Books I Read/Listened To In September

 Fiction

'Resurrection Men' by Ian Rankin

This is the thirteenth book in the Rebus series and was prize winning. Unlike some of the recent preceding ones, this novel has energy. Rebus is sent back to a training college but is working undercover to find out about corrupt police officers. There is an air of uncertainty especially as the case the retrainees are given to work on is one Rebus knows and her does not know if he is as much under suspicion as the men they are working with. In parallel then overlapping, is the case handled by DS Siobhan Clarke. While not named on the covers in many of these stories she is as much a protagonist as Rebus himself. Rebus is still in his relationship with a curator, though a night-time encounter with her seems rather too convenient to be believable. There is quite a lot of tracking back and forth between the college and Edinburgh and Glasgow. Crime boss Big Ger Cafferty appears yet again though some of the focus is on one of his lieutenants. It gets a bit tiresome that he keeps on turning up. However, this novel is decent in terms of the doubts and self-reflection of Rebus and Clarke and how the different threads of the various stories come together.

'Fool's Errand' by Robin Hobb

This is the first of the Tawny Man Trilogy set in the same world as Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, the first book of which I read some while back: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/11/books-i-read-in-november.html Indeed its protagonist is the man who was known as Fitz in that series, but 15 years later when, having renamed himself Tom after all the dramatic adventures of the previous books, is now living a bucolic life with his adopted son and the wolf he is bound to. Hobb's world has two kinds of magic that are genetic inheritances but can be accentuated through training. The Wit allows someone to bind with an animal and communicate with them telepathically. If not handled properly the person can lose themselves in the animal's identity. At the time of this book, the Witted are being persecuted and horribly executed. The other is the Skill which is another form of telepathy allowing sight, i.e. being able to "farsee" and communicate over distances. Tom probably has both abilities. There are also hedge witches with the ability to make charms to achieve low-level magic which actually works.

The first third of the book seems to be going nowhere. We see Tom's quite life while he is visited by various people from his past who know more or less about his history. Most important is the Fool of the title, who had that role at court, but has now reinvented himself as Lord Golden (many nobles names are characteristics such as King Shrewd and Prince Dutiful). He is a kind of alien with unknown abilities but probably a recurring role as a prophet who needs a catalyst in the form of Tom. This section of the novel is effectively a huge recap of the entire Farseer Trilogy which might be a bit tiresome if you have read it, but does mean if you are new from Hobb's work you can get up to (leisurely) speed with her world. Then the rest of the book is a mission into the depths of the country to track down the heir apparent Prince Dutiful who is Witted and has been lured away by a hunting cat.

Hobb has real skill in her writing. Whereas there are some familiar tropes, she has a deftness in turning in ways you do not expect, especially in extracting her protagonists from danger in credible ways. The relationships between the main characters, including Nighteyes the wolf, are handled very well when they are faced with a range of unusual and mundane challenges. In addition to the adventuring with questing and battles, and various bits of magic, it is these relationships which really bare you on in the story. There are no absolutes and even the 'good' characters are grumpy and flawed. I know some readers do not like protagonists who make mistakes, but I feel it means that you can feel you are alongside the characters even though they are existing in a very different world to our own. In addition, despite the fantastical setting there are parallels to our world, notably in suspicion and hostility to those who are seen as 'other' and in turn the negative integration which can make the oppressed become almost fanatical in their defence.

I do not have any more books by Hobb at the present, but if you are looking for well-written fantasy which is credible but not as bleak as grimdark, I can recommend this series.

'Mr. Commitment' by Mike Gayle

This is the second novel by Gayle. I read his first, 'My Legendary Girlfriend' (1998) back in 2016: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html Gayle was trumpeted as the male version of Helen Fielding in featuring in a reasonably light way novels looking at relationships in contemporary Britain (largely London). This one features Ben Duffy, known to his friends as 'Duffy' who is an unsuccessful stand-up comedian who aged 28 has been in a relationship with successful advertising executive, Mel for four years. They live at different ends of London and she asks him to move in with her and get married. Duffy spirals into lots of concerns about marriage, not really about commitment but about the trappings that come with marriage, such as consumerism and children. The novel is then a 'will they/won't they' back and forth with other options for both Duffy and Mel appearing. It is very much of the ilk of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994), though with a lot less humour.

Some reviewers feel Gayle has portrayed the male characters as stereotypically useless men. I would disagree as in fact this is one of the challenges, most of the other men in the book, seem to be fully in control of their lives and doing pretty successfully. Many of these kinds of books have a sort of 'soft' social class portrayal of a kind of middle class and people around the fringes, actually doing better than would be the case given costs and low salaries in London. Duffy flat sharing is a reasonable portrayal. Marriage itself comes over as a middle class activity and it is tightly associated with dinner parties and especially in this book visits to Ikea. This seems to be an inescapable context. Even 'Starstruck' (2021-2023) strays into this territory though it is a lot funnier. I guess this was the focus back in the 1990s and is coming around again after different portrayals like 'The Royle Family' (1998-2012) 'Gavin and Stacey' (2007-2019), and 'Two Doors Down' (2013-2023). I know I am comparing a novel to TV series but it does show how few relationship novels I read.

This was not a bad book though what it features was hardly unexpected. It would have been good to have included more humour. Possibly the best thing is it might make young men - though they are unlikely to read it - actually think beyond their immediate needs to their longer term and see that relationships can be achieved without having to buy into the whole 'kit' of middle class consumerism.

'The Montmartre Investigation' by Claude Izner [Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre]

This is the third book in the Victor Legris series. Legris is a book seller living in Paris in the late 19th Century who is also an amateur detective seeking to solve local crimes before the police do. The two authors, sisters who are both Parisian booksellers, are very knowledgeable about France in the period. The book is lovingly detailed in describing all the different districts, their buildings and the residents. Though set in 1891, the fringes of the French capital do open quickly into farmland and an urban goatherd is an important character. The case starts with the murder of a schoolgirl from a boarding school close to Legris's shop which he co-runs with his aged mentor and step-father, Kenji Mori and their assistant, Joseph, an aspiring crime novelist.

A number of people are murdered through the book and Legris and Joseph, often working alone, wheedle their way into various locations to get to the bottom of these and indeed to see if there is a connection between them and what it might be. The first killing might even be a case of mistaken identity and as a result Mori's goddaughter comes to stay at the bookshop. There is a lot of following people around the streets of Paris. There is also a lot of visiting the nightclubs, notably 'Le Moulin Rouge' and 'Le Chat Noir', where the protagonists happen to run into every famous Parisian artist, writer and composer of the time, which does feel rather artificial. Legris's lover is a painter, Tasha and it is nice to see an amateur detective who is not celibate, even if his relationship is complicated. 

There is a lot of interest in this novel. The details of the settings and the people are fascinating. The murder mystery is pretty clever and not that easily to predict, but avoids deus ex machina being needed to resolve it. The prime drawbacks are that there is a lot of tramping around and the tone seems off. This may be due to it being in translation from French. Despite a series of brutal murders, starting off with a stabbed girl, the tone is persistently light. This is fuelled by quirky customers at the bookshop, Legris having women throwing themselves at him, Joseph's mother' Legris on-off relationship and Tasha's disapproval of his investigating and so on. It may have greater gravity in the original French, but in English, despite points of interest it comes off uncomfortably jarring.

'Half A King' by Joe Abercrombie

This novel is set in a different world from, 'The Blade Itself' (2006) which I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html This one has a more Nordic flavour and focuses on states around the so-called Sundered Sea, a roughly circular sea with rather bleak moors, forests and fens around it and various cities on its shores. It focuses on Yarkvi, the second son of the King of Gettland who was born with a withered arm with only a thumb and one finger on his hand. With his father and elder brother dead, he is called back from training as a Minister - a celibate kind of combined herbalist, diplomat, advisor, order to be king. On a revenge mission to a neighbouring state his uncle attempts to kill him and takes the throne. Yarvi survives but ends up as a galley slave, then later escapes with others from the galley to make the arduous journey back to Gettland to recover his birthright.

Though Abercrombie aimed for this to be a young adult book; a little less 'grimdark', and it is a bit shorter than 'The Blade Itself' and much shorter than later books in that series, it is still pretty much a gritty read, with lots of death and suffering along the way. The book is not high fantasy and at times if someone told you it was set in genuine Nordic history you could almost believe it, including when a One God is put in place over the 409 gods worshipped before. With uncles and a widowed mother in a Nordic realm, there are heavy overtones of 'Hamlet' (1601). The portrayals of this bleak context are well done and the action moves along briskly. The portrayal of the characters is handled well and as Abercrombie notes in an interview at the end of the edition I have the focus on one point of view throughout and a small set of characters at any one time means the character development is rich. Some might foresee the twists at the end, but I found they were well handled.

If I see more books in the series I would certainly pick them up.

Non-Fiction

'What is History?' by E.H. Carr

This is a series of four lectures that Carr gave in 1961. Despite its age it has really stood the test of time (though it does refer to all historians as 'he' and talks about the USSR) in terms of its exploration of perspectives on history. It is a short book (159 pages in my edition) however covers a whole range of issues that still need to be thought about. Examples include whether anything in history is 'inevitable' and how historians are impacted by their attitudes of their own time when looking at attitudes of the past and whether we can ever be really objective. In some ways the book comes to a proto-Post Modernist approach which was to develop in the next thirty years, emphasising the looking at context rather than insisting that our perspective is somehow greater than others without checking this. He also points out how Western-centric so much of history is in the West and how this neglects histories that in the life of humanity have had huge impacts.

Despite its age, this book is very deft and putting questions that historians especially in the period of so much dubious 'history' appearing online, need to keep asking themselves and using to check their work. If you are interested in the study of history, I feel this book remains relevant especially in what it asks.

Audio Book

'The Collectors' by David Baldacci; read by Steven Pacey

This is the second book in Baldacci's Camel Club series. I listened to the third book back in 2020: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html It is typical of many of the CD audio books that seem to turn up in charity shops. The 'Camel Club' is a collection of misfit middle-aged and elderly men with various backgrounds largely in intelligence or the military who get wrapped up in conspiracies and solving crimes, led by Oliver Stone a former CIA assassin who now lives and tends a cemetery. In this one the gang investigate the killing of a librarian at the Library of Congress where one of them works and the assassination of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. There is a parallel story about a con artist and her gang ripping off an Atlantic City gangster, which overlaps with the main story as she was the former wife of the librarian.

There is a lot of chasing around Washington DC but the solution of what is going on is reasonably well handled.  Some of the technology, especially used in the con, seems dated, even for 2006 when the book came out. Unlike 'Stone Cold' (2007) which I listened to back in 2020, the language is a bit less tough-guy throughout and it is more a gang of quirky sort-of amateurs solving what is going on which turns out to be spying and treason.

Pacey does well with a range of distinctive American voices and is not bad with the few female voices that appear. This is not the sort of book that I would have gone out and bought but it is fine enough for listening to while commuting.

Books I Read/Listened To In August

 Fiction

'Robin Hood Yard' by Mark Sanderson

This is the third book featuring Johnny Steadman an investigative journalist for the fictional 'Daily News' and Matt Turner, who in this book has become a Detective Constable in the City of London police. The book is set in 1938 and much of the action keeps to the City of London, which has its own police force, though with occasional jaunts into other parts of London under the Metropolitan Police. The story is mainly around a series of gruesome, almost 'locked room' murders and anti-Semitic attacks. The prospective Lord Mayor of London seems to be involved and there are other issues around Czechoslovak gold, the City of London being the home of the Bank of England and other financial businesses. 

There is reference back to the previous books in which Steadman and Turner were abducted and photographed in apparently homosexual stances for blackmail by a local criminal. This has ironically stirred some gay interest between the two men though both of them are also attracted to Turner's wife. This is a deft way of getting in some gay and bisexual characters at a time when homosexuality was a crime in Britain.

The book moves at a fast pace though at times feels rather jerky. There is rapid switching between different perspectives which can be a challenge to keep up with. It conjures up the time period and the details of the City of London well, though due to the latter it does feel claustrophobic at times, and rather convenient that so much of the action takes place inside the 'square mile'. The one who turns out ultimately to be the murderer feels a little as if thrust in at the end rather than naturally developing from among the suspects that the reader has seen up to then.

While a well-informed and interesting book, at times it does not come together as smoothly as you might like. This book was published in 2015 and there have been no sequels.

'The Blade Itself' by Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie is often seen as the godfather of the grimdark genre of fantasy novels. This novel does start of with very gritty text. One of the main characters,  Sand dan Glokta, is a torturer for the Inquisition of the Union, a country in a fantasy world that we only learn about as the book progresses. There is Logen Ninefingers, a large mercenary-cum-bandit from the mountainous northern lands who gets separated from his band early in the book, though we also see their progress at various stages. Then there is Captain Jezal dan Luthar, a nobleman officer in the guard at the capital Adua aiming to win in a fencing championship. I must also mention Ardee West, one of the few female characters in the book, who Jezal falls for. The other woman character is an escaped slave, Ferro Maljinn aided, despite her resistance, by Yulwei the Fourth Mage. Ferro is really eaten up with revenge and is very violent. There is a great fight scene near the end involving her and Logen, which has a really cinematic feel to it.

This first book is effectively 'assembling the team' at the instigation of Magus Bayaz the First Mage who has been living remotely since the establishment of the Union decades before. It is an interesting twist that when he turns up in Adua with Logen, he is disbelieved rather than acclaimed as this great magic user. Magic does feature as Bayaz has both fire-wielding abilities and mentalist ones too. Logen can talk to spirits, though these are dying out. The trigger for the action is an invasion from the north by a leader who Logen previously worked for. Beyond that there are the Shankas, humanoids who are invading behind the northern army, rather reminiscent of the Game of Thrones

The grittiness of the novel, especially early on, does mark it out as grimdark. At times Abercrombie does dodge fantasy tropes. However, as the novel progresses, he rather falls into many of these. The relationship with Ardee seems inevitable, though she is a nicely feisty character. Though we see through the eyes of Ferro, she is all about antagonism. Bayaz's involvement with Jazal also reminds the reader of incidents from the Harry Potter series. This was Abercrombie's first book so maybe we should expect him to be coming out of the fantasy context with what he produced. Still, the book is sufficiently different to take and hold the interest, even if our adventurous band end up sailing off to distant lands at the end as if starting a 'Dungeons & Dragons' scenario. While I am not rushing out to buy the other books in the series, I would certainly pick them up if I saw them for sale.

'The City of Mist' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón'

If the charity shops are anything to go by, Ruiz Zafón is a popular author in my home town. His books, originally in Spanish, sold in the millions. He died in 2020 and seems to have garnered quite a following among English readers too. This is a short collection of short stories, some very short. Some he translated himself. Many feature the town of his birth and early life, Barcelona. In line with the magic realist approach which we often associate with Spanish-language authors, Ruiz Zafón manages to slip between gritty portrayals from across the 16th to 20th centuries. The term 'Gothic' is often appended to them and there are elements of literally fateful deals, of a labyrinth of forgotten books and of ghosts. These are mixed in with very human mysteries and despair. There is certainly a dark tone across the stories, even when this is moderate such as some kind of unknown lost chance for the architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet or more bleak such as a young woman wasting away from illness.

At times you might be irritated by the brusqueness and as a reader almost feel dismissed by Ruiz Zafón going about his business. However, as is noted in the foreword, the stories tend to grow on you after you have read them. These days I see more books of short stories being published and yet you also encounter opposition almost hostility to them for lacking substance. Thus, how you engage with this book probably depends on how you engage with short stories as these are of the archetype. They work to engage you and unsettle you as the best (magic realist) short stories should, but give them time to achieve that.

Non-Fiction

'The Making of the English Working Class' by E.P. Thompson

First published in 1963, though I read the 1980 edition (955 pages), when I was a student this book was more renowned for existing than actually what it said, apart from the analysis of social class as being not something fixed, but a relational perception (re-)established with every interaction between people. However, while that aspect features at the beginning and I feel remains a valid approach, this book is much more than that. It covers the period roughly 1780-1830. Thompson does assume that the reader is familiar with the radical movements of the mid-17th Century and with the Reform Act of 1832 and the Chartist Movement of 1848. He refers to these quite often, but frustratingly does not really explore them.

I guess that this is Thompson's purpose. He is seeking to shine a light on the aspects of the development of working people, their experiences and their outlooks, that so easily get overlooked. We can see the late 1960s and the 1970s as being at the peak of 'everyday history' and this book certainly is part of that perspective. There is an immense amount of detail as Thompson looks not simply at the economic aspects of how England changed due to the Industrial Revolution, but also the inputs from religion and ideologies, especially coming out of the French Revolution. He draws attention to all the various movements and especially publications of the era which looked to develop or oppose the development of working people. At the outset while there were labourers a lot of working people were artisans. This time period saw the end of many crafts and their replacement by the water- and then steam-powered factory. 

As Thompson shows well the picture was far from being a uniform transition and he picks out clearly how the impacts varied across England. The focus is on England, because as he notes, the impacts, especially of religion, on Scotland, Wales and Ireland did provide a very different context which would deserve books of their own. Saying that when people from those nations came into the English scene he does not neglect them. By taking a nuanced view of what was happening even within England, this allows Thompson to do deep analysis and his digging into the very varied experiences of Luddism show the value of this.

There is a lot going on in this book and all the names, publications and locations can be overwhelming at times. However, Thompson does also write with gusto and while analysing also sweeps the reader along with all the different incidents and voices that the book encompasses. It might look like a hefty tome, but as well as being informative I found myself moving briskly through it carried along by Thompson's energy. Despite its age, I do recommend it as a book that will alert you to things of which you might never have heard but also to show how effective historical analysis does not mean a book has to be a dull read.

'The German Empire, 1871-1918' by Hans-Ulrich Wehler

I have been very fortunate this month to have selected two excellent history books to read. I was struck a few years ago when speaking to a German living in the UK, at the time of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, that they thought historians had 'got over' what they saw as an inappropriate 'blaming' of Germany for the start of that conflict. I noted at the time that even books written by British historians seemed to have defaulted back to the 1930s explanation that 'everyone' had been to blame for the outbreak. This runs against the perception informed by the work of Fritz Fischer from 1961 onwards which showed how German policy had, if not created the context for war, pushed events towards it in a more active way than had been perceived. That line was the one which informed my university studies of German history, and indeed my teaching of it, but now in the period after the 1980s rows between German historians, to have faded away leaving the blame-everyone perspective to hold the field by default. In this situation, I feel it makes this book even more important now than perhaps when it was published in German in 1973.

Wehler is far from being an ardent Fischerite. Towards the end of the book he emphasises that we must take care to distinguish the aspirations of radical groups in German society, especially in terms of annexations, from the actual policies of politicians and even the military. Wehler is good on making clear that the context which is established sets parameters on what might and can be achieved. While he is seen as a proponent the Sonderweg (special way) interpretation of German history, in fact I would again argue he is not a zealot. In this book he shows how policies developing out of the agrarian revolution which came to Prussia in the 1850s and 1860s became a founding perspective for the German Empire created in 1871. 

Particularly promoted by the capable Imperial Chancellor, 1871-90, Otto von Bismarck these became ingrained in German politics and society. The policies of Bismarck and his successors was to ensure that the attitudes favouring the elites, notably large landowners, but latterly big business too, kept up the primacy of these attitudes to the political and economic detriment of the large parts of German society. It was not only legislation and subsidies, but also the promotion of conservative civil servants especially in the legal profession, the linked lionisation of the state and the use of patriotism and aspirations to the elite that brought the middle classes to support the favoured policies of the elites. The successful wars of 1864-70 and the militarism promoted by policies, education and propaganda, did not guarantee the empire would go to war, but constantly made it seem a feasible step to take to resolve internal social pressures.

Wehler not only looks at these parameters and calmly demonstrates the difficulties that they made for Germany, but also shows convincingly how much danger they stacked up for the future. Given a legal profession and a military that had been filled with men of a particular outlook in an unchallengeable poisition, combined with the use of xenophobia and anti-Semitism as polices to connect people to the state, the reader comes away quite surprised that the Weimar Republic ever got off the ground. The advent of the Nazis was clearly well established as early as 1918 by what had gone before.

Wehler makes a very convincing case based on perceptive analysis. He does not overplay his hand and cautions the reader not to jump to easy assumptions, bringing out the nuances in what was said and done. Despite being 50 years old, I feel this book remains a very valuable analysis of Imperial Germany and indeed feeding into analysis of later periods in the country's history. It seems very apt especially now when issues around the political parameters that elites can establish and maintain speaks to what is happening both in democracies and dictatorships around the world.

Audio Books

I moved house in August so now have a longer commute to work. That means the revival of me listening to audio books as I have a good stash remaining from the mid-2010s when I commute so much.

'Agatha Christie. Three Radio Mysteries. Volume Four' by Agatha Christie; Radio Plays

Keeping with the policy I adopted previously, if the audio book is based on a book, I still review it, even if it is acted out as a play rather than read. This is a rather strange BBC collection from 2003, featuring a range of well-known actors including the late Richard Griffiths, Dervla Kirwin, Adrian Dunbar and the disgraced Chris Langham, who was imprisoned two years after these recordings were made. Though original short stories published by Christie in 1933-34, for the dramatizations they have been updated. Thus in 'The £199 Adventure' it is for a masking substance for performance-enhancing drugs that the character is sent to Milan to retrieve. The £200 he possesses would have been quite a lot back in 1933, at least equivalent to £15,000 today, if not two or three times that, nowadays even in 2003 the amount seems paltry. This first story is rather frantic and almost comical, with lots of charging around and shooting.

The second story, 'The Gypsy' is much more Gothic in tone and is well handled, bringing in questions about premonitions and reincarnation. The use of moorland and the sense of claustrophobia when one is trying to escape from what seems to be fated is well portrayed by the actors. The final drama is 'The Last Séance' which again is successful in terms of hitting the Gothic tone well, though the updating does raise some issues. Dervla Kirwan and Adrian Dunbar are an Irish husband and wife who work for an English noblewoman, as housekeeper and butler, which shows up the origins. The woman who comes to them for a séance, however, is an Afghan refugee, injured by an airstrike and wanting to contact her daughter injured in the attack who died as a result. However, the acting is convincing and it has a chilling edge, especially as Kirwan's character, able to contact the dead, is pregnant.

Overall, a rather strange package of plays, but generally handled reasonably well, if rather over-dramatically at times. Like good short stories, especially the latter two, make you think about them afterwards.