Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell' by Susanna Clarke

A huge (782-page) hardback copy of this book was given to me by a big fan of the novel. His tastes sum up the nature of the book. While he likes science fiction and fantasy novels and movies, he is also a fan of Anthony Trollope and Vikram Seth. This book is fantasy novel, set 1806-1817 but in a world where magic is real and for a large part of the Middle Ages, England was divided into two kingdoms with the northern one ruled from Newcastle by John Uskglass, the so-called Raven King, a man trained in magic while in Faerie as a child. The style of the novel is that of Austen (more 'Mansfield Park' than 'Pride and Prejudice'), Dickens and indeed Trollope, though without the humour. As the title of the book might suggest, like an early 19th Century novel it focuses on the relationship between the two eponymous men. There is action and some adventure, especially in the closing stages but a lot of the book is about how the two characters revive English Magic - other parts of the world remain devoid of it - and their increasingly different views on how it should be treated.

Neither man is a hero. Gilbert Norrell wants a personal monopoly on magic and works hard to buy up every book from the 'golden' and 'silver' ages of magic of the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. He tries to clamp down on any practitioners, including his own servants. In contrast Strange wants to acknowledge past contact with Faerie; make use of routes between mirrors; widen access to magic and so seeks to publish books and establish schools of magic. Yet, his ambitions also lead him to be neglectful of his lovely wife who is abducted by a Faerie king who is never named but intervenes throughout the book for his own selfish, indeed wicked aims. Both magicians work for the government and some of the most interesting scenes are when Strange goes abroad (Norrell keeps very much to his house now in London) to work with the army in the Peninsular War and later many of the exceptional genuine incidents of the Battle of Waterloo are explained as being the result of Strange's magic.

Some of the minor characters are particularly interesting. Stephen Black is a black butler of Sir Walter Pole, the politician whose fiancée Norrell brings back to life as a way of becoming established in London society but at a huge cost in terms of the deal he has to make with the unnamed faerie king. Black becomes a protégée of this king who constantly drags him off to dreary festivities in his kingdom but because he cannot understand 19th Century society is convinced Stephen will become King of England. Both Lady Pole and Arabella Strange become ensnared by and suffer at the hands of this faerie king. The theme of women suffering both psychologically and physically due to the ambitions of their husbands is one that runs right through the novel. John Childermass, Norrell's valet who is developing his own magic skills and Vinculus a street magician are also interesting characters. I felt the novel strengthened when Black and Childermass becomes more of protagonists.

The strength of the novel is the world building that Clarke does, both portraying society of the time and the actual politicians with the mixing in of a magic world - reinforced by numerous lengthy footnotes to books and legends from this alternate world. If you are into mainstream fantasy rather than 19th Century society novels, then the pace will feel very slow. In addition, the focus on the tensions between the two magicians might seem unexciting unless you found 'Mansfield Park' engaging. The work that went into it and the deftness with story telling and skilful pastiche writing are to be admired, especially as this was Clarke's first book. I am interested to read 'The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories' (2006) set in the same universe but with a focus on women.

'The Wild Wood' by Charles de Lint

Given that he has published 28 novels since 1984 in addition to novellas and young adult fiction, I was really surprised that I had never seen a book by De Lint ever before. I can only put this down to him being Canadian and not read by people in the places I have lived. Picking up this book from a charity stand in a supermarket, I thought it was simply a contemporary novel. In part it is. It is set in an area of Canada which I thought was near the Ontario-Quebec border, but seems to be fictional. It is about a painter who has relocated to a remote forested area into a wooden house built by neighbours who she is relatively close to, though they are spread out over quite a geographical area of forest and lake, though within relatively easy drive of some urban centres. What I was unaware of is that De Lint is seen as the originator of urban fantasy and this book soon turns out to be a magic realist novel. There are gritty aspects of Eithnie's youth - notably a miscarriage - and especially that of her cousin, Sharleen, who becomes a support as things turn weird for Eithnie.

If you know that De Lint writes fantastical stories then you quickly understand that the stalker is not a human threat; this is not going to to turn into a horror-thriller with her trying to escape a murderer in remote woodlands. Instead spirits of the polluted forest and lakes are seeking to have humans who will support them going into the future. Eithnie is originally terrified by them but learns to get on with natural spirits on a visit to two artist friends in Arizona. Then the book goes off the deep end and really should carry some warning. As it does not, at least in the edition I have, I will alert you to the fact that eventually Eithnie is impregnated by a wooden man/tree spirit and ends up having its child. I do not know what the plant version of bestiality is, but this is what happens in this book. In line with stories around Faerie, which this explicitly becomes, the child will not remain in our world but go into the spirit world as a bridge.

There are some bits of the book which are pleasant. The portrayal of the Canadian wilderness is evocative. The characters and the interactions between them are believable. This could have been a decent contemporary novel about an artist refinding their inspiration and having a nice relationship with her mysterious but handsome and manly neighbour. However, it takes a turn into something quite different which is intentionally unsettling, even though packaged up (both in terms of the story and the cover) in a rather twee context. Maybe it was a good thing I had not come across De Lint's work before and I will certainly not be seeking it out. The one plus point about this book is that in my edition it is only 205 pages long. I often mourn that science fiction and fantasy books, unlike in the late 1960s/early 1970s are rarely tolerated as being that concise and I wish more were. Maybe De Lint was allowed to get away with it as on the surface this looks like literary fiction rather than fantasy. It maybe because it started out as part of a collection commissioned in 1994 by Brian Foud. This novel as a standalone book does caution me to read up on authors before I buy their books, even if from a charity stand.

'The Poet' by Michael Connelly

I had not realised that Connelly had published this book in 1996 while still producing the Harry Bosch series. There are references to the series of murders featured in this novel in other Connelly books. The main character is Jack McEvoy a crime feature journalist for a newspaper in Denver. When his twin brother, a murder detective, is found apparently having committed suicide, close to where their sister drowned, McEvoy begins to investigate. Soon her uncovers a whole series of apparent suicides by murder detectives leading on various cases featuring murders of children or people associated with the care of children. The book alternates between McEvoy traipsing across the USA, for the most part in the company of FBI agents and a paedophile and murderer named William Gladden who may be connected to the murders McEvoy is looking into but in what way, even when he becomes the prime suspect, we do not know. It is never pleasant reading from the perspective of a criminal in detective stories, but especially this one who is open about his abuse of children and remains with the corpse of an adult victim over a period of days. 

I can see why Connelly introduced the Gladden aspect as in general this is not a particularly exciting book. Yes we expect some police procedure but here we get police, FBI and journalistic procedure. There is a lot of McEvoy sitting around in hotel rooms connecting his computer's modem them disconnecting it so he can make lots of phonecalls. The faked suicide though intriguing seems very contrived. There are some moments of tension and action towards the end and a good twist. However, you have had to wade through a lot of stuff to get to these parts. The relationship between the protagonist and a ballsy female FBI agent feels very stereotypical; almost Connelly's default setting. The expanse of the case really weakens the gritty immediacy of Connelly's best stories; too much in this is down the end of a phoneline.

Non-Fiction

'The Nation State and National Self-Determination' by Alfred Cobban

In theory the edition I bought of this book was the 1969 revised edition of Cobban's 1945 book. However, aside from some scanty sections on self-determination in Asia and Africa in the 1940s-60s, throughout it was difficult to tell where at all it had been updated. Though the section on nations within the USSR was sound, Soviet suppression of nationalities in Eastern Europe was not developed. The strongest parts of the book are around the development of nationalism in the late 19th Century and especially in terms of the contradictory imposition of it through the Peace Treaties of 1919-20; 1923 and the Nazi abuse of the concept. The population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s and the ejection of Germans from Eastern European states in 1945, are not featured or insufficiently.

The book keeps coming back to the philosophical and intellectual roots of self-determination. As Cobban admits many of his arguments are circular yet he tends to go through them again and again, such as how pragmatic in terms of economy and borders peacemakers should be; seeing whether self-determination requires or drives on democracy; asking how 'far' self-determination can go, for example, in terms of nations such as the Welsh, Bretons and Catalans - though in the latter case utterly neglecting Franco's suppression of regionalism. In a very colonialist attitude, even in the largely post-colonial age by 1969, he portrays much African nationalism as tribal. He recognises that colonialism has lumped together various tribes and divided others but in contrast to his portrayal of Europe, sees this as something the new African countries have to deal with pragmatically not through self-determination. He makes no mention of the confederations attempted in Africa and the Middle East. He gets very confused by the Israel/Palestine situation and seems overly optimistic of a multi-nation solution. 

On US foreign/imperial policy Cobban presents a false picture of it having abandoned its interventionism of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, whereas in the name of the Cold War direct and indirect intervention across the Caribbean, Central and Southern America became even more active than before and indeed a kind of Monroe Doctrine was extended to the oil regions of the Middle East under the Eisenhower Doctrine.

I can understand why there was a need to update this book. However, the revisions were highly limited and even before getting on to post-1945 there are odd ellipses which simply multiply when Cobban is addressing the Cold War era as if while he could disentangle the complexities of the inter-war era he was at a loss in the post-1945 contexts. The philosophical element which could have endured through the decades is circular and consequently weak anyway. The value in this book is primarily around the different pressures on and from self-determination at the time of the post-First World War peace treaties.