The Books I Read In May

This month travelling (by car, train is too expensive) and reading the Goldhagen book (634 pages) meant I only finished two books.

Fiction

'Pompeii' by Robert Harris

Harris is adept at writing historical novels, e.g. ''Imperium' (2006) and Munich' (2017) in which we know the actual historical outcome (though some reviewers believe he writes just counter-factual outcomes) but he manages to maintain the tension all the same. As he shows in 'Imperium' https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html and 'Lustrum' (2009) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html, Harris has a love of and sound knowledge of Roman history. I had expected that this book, published in 2003, would be pretty much like a disaster movie. I was naturally reminded of 'Dante's Peak' (1997) and 'Volcano' (1997), though very sensibly, as in those movies, Harris makes his protagonist a technician.

In this case, it is aquarius Marcus Attilius Primus, responsible for the aqueduct which provided nine towns, including Pompeii, around the Bay of Naples. The book covers a matter of days in which Attilius uncovers problems in the local water supply that eventually signal the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but also how greed and local corruption in the 'good time' town of Pompeii has led to problems already. Harris's approach really shows you the wonders of water civil engineering in 1st Century Roman lands without providing you with a lecture on it. There are excerpts from various volcanology  books at the start of each chapter, but he deftly communicates the scientific and indeed social and economic aspects well through the flow of the story.

There is a little of the hero being in the right place at the right time to see what is happening without being subsumed by it. However, this does not come over as unrealistic. Tensions between him and the staff he has come to manage, as well as local business community and crossing paths with Pliny the Elder, admiral of the fleet in the region and a genuine victim of the eruption. However, overall the artifice when it appears does not intrude greatly and instead you have a book which is really engaging even when featuring the intricacies of pre-industrial water management and fish farming.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's Willing Executioners' by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

This book is about persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime. It says very important things, for example noting how every piece of anti-Semitic legislation was itself cruel, rendering the Jews 'socially dead' even before moving on to the horrors of the extermination camps. He portrays very acutely how the Jews were seen as inherently evil and so rather than simply be exploited in the way 'subhumans' such as Poles and Russians were, they had to suffer all the way to their deaths. This comes out particularly strongly in the sections on the "work" camps which Goldhagen highlights did not produce anything of value, but instead were about making the Jews do painful, useless work as a punishment for their supposed evil. Similarly the death marches, which along with the police battalions, are an aspect he particularly investigates, were simply about inflicting pain before death on the Jews who were marched around. The in-depth analysis of the ideology of German (he eschews the adjective Nazi) anti-Semitism, the "work" camps, the police battalions and the death marches provide valuable insight not always picked up by other historians, even now some 28 years after this book was publisged.

Especially at the beginning this book is more about psychology than history with Goldhagen seeking an explanation for how such vast numbers of Germans felt that Jews were effectively like a bacillus that needed to be eliminated, but also that they were demonic so needed as much punishment before death as possible. While he does take steps to deny he is saying that Germans have always been so cruel, in fact his evidence is very much to the opposite, especially as he sees the Germans as being unique in their hatred, even though he does mention in passing other nations who have carried out genocides. He shows how anti-Semitism morphed from religion to biological, but this happened in numerous countries. He seems to feel that once the war was over, this hatred ebbed from the German population and yet he gives examples from the post-1945 period himself of people still adhering to such vile views. There are occasions in this book in which Goldhagen insists on points that the evidence he provides himself contradict them.

While the book draws needed attention to the extent of the anti-Semitism in Germany and where its power stretched and how particularly virulent and cruel it was, there are grave weaknesses in it. Despite having extensive references, Goldhagen is dismissive of almost everyone who has researched and written in this area (bar his father). He portrays himself as having unique insight. He is also entirely dismissive of research into other aspects of the Nazi regime aside from anti-Semitism, portraying these as easy to explain, even 'transparent'. My reading over the last few years would oppose that portrayal.

The prime difficulty, as often happens with books written on grave subjects or by well-established academics is the lack of editing. Goldhagen repeats the same point again and again even within a single section, let alone across the book. He keeps hammering home his points with italics as if the reader cannot comprehend the importance of what is being said without it being jabbed repeatedly in their faces. No-one is likely to come to this book ignorant of the Holocaust and while he adds to that knowledge, in contrast to his personal view, he is not operating with a blank slate. 

This book could have been cut by 200 pages and he would have made his arguments, even aired his personal gripes with other historians, far more effectively. Instead, the reader is numbed by incessant repetition and being treated as if they are moronic. For all his insistence, his approach gravely weakens the effectiveness of what he aims to communicate and loses the important details in repeated rhetoric. He does savage reviewers as at best misguided, at worst apologists, but I hope that he is too busy to seek me out to attack my view on his book which has good elements but could have been a lot better.

Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'The Lady from Zagreb' by Philip Kerr

I have lined up the last few novels by Kerr (who died in 2018) featuring his German detective of the 1930s-50s, Bernie Gunther. This is the tenth in the series and like many of the others, jumps between wartime and post-war happenings. While it is common for us to know that in almost all detective novels, the detective will live beyond the end of the book, this approach does mean that even when they are facing serious jeopardy, as Gunther does in Switzerland in this novel, we know they have survived the incident largely unharmed.

Living in southern France in 1956, Gunther sees a movie featuring a (fictional) actress, Dalia Dresner, of Croatian extraction, with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1942-43. At first we seeing him dealing with an assignment to investigate the use of a house in Berlin by the SS for the daughter of the man it was taken from. That first case has a real hard boiled feel to it, but tapers off. Still it does provide information and contacts useful for the second case when he is tasked by Dr. Josef Goebbels controller of movie making under the Nazis with finding the actress's father who is in the collaborationist state of Croatia. The action in this novel is broken by Gunther going off to investigate the Katyn Massacre which featured in the previous novel in the series, 'A Man without Breath' (2013) which I read when last going through Gunther novels back in 2016: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-books-i-read-in-february.html

Despite this fragmented nature and the fact that a beautiful actress would fall in love with a grizzled police officer almost twice her age, the story is interesting. Travelling to Croatia and Switzerland allows Kerr to show us different countries' experiences during the war and the inter-play between different nations police forces. His portrayal of the landscape of these two countries, complements that of the luxurious houses in Berlin which feature when he is in Germany. The manipulation of Gunther whether directly or indirectly, is well handled and credible. I was successfully misled in that regard, though other readers may spot this sooner. While at times credibility can be stretched, for the main this is an engaging mystery story, as always with Kerr, effectively grounded in the times and places he is showing.

'The Second Sleep' by Robert Harris

It is certainly challenging to guess what Harris will write next. While he has produced a number of historical novels set during the last days of Republican Rome and before and during the Second World War, he has largely adhered to straight historical fiction. His most famous book, 'Fatherland' (1992) which was an alternate history book featuring a Nazi victory, was really his only one which diverged from historical fiction. In contrast 'The Second Sleep' is a post-apocalyptic novel, set in the 2800s. Society has returned to the industrial level of the mid-18th Century, with water-powered factories being the highest level of sophistication.

We are not told what the apocalypse was but Harris shows concerns about how much knowledge depends on the maintenance of electricity and internet access, very timely given we lost internet access across our district this week and thus could not even contact people to report it. There are also indications of climate change. The novel takes place in Devon in South-West England but parakeets and even birds-of-paradise live wild in the countryside and the county produces bountiful red wine.

A Christian church is largely in control of English society (Scotland is once more a separate state). It has some elements of Catholicism such as clerical celibacy and the use of Latin, but also of the Church of England, i.e. it uses the King James Bible and the head of state is the head of the church rather than this residing with a Pope. Investigation and discussion of the remains of the pre-apocalyptic society are treated as heresy and this is at the heart of the book. Christopher Fairfax is sent to a small Devon village following the death of the local priest and discovers that the dead man had an enduring interest in the preceding society and what might be a refuge of the last of those seeking to maintain an industrial England.

Obviously there are lots of parallels to 'A Canticle for Leibowitz ' (1959) by Walter M. Miller Jr., though, unlike that book which covers many centuries, Harris's is on a much smaller scale, confined to a small village and its neighbouring market town. This helps in him drawing the characters richly and the inter-play between Fairfax, Lady Durston and Captain Hancock, a local industrialist, is well handled. Harris was looking to draw on the work of Thomas Hardy (even naming the post-apocalyptic county, Wessex) and there is also the flavour of Jane Austen novels too. In that he succeeds. However, the book falls down at the last. I have often noted that Harris struggles with endings. This is also notable in 'Fatherland' and 'Enigma' (1995) and in fact the screenplays of these two (1994; 2001 respectively) handle the conclusions better than the novels did. The same happens here, it is almost as if Harris runs out of steam. There is a great revelation and then it just halts where another author would have given something more satisfactory or at least more conclusive.

'Dinner for Two' by Mike Gayle

This is quite an insubstantial novel. It seems in part autobiographical featuring a music journalist then agony uncle (a role Gayle has held), Dave Harding, who like Gayle is black. He lives in London in the early 2000s. Not a great deal happens. His wife Izzy has a miscarriage and Harding is contacted by a 13-year old girl, Nicola, who claims to be his biological daughter as a result of a one-night stand while Harding and her mother were on holiday in Greece. Much of the book is taken up with Harding angsting over whether it is right for a man to want to be a father the way some women yearn to be mothers. Then there is thinking about revealing Nicola to Izzy and being in touch Nicola's mother. Caitlin. It is padded out with mildly witty articles that Dave writes for various publications and his comments to women about what men are thinking. I was surprised Dave does not get more into difficulty as a result of meeting a 13-year old girl, on occasion playing truant from school, for a number of meals and drives in his car. Izzy and Caitlin also seem much too easily accepting of the situation. I have a sense that Gayle has written a book on how he wishes people would behave when 'patchwork' families develop than is actually the case in UK society. In addition all the characters come over as very privileged and not facing any real challenges which makes it all seem like a 'feel good' fantasy. Maybe I should have expected that from Gayle's writing.

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Falls' by Ian Rankin

This is the 12th Rebus novel and as I have noted before, the stories by this stage of reading are less like murder mysteries and more like slipping into the next instalment of an ongoing story. Given that much is police procedural it is rather like watching an episode of 'The Bill' (broadcast 1983-2010). The daughter of a wealthy family living outside Edinburgh has disappeared. She seems to have been involved in an online puzzle game which sent her seeking clues around the city as well as further afield. This is quite a common trope these days, but much fresher when this book was published in 2001. Her disappearance may also be connected to the appearance of wooden dolls in coffins, which have been associated with other disappearances/murders over the previous thirty years. Rebus weaves in and out of the main search, though contrary to what Rankin says in the introductory essay DC Siobhan Clarke actually appears quite a bit and collaborating with him as well as other colleagues in trying to solve the issue of the puzzle. Being able to connect to the internet on the go using laptops was a novelty then so it is something Rankin explores.

As usual, Rebus is a bit of a mess (though he does get a half-decent relationship in this one) and gets in trouble for his approach. He goes to interesting places in both Edinburgh and the surrounding countryside and as usual runs up against privileged people obstructing the investigation. There is uncertainty about the perpetrator and that provides some mystery as we see the various suspects. However, as is the case with these later books, it rather goes on too long and so loses the energy that a shorter novel would have had. It is comfortable rather than challenging to be reading a Rebus book of this vintage, as I say, rather like sitting down to watch a random episode of 'The Bill'.

'Book of Days' by Gene Wolfe

This is a very odd bundle of 18 short stories by Wolfe. I knew 'How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion' which is a reasonable counter-factual story in a world where Hitler has become leader of Germany but there has been no Second World War and Churchill is a journalist. Some others are just odd notably 'St. Brandon' written in a faux-Irish folktale style and seeming unfinished. 'Car Sinister' about mating cars is just weird, but the sort of thing you might expect. 'Forlesen' seems to be about some tedious afterlife and is pretty tedious. 'Paul's Treehouse' and 'Three Million Square Miles' seem to be observing something about US society but I did not get the message if they were. 'How the Whip Came Back' is more effectively disturbing combining a dystopian view of a restoration of slavery with a sexual perversion. 'The Changeling' is more simply an unsettling story. Wolfe clearly expected computer dating to be far more effective than has proven to be the case and while you can see some examples of his prescience, only on occasion within a few of the stories does anything really jump out as striking.

'Lustrum' by Robert Harris

This is the sequel to 'Imperium' (2006) which I read in 2020: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html  It continues the story of Marcus Cicero (106-43 BCE) during his period as Consul and then in the subsequent years when with the rise of Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) his position and indeed his life comes under increasing threat. It is seen from the perspective of his slave secretary, Tiro (perhaps 103-4 BCE). 

What Harris continues to do as in the previous book, is take actual events and portray them in a very gripping way. He manages very well to communicate the complexities of various political, legal and religious procedures of the Roman Republic. Having it seem by Tiro means we get little pen portraits of the different individuals involved but also a range of details about the houses, the artworks, the clothing of people of the time. Tiro is not an unreliable narrator but he is opinionated which adds a richness to the story.

Harris is also successful in making us feel real jeopardy for the individuals involved and both the impossible positions Cicero was put into and the price he made for his errors. In addition, you do see techniques being employed that are familiar from politics of the 21st Century too. While I have not read every book Harris has written of those I have, six in total now, together 'Imperium' and 'Lustrum' are the best and I found them really engaging. I do recommend them even if they would not normally appeal to you.

Books I Read In June

Fiction
'The Victoria Vanishes' by Christopher Fowler
This was originally, when published in 2008, the final book in the hexalogy of Bryant and May novels, though ultimately he has gone on to write another 11 novels and 2 anthologies. I have no idea why these books are popular. They have curiosity value, but really lack life. The fact that in four of the original six, this one included, the protagonists, heading a peculiar division of the Home Office but in their 80s, means a lot of time is spent with them discussing old age rather than advancing the story. Why he did not write more set in decades when they were younger, I have no idea.

The bones of this plot, that a serial killer is injecting a poison into middle-aged women in various London pubs, but a conspiracy involving chemical warfare behind it, sounds like a decent television thriller of the 1980s. Fowler clearly loves London and fills the books with immense details about its history, in this case eccentric pubs. Of those he lists I have actually visited about a quarter so I know their appeal. However, such nostalgia does not make for a gripping crime story. It is probably best to treat these novels rather as a kind of slice-of-life book around the lives of some odd police officers. Fowler has won awards for the humour of his novels. However, I have struggled to find it. They are whimsical rather than funny. Though this one has a decently interesting crime at the heart of it, as with the previous books in the sequence, I found this novel stodgy and a little dull; certainly lacking energy.

'The Long War' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
This is the second book in the pentalogy and as with the  first: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/05/books-i-read-in-may.html there are wonderful ideas in the book, but neither of the authors seem to know what to do with them. We do see the perspective of some Chinese explorers which tempers a little the US-centricism of the first book, though not much. Too often you feel you are reading a survivalist novel with a string of characters being smug about how much better they are at existing in the multiplicity of alternate Earths than every one else they meet. There are some bursts of real cruelty especially when humans interact with canine humanoids that are particularly nasty.

As with the first book, there is a lot of simply tramping about across all these versions. The 'war' of the title is more a sit-down protest which gets skipped over in an unsatisfying, pat way. The problem of the 'trolls', gentle hivemind humanoids who are fleeing from human-occupied versions is again not really resolved and a overly simple solution is delivered. Overall this book is like sight-seeing with a party of insufferably smug individuals. There are brief moments of tension, but for most of the time, it is people lecturing each other in a very self-righteous way and passing through a string of variants with very little actually going on.

'Imperium' by Robert Harris
I have read 'Fatherland' (1992) and 'Enigma' (1995) - both of which have more effective endings in the movie versions than in the books; 'Archangel' (1998) and I have listened to the audio book of 'Munich' (2017), without being overly impressed by Harris novels. The dramatisations tend to have a better narrative especially at the end. This novel, published in 2006, the first in a trilogy, is the best book I have read this year. It focuses on the career of Roman lawyer and politician Marcus Cicero (106-43 BCE) in two periods of his rise to power, seen from the perspective of his slave secretary, Tiro (perhaps 103-4 BCE). You might imagine a novel about Roman court cases and political manoeuvres would be very dry. However, Harris succeeds in bringing the range of characters vividly to life and he has a knack of explaining the complexities of the Roman Republic's legal and political systems almost without you noticing. Added to that, he has mastered the necessary skill of historical authors of making you feel real jeopardy when in fact you know the outcome. The fact that, unlike some reviewers, I never had to translate the speeches of Cicero at school may have made it fresher for me than those who were forced to dig deep into Classics. Overall, it was a really engaging book with far more life than the other novels I read this month and indeed throughout 2020. I will certainly look out for the second and third books in the series.

Non-fiction
'The Penguin History of Medieval Europe' by Maurice Keen
Keen points out at the start of the book that he cannot encompass all of Europe. In fact his focus is narrower than that. Scandinavia, Russia and Ireland never get a mention. England really only features due to the Hundred Years' War. There are brief mentions of Spain and Portugal and of Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire only in connection to Ottoman advances. The prime focus of this book is on France, the Holy Roman Empire and parts of Italy, mainly the Papacy and its territory. In large part that is due to the narrative thread binding the book, which runs from the start of the 9th Century to the mid-15th Century. This thread is how Europeans went from viewing their region as a super-state, Christendom to having a far greater national identity and how the various secular rulers effectively won out over Papal hegemony. Within these constraints, the book works effectively. It features all the political events but contextualises them well with views of the economic, social and intellectual background to what was going on. Given its focus on over 600 years, it is good at showing the long-term developments as a counterpoint to the rapid conflicts and religious disputes. Despite its age - published in 1968 - it remains a reasonable introduction to the period at the heart, if not the periphery, of Europe.

'A History of Modern France, Volume 1: 1715-1799' by Alfred Cobban
This is the first in the version of Cobban's book when he had expanded it to three volumes. Having been reprinted in 1965, even when I bought it as a student in the mid-1980s it was old. Since then many of the gaps in the history of the period have been filled. However, as I continue clearing out the numerous history books that I bought in the 1980s and 1990s, I felt obliged to read it.

It is not a bad book, though it is overshadowed by Cobban's love for King Louis XIV and his reign. That king's death opens the book, but throughout you can clearly see that he was disappointed that none of his successors either as monarchs or running the republic, could come close to that glory. He does not even rate Napoleon Bonaparte highly though the book closes with him coming to power as First Consul. The most effective parts of the book are in outlining the demographic, economic and philosophical developments that preceded the Revolution. He shines a light on those areas, such as the last few years of the 1780s before the outbreak of revolution, which still seem to get neglected. He is good at showing how foreign adventures and internal corruption weakened the regime of Louis XVI so much as to make some serious changes inevitable.

The book is weaker on the Revolution. Though Cobban does well at puncturing the myths about Robespierre, as he does earlier with those around Madame de Pompadour, like too many general history authors he careers through the chopping and changing of the revolution far too frantically. He provides sufficient detail but as a long lump, rather than breaking it down effectively into the multiple phases he runs through. Segmenting the account of the Revolution would have made it have greater impact. Instead as is too often the case the reader simply has a picture of chaos with constantly changing faction and politicians' names. Ultimately, Cobban finds the Revolution as not as revolutionary as might be expected and while nothing for him can match the golden era of Louis XIV, he notes that what follows the Revolution is highly conservative with many of the attitudes it threw up, fading very quickly.

There are good elements to the book, especially in the pre-1789 period. However, overall the hand of the author is far too apparent throughout and you are left with the sense that the book is largely bemoaning the fact France could not get back to the state it had under Louis XIV and that is not the way a good history book should be written.

The Books I Listened To/Read In May

Fiction
'The Ultimate Threshold. A Collection of the Finest in Soviet Science Fiction' translated and edited by Mirra Ginsburg
I was interested when I ran across this book, published in 1970 by Penguin to think that it was a collection of science fiction from a country that no longer existed.  The stories were published, 1963-68 through the more liberal Nikita Khrushchev years and into the harder time of Leonid Brezhnev.  Having seen imagery online of Soviet intentions for developments in space, I wondered what they thought would be the future in fiction.    As Ginsburg outlines at the start, it is a surprise.  It is clear, as she says, that authors in this genre had far greater freedom in others and they use this to express views that ran counter to the proclaimed Soviet attitude.  There is as much individualism in these stories as you would have found from a US science fiction collection of the time. Indeed 'One Less' by Igor Rosokhovatsky about the impact of the death of one man chimes with some anti-abortion arguments used in the USA presently.

The best story is probably 'The Useless Planet' by Olga Larionova which features aliens exploring Ancient Greece and determining how useless the planet is.  One explorer, like them all, able to take on a variety of forms and remains behind in the form of a statue which can come to life, so inspiring various legends.  There are overtones in this of how a large bureaucracy may define things that are essentially human as 'useless'.  A little in this line is the eponymous story by Herman Maximov about a device which allows people to commit suicide and 'When You Return' by Igor Rosokhovatsky about a dead husband/father being replaced by an android version of him with his memories but far stronger; able to fly which reminded me a little of 'Robocop' (1987/2014) but far gentler. 'We Played Under Your Window' by the same author shows alien technology bringing a man back to life, effectively the kind of clone seen in the 'Dune' series and work by Walter Jon Williams, though bittersweetly they do it too late for him to be reunited with those he loved.

Some of the stories have a kind of tone of a fable or morality tale, such as 'Icarus and Daedalus' by Henrik Altov about two pilots racing through a star.  'Erem' by Cleb Anfilov can almost be seen as a critique of how the Soviet system used its people through showing a sentient robot willing to work to save its base but with no reward bar 'death'.  Another is 'The Horn of Plenty' by Vladimir Grigoriev about a device to convert rubbish into useful products, turned by the Soviet system to producing rubbish from useful items.  Another like this is 'Preliminary Research' by Ilya Varshavsky in which scientists are brought to work for a sinister organisation and their ideas are distorted to benefit criminal and terroristic activities; those who resist are disappeared.  'He Who Leaves No Trace' by Mikhail Yemtsev and Yeremy Parnov is a kind of 'magician's apprentice' story of a man whose clones get out of control.

One interesting thing is that many of the authors were actual scientists, so you seen some interesting predictions.  One I was struck by in 'Icarus and Daedalus' by Anatoly Dneprov is that when light does not function to indicate their way, they use monitors of gravitational waves to find their path, a force only recently confirmed as existing.  'Formula of Immortality' from 1963 reminded me of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' (1968) in its focus on people constructed using DNA but with a very fixed life duration built in.

'When Questions Are Asked' by Anatoly Dneprov is really a cautionary tale about being cautious with contamination of testing as is light hearted.  It stands out from the others for that fact.  Overall, if I had not known the authors were Soviet I would have felt this was a typical science fiction book of that golden age of the late 1960s/early 1970s.  It is clear that the genre bucked so many trends in Soviet society and like the best science fiction in any society held a mirror to the context from which it arose as much as speculating on the future.  The stories are generally crisp and cover ideas equal to anything coming out of the USA at the time.  I do wonder what happened to these authors and whether they are still read in Russia today, let alone being more widely available in the West than this obscure sampler of them.

'The Siege of Krishnapur' by J.G. Farrell
As regular readers of this blog will know, I rarely do well with books that have been recommended to me and this is a case in point.  I had read how this book, which won the Booker Prize in 1973, which is about a fictional village under siege during the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, was based on diaries, memoirs and letters to make it very accurate.  That seemed like a good basis for a novel.  However, it is very disappointing.  The characters that are featured do give a good impression of the people involved in running India when it was under the control of the East India Company rather than the British Government.  While some have an efficiency or even self-assumed altruistic approach, the profit motive is at the heart of it all; the senior officer during the siege is the Collector.  We read some details of the opium trade.  The E.I.C. grew opium in India to sell to the Chinese population, contrary to the wishes of their government, in order to earn Chinese silver and to buy tea, porcelain, silk and rhubarb, in high demand in Britain.

Too many of the characters are quirky and Farrell's writing means that we never sympathise with any of them even when they are facing starvation and disease.  It is quite incredible that we care so little for these people in such circumstances.  By the end of the book you are just glad it is all over.  I think that the petty obsessions of each of the major characters makes it all seem rather frivolous and undermines any genuine concern we have for them.  There is also a surprising lack of tension in the book, even during the battles.  I guess that arises from us caring so little for the people being written about.  I do not know whether it was Farrell's intention to make the British colonisers to appear so useless; so wrapped up with all their hobbyhorses, to be dim when it came to their circumstances and waste time on the unimportant.  Either it is an incredibly subtle but acute critique of British society or it is just the failing of him being able to conjure up any character we engage with.  As a result of these flaws, I simply found this book tedious and was simply glad when it was over.  I regret reading the recommendation for this book which I saw on 'The Guardian' website.  I should have gone with my caution over recommendations.  A little hypocritically, I hope that my review is of use, but in warning you away from this tiresome novel, which despite the supposed background research, comes across very much as an artifice.

'Run Man Run' by Chester Himes
This book was published in 1967.  Though there are references to culture, especially outlets in New York, that date it, you could easily produce a hard-hitting drama based on the novel set in 2018 and still be highly relevant.  This book is far better than the two previous novels by Himes that I have read: 'The Crazy Kill' (1959) and 'The Big Gold Dream' (1960).  You can really see the author's development in his writing.  This novel does not feature the two black detectives, 'Grave' Digger Jones and 'Coffin' Ed Johnson, but is still set in Harlem and surrounding districts and features New York police, though in this case primarily two white detectives.  What makes 'Run Man Run'  current is the focus the killing of two black luncheonette workers and the wounding of a third, all shot by a white police detective, a challenge that remains 51 years later in many parts of the USA.  Without lecturing the reader, Himes works through the assumptions about black men and how they are so easily portrayed as being associated with crime even when in this case all three victims are working men and one is also a student at Columbia University.  The strength of the word of a black and a white man, especially a police officer, is shown here just as we see on the news regularly nowadays.

I have criticised Himes in the previous two novels I read for leading his characters running around Harlem not achieving a great deal and in the end becoming tiresome.  In this novel, however, he really jacks up the tension much more effectively especially when the third man is being pursued by the detective wanting to silence him.  Himes jumps between different perspectives abruptly, which may be criticised but it helps ensure that we have no idea of the outcome and how will survive. We also do not know who will be believed or dismissed.  Even the hero's girlfriend is uncertain of him and many of his complaints are thrown out as being insane.  As before there is excellent detail about the time and the place; the appearance of Malcolm X and a rising black consciousness towards the end of the 1960s is integrated.  It adds to the assumptions made against black men, that they are not just criminals but terrorists too and so there are parallels to views of the Irish in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s and Muslims in the USA in the present day.  This is a brisk (191 pages in my edition) book which is both an effective thriller and also engages with many American issues which are as alive today as in 1967.

Non-Fiction
'The Russian Revolution' by Sheila Fitzpatrick
I read the 1994 edition of this book which, originally published in 1982, had been updated and expanded following the fall of the USSR three years earlier.  This book is excellent and I can easily understand why it remains in print, with a newly revised edition out in 2017.  My edition was only 199 pages long including references, but Fitzpatrick's analysis is far sharper than many lumbering books I have read on the incidents.  She begins by defining what she sees as the revolution and while focused on Russia rather than other states that broke from its empire, she sees the revolution as running from 1917 to 1937.  The book is particularly strong on the period between the February/March Revolution and the October/November Revolution, a period which tends to get overlooked.  Fitzpatrick certainly does well in countering any assumption of inevitability about the Bolshevik victory, even Lenin's leadership of it.  Other highlights are her analysis of the social impact of Stalin's industrialisation, revealing how the working class had so declined as a result of the Bolshevik seizure of power and the civil war that followed.  She is also good on the Cultural Revolution that Stalin's consolidation brought about and how it established the future leaders of the USSR while killing so many others.  This is a crisp, highly perceptive book that I recommend.

Fiction - Audio Books
'The Algebraist' by Iain M. Banks; read by Anton Lesser
In terms of science fiction books, I am rather averse to those covering epic chunks of space and the big questions.  I am more interested in 'local' developments and aliens beyond early encounters.  As such this book worked well for me as it features on gas giant at the end of human-occupied space and its moon inhabited by humans.  Artificial intelligence has been forbidden, but as the book progresses we find it lives on. The atmosphere of the gas giant is inhabited by large disc like creatures, the Dwellers, that are very advanced.  Our hero, Fassin Taak is a 'seer' a kind of researcher who investigates them and is sent to find out a code which may give access to concealed portals when the system is cut off from much of human space by the destruction of one constructed portal by rebels/pirates, the Beyonders.

This is a very rich book.  Banks does very well in conjuring up the nature of human society in this system and that of the Dwellers too.  What I like is that it is done not with awe, but with a workerlike approach.  This means we do not spend time gawping at what is being revealed, as is too often the expectation in science fiction stories, but instead we are drawn into the conspiracies that are going on both within Dweller and human society.  There are great descriptions such as an attack by the Beyonders during a 'yacht' race in the gas giant's atmosphere.  There are a range of engaging characters and it is a challenge to know who is really who and even the hero turns out to have different loyalties to what might be expected.  I would say that you do not feel real jeopardy, but the book is a real rollercoaster with a lot going on.  However, things are made clear, without info dumps as to what is happening.

Anton Lesser is excellent in voicing the wide range of characters whether human or alien.  He even pulls off a scene in which two characters are communicating by touch so they cannot be overheard.  Overall, this was an enjoyable book brought to life very well but an experienced reader.
'Munich' by Robert Harris; read by David Rintoul


It is interesting that the events of September 1938 at the Munich Conference, despite being seen as the summit of the policy of appeasement are now so poorly known that I saw one commentator to the 'The Guardian' review of this book assume it was an alternate history.  Harris published one very successful alternate history book 'Fatherland' in 1992.  Since then his output has largely been historical novels, yes, fictional but embedded in what really happened.  This book is no different.  Harris, it is revealed in the acknowledgements was fascinated by the Munich Conference following being the presenter of a documentary broadcast in 1988, 'God Bless You, Mr Chamberlain'.  Thus this book is filled with immense detail about what happened in the days around the conference.  He does involve some adventure with his two 'heroes', a German and a British diplomat trying to make Chamberlain aware of the Hossbach Memorandum produced in 1937 that showed Hitler's objective was clearly war despite his rhetoric about peace.  One the German side we see a little of the Oster plot against Hitler, again genuine.

If you do not enjoy details of background discussions then this will not be the book for you.  However, I feel Harris brings to life the men involved, well representing their different characters and opinions around what was happening.  It is far better at 'explaining' Munich from the British side than the Lammers book I read in February.  I do feel that Harris is far too much of an apologist for Chamberlain.  It shows how stubbornly he clung to foolish opinions even when his colleagues in the Cabinet put forward different views that would have been more beneficial to Britain's position and above all to the Czechs.  Harris does show how much contempt Chamberlain had for the Czechs, at best patronising them but generally working from the basis that Czechoslovakia was illegitimate anyway and so it was nothing to give territory from it to Germany.  Running through this is a sense of national superiority on the part of Chamberlain, which far from being as harsh as Hitler's certainly bent that way.  I wish Harris had shown Chamberlain to have been more of the misguided fool that he actually was.  However, he does signal his ill-health which was to kill him a little over two years later.

The success of this book is in how it provides genuine tension even when we know the outcome.  It also succeeds in bringing alive very dull people from the past and giving us some insight into their context, especially how it shaped their behaviour, though falling at the last through being far too sympathetic to Chamberlain.  It is only at the end of the book that you are made truly aware of the futility of everything that was done at Munich and around the conference.  David Rintoul is perfect for reading this book, being able to produce a great range of voices to represent the different politicians and officials on both sides.  If you are more sympathetic to Neville Chamberlain than I am you might enjoy this book thoroughly.  For me it was decent, rather than outstanding; frustrating and ultimately depressing.

'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen; read by Joanna David
I realised from the woman who lived in my house watching the DVDs of the BBC 1995 dramatisation of the story that I knew pretty much all of this story.  It is very light, but at least given some humour to make it seem less insubstantial.  There are some rather over-emphasised characters especially in Mr Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but they add some depth to the book.  I feel sorry for the people Austen portrays.  Yes, they are spared the poverty of many of the era, but have an insecurity of situation which especially for the women compels them to obsess over the game of finding a suitable partner to marry.  Aside from that their lives are very tedious, with some singing and piano playing; playing card games, visiting friends and relatives and the occasional ball, the only distractions.  The advantage of the book is that the omniscient narrator is able to show the inner thoughts of Mr Darcy which makes his shifting attitude towards Elizabeth Bennett seem to start earlier and be more logical than having to show this through facial expressions on the screen.  I would hardly say that I enjoyed the book, but it passed the time and it was good to have heard the original material and know how close the dramatisation that I know best, was to it.

Joanna David who appeared in that dramatisation as Mrs Gardiner is perfect for voicing this story.  She does the voices of the men as well as the range of the women and is especially good with Mrs. Bennett and Lady de Bourgh.

'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley; read by Richard Pasco
It is interesting how you gain an impression of a book from how it is represented in popular media rather than its actual pattern.  Of course, I knew this book was not the same as the horror movies of the 20th century.  However, I had not realised how much of a philosophical book it was and how many of the themes it explores have relevance now, perhaps more so even than in the intervening 200 years since it was published.  The approach is effectively nested monologues from an explorer of the Arctic relaying the monologue of Victor Frankenstein and in turn Frankenstein relaying what the creature says about his experiences and motives.  To some degree this approach excuses Victor in a way that I feel modern readers will not let him get away with. 

There is an early 19th century assumption that the deformed are inherently evil and should be dismissed anyway, in a way that would be intolerable nowadays.  Though, saying that, the last few years have again raised particular hostility towards the 'other' in terms of assumptions, for example, immigrants.  There also seems a return to the belief that certain behaviours are inherent in particular sorts of people, whereas Shelley shows effectively how mistreatment breeds mistreatment and can turn even the kindest spirit, malicious with repeated inflictions.

Victor Frankenstein does come across as a victim himself and I was not certain if Shelley intended this or expected the reader to see that he had brought about his own downfall and misery through his own reckless behaviour at the start and his unwillingness to recognise his responsibilities.  In that, even 200 years later, this book appears as a critique of the self-centred behaviour of young men, especially in terms of any children they may help conceive.

Richard Pasco's reading reminded me of William Roberts's reading of the Lovecraft stories that I listened to last month, though perhaps a little less bombastic, all for the better.  There are numerous dramatic scenes that he articulates well, without going over the top.  He communicates the earnestness of Shelley's writing and her articulation of assumed horror of the creature even before this is evidenced by his actions.  He draws out suitable voices for the different narrators and gives the book the appropriate period feel.  I would not say I enjoyed this book, but I was engaged with it and found it thought provoking and relevant to concerns today, despite its age.

'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens; read by Hugh Laurie
This was another book that I had misapprehensions about based primarily on images from the 1946 movie.  I had anticipated that it would be very gloomy in portrayal and depressing; something akin to 'Wuthering Heights' (1847), a book I was compelled to read at school some thirty years ago and have no wish to return to ever again.  Though there are what might be termed 'Gothic' elements, especially in the jilted bride, Miss Haversham and the decaying house she maintains; the bleak marshland in which she and the 'hero', Pip, live, it is a lighter book than I had anticipated.  There are some quirky characters, notably Joe Gargery the blacksmith, Mr. Wopsle a clerk who takes to the stage and especially John Wemmick, a solicitor's clerk with a wonderful fortress-like home.  I had anticipated that Pip would be utterly wrecked by his involvement with Miss Haversham and her plans to wreak revenge on men through her adopted daughter, Estella.  However, while not everything turns out jolly, it actually unfolds to not be such a tragedy and is more really a story of the various ups and downs of Pip's life from childhood into approaching middle age.  The interest stems from the particular nature of the different characters and the interlocking between them in ways which may have been less expected than these days when such coincidences have become over-used.

Hugh Laurie with his light tone, is appropriate for voicing a character who speaks in the first person throughout and is a boy for much of the book.  He pulls off a range of suitably Victorian voices, at times sounding like the late Jon Pertwee in some of his roles.  His tone also keeps the story from descending into that bleak Victorian gloom which so much of Dickens's work is at risk of sinking into and which puts off so many modern readers from even approaching it.  I would hardly say I thought this was a brilliant book, but I found listening to it far more pleasant than I had feared.

'Northanger Abbey' by Jane Austen; read by Jill Balcon
This is another novel that I had formed a misapprehension of.  I knew that it made fun of the taste in Gothic novels that was common at the start of the 19th century.  However, I thought that they made an impact on the book to a greater extent than is actually the case.  The Gothic tropes impinge just in two ways, first through the narrator talking about heroines and what they 'must' do and then when said heroine, Catherine Moreland goes to the eponymous abbey she assumes that the history of the Tilney family complies with the expectations of the novels, i.e. that the father mistreated the mother and kept her confined leading to her death.  However, at the heart the story is pretty much like 'Pride and Prejudice' (1813), i.e. a young middle-ranking woman trying to find a husband and various misunderstandings and upsets delaying the consummation with her target; in this book not helped by a father who is easily misled and another man, John Thorpe, who wants Catherine for himself.

The portrayal of the society around Bath and the various activities is interesting as is the reference to Gothic novels which were popular at the time.  In many ways the discussion of these between Catherine and Isabella Thorpe, makes the book sound contemporary, the girls (Catherine is 17 for most of the book) chatting about them seems very like social media behaviour of nowadays.  There is some light humour but I had hoped for a more dramatic novel even if it debunked the Gothic tropes.  Jill Balcon handles the voices, especially those of the girls, very well, though at times is a little quiet which can be a challenge for car-borne listeners.  If I had come to this book straight without having listened to 'Pride and Prejudice' so recently might have found it fresher.  However, ultimately it felt like more of the same.

'Oliver Twist' by Charles Dickens; read by Alex Jennings
Like a lot of people I probably know this story best from the musical movie, 'Oliver!' (1968) and as a consequence was unaware of how long the actual story is or how many characters outside the London gang of Fagin, Bill Sykes, Nancy and the Artful Dodger feature.  It begins as a gloomy book in the way that I had feared 'Great Expectations' (1861) would be.  However, it develops to be more like that book as it progresses with more hope for Oliver Twist; rich benefactors; a complex family rivalry and come-uppance for all the wicked people.  At least it does not revel in its misery as that horrendous book clearly inspired by this one, 'The Quincunx' (1989) does at such painful length and offers up at least some shreds of hope.  Dickens was clearly aiming to alert readers to the fate of workhouse orphans and the activities of criminal gangs in London.  There is detail of pick-pocketing and house-breaking; plus journeys through London.  There are a range of mean-spirited characters and at times Dickens shows the civic notables of Oliver's home town, in all their self-righteousness, to be more evil than the criminals in London.  The sense that the poor to blame for their own fate, gave dialogue that you could hear today applied to people on benefits.  Thus, it retains a relevance to today.  I had not expected it to be wrapped up as neatly as it was, but I guess that reflects the demands of the time when it was written.

Alex Jennings tends to fall to stereotypes when voicing Fagin and Bill Sykes, in the latter case unfortunately reminding me of the The Peppermint Nightmare from the television series of 'The Mighty Boosh' (2003-07).  However, he is otherwise very good at conjuring up a range of Victorian characters, especially the busybodies that direct Oliver's life with no compassion.

'Middlemarch' by George Eliot; read by Harriet Walter
As most people know, George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans (1819–80).  You can sense a feminist perspective in this book.  In contrast to Jane Austen's (1775-1817) few of the marriages are a success and it is the wife who suffers from the husband's obsessions.  The only really happy one is when the widowed Dorothea goes off with the artist Will Ladislaw at the end of the book with heavily reduced wealth due to her husband disinheriting her of everything if she married him.  These were radical ideas when the book was published in 1871-72 especially when wrapped up in a book which seems on the service just to be a prolonged version of what Austen would have written.

This book is very highly rated.  However, to me, it was utterly tedious.  It is really a 19th century version of the television soap opera 'Emmerdale' (broadcast under two names since 1972).  We simply hear about various women deciding to marry unsuitable men; people borrowing or going short of money; old family scandals; fuss about the reputation of a doctor and various other people plus various philanthropic ventures such as a new hospital and improved housing for the peasants.  It dances around these characters all being very irritated with each other or ashamed of themselves and their behaviour.  Austen gets away with it for keeping everything quite short.  This book just goes on and on and feels far longer than the 6 hours 50 minutes it is read for in the edition I have.  The book is massively over-rated and quickly becomes tiresome, to such an extent it has driven me away from listening to any more of the 'classic' novels in audio book form from Penguin that I had lined up.

Harriet Walter is fine reading this, doing the female and male characters and trying to put some life and a little drama into what is an incredibly limp story.

Eve of the Globe's War: A ‘What If?’ Novel of the Coming of the Second World War without an Industrial Revolution

Eve of the Globe's War: A ‘What If?’ Novel of the Coming of the Second World War without an Industrial Revolution

Today I self-published a new 'what if?' novel for sale on Amazon.  Rather than look at a small shift in history of one country and its implications, this one considers what would have happened if the Industrial Revolution had not been permitted to happen.  As the introduction outlines, there have been many regimes and societies throughout history that have resisted innovation; indeed passed laws against it.  The Classical societies of Egypt, Greece and Rome did advance knowledge in certain areas but as slave economies felt no need to go further and indeed many of the skills they had were lost.  In Imperial China and Shogunate Japan there was active resistance to innovation for fear of the damage it would bring to the established regimes.  Thus, looking at absolutist monarchies that were increasingly strong across Europe in the 18th century, often with monopolies over leading industries, it seemed highly feasible that innovation may have been halted; punishable by death.  Discovery of China and Japan seem to simply vindicate that this was the right approach for these restrictions.

Having set up this scenario I aimed to pick a well-known element of our history and show how different it would have been without the industrialisation of the 18th and 19th centuries.  I lit upon the Munich Crisis of 1938 when Germany demanded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.  In addition, paralleling with the German use of the Enigma ciphering system and its provision to Britain and France by Polish intelligence, I thought the idea of agents seeking such a device would form the good basis for a story.  In order to highlight the differences I used well known people from our history: Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Bernard Montgomery, Neville Chamberlain, Oswald Mosley and Adolf Hitler to show that the lack of industrialisation would have not simply have impacted on the technology available but also the societies of Europe.  In our world there was still limits on chances to advance, but in a democracy even a man from a mercantile background like Chamberlain could become Prime Minister of a large empire and Adolf Hitler, a failed painter, son of a customs official, could rise to be dictator of Germany.  In a world where society remains dominated by the nobility such men could not have progressed.

I have felt that the Stuarts were more liable to become an absolutist monarchy for Britain than the Georgians would have been, given the behaviour of Charles I and James II.  People might challenge that the family, especially Charles II, had an interest in science.  However, given the removal of Charles I, their Stuart descendants - stemming from children of Queen Anne surviving rather than dying in infancy - seemed more like to adopt the kind of absolutist approach favoured in France, that in our world, provoked the French Revolution.  In this alternative rumblings on both sides of the Channel have not gone any further.

The map of Europe looks very different too.  As there has been no French Revolution so no Napoleonic Wars,  the Holy Roman Empire and various Italian kingdoms have been left in place.  The slow speed of communications and relatively low level of urbanisation has meant that though things have developed from the early 18th century, it is of a fraction of the scale of what happened in our world in the same time period in so many aspect.

This is the map I produced to give an idea of what the heart of Europe is envisaged as in this book, in itself providing opportunities and challenges for the heroes and heroine as they travel by horse-drawn carriage, river-carried barge and hot-air balloon from London to Munich and back.

This book is a spy novel set in this alternate context and it has a greater romantic element than my previous novels. It is interesting as an author when a character appears and then gains a more central role than you had ever anticipated and this is what occurred with Écuyesse Servane Adélaïse Perenelle Bérénice de Grimoard who grew from an incidental to being a counterpoint to the Honourable James Manners, the rather feckless civil servant dispatched with the motley crew of notables - Churchill, Eden and Montgomery to barter for the Prussian cipher machine, of course, unlike the Enigma of our world, operated by hand; electricity not being in use in this alternative.

I hope a spy novel set in a very different 1938 to our own will appeal to readers. It provides a very different story set around the Munich Conference to that seen in Robert Harris's forthcoming novel!