but Crossley-Holland's versions are wonderfully resonant, well researched and conjure up an entire vanished world. Each myth comes with a detailed note explaining which sources the author drew upon, and how he sees the myths fitting together (they are often wildly contradictory). I can see now why Thor, Odin and Loki made such appealing characters for blockbusters -- there is a lot to work with!

And thus I returned home, having read seven books in six days. Perfect!