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Tag: Book Review

  • The Bloody Chamber

    Angela Carter, 1979 

    Vintage, 2006, 149 pages 

    Read 2011, re-read February–March 2026 

    Short stories/feminist literature/literary fiction 

    *Spoilers*

    I was going to introduce this collection of ten short stories as feminist rewritings of fairy tales. However, Helen Simpson’s introduction instantly states ‘The Bloody Chamber is often – wrongly – described as a group of traditional fairy tales given a subversive feminist twist.’ 

    Fine, I thought. Suit yourself. I won’t.  

    (Whispers) But actually, I will. Just a little bit.

    In The Bloody Chamber, fairy tales generally of the more macabre variety become the points of departure in Angela Carter’s process of writing new ones. In the eponymous first tale, a young French woman gets married to a murderous member of the nobility, only to be rescued by her mother. In The Tiger’s Bride, the protagonist is gambled away by her father to a man disguised as a big cat, in the end becoming a tiger herself. Puss-in-Boots is the story of a rake and his feline companion, who are only ever rewarded for their ways. The Erl-King is a sylvian story of possession and revenge. The Company of Wolves is a young girl taking on a wolf in a universe akin to The Northman, in which ‘Children do not stay young for long in this savage country.’ Wolf-Alice combines a vampire with a protagonist reared by wolves. Simpson is partially right in that these tales are evolutions rather than adaptations, but you can see the overlaps, as brief as they are. 

    Despite an almost-universal familiarity* with the stories that are used as launchpads (in respect to their providence, maybe they should be referred to as ‘tales’ rather than stories), it’s not always immediately apparent where these tales are going and what each element signifies. However, this sense of mystery, combined with Carter’s creativity, makes for compelling reading. This is a multilayered, densely symbolic and, despite its complexity, fun collection of short tales. Sometimes set in days of yore, sometimes rewritten into the twentieth century, most stories are from a female perspective, and that preserve of the short story, the ambiguous ending, recurs. Analysing all of them, and what I think they mean, would make this review 1) very long 2) something closer to academia (such as the Lacanian psychology in Wolf-Alice), but Carter writes creates the option of a close, deep read (and re-reads), or just marvelling at them in a less analytical, although not necessarily less appreciative, manner. Indeed, Carter really plumbs the content of these tales, with some of them based on the same origin story, two drawing from Beauty and the Beast and two (arguably three) from Little Red Riding Hood. 

    And if the ideas are bold, the writing matches it. Ian McEwan’s frontpage pull quote describes these as ‘Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality’.** Ian, I just so happen to agree. Check this out: 

    And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur. 

    Besides beauty, Carter’s continuation of these tales retains their darkness, with brutality present within each of the worlds created. However, here, the conservative bent of the traditional fairy tale is subverted into an embracing of danger. Yes, the protagonists must be vigilant, but also bold; they possess agency and learn to take action. 

    Worth reading? Yes. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes, particularly if you want to get into the subtext(s). 

    * At least in Europe. 

    **While studying this as a student, at some point I ended up just circling a single word of this front-cover quote: ‘sensuality’ (see the above photo). 

    You might like this if you enjoyed: 

    The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 

    American Gods by Neil Gaiman 

  • The Unconsoled

    Kazuo Ishiguro, 1995 

    Read: March–April 2026 

    Edition read: Faber and Faber, 2013, 535 pages 

    Fiction, Literary fiction, Post-modernism, Surrealism 

    *Spoilers* 

    A classical piano player, only ever referred to by his surname of ‘Ryder’, arrives in an unspecified, somewhat Germanic city, to give a performance. Between arrival and said performance, errands unfold one after the other into a chain of Kafka-esque side-missions, with the kind of incongruous logic only found in dreams. Time stretches, locations move about (the copy-editor must have had their own nightmares over this one), and otherwise repressed people bring their various crises and make unsolicited confessions to Ryder, in which they assume he is up to speed with whatever they are divulging. This assumed information – which we share Ryder’s ignorance and sometimes bemusement of – remains unexplained to both him and us as readers (for example, Ryder having his picture taken in front of The Sattler Building is hugely controversial – we just never get to know why).  

    This air of mystery is coupled with nearly every character’s excessively polite and precise and utterly verbose dialogue, which occasionally results in paragraphs several pages long. As such, the action and the plot unfold slowly. Although tense, it’s nowhere near ominous enough to be considered a thriller or horror novel (nor does it have the pay-off).   

    Rather, the novel lends itself to interpretation rather than explanation. Mine is that, in this dream-like state, the city is Ryder; maybe his self-perception, maybe his unconsciousness, and that he is trying to resolve some traumatic event – or maybe just overwhelming disappointment (one of the major themes) – with this trauma/disappointment simultaneously embodied and split into multiple characters, with each of these representing something that Ryder feels about himself. 

    A few examples: Stephan believes that his childhood inability to commit to his piano lessons caused his parents’ marriage to break down. And much as how Stephan’s parents ultimately never do watch him perform, nor do Ryder’s parents visit. Brodsky, once a conductor and now an alcoholic, is psychologically hung up on his wound (the nature of which is hinted at but never specified), with both of these issues estranging his wife. Despite a late resurgence, his conducting of the orchestra goes badly askew. Miss Collins, the said estranged wife, finally loses her patience, telling him ‘You’ll always go back to your one true love. To that wound!’ We are repeatedly told that the whole city – i.e., Ryder – and its reputation is dependent upon its ability to produce a genius musician, for which it turns to an outsider, Ryder, for help (unsuccessfully). Ryder, although clearly talented, is displaced even in his own dream/mind/sense of selfhood/sense of being, staying in a hotel (rather than at home) as he struggles to fulfil these expectations. 

    The variation upon this a couple of characters who it slowly becomes apparent are drawn from Ryder’s life and not just his mind, but his memory of which has been repressed. The most tragic of these are Sophie and Boris, to whom he appears respectively to be a husband and father figure. 

    Despite their symbolic prevalence, these characters are well-rounded and relatable. Taken together, the nature of these characters, with their combination of deep-seated unhappiness and repression, has a clear significance as symbolic elements. Despite the many unsolicited, detailed divulgences that Ryder is exposed to, nearly every character has an otherwise subdued, inhibited personality. Little in the way of obvious resolution is delivered and whatever has placed our protagonist in this position – or mental state – remains concealed. As such, The Unconsoled is a melancholic read; how we thwart the promises and expectations of our talent without even realising it, until only hindsight is left (‘Oh dear, Mr Ryder, I’m much too old to be standing at any crossroad […] If this had all happened even just seven or eight years ago […]This is hardly the time to be starting out with a whole new set of hopes and fears and dream.’) Ryder’s parents never arrive; Stephan recites his piece as support act, but the whole point, that his parents witness his talent, is thwarted; Brodsky’s conducting of the orchestra falls apart; Ryder’s performance never happens. Yes, this is a Kazuo Ishiguro novel. 

    If you enjoyed, or rather, enjoyed how sad Never Let Me Go, The Remains of The Day or Nocturnes made you, you’ll like remaining unconsoled to this one too. 

    Worth reading? Yes. Don’t be daunted by its length or its deliberate wordiness, it’s a compelling read. 

     Worth re-reading? Yes. This could even illuminate some interesting foreshadowing. 

    You might like this if you enjoyed: 

    The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien 

    A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse

    Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 

    The Remains of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro. 

  • The Second World War 

    Antony Beevor 

    950 pages  

    Published 2012 

    Weidenfeld & Nicolson 

    Read from October 2025 – March 2026 

    History 

    Some historians focus on the minutiae of history: what is the history of the dice? Why did the shape of ringpulls on tinned food change? What role did shoelaces play in the Mongol Empire? Not Antony Beevor.  

    ‘Antony, what are you writing about next?’ 

    ‘The Second World War.’ 

    ‘Which bit-?’ 

     ‘ALL OF IT.’ 

    In reviewing non-fiction, and history books in particular, it can be tempting to list all of the information gleaned, and it is testament to the quality of this book that in writing this review it was tempting to list many, many things. Initially daunted by its length, once I got going the 950 pages were a pleasure to read. Narrative-driven but analytically insightful, The Second World War is well-paced and conveys the overall story of World War Two in a balanced manner. Despite being so long, there is a slight trade-off between scope and depth, with scope winning out. This isn’t to say that Beevor doesn’t have an eye for detail; he knows what to include while keeping the story moving, and given how long it would have been otherwise, this is a minor and sensible compromise and remains a highly educational read.* Beevor also makes just the right amount of space for the human element of the war and the interest that this generates is a good starting point for further, more specific, reading.   

    The national stories of the Second World War obviously vary, but Beevor – a British historian – makes efforts to cover all theatres. Besides the well-known events (from a British perspective) – the Blitzkrieg (which Beevor contends was improvised in the moment and on the ground rather than premeditated), the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the North Africa campaign, the Eastern Front, D-Day – it covers lesser-known domains, such as the Winter War, the Italian invasion of Greece and the German invasion of the Balkans, and in particular, the Sino-Japanese theatre. 

    Beevor shows a particular focus, unsurprisingly, on military matters – particularly the distribution and movement of forces by commanders – and analysis of leaders, which in this war featured a lot of big personalities. Beevor doesn’t delve into the great man of history theory directly, but he does make it clear how important these particular people were, from Hitler’s uncompromising vision and interfering manner, to Stalin’s paranoia and ruthless obstinacy. I was also surprised at how badly world leaders, leaders-in-exile, military commanders and resistance-movement leaders, ostensibly on the same side, seemed to get along most of the time and how much politicking they engaged in. Many had post-war visions of their country or empire in mind and wanted to make sure that, come the cessation of hostilities, they would either be in charge or be able to pre-empt any civil war. 

    As with his analysis of citizens being caught between systems, Beevor also dispels the ‘good solider’ myth, and how it was more a case of people trying to survive the commanded action (whether combatant or civilian). His criticism is also balanced without producing any false equivalences. In particular, he looks at how British and American ‘targeted’ bombing was so inaccurate that it was more fitting to think of it as area bombing, and criticises this as morally indefensible. 

    Besides Beevor’s own analysis, his insights enable self-made analysis. One example, I already had some understanding of how poor Hitler was as a war-time leader, but didn’t appreciate the extent to which he interfered in command, believed in his own propaganda and refused to even consider strategic withdrawals. Both he and Stalin maintained hold of their subordinates through divide and rule in order to have direct control over all parts of their armed forces. 

    There are a couple of minor niggles: the front cover states that the war left no life untouched, but Latin America is barely mentioned and Sub-Saharan Africa is similarly limited. It would have been nice to have more on the end of the fighting in Italy, and overall, although it includes some post-war analysis, it ends a bit suddenly, although it’s fair to counter that a line had to be drawn somewhere as World War Two became the Cold War (‘Greece was another example of the Second World War merging into a latent third world war’). One point I would have liked Beevor to share his thoughts upon was if Hitler hadn’t believed in labensraum and the triumph of the will so stubbornly, and had been a more pragmatic military commander, would the Axis powers have won? There are several maps, but even so, a few more would have made it much easier to understand the progress of battles and how frontlines moved. Likewise, it would be useful to know what a division, battalion, army etc. consisted of, given that these varied from country to country. 

    However, befitting the title, Beevor does a good job of tying it all together, stating:  

    The Second World War, with its global ramifications, was the greatest man-made disaster in history. 

    Worth reading? Yes.

    Worth re-reading? Yes, although an alternative would be to read around the subjects that you find particularly interesting.

    *Winston Churchill’s history of the Second World War consists of six volumes if you really want what I assume to be a particularly splenetic account of the conflict. 

    ** It was interesting to contrast Beevor’s hyper-detailed Stalingrad with The Second World War and how Germany’s Russia campaign fitted into the wider story of the Second World War, particularly how it influenced the fighting in China and North Africa. 

  • Back soon: gone readin’

    Ever since I relocated my to-read book pile from the shelf over my bed to a table in another room, I have experienced an interesting dichotomy: whilst sleeping easier knowing that my skull won’t be crushed by the shelf suddenly giving way and the resulting downpour of books, this has allowed the pile to start resembling the Tower of Babel and I fear whatever god(s) may be will get the wrong idea. All I have to ward this threat off is A) a negative review of the Bible, which brings us back to the beginning of the problem, or B), read the books I already have instead of buying more.

    As such, there will be a bit of a break from weekly reviews, but barring the aforementioned smiting, look out for my glorious return, which, specifically, will consistent of the following reviews:

    Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell

    The Second World War – Antony Beevor

    Beirut 1958 – Bruce Riedel

    The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter

    The Secret Commonwealth – Philip Pullman

    The Gospel Singer – Harry Crews

    Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

    Birds, Beasts and Relatives – Gerald Durrell

    These Darkening Days – Benjamin Myers

    Young Skins – Colin Farrel

    In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust (graphic-novel adaption)

    The Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman

    Black Hole – Charles Burns

    And a bit further down the line:

    Studying the Novel – Jeremy Hawthorn

    The Seven Basic Plots – Christopher Booker

    The Iron Wall – Avi Shlaim

    Hope It All Works Out! – Reza Farazmand

    Happy reading in the meanwhile.

  • Sword Song

    Rosemary Sutcliff, 1997 

    Red Fox Classics, 2001 

    272 pages 

    Read December 2023 

    Historical fiction, YA fiction 

    *Spoilers* 

    Bjarni, exiled from his settlement for five years for breaking an oath (and only indirectly for committing manslaughter), proceeds to make his way through the Viking world as a mercenary and sailor. What with being a solid Norse lad, this entails the expected abundance of seafaring and feuds. However, Sword Song was not entirely the picture of Viking life that I expected; Scandinavia is eschewed in favour of Viking settlements in the Celtic nations, and the non-martial aspects of Viking life, whilst not foregrounded, are given more space than I anticipated. 

    The slightly old-timey dialogue (‘Is it well with the bairn?’) and the use of placenames of yesterday (‘the Outer Isles’ for the Outer Hebrides and ‘Sutherland’ for the Highlands) lends it a feel of a time before lore, when homes were considered in a more fluid manner and certainly before the concept of a united kingdom. It is not always initially exactly clear where the story is taking place and I enjoyed this defamiliarisation, placing us in our protagonist’s calf-skin boots through five years of adventuring. 

    Its emphasis on adventure makes it a YA book (I mean, look at that front cover), although, while the violence is not gratuitous, nor is it shirked from. In Bjarni’s universe, whilst not a given, death by violent means is readily accepted. In other ways, the richness of details, especially on nature and boats, makes it a gratifying read as an adult: ‘Just where moorland fell away to machair a stream came down from the higher ground, pushing its way through a narrow glen suddenly and unexpectedly choked with trees-a-tangle, birch and rowan and willow and thorn’. This appeal to more considered tastes tempers the pace and prevents it from devolving into the monotony of just being sword fight after sword fight, which, conversely, is what I found hard work when I first bought this when I was 11 or 12 (RRP: £4.99) and sword fighting was a lot more important to me than bucolic vistas. Upon picking it up (20 years-plus later) I half-expected to DNF it again. Instead, I very much found the opposite: the break-up of the sword fighting is what helps make it a compelling read. The abundant descriptions of nature and place-setting that Sutcliff incorporates into her descriptions, without being overwrought, emphasises how these were peoples of the land and of the sea, and in a way, nation builders.  

    It feels well-researched, or at the least, convincingly researched, and both Norse and Christian mythology are touched upon, although they are not central to Bjarni’s worldview. These religions coexist, but primitive, brutal and tribalistic traditions abound in all wheres; feuds, funerals, how animals are treated, going into battle. With all of that said, the underlying zeitgeist is of an incremental shift from paganism to Christianity – the bigger picture paired with the individual experiences of Bjarni. Sutcliff also doesn’t shy away from incoporating the Vikings’ penchant for taking thralls – or slaves – and how some people did not have a chance to make their own way through the world. 

    I would have liked it if there had been a bit more introspection on Bjarni’s part: earlier on in the book ‘he was well enough content, though still there was an ache in him somewhere like the ache of an old wound when the wind is from the east’, but this is pretty much it. He seems to take five years of what seems to be regularly scheduled drama in stride, and is apparently content to wander with rarely a trace of homesickness.  

    Towards the end, he reflects upon how his people call home wherever they lay their head: 

    And suddenly, he was realising something that he had not realised before; that while he come of a people who could uproot easily, whose home was as much the sea as the land [Anghared] was of another kind […] She was flung out into a strange world that held nothing familiar, a cold place; he could feel the cold in her. 

    But there is little talk of how this strange, cold world has affected him. How has he changed by the end? I’ve not read any of Sutcliff’s other books, but as this was published post-humously (I don’t know if that included any of the writing and editing process), I suspect that this may have contributed to this slight sense of underdevelopment. 

    Worth reading? Yes. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes. 

  • Grey Skies, Green Waves

    Tom Anderson

    Read: October 2025, re-read December 2025–January 2026 

    Edition read: Summersdale Publishers, 2010, 270 pages 

    Travel writing 

    Living in southeast England, friends, family and well-wishers in general (you’d be surprised) are often alarmed when I mention that you can surf in the British Isles. Isn’t it cold? they ask. Yes, I say. Bring a wetsuit. Embrace the pain. The truth of the matter is that there is a lot of surf to be had; it’s just very much a geography-determined past-time. However, wherever you do go to catch a wave, they will be right about one thing: it will be cold. 

    As such – although only partially for this reason – surfing in the British Isles is sometimes seen as the poor cousin of what’s to be had internationally. And thus, the premise of Grey Skies, Green Waves is partially set up: our narrator and author, Tom Anderson, has come to realise that he doesn’t really like surfing in the British Isles anymore, given how much warmer, sunnier and, er, wavier, the rest of world is. He has fallen into a slump of surfing locally only half-heartedly. 

    The other part of the premise – and actually, given that Anderon grew up with the niche but all-consuming hobby of surfing, the more important part – is that he has hit a slump of entering surf competitions, only to drastically underperform. He sets out to remedy this case of ‘I don’t like the things I use to’ by taking more opportunities to surf in more domestic locales, and herein he accounts several surfing trips around the British Isles, extending from south to north Wales (including a secret spot in Cardiff), Devon, Cornwall, John O’Groats, the Outer Hebrides, the River Severn and County Claire. 

    Anderson is clearly a Good Surfer (surfing triple overheaders near John O’Groats is not for beginners, nor for improvers), and at points he captures the various sensations of being in the water vividly (‘A thick slop of heavy, cold, dark water is the surfing equivalent onto several feet of powder on a snowboard, or a big, smooth tarmac slope to a skater […] To bury your board onto its edge and then throw all your weight through an arcing turn, knowing the water below will bear everything you throw at it, it a feeling of at-oneness with the ocean that rivals any tube ride.’) As a surfer’s lexicon will attest, a wave is not just a wave: it has speed, height, depth, shape, direction and length. Anderson does this well, although certain passages merit a bit of secondary reading (for example, what is a ‘wedge’?). It is at its most engaging when describing being in the water in good conditions, and the more enthused about that particular session he is, the better that Anderson writes about it. As the book goes on, the stoke improves., and as such, the last quarter of the book is the best. 

    The other element of this book is back on dry (well, damp) land, capturing the ennui that accompanies not just surfing, but many outdoor pursuits, in the British Isles: early (cold) mornings, waiting in (cold) carparks for the right conditions to materialise (if they do), drinking away (cold) afternoons in pubs, disappointing competition results and late (cold) night drives home. Whilst overall I appreciate the inclusion of this other side of surfing, there were a few non-surfing sections that did not exactly make for compelling reading, such as the passage where he retells someone else’s story about accidentally trapping someone in an automatically cleaning French toilet. 

    It is written in the first person, which while fitting for a piece of travel writing, could have included fewer conversations recounted word for word via direct speech. Although sometimes this does place you in the moment, at other times it could have been a bit terser and not lost anything. Sharing the same past-time, it would be remiss not to mention William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days as a simultaneously accompanying and contrasting read, but given their different focus. 

    Worth reading? Yes – persevere through the discouraging sections. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes, for the passages in the water in particular. 

  • Blood Meridian

    Cormac McCarthy, 1985 

    Re-read: November–December 2025 

    Edition read: Picador, 2011, 353 pages 

    Neo-Western, Historical fiction 

    *Spoilers* 

    The point of entry to this notorious book is that it is a Western, albeit, one closer to literary than genre fiction, with the primary theme being war, literal and spiritual, everlasting with man as its eternal maker. The scale is grandiose and the tone is Biblical. Considered to be one of the Great American Novels (comparisons to Faulkner, Melville, as well as Shakespeare, abound in the attendant literary analysis),* it’s a bracingly violent read. 

    The Mexican–American War, here, is presented as humanity’s nature writ large. Drawn from the diary of an American who signed up with the scalp-hunting Glanton Gang during said war,** McCarthy uses this (relatively) modern context to divine the nature of our species. The world in this book – which at times is quite distinctly the US–Mexican borderlands and at others could be neolithic – is the result. And what a thoroughly pessimistic exploration of human nature it is. 

    More plot- than character-driven, our protagonist, who is only ever named as ‘the kid’, is – as the lack of a name suggests – a figure with little expressed individuality or motivation except for a natural aptitude for violence. Born into a world lacking sentiment, his origin story is that he just wanders off from his home in Tennessee one day and never returns. From here, following an incompetent filibuster*** foray into Mexico made under the purview of Manifest Destiny (although throughout the novel, white men, Mexicans and Native Americans mete out violence with equally vicious proficiency), he joins the Glanton gang. Captain Glanton, being the sort of person you would move away from on public transport or in the pub, has been hired by the Mexican authorities to kill Apache. In the pursuit of money and steeped in the prosecution of colonialism, the gang soon devolve from regional assignments into killing anyone that they can: all scalps (referred to as a ‘receipt’ at one point) look the same by the time they are cashed in. 

    With that said, the kid and Glanton are in some ways a sideshow to what come to be the two main characters: the land and the Judge. Judge Holden is a driver of philosophical content, holding forth on the order of the universe and the nature of man frequently and extensively (a snippet: ‘It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone.’) Abnormally big and completely hairless, he quickly comes to manifest as a supernatural being.  

    As for the land, the kid and the gang are outside nearly all of the time (brawling in tavernas is a recurring exception to this) traversing vistas colossal in scope, with the size of the open spaces often calling up references to other dimensions and worlds (‘The horses trudged sullenly the alien ground and the round earth rolled beneath them silently milling the greater void wherein they were contained’). The kid and the gang inhabit the liminal, with lots of descriptions of dawn and dusk and of being in places so remote and uninhabited (place names are rarely given) that they rightly seem like they should not exist in our world. It actually reached the point where it made me think of H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Horror. This is coupled with frequent references to astronomy and the stars, but more in the sense of ‘you are alone in the universe’ rather than ‘isn’t this nice’. This is paired with descriptions of the wilderness so rich that there were times reading this where, minus the murder/scalping/raping/torture/freezing/dehydration/exposure/starving/theft/racism/getting shot, I wanted to be there, riding a horse, wearing a hat, being stoic. However, this is no bucolic, eco-primitivist treatise – man may be the one waging eternal war, but nature is a close second via sheer inhospitality. The various desert landscapes tend to reach the point of reading like hell: hot, empty (of nice things) and full (of the dead).

    For those unaware, McCarthy has an idiosyncratic writing style, eschewing most punctuation and using what Wikipedia calls ‘polysyndeton’ (but which I think you and I can call ‘long sentences with no commas’). It is perhaps in Blood Meridian that McCarthy best encapsulates his grandiose, prophetic style, with archaic nomenclature abounding (you will need to bring your old-timey dictionary), somehow simultaneously terse and poetic, extravagant and as laconic as his characters. There is an embarrassment of riches in fantastic writing, but the ‘legions of horribles’ passage is a great example: 

    A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows or mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horse’s ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horse from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. 

    Oh my god, said the sergeant. 

    Oh my god, said the book reviewer. 

    With this all said, this novel is certainly not for everyone. Criticism tends to focus on the lack of exposition and insight into any character (except for the judge), although my take on this is that this creates the very much intended effect that mankind is unknowable. This could also be said about any McCarthy novel, so you might already know whether you like this or not. The other common critique is that the violence is gratuitous. Admittedly, around page 200 it starts to feel like one long bender, akin to the anti-narrative of Suttree, but I felt this added to the effect of violence becoming its own purpose. The few female characters are also very minor, although, again, if you’ve read any other McCarthy books, you knew this already.****  My biggest criticism is that by a certain point the intensity of the descriptions becomes hard to process, although this a case of having a good problem. 

    As stated, where we come from, how we are and where we are going is here attested as thoroughly pessimistic. In McCarthy’s ouvre, if No Country for Old Men is the present and The Road is the future, then Blood Meridian is the past. The Kid’s refusal of the Judge at the end does suggests a rebuttal of determinism, although at the close it is a question without an answer. 

    Worth reading? Yes. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes. 

    ‘The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner’ 

    *A body which includes my dissertation. 

    **Samuel Chamberlain’s My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue. 

    *** In the archaic meaning of the word. 

    ****With the late exception of Stella Maris. 

  • A Place of Greater Safety

    Hilary Mantel, 1992 

    Edition read: Fourth Estate, 2010, 872 pages 

    Read: April–September 2024 

    Historical fiction 

    As with Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, this hefty historical epic* covers the life and times of some great men of history, this time across the Channel and delving into a social rather than a theological upheaval: the French Revolution. 

    Told through the carouselling perspectives of three figures central to the revolution (plus a cohort of secondary characters), Georges D’Anton (later just the more streetwise ‘Danton’), Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, the scope is broad, starting with their childhoods in the French countryside, through to their schooldays, their respective moves to Paris, their careers as lawyers and their participation in the revolution. Besides allowing considerable breathing space for characterisation, this scope also effectively portrays how the revolution was as much a process as an event, which ultimately took place over some ten years. 

    In addition to this ambitious scope, Mantel also writes in great detail. As well as insights into the psyche of each character (as with Wolf Hall’s Cromwell, this is the element of fiction that accompanies the history of the meticulously researched events), it is ornately written, moving not just day by day but idea by idea, very much positing the idea that the revolution took place first in drops and then in rivers (of blood), with the factional struggles that came to characterise the revolutionary movement presented in ample detail. Besides the numerous factors, driving ideas and events of the French Revolution being funnelled through the perspectives of the three main characters, as well as the many, many secondary ones, the tense shifts a lot. At least some of this myriad of secondary characters was surplus to requirement, meaning that I had to flick back to the dramatis personae on a regular basis; more time spent with fewer characters would have resulted in a more focused narrative. 

    A Place of Greater Safety is partially a history lesson, but its subjectivity and intricate, ultra-focused (and fragmented) perspectives means that it would help to have a knowledge of the French Revolution before reading it.** This provides a segue back to my comment about ‘great men of history’: the novel, with all of its shifting perspectives and subjectivity, makes allowance for the counter-argument that broader social factors were just as responsible for the revolution as were the actions of any one particular figure. Here, events are sometimes seen as the drivers of these men, and sometimes vice versa. 

    How effective a comment this is upon trying to write a history upon a multifaceted event, and the element of confusion that must accompany being in the midst of a revolution, is up to the patience of the reader. There is a lot between the lines and keeping up this level of active reading for 770 pages is hard. It’s certainly an original approach and Mantel has a distinctive way of writing and you’re either going to enjoy its idiosyncrasies or run out of patience for it. 

    Worth reading? Yes, although I would start with a shorter Mantel novel to get an idea if you’re going to like her style of writing. 

    Worth re-reading? If you can handle it, yes. A second read would help a lot with comprehension. 

    *In what can only be called a daring effort, this, apparently, was the first novel that Mantel ever wrote (although not had published). 

    ** I retroactively did so via The Rest is History podcast. 

  • Call for the Dead

    John le Carré, 1961 

    Edition read: Penguin Modern Classics, 2012, 150 pages 

    Read: October⁠–November 2025 

    Spy fiction

    *Spoilers* 

    Here in le Carré’s first novel, we meet George Smiley, who, not for the last time, is set up as a cuckold who is about to be fired for someone else’s mistake,* but subsequently proceeds to kick clerical ass and take down possibly important names, dates and locations via diligent observation.  

    The premise is that a civil servant has committed suicide after a routine security check – only for said civil servant to receive a phone call during the subsequent investigation. With an atmosphere of betrayal set up from the outset, the characteristic cut-and-thrust dialogue of the Circus (the secret service) is present, as is the jargon of the trade. 

    This is a slightly more forgiving read than something like The Russia House or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with a bit more exposition provided (one character even gives another one a written summary in the form of a case report at the end). It’s also a relatively light read compared to le Carré’s subsequent works, with a lower body count and fewer characters reduced to disaffected cynics. 

    While clever, complicated and characteristically morally ambiguous, this isn’t le Carré’s best novel – Dieter, although an interesting character, it is a little bit hard to appreciate as the great opponent he is set up to be. Partially this is because this is quite a short novel, partially it’s because it’s hard to square away some of his characterisation: ‘[…] to Guillam he was a living component of all out romantic dreams, he stood at the mast with Conrad, sought the lost Greece with Byron, and with Goethe visited the shades of classical and medieval hells. As he walked, thrusting his good leg forward, there was a defiance, a command, that could not go unheeded.’ Eh? Although Dieter embodies the human side of the enemy, for a spy runner, that sounds a bit conspicuous. It is interesting, however, to read him as a prototype of Karla – the fanatic, faceless antagonist who comes to be Smiley’s nemesis and counterpoint. Nonetheless, it’s an engaging read, and I enjoyed working the case out along with the protagonists.

    Worth reading? Yes. A good starting point for reading le Carré. 

    Worth re-reading? Yes…although I think there are better le Carré novels to re-read. 

    *To my knowledge, his forever cheating wife, Anne, never appears directly in any of the nine George Smiley novels. Having not read all of them, I ask you, dear reader, does she ever? Or is she always framed via Smiley? 

  • The Sparrow

    Mary Doria Russell, 1996

    Edition read: Black Swan, 503 pages 

    Read: 2019

    Sci-fi/philosophy 

    The Sparrow is ostensibly a sci-fi novel, but really, sci-fi is the point of departure. Outline: the planet of Rakhat makes contact with Earth in 2019. The Jesuit Order decide that they’ve got this one, so off they go into space. We follow the crew along on their adventure, but we have already been told that only one member of the crew returns in 2059. Despite the premise of going to and living on another planet, technicality is eschewed in favour of ‘why’? As such, it is more about religion and faith. Nor is it about some outlandish alien religion or faith – it’s mostly the Jesuit Order. 

    This sounds like an incongruous pairing (‘priests in space’ sounds only one step away from a stoner song) but a central theme is how God chooses to show himself.* The characters ponder over this a great deal; when we push the boundaries of existence, how do we maintain belief in old systems? (especially when God taketh away, which he does deign to do here). In this sense, the genre – or maybe the context – of sci-fi is fitting.  

    The chronology jumps around, with the interplay between the two periods cranking up the suspense – we know that something went wrong on the venture, but the details are trickled out. The characters are sometimes cheerful to the point of incredulity, but this is a minor criticism of characterisation in a genre which carries a reputation for sacrificing well-rounded characters in all of the excitement of world-building. 

    Worth reading? Yes 

    Worth re-reading? Yes – a re-read is due on my part. 

    *The books sticks to ‘him’ for God, so we’ll leave it at that here too.