The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'English Passengers' by Matthew Kneale

Writers are sometimes advised against writing multiple points of view in a story, but Kneale ignores this entirely, jumping between a whole host of perspectives, some in different times to the main flow of the action. At least he labels them, but it does make the book feel fragmented and longer than it actually is. The basis of the story is that in the 1850s a group of disparate men launch an expedition to Tasmania which they believe might have been the actual location of Eden. They hire a smuggler's ship to take them there. We see through the eyes of the captain, the various members of the expedition who generally hate each other, an Aborigine whose almost entire life we see in contrast to the other characters and various officials and their wives, based in Tasmania.

In many ways the book is very good at conjuring up the nature of lives in the time period and the perspectives people had, especially in the burgeoning colony. It shows the misery of the Aborigines slaughtered, dying of disease and relocated; even mistreated in death. It also shows the misery of prisoners held on Tasmania. None of the characters is really one you feel affinity with or even sympathy for. They are all hard and/or foolish people that are free with their hatred. As such it is a real task to get through this book and it is the first one I have struggled to finish in a very long time. While I admire the work Kneale has put into the research and the creation of the characters, this is not an enjoyable read at all.

'The Monogram Murders' by Sophie Hannah

This was the first of (so far) four continuation novels featuring Agatha Christie's character, private detective Hercule Poirot. It also introduces a new character, Inspector Edward Catchpool, rather than reusing some of Poirot's other companions. Hannah has experience in writing murder mysteries of her own. However, this book comes over as almost being too self-conscious that it is a Poirot novel. I guess Hannah (or perhaps the publishers) felt compelled to appeal to the audience of Poirot novels and probably especially the TV series. The early phases of the book are almost overly 'cosy' in the way that the Poirot books now tend to be represented rather than how they were viewed when first published.

Another factor is that Hannah seems to have forgotten how short many (most) Agatha Christie novels were, coming in around 65,000 words, much shorter than the 90,000+ words which is common for novels these days. The extra length certainly is apparent in the closing stages of the book when Poirot has assembled all the suspects and those involved, to explain what has been happening. This is far more common in TV productions than in the original book. Hannah puts in so many twists that this section of the book becomes very laboured and lacks the crispness of Christie's original.

The setting is fine as are the details of society in the 1910s and 1920s. Action goes between the Bloxham Hotel in London and a rural village, which while indulging in some stereotypes, does have interesting characters and especially motives. These help provide twists but a lot of the impact is lost in the overly complex timing and carrying out of the various killings. Overall, it is not a bad book, but there is a tension between continuing Christie's work and producing a book which is pitched more at what the expectations of a 21st Century audience are expected to be.

'Rivers of London' by Ben Aaronovitch

Given that this was the first in what is now a sequence of nine novels and nine separate graphic novels, I am surprised that I have not come across more of these before. It is a kind of mix between 'The Sorceror's Apprentice', 'Torchwood', the Bryant & May novels and Neverwhere'. It features police constable Peter Grant who works in London and finds he can see ghosts and is recruited to a special paranormal unit of the Metropolitan Police headed by a wizard. There is an interesting mix between the now common magic-alongside-everyday-society and the details of London that Aaronovitch includes. Grant mixing with the embodiments of the River Thames and its tributaries, is a really interesting aspect. There is a good range of characters and the mix between the fantastical and down-to-Earth relations and police work is well handled. It moves at a good pace and has interesting twists too. Me knowing many of the locations mentioned added something, but you do not need to be familiar with them to follow the story. Certainly if I see any others in the series at local charity shops, I will pick them up. Maybe they do not appeal to people here, now I live so far from London.

'Turbulence' by David Szalay

This is a short (136 pages in my edition) novel, that is a series of linked short stories, or indeed, vignettes, connected by flights. The thread is effectively the 'baton' is passed from the current lead character to someone they meet on their journey. It loops around the world, from London back to London and the first character we see, in a series of hops from airport to airport and into their hinterland. Szalay does show skill in quickly bringing out the different, diverse characters and a range of settings on different continents, showing us something, usually (mildly) startling, from their lives before moving on to the next. However, even more than with a short story collection, we do not really have time to get to know the characters. It was a brisk book that I read in a day, but felt that it was more like an exercise for a writing class than anything more substantial.

Non-Fiction

'Industry and Empire' by E.J. Hobsbawm

Covering the period of British history from 1750 to 1964, this book is about the Industrial Revolution. It is far better than Hobsbawm's Age of series that I have been reading in recent months: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html I do not know if it was because this book formed part of The Pelican Economic History of Britain series and so Hobsbawm was kept under more editorial control. It certainly benefited his writing. While he does look out for nascent workers' movements and still believes that economic concerns were the sole motivator of imperialism, he keeps a much tighter focus on his topics. 

The book is very adept at distinguishing the differences, for example in the nature of industries, their different workers and capitalisation and their locations in a way which is often absent from broad sweeping statements some general histories rely on. Hobsbawm is careful to show that the 19th Century was not a continued story of British success and the 'workshop of the world' era was actually short lived. Throughout there are illuminating gems of analysis which despite the age of the book (published 1969) are refreshing and you are surprised seem to have been forgotten by subsequent historians, perhaps thrown out with anything else deemed Marxist in tone. Hobsbawm's perspective is not determinist whether in a Whig or Marxist way, but he is alert to the social impacts in a way that perhaps purely economic historians can otherwise be neglectful.

Hobsbawm published the book while the post-war boom was still going on. However, at the end of the book he does show real prescience in expecting the 1970s and beyond to see greater economic difficulties for Britain due to long-term waves in the economy. As we know from the Age of books despite the misery of the 1980s, he did cling to an optimism that it would not endure in the way it has in so much of Britain. Ironically, the approaches to the economy and society that he highlights in the early 19th Century have come back to become the 'norm' for business behaviour in the 21st Century. Things that Hobsbawn portrays as having been passed, unfortunately now seem common place, especially in the precariousness of employment and the poor quality of life for many workers in Britain.

Despite its age, I do recommend this as an insightful study of the British Industrial Revolution and feel it is a stronger book than some of Hobsbawm's others.

'Bismarck and German Unification' by David Hargreaves

This book is in the Documents and Debates series. It makes use of a range of translated sources at the time to draw attention to facets of the events it outlines. I had expected it to be like 'The Thirty Years War (1987) that I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html However, the actual narration and analysis of history is much less than in that book. Its purpose is really to be read alongside other history books of the period to prepare students to answer questions of what those cover. As a result, while I am familiar with many of the details of the period and the developments, I learnt little new from this book. It did raise points of interest but expects the reader to go to other sources for explanation of these. Thus, while it contains interesting content, notably on the shifting views of Bismarck and the differences between his private and publicly-stated views, plus on the paths down which Austria and the southern German states might have gone, it is a rather frustrating book to read on its own. I have two other books in this series focused on British political and social history, but do not see much to gain from reading them, as I have other books which tell me more, e.g. Hobsbawm's book reviewed above.

While with elements of interest, the nature of my reading does not fit this kind of book which is much more a tool for students at a very particular stage of their studies to use for revision and practice in analysis of documents.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Long Night in Paris' by Dov Alfon

This is a contemporary thriller which is split between Israel and Paris. Given the range of perspectives of the various people involved included various members of the Israeli intelligence agencies, French police and assorted Chinese agents it is very choppy. Alfon seems particularly interested in the rivalries between different Israeli agencies, but in contrast to trying to track down the murderers of an Israeli IT specialist and then a former Israeli agent in Paris, lots of details of people posturing in meetings becomes tedious. In addition, the tension is further slackened by how long the processes go on. The killing of the IT specialist is proven to be a case of mistaken identity, but this takes time. There is a lot of posturing between the Israelis and the French too, which is not really engaging. Thus the book falls between two stools. It lacks the intrigue of a murder mystery and yet also lacks the pace of a contemporary political thriller, say something by James Patterson. 

Overall there are some good elements and the explanation for the defection of the agent ends up being feasible. However, too much is jammed in to the book leading to longueurs. In addition the internal inter-agency rivalry is not engaging and is too full of insufferable people. This is a weakness we see in thrillers, e.g. the Bourne novels. People who are interested in/have been involved with such agencies seem to think the average reader will find them fascinating. These days, though, most are familiar with how they work so these scenes just resemble meetings the average office worker attends. A shorter, much tauter book could have brought out the highlights without weighing them down with uninteresting extras.

'Murder in the Museum' by Simon Brett

This is the fourth book in the Fethering series of 'cosy crime' novels by Brett which have now reached 21 books. I read the first back in 2016: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html Maybe my age and my relocation within the UK has made me more tolerant of the setting. The novel features two middle-aged women, Carole a former civil servant and her next door neighbour, Jude who is a new age health practitioner. A lot has happened in the two books I have not read. However, as amateurs they still get themselves mixed up in murders. In this case through Carole being a trustee of a local house where (fictional) author and poet Esmond Chadleigh lived and there is discussion about how to raise funds to develop a museum. A skeleton found in a walled garden and later the shooting of a former trustee link past and current deaths.

It is well realised. Brett is excellent at capturing a slice of Home Counties England and the people within it. At times he shades into stereotype, but occasionally surprises the reader. He seems better at showing the novel is genuinely set in the 2000s than was the case with the previous one I read. In addition, Jude's support of an old lover who is gravely ill leavens the cosiness effectively and makes what otherwise could be seen as too whimsical. It is a fine line to walk, but it is done reasonably well here. The conjuring up of fictional poetry and an imagined author's career is done credibly. While I would not rush out to buy more of this series, I enjoyed this one more than 'The Body on the Beach' (2000) when I read it seven years ago. However, I acknowledge that that may be due to changes in my own life rather than in Brett's books.

Non-Fiction

'Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991' by Eric Hobsbawm

While Hobsbawm comments himself on the challenges of producing a history book on times through which you have lived, (his life was 1917-2012) he does at times fall victim to that, seeing the groundwork to subsequent developments that he cannot help but identify even if it falls outside the scope of the particular book. Hobsbawm was a Marxist and while he does not laud the Soviet system and in fact identifies flaws in it from the outset that were to ultimately lead to its downfall, he does see the political situation of the 1980s ('the Landslide') with the move to New Right attitudes as a grave catastrophe in a way that probably many historians of the time would see differently. Until the end he does tend to play down the climate change challenges, but that is probably because he was more alert to the more immediate environmental harm caused by pollution. Ironically he ends on an optimistic note, which in fact in the period following has proven to be false and looking at the present news one can see behaviours and conflicts that are so reminiscent of the 1910s, 1930s and 1970s.

Hobsbawm brings a general perspective of realism, though perhaps over-estimates the room for manoeuvre for politicians in the democracies in the inter-war era. He is good on their fear of a repeat of the Great War, but tends to under-estimate how much the fear of the spread of Communism shaped so much of their responses especially to the rise of the Fascist regimes. Though he is better on the reason why the short-lived alliance between the West and the USSR could not be sustained.

Often taking an economic perspective, his writing on the Depression and then the 'Golden Age' of economic prosperity in the West, about 1948-73 is well handled and also why it unravelled. Though he picks up on the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution, these are more seen through the lens of the West and there is an absence of seeing things from those countries' perspectives which was a refreshing approach in earlier books in the series. His writing on cultural changes is less well focused and he seems despairing of post-1945 art as lacking the dynamism of the earlier decades.

Overall, there are gems to be picked from this book as there was with the others in the series. I remember reading that the right-wing historian Andrew Roberts picked out Hobsbawm's series as the most over-rated one. I would not go as far as to condemn it in the way he does. I think Hobsbawm had a perspective which is often sorely lacking nowadays especially in era or general history books that is well worth recapturing. The prime challenge is that he seems to have struggled to disengage from those aspects which not simply interested him, but which to him seemed essential. When he touches on those things it distorts his writing and he is a better analyst when less attached to a topic. Consequently, this book like the preceding three are useful for reference. As a sum of the parts, the quality is lesser than individual chapters and analyses and as a result, viewpoints which stand out today and retain real value are liable to lost amongst the mass.

The Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'A Symphony of Echoes' by Jodi Taylor

This is the second book in The Chronicles of St. Mary's set in an autonomous department of a fictional university in Yorkshire that deals in time travel. As I noted with the first book: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html it is a strange mixture. I theory it is set in the future, but a lot of the technology (cheques!) referenced seems to be from the mid-20th century. Max, the heroine, while holding a doctorate and having a mature(-ish) sexual relationship with a colleague often comes over more like a teenager. At times you feel that it is rather weighed down by very British tropes about special centres that owe a lot of the 1940s and 1950s even than the 2010s. However, in this quirky way it is quite charming if you are not tired of such tropes and in the way the Harry Potter books embedded in traditional British private school novels appealed to a modern audience I can see the same with this series.

A lot happens in this novel. Max goes into the future and becomes head of the unit to get it back into shape and then uncovers a conspiracy by the prime antagonist trying to change the course of the life of Mary Queen of Scots. With the various missions through time, it can be a little episodic, but the mission to 16th Century Scotland is really well handled in terms of practicalities. The unit is prone to disaster and this can get rather wearying in time, but I felt Taylor was really getting into her stride with the final third of this book. I was disappointed that (spoiler) she kills of the disabled character in a way I think many readers will disapprove of. However, having become reconciled to the rather quirky context laden with tropes, and with the flow improving, if I see any more of these books, and there are now 28 in total this series - Taylor writes at a real pace; this is not her only series - I would pick them up.

'Melmoth' by Sarah Perry

This novel has nothing to do with the town of the same name in South Africa but some connection to 'Melmoth the Wanderer' (1820) a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin and according to 'The Guardian' to 'Melmoth Reconciled' (1835) by Honore de Balzac. Melmoth is a kind of Wandering Jew character, someone condemned to wander the world for centuries or eternity. In this novel, which has a Gothic feel though set in the 20th and 21st Centuries, sees Melmoth as a female spirit who both bears witness to horrors but also seeks to lead away those in utter loneliness to accompany her.

We see through the eyes of Helen Franklin a British woman who lives in Prague and has a small selection of eccentric acquaintances. One of these through being passed the research of a man who had been looking into reports of instances of the appearance of Melmoth from the 17th Century down to the present day. Helen works through these documents and we see them the way she reads them. One is set during the German takeover and control of Prague 1939-45; one earlier in 1930s Egypt and Franklin's own encounter in the Philippines that led to the loneliness of her own life. Franklin and those she knows are uncertain if Melmoth is real and whether they are seeing her.

The uncovering of the information and the stories of those who have encountered Melmoth or her stories before; their moral decisions in particular, add to the richness of the novel. Perry keeps these tight so you do not feel overloaded and indeed despite all that it has to grapple with, the novel is brisk and that makes it very effective. Her conjuring up of different locations, notably Prague in two time periods is also done well. There are some unexpected turns too. Thus, while I cannot say I enjoyed this novel, I felt impressed by the competence in rendering it and may pick up others by Perry, especially her renowned 'The Essex Serpent' (2016).

'A Case of Two Cities' by Qiu Xiaolong

Maybe because Xiaolong (that is their surname, they render it in the Western order) is based in the USA I have never come across the Inspector Chen novels, of which this is the fourth (he is Chen Cao with Chen his surname). Though published in 2006, this is set in Shanghai in the 1990s. Chen is charged by a high level committee of the Communist Party in Beijing with pursuing what is left of a chain of corruption after a leading corrupt businessman has fled to the USA seeking asylum. Later Chen, who had some small fame as a poet, is sent to the USA as head of a cultural delegation and is able to pursue his investigations in Los Angeles and especially St. Louis, hence the title of the novel.

Having taught modern Chinese history, I think Xiaolong's portrayal of China in the era shown is very well done. He has been criticised, but as is often the case with crime novels, his characters are drawn from the wealthiest and the poorest in China of the time, a divide which was especially apparent in Shanghai. He does show parallels to similar divides in the USA too.

A prime challenge is that Xiaolong has to communicate so much to the average reader. Especially in the early part of the novel he has to provide a dense potted history of how much China and especially Shanghai changed in the 1990s as well as outlining how the Communist state was run at this time. On top of this, Xiaolong as a student of literature cannot resist putting in loads of classic Chinese poems throughout. This does really overload the book. Dealing with the recent history would be a great deal for most English-language readers; grappling with the numerous quotations let alone the other literary references he has to explain made it heavy to wade through at times, though it picks up towards the end.

Some commentators have complained about the lack of deduction and unresolved situations. However, I think this is because they set Xioalong in the wrong context. I would view him in the company of  Josef Škvorecký, Leonardo Sciascia, Philip Kerr and Michael Dibdin in setting crime novels in authoritarian and/or corrupt states where the interest is as much in the interplay between different forces and vested interests in those societies as in solving the crime. Typically the interests are able to outweigh the desire for justice in a way that is less familiar to readers of crime novels set in seemingly democratic societies.

While I am in no rush to buy more of the Chen series, I was not put off by this one and if by some rare chance another one of them turns up where I am shopping for books, I would buy it.

Non-Fiction

'The Age of Empire 1875-1914' by Eric Hobsbawm

When published in 1987, 26 years after the first volume 'The Age of Revolution: Europe: 1789–1848' had been published, it was intended to be the final one, so combined, covering the so-called 'long 19th Century'. Hobsbawm did though go on to produce 'The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991' (1994) which I will read later this year. As with the other volumes in 'The Age of Empire' comes at the period in terms of themes rather than in chronological sequence. Thus each chapter is almost an independent essay though he does refer back to other chapters and books in the series. Some of the chapters are strong. The one on women; the tensions in science; the 'second world' - Persia, China, the Ottoman Empire, Latin America and the one of the lead up to the First World War stand out.

The main challenge as I have noted when reviewing the previous two volumes is that as a Marxist, Hobsbawn is too often on the hunt for the glimmer of revolution and this distorts his writing especially when looking at social class and economics. It is apparent here as he comes ever close to the second and third Russian revolutions. To a degree his attitude is tempered by the passing of time on his own timeline and there are some references to the rise of New Right attitudes in the 1980s which temper what otherwise might have been glee at the growth and advance of socialist parties and ideas in the period covered by this book. However, he cannot shake off his hunt and this does weaken to a degree otherwise good analysis on the rapidly changing patterns of life for the bulk of people who by 1914 were industrial workers.

The prime weakness of this volume I feel is ironically the title's prime focus, i.e. empire. Hobsbawm clings so tightly to the Marxist perception that imperialism was primarily motivated by economic factors that despite the fact that he cannot help but details a whole range of other factors that are not economic, he feels he has to keep asserting the overwhelming authority of the economic perspective almost at the same moment as disproving this status for it. A big absence notable from comparison with 'The Age of Capital: 1848–1875' (1975) is that there is nothing on the victims of imperialism. With the earlier phase importantly he looked at that side of imperialism, by discussing those who had it imposed on them, a perspective that has even greater attention now than when Hobsbawm wrote this book. His ability to look at that side of the experience was what marked out his earlier work, even nowadays so I feel in this third volume he missed a real opportunity to develop that element. Despite the declared theme this is probably the most Eurocentric of the three books.

Overall as with the preceding two volumes, there is a mix of strong and weaker material. Hobsbawm does still stand out through freeing himself from chronology in a way which does still seem to hamper modern historical writing, especially on this semi-popular basis. However, his perception of the world shaped so strongly by his politics means that whenever he focuses on the economy and the working classes, his analysis is far weaker than when he brings it to other areas of less concern to Marxism such as intellectual and cultural trends.

The Books I Read In December

 Fiction

'Cause for Alarm' by Eric Ambler

I only came to Ambler as a result of being given a couple of his books. This one was a green Penguin edition from when the book originally came out in 1938. Though writing adventure stories, Ambler was very good at making them realistic. This novel features unemployed British engineer Norman Marlow who desperate for work takes a job representing a British company which manufactures artillery shell casings in Italy. He is soon wrapped up in various conspiracies, typical of Ambler novels, pressed into providing information to a Yugoslav general who may be a German agent; an operative of the OVRA, the Italian secret police and an American who may be a Soviet agent, at a time when though there were concerns about Communists infiltrating the West, things such as the Cambridge Spies had not come to light. 

While it is fiction, it is well rooted in the realities of the time and interestingly plays on the tensions between Germany and Italy, who though allies retained a suspicion of each other. The second half of the book is an escape with Marlow aided by Andreas Zaleshoff as they make their way quite violently to Yugoslavia with the Italian authorities after them, in a way which is reminiscent of Buchan novels. Ambler does represent that bridge between Buchan and Deighton and gives an interesting and entertaining insight into what was going on in that period of the 20th Century. Some readers might find the 1930s manners unengaging but it is nice compared to some 'middle aged hero' books of today to find that the protagonist is flawed, uncertain and not superhuman.

'Trace' by Patricia Cornwell

This is the 13th of the 26 Dr. Kay Scarpetta novels that have been published since 1990. By this novel Scarpetta is the former Chief Medical Examiner for Virginia, now working as a private forensic specialist. In this novel she is called back to Richmond, Virginia to help into the investigation of the killing of a girl that initially looked like death from flu. Scarpetta's history in Richmond, including people she worked with and the building she worked in, all become mixed up in the story which turns out to be about a serial killer whose eyes we see through from early in the novel. Matters are confused by two parallel stories, about Scarpetta's niece Lucy Farinelli, a former FBI agent who runs a detective agency and training school in Florida and is investigating an assault against a trainee who was staying with her that she fancies. Lucy packs this woman off to stay with Wesley Benton, Scarpetta's current partner for psychological support. 

Jumping between the three strands, sometimes in chapters just two pages long does not add the pace that was presumably intended, but adds to a real sense of fragmentation. The connection between the three strands seems rather tenuous. It is difficult to invest in Lucy and Wesley but I guess that is because I was given this book alone without having seen those characters' histories develop across a series of books. This book is very much a procedural book and I guess it draws fans who are interested in all those details of process. I realised reading these books that I only engage with those when they supplement a mystery. I have spoken before about how I am not keen in seeing through the eyes of the killer which seems so popular these days. However, stripped of mystery, this seems to emphasise the plodding nature of the story working towards what feels like an inevitable conclusion.

I can understand why the Scarpetta books have proven to be popular, but this single one that I was given, has shown me that this is not the sort of writing that engages me in the slightest.

'Just One Damned Thing After Another' by Jodi Taylor

This is the first in what is now a 14 book series, with some extra sub-books listed, though I do not know what format they come in. It is set in St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research. Knowing both St. Mary's University and the Institute of Historical Research, maybe that was what drew me to the series. The novel is set in some undisclosed near future. The Institute is an offshoot of the fictional University of Thirsk on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. Holographic presentations are relatively easy to use, but cheques still seem to be around. The institute carries out its research using time machines though no details of how these function is given.

The novel is rather erratic. Taylor seems to have felt compelled to draw on a range of tropes. With a specialist unit working in relatively secrecy in a rural English setting I was reminded of the true stories of Bletchley Park, and of 'Enigma' (1995) by Robert Harris and 'The Small Back Room' (1943) by Nigel Balchin. Some reviewers have noted the almost old fashioned British behaviour, including lots of tea drinking. However, despite some modern swearing a lot of the relationships could be from a wartime novel. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly there is a real feel of a UK version of 'Timeless' (2016-18) though as that was shown three years after this novel was published, perhaps it informed that, rather than the other way around. The sub-plot of a devious antagonist who stole a time travelling pod, certainly seemed to ring bells. Similarly with the different units such as technicians, security, catering, etc. it also reminded me of 'Battlestar Galactica' (2004-09) especially with a love interest called 'Chief' for much of the time, I could not help envisage him as portrayed by Aaron Douglas who has a very similar role in that TV series.

The internal politics of the place seemed characteristic of the numerous 'school' novels that are common in Young Adult literature. In fact by effectively stripping Dr. Madeleine 'Max' Maxwell of her doctorate and rendering her 'Miss. Maxwell' and people using lots of surnames does give that 'boarding school' feel and makes Madeleine feel much younger than she is. Maybe this is because it is written in the first person so foregrounds her personal feelings a great deal, which do seem rather youthful. The novel covers five years and she must be in her late 20s or early 30s by the end and yet she feels more like Enola Holmes.

The story is adventurous with all the induction and training that is necessary in the first novel of someone coming to an institution. It gets through characters at an alarming rate. Many of those we are introduced to are either kicked out, leave or are killed. The title fits very well with the course of the book, but to a degree as one of the nastier characters argues, it almost becomes ridiculous. I know Taylor probably wanted there to be a genuine sense of jeopardy and thus to eliminate characters who we had invested in, but she does it a bit too much, reducing our investment in other characters. Keeping track of all the names, especially with the switches between title, surname and first name, does not help.

The book does, fortunately, take a feminist outlook. The handling of everyday misogyny is handled reasonably well; overcoming a miscarriage gets rather lost in the flashes and bangs. One twist revealing harassing behaviour is well done. There is a challenge because Taylor has a set-up which looks like 1943 but set in perhaps 2043. The 'cast' is not diverse, it is very much like an English boarding school. Maxwell, as she is usually called, does press back against some of the unacceptable attitudes, but in some ways because she is rather juvenilised, there is still a default to her 'elders'.

As you can probably tell I was ambivalent about this book. I felt it was almost weighed down by all that had gone before. At times Taylor shakes off that: both the fictional and the real life British (historical) culture. Her protagonist is in a difficult position as a mature, knowledgeable woman, yet who has to deal with incessant danger and it seems that the only acceptable mode for that is to face it as a kind of sparky teenager. There is enough in here to interest me and there were good twists I had not foreseen. I am interested to see how the story goes once the 'induction' period is done with and the characters settle down, assuming Taylor does not continue to burn through them at a rate. I do admire her willingness amongst all the tropeage to turn in different directions. While I feel Dr. Maxwell is reducing herself to fit in, she is an interesting character to follow.

Non-Fiction

'The Age of Capital. 1848-1875' by Eric Hobsbawm

As Hobsbawm identifies himself, in contrast to the previous volume in this series 'The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848' (1962): http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  there is not the energy given to this survey that the concept of the Dual Revolution gave that book. The main theme is the success of liberalism in terms of pushing the capitalist economy not simply on in Europe but increasingly in other parts of the world. Like a 1st Year undergraduate, at times Hobsbawm gets rather dazzled by all the figures of coal and steel production or the length of railways laid. 

What leavens this is that he does try at times to see both sides of these developments. While not unique in 1975 when this book was published, especially with the rise of so-called 'subaltern history' (Hobsbawm uses the term 'subaltern' quite a bit), it was relatively rare of people especially in general histories to look at the downsides of the onward march of capitalism and industrialisation. However, Hobsbawm includes a chapter on the Losers of the process, including people outside Europe exploited by the advance of industry as well as those Europeans whose livelihoods were disrupted or destroyed and had to comply with the increasing authoritarianism in the workplace. He is particularly interesting in terms of patterns of migration both within and to outside Europe.

The prime flaw is one that we saw in The Age of Revolution'. As a Marxist, Hobsbawm seems compelled to sniff out even the tiniest sign of revolutionary potential. He is rather patronising towards those rebellions such as in Hungary or bringing about the unification of Italy, which lack that social revolutionary aspect. Given that this is a time when Karl Marx (1818-83) was particularly active, he feels obliged too, to reference any input that Marx had and to judge other thinkers as lesser than his hero. While Marx was important, this distortion in viewing the other inputs, which as the meagre evidence of revolution in this period he brings forward shows, had a far greater impact on the thinking and behaviour of people in this period, weakens his case.

Without the great dramatic events of the previous book, the thematic approach, making sure to investigate culture and science as well as industry and politics, works even better in this volume. Hobsbawm is good at countering the default assumption of too many that somehow all the 19th Century was pretty much the same and brings out effectively the differences between life at the start of this period and life 27 years later. In itself that does bring home that while one may not be able to speak of a revolution per se in this period, millions of people in many parts of the world saw radical change in their lives within a single generation. While Hobsbawm touches on this on occasion, I feel that actually the message you take away from this book, has that, rather than any seedlings of revolution, as its prime point and indeed a strength of what at times can be rather erratic analysis.

Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'Look to Windward' by Iain M. Banks

I am not a big fan of Banks's Culture-set science fiction stories. The concept of an super-powerful civilisation creating vast structure and seeking to moderate the galaxies always comes across as rather worthy and quite unexciting. Having grown up reading Moorcock and Priest, then the Cyberpunk authors, I am more interested in a closer focus and a lot more grittiness. Having put in that caveat, I must say I enjoyed this book, I think because it is largely around one (admittedly vast) space station and focuses on two Chelgrians, two feline-like humanoids. Mahrai Ziller is a composer who has gone into self-imposed exile on a Culture Orbital (effectively an artificial planet), Masaq' in protest at the Chelgrian caste system. Embittered army officer Major Quilan IV with the personality of a dead senior officer in his head too. The Chelgrians have suffered a civil war, which it has been revealed that, while not started by the Culture was expanded by their intervention. Quilan is ostensibly meeting with Ziller to try to persuade him to return to Chel. In fact Quilan has an ulterior mission which intentionally he only recalls as he progresses on Masaq'. There is a sub-plot about another character discovering the objectives of Quilan's mission. However, typically for Banks that element is not resolved until after the main action has occurred.

There are a couple of Banksian traits that can rile. He loves describing vast structures though with Ziller and Quilan touring Masaq' this is less of an info dump than it can be in later Culture novels. As I noted with 'Matter' (2008): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/01/books-i-readlistened-to-in-january.html he tends to baulk from actually writing the climax of the novel. Instead it fades to black and then we pick up things some while later to see the consequences and that happens in this novel too. However, overall, by keeping focused on two characters (and a supplementary one for part of the time) Banks seems more in control of this novel. He can show his ideas and attitudes without you feeling you are attending a lecture. The characters of Ziller and Quilan to me - and I accept I may not be common among SF readers - are more engaging than descriptions of yet another intelligent spaceship or vast artificial structure.

'Transcription' by Kate Atkinson

The first thing I must say is this is the first book I have read by Atkinson but I would be tempted to try others. She is very deft in her writing and I was really swept along by the prose even when she is describing grim scenes, e.g. a woman strangled and dumped in a coal hole; the problems of killing a woman who has surprised you, using a small calibre pistol. The novel is based on a true operation by MI5 during the Second World War to monitor British Nazi sympathisers who might pass intelligence to the Germans or indeed in the case of an invasion, collaborate with the German forces.

Juliet Armstrong is recruited to transcribe the conversations between the Nazis and an MI5 agent provocateur at a bugged flat in London. However, she is soon drawn into becoming and agent herself, in particular trying to get hold of the 'red book' which has a list of these people. The novel goes between 1940 when she is 18 and 1950 when she is back in London working for the BBC producing Schools radio programmes. She is still temporarily in the employ of MI5 and begins to encounter people from her war years and face threats connected with them. The stories run in parallel so that we discover what is impacting her in 1950 as she recalls and details more from 1940.

The assortment of characters is well drawn. There is a real feel for London in the two time periods. Juliet is a reliable but naïve narrator. The balance between her eagerness for sex and her naïvety are handled well. The only disappointing element I felt with the novel was the twist at the end. It was entirely unnecessary and was really rushed. It did not really add to our understanding of Juliet and seemed to be something that an agent or publisher had pressed for, whereas the book up until that stage had had a real deftness, a good combination of thriller and slice of life, very much embedded in its times and bringing out the differences and similarities between 1940 and 1950 in London better than many authors would have done.

'Freaky Deaky' by Elmore Leonard

I was unsurprised that this 1988 novel had been turned into a movie in 2012, not that I have seen it. However, Leonard's tautness of writing is often commended. Reading this book, you certainly feel that with its restricted number of characters it could be a stage play. Set in Detroit in the late 1980s, it draws on the counter-culture terrorism of the late 1960s, through Robin (a woman) and Skip (a man) who were involved in setting off bombs during that period. It also features Donnell, a former Black Panther who is now a factotum to Woody Ricks a very wealthy man who is losing a grip on reality due to alcohol abuse. Also featuring are Chris Mankowski, a suspended bomb disposal cop and Greta Wyatt, a sometime actress raped by Woody Ricks. Mark Ricks, Woody's brother also turns up. Robin and Skip are looking for revenge on the Ricks brothers who they believe betrayed them to the authorities leading to imprisonment. Donnell is looking for as much money as he can get out of Woody; he knows Robin and Skip from the past. Ultimately all the characters are looking to see what money they can get from Woody as their paths cross and re-cross and there is a lot of double dealing and betrayal.

As you would expect from Leonard, it is gritty and seedy. The characters are believable and the scenes and locations well portrayed. Perhaps he goes a little too far with how intertwined the five main characters are (he effectively lifts Woody out of this by having him clueless) and it begins to grow tiresome as to who is working with or betraying whom, but overall not bad. The movie is portrayed as a kind of comedy. Things do go wrong, especially with the bombs set, but this book is straight without any comedic elements.

Non-Fiction

'The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848' by Eric Hobsbawm

I actually met Hobsbawm on two occasions but embarrassingly was really at a loss as to what questions to ask him. This book was published in 1961 though has been reprinted may times since. Hobsbawm was a Marxist historian and so brings a perspective on to what he describes which is working at the high level, focused on the big trends in society rather than detailed accounts of what happened next. This perspective is now rare even in general survey history books that can, as Hobsbawm eschews, effectively end up as a list of a sequence of events. Even if you do not subscribe to Marxist viewpoints, the approach Hobsbawm adopts in this book is a very useful one that I feel current students can benefit from to balance against the history survey books which in many ways go into too much detail. Maybe historians aside from people like Ferguson, Fukuyama and Hutton do not feel they have the 'right' to draw such sweeping points from the history.

Hobsbawm's premise in this book is of the dual revolution, i.e. the Industrial Revolution initiated in Britain and the French Revolution. These two, he feels, combined shaped the development of societies. He does make some efforts not to neglect the world outside Europe and North America and indeed shows how these revolutions impacted, e.g. the destruction of Indian textile manufacturing by British factories and how Egypt tried to make the industrial leap only to be stymied. Thus, while focusing on the broad sweeps of history, he never goes full Marxist in portraying anything as 'inevitable' and indeed highlights when actions by leaders and business people divert or prevent what otherwise might have 'naturally' happened. 

The book is organised thematically with the trends that happened, not just from the two revolutions but also as a result of peace, nationalism, etc. Then looks at the impact. He is good on belief, whether religious, philosophical or political. He highlights trends in land usage and in the ability to 'get on' in society before looking at the arts and scientific developments. Many of these aspects, particularly on a thematic basis rather than as a sequence of events, are neglected too often. This is why I feel, despite its age, this book is a useful addition for people looking at this period alongside more recent books.

My one gripe is that as a Marxist writing in the period of the Cold War, Hobsbawm is desperate to find any seed of revolution that he can amongst what he is describing. In contrast, a reader living since the Cold War ended and with so much authoritarianism rolling back what any revolution achieved, even in democratic countries, is liable to find such scouring for these 'seeds' as rather pathetic. The groups mentioned are typically tiny and achieved nothing. Going in so tight seeking these things jars with the broad sweeps adopted elsewhere in the book which are its strengths. Almost without recognising it, Hobsbawm shows that for all the revolutionary energy, the different plans of the various stages of the French Revolution were betrayed and monarchy restored. The Industrial Revolution brought gain to very few and suffering for millions more.

It is a shame that more general surveys are not written with Hobsbawn's approach these days and thus, this relatively rare perspective means the book remains of value even more than sixty years later.

Has Protracted Democrat Contest Harmed or Benefited their Chances?

As the competition between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continues with the latter pulling back after Pennsylvania and with no sign of either conceding, you have to wonder whether this contest which has dragged on for months is wrecking any chance for the Democrats when it comes to the Presidential election in November. People said that John McCain becoming the clear Republican nominee early on, back in March, that he would be able to get his campaign for the Presidential election rolling. It maybe because I am seeing all of this refracted through the UK media and an aged Republican is not that interesting to write about, certainly not in contrast to the people who might be the first black or first woman President of the USA. I imagine McCain is campaigning, but that element is not getting over here. I pick up US news sites (it is difficult to interact with Windows and/or MSN and not do so) and McCain certainly is not jumping out of the headlines on those sites either. So, there may be a counter-factor, for all the seeming divisiveness of the Democrat contest and it becoming increasingly unpleasant between the two candidates, it is keeping the party in the news. In addition, issues are being discussed again and again and Democrats are turning out to become involved. People often think elections are about winning floating voters, but often they are also about making sure your ordinary supporters are not complacent or disillusioned and actually turn out to vote. Of course with the electoral college system you can have an excellent turn out in Oklahoma or West Virginia or Oregon and it count very little. You can win the overall popular vote and yet still lose as it is filtered through the state system and you can have irregularities as seen in 2000 which can also snatch away victory.

Whether the American population just gets weary of the election because of the Democrat contest is another issue. All their enthusiasm may fade due to an apparent over-dose of politics. The British population has very little interest in politics bar the end product. Most see no connection between who they vote for and the taxes they pay or the services they receive and simply blame it 'on the government'. From the British perspective the US public appear to be much the same. Wars are always difficult to deal with. Generally people like wars, but they do not like the cost or the casualties. By now all the shine has gone off the war in Iraq, but interestingly yesterday Clinton was obliged to say that if Iran developed nuclear weapons and attacked Israel she would 'obliterate' Iran. People are always far more interested in the next potential war than the current one. The tension in US politics is that Democrats are not keen on a big military but want to intervene globally. The Republicans want a big military but they do not want to be taxed to pay for it or to have it used anywhere overseas. In an age of 'police actions' and 'regime change', you have to have, as Bush has found out, both - a big military and to use it overseas and for a long period of time. I imagine Bush never expected to still have troops in Afghanistan or Iraq at the end of his period of office. Clinton has said openly that she wants to bring all US troops home and bemoans that some have been on two or more tours of duty, as if a war should only last one tour of duty and no more. Yet, she is very bullish about opposing Iran; Obama can do nothing but say the same things because room for manoeuvre in US politics is very narrow and by being who they are Obama and Clinton are already pushing at the boundaries.

In 1991 Francis Fujiyama famously said that we were at the end of history because the Cold War was over. In fact we were at the end of a phase of history, the 'short' 20th century, as Eric Hobsbawm titled it the 'Age of Extremes'. In itself it had characteristics of the previous phase the 'Age of Empires' in the growth of the continental empires - Russia and America and to an extent China and both over China and interacting with parts of the world in a similar way to the 19th century, competing with the Europeans, pushing influence into Africa, Asia and Central & South America. That phase seemed to be driven by ideologies, but as in the 19th century it was really about power and resources. In this new phase the superficial pattern has shifted away from Cold War rhetoric but the world picture is little different from the 19th and 20th centuries. Current conflicts are over control of oil. The increase of the use of biofuels is about what they called in the 1960s oil security as areas where oil is available seem often to be unstable and shake off the control of the Powers. Biofuel can be grown in most places so freeing states of that difficult dependency. Yet growth of them in larger quantities and the rise in oil prices is sending food prices spiralling, not benefiting poor countries because though they may produce focus on a few cash crops means they have to import increasingly expensive food. No doubt supplier and consumer countries will try to tie up connections to secure prices and supplies, so have we really moved on from imperialism? China is currently the most active colonial power, seemingly going out of its way to link up with the pariah dictatorship states, notably Sudan and Zimbabwe, but the USA with its involvement in different states is not far behind.

The US public tends to be most concerned about domestic issues except when their sons and daughters are serving overseas, but as all countries are finding you cannot divorce the two. Just as who you vote for impinges on your taxes, foreign affairs influence what you pay at the supermarket or petrol pump at home. It is into this world that McCain, Obama or Clinton will be elected. Yet, despite all their abilities, I think that in fact because of the limits on what the American public will accept as policy, they have little choice but to stick to the line Bush has been pursuing. The only difference may be that when a terrorist attack hits the USA in the future you will not see the President sitting in a classroom for 30 minutes, blinking and not speaking like some robot whose batteries are running flat or the proverbial rabbit caught by the car's headlights.

The Usefulness of 'What If?' History

'What If?' history also known as alternate history or counter-factual history occasionally strays into mainstream culture. It imagines what would have happened if there had been a different outcome of certain events in the past. Notable over the past few years have been 'Fatherland' which was both a bestseller book and a not so successful movie in 1994 starring Rutger Hauer. The story was set in the 1960s in a world where the Nazis had won the Second World War and Germany ruled Europe, having pushed the Soviet Union back over the Ural Mountains. A kind of Cold War had developed between the USA and the German Empire. More recently was the movie 'C.S.A. - Confederate States of America' (2004) which envisaged that the Confederate States, i.e. the South had won the American Civil War. Each year numerous books come out covering various 'what ifs?', the Nazis and the South being the most featured, but there are many other scenarios such as a successful Spanish Armada or the Black Death wiping out far more of Europe's population. I hope to feature some lists of these on future posts.

So is 'what if?' history simply an entertainment, a kind of game to speculate how things might have turned out if someone had done something differently? This is an aspect, but I think there is a more serious side to the approach. The BBC website used to run an excellent 'what if?' discussion board. It was set up in conjunction with a series of radio programmes in the 1990s that would bring in historians, politicians, commentators, etc. to discuss a 'what if?' scenario. The message board became very busy with people putting forward different scenarios each week and people being free to comment on them. I found that it would often provoke me to go and read more on what had actually happened. The contributors varied from school children to retired people and it was a stimulating way to spend a lunch break. However, the BBC discontinued it in the mid-2000s. What it demonstrated though, was that rather than just being a game, speculating on counter-factual history actually aids getting to grips with actual historical events.

For one thing, the message board sometimes showed that changes in history might not have had as great an impact on how things turned out as we might think. In Stephen Fry's book 'Making History' (1996) scientists stop Hitler being conceived. What happens is that another leader, a German hero from the First World War ends up effectively in Hitler's place. However, being calmer and more calculating he executes the war more effectively and wins, the world breaks into the kind of Cold War envisaged in 'Fatherland' but for the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and Russians in the occupied territories, the outcome is the same as if Hitler had existed: they are slaughtered. Thus, one can argue that in a broad sense it was Germany per se that was leading to such an outcome and it would be a difference in small details if it had been Hitler or Himmler or whoever, who had been the actual dictator.

A classic case of some factors not mattering as much as we might think is the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon did not start the attack until 11 a.m. arguing that the ground made muddy by rain would prevent cannon balls from working effectively. (Most damage caused by cannon balls was as they bounced along the ground hitting rows of troops, with mud they just plonked into it and stuck). However, waiting a couple of hours, it is argued gave little time for the ground to dry but allowed the Prussian troops to move that closer to aid the British and their allies. However, through discussion and even reconstruction of the battle (easily done these days with even cheap software) you can see it did not matter what time Napoleon started as the British defensive position was so strong and even if Napoleon had wiped out the British and their Dutch and Belgian allies, the Prussians would have swept up his exhausted army later in the afternoon. Wellington might not have been a hero, but Napoleon still would have lost and Europe would have changed as it did. Add into this the factor that Napoleon was ill and could not focus on the battle and you see the 'what if?' of Napoleon starting earlier makes a difference to the course of the battle but no difference to the world 190 years later. So we can argue, that is not a key factor. Contrast this with, for example, Hitler's decision to stop the German troops storming the British and French forces contained at Dunkirk in 1940 which allowed over 300,000 troops to escape and the basis of the Free French movement to be established, as well as Winston Churchill to retain his position as British Prime Minister you can see that sometimes a 'what if?' would have meant a very different world.

In the late 1990s Eric Hobsbawm, a veteran historian, gave a lecture about counter-factual history. People might have expected him to dismiss it as a kind of game for popular novels or the discussions of historians over a beer. However, instead, he showed how putting forward counter-factual scenarios can be used to test the significance of contributing factors to a particular historical event, along the lines of what I have said about the Battle of Waterloo earlier. Too often historians simply assume that something is important without testing it. So using 'what ifs?' is like a scientific test, you alter one factor and see if it is important, then try another and so on. Obviously it is not objective as we can only speculate on what might have happened we cannot see it. Yet, it is better than simply thinking something was important and not making any test.

Hobsbawm did make one vital distinction between types of 'what ifs?'. The only ones he would accept were those in which someone could make a different decision based on the knowledge they possessed. Both Napoleon and Hitler could have chosen something different at the time of the examples I have used. However, Hobsbawm, unlike novelists, would not accept speculation on 'what if it had not rained the day before?' or 'what if Hitler had atomic weapons in 1940?'. He would not tolerate speculation about things over which people have no control, especially the weather (important in many battles) or things that would have needed changes in behaviour across a whole society, especially in terms of technological development. For him, the testing of causes had to be about human choices rather than working miracles. I agree with him to some extent, though I would also note that in dictatorships and even in democracies often the leader can shape broader developments. For example, it was Hitler's personal enthusiasms which led to the development of the V1 and V2 rockets and to tanks which were far too complicated and too heavy to be of much use in fast moving war, in contrast to the Soviets whose tanks were comparatively easy and effective. Different decisions by the leader would have meant a different war.

A very interesting location for discussing counter-factuals (especially since the BBC closed its 'what if?' discussion board in 2005) is:
http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/index.php There is even help and advice about how to think about counter-factual history. If you are interested in alternate history fiction (whether in English or other languages), a wonderful site is: http://www.uchronia.net/ with reviews, it seems of every counter-factual book written and with a regularly changing front page showing recent releases in the genre.

'What if?' history can be interesting and good for your knowledge too. It is a form of entertainment but also has very useful functions in 'serious' history. If anyone knows a good online venue where different alternatives are discussed, let me know. It might be a minority, slightly geeky hobby, but one I miss. I intend to start posting some of my favourite scenarios and details of 'what if?' books on this blog in coming months.