Wednesday 22 May 2019

Shame *clang* Shame *clang* - So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

When I recently reviewed Jon Ronson’s Podcasts, The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August, I commented that Ronson tended to feel on the side of the called out, having sympathy for the victim of the pile but not those damaged by their words and actions. I specifically pointed at this book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed as being guilty of that. However, it struck me afterwards that it had been a good while since I’d read it and could very well be wrong. This is a review of the re-read.

Spoiler Alert: I was not wrong.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is about the way Twitter and the internet has become a tool for holding people to account. Ronson speaks to various people who’ve had their lives “ruined” by online justice mobs, for serious transgressions or simply for poor attempts at humour.

First up is Jonah Lehrer, who was exposed for fabricating quotes and recycling much of his own work in an act of self-plagiarism. Ronson talks to the journalist who made the connection and it’s a fascinating section, the torturous responsibility of this knowledge, the reluctance to bring Lehrer down. But at no point does the idea that Jonah Lehrer is responsible for his own choices and his disgrace was a consequence of them raise its head. This very simple idea that if he, oh, I don’t know, didn’t make things up wholesale then there wouldn’t be an issue, never occurs. Instead, the media reaction is extreme, overdone.

And so it goes on.

A story which I remember being superbly narked by the first time I read the book, as well as when it was actually it the news, is that of Adria Richards who overheard two men making inappropriate jokes during a conference lecture about how to get more women into tech. She tweeted about it, the men were identified and after a public outcry, fired. Cue a counter outrage leading to her own firing. Unlike the men involved, by the end of the book she is still unemployed, yet that angle feels under examined.

Look. I write code. What do you think every stupid joke about big dongles, or “I’d fork that repo” or that girls writing code meme does? Or last weeks’ “men posing with booth babes” fest on twitter? A clue: it does not make this easier. It quietly takes a spoon and when I am out of spoons I will just… stop. And then you’ll wonder why your app doesn’t work for women, or why your soap dispenser is racist. Ronson actively makes this choice not to criticise the actions of any of the people he profiles but when they are part of a systemic problem with an industry, I find it really difficult to go along. In not saying anything, it’s hard not to draw a moral equivalence between making those jokes and pointing out they’re not okay.

But really, the whole thing feels artificial. Like The Butterfly Effect, the journey feels pre-ordained, as though he had all his candidates ready when the book was pitched to the publisher. There’s no organic sense of discovery or investigation. Instead of digging a little deeper, it’s just on to the next. There are plenty of branches which could have been taken - why do companies cave to public pressure instead of styling it out? Why are men allowed to be rehabilitated where women are not? Is this a natural evolution of the Dark Arts of spin? What role do news organisations play in framing the narrative? Instead of that, here’s another story about somebody who made a poor decision.

A book like this is always going to have a limited shelf life - the world moves on quickly and this was published in 2015. Attitudes change, technology changes. This holds up fairly well although one must wonder about the wisdom of attempting to rehabilitate one’s online reputation while agreeing to have an incident documented in a prominent journalist’s book.

Ronson is a very enjoyable writer who tells a good tale and I appreciated the self-examination he brought to the early chapters. I like his work, but I’d like it more if it felt like he was doing journalism instead of recounting an entertaining story.

3.5 stars



Wednesday 15 May 2019

More of the Same - Circe by Madeline Miller

Like Miller’s previous work, The Song Of Achilles, Circe is a reimagining of a Greek myth. Circe, the daughter of Helios, best known for turning Odysseus’s men into pigs and keeping him on her island for a year.

We are beginning to experience something of a flood of greek retellings, no doubt due in part to Miller’s previous success. Like the others, Miller’s story is something of a rehabilitation for the character - rather than the beautiful sorceress of a thousand Pre-Raphaelite paintings who presides over her cauldron while impressively managing not to set her drapey skirt on fire, we have an immortal girl, vulnerable in her humanity, ill used by her family and eventually banished to the island of Aeaea.

Circe is an interesting subject who I largely know as a part of another person’s story, and Miller creates a terrific plot which illustrates just how wrong I am about that. Miller’s not just creating this witch, she is creating a pantheon of titans, gods and mortals. It is not just Circe’s story, it is the story of her sister, Pasiphae, mother of the minotaur; of her brother, Aeetes, protector of the golden fleece - at least until Medea, Circe’s niece assists in it’s thievery.

As far as mythology is concerned, Circe is a woman who sits alone on an island so she can be a small part of a great man’s story. Miller gives us a woman whose life and choices have led her to these moments. The abilities she has and the knowledge she imparts, she has earned.

But despite this, there’s no getting away from the fact Circe’s story is one of a woman who largely sits on an island. She is a character searching for a connection - at the beginning from her family, then from a man she loves, and then… well. It’s a story of character development rather than of action. At times, it feels a little bit as though things happen precisely to get away from the fact she is just sitting on an island.

The book is written in the same first person style as Miller’s first book, which, if I’m honest, I find rather annoying. Obviously, I’m being extremely unfair here; if I hadn’t read Achilles I wouldn’t have anything to complain about, but I have and I fear it shows Miller’s writing up. This is, after all, a first person narration - Circe and Patroclus are very different people and yet they have the same heavy fatalism of a story told from the point of when everything has already happened. I’m not the biggest fan of it, but I think it works better here, from this character.

As with Achilles, I’m also interested to know more about why Miller made the choices she did about the narrative. The Odysseus she has here is a very different creature to the one of the Trojan war and it’s an interesting change. I did not like it when I read it, and I felt it too much of a jolt from the character I had loved previously. Considering it now, I’m honestly not sure. Miller reframes what we think we know of the stories, but Odysseus’s part is small here and the reframing of his choices and motivations is fighting an uphill battle against a lifetime of what I think I know about him - including Patroclus’s account in Miller’s previous book. I find it jarring, but it certainly stands up to scrutiny.

I enjoyed this more than The Song Of Achilles largely thanks to the absence of a narrator swoonily swooning over things, but there’s not a great deal to pick between them. If you enjoyed on, by all means read the other but don’t expect something new and different from it.

4 stars (but only just)



Wednesday 8 May 2019

For summer's parting sighs... - The Last Days of August by Jon Ronson

Having listened to and been utterly gripped by Jon Ronson’s The Butterfly Effect, his investigations into the repercussions of Free Porn, it should surprise nobody that I immediately picked up this second podcast. Like The Butterfly Effect, it’s available for free for those with an Audible subscription. I believe it’s also available elsewhere at a price of gratis, but I have a cold and cannot be bothered to find out.

August Ames was one of the biggest porn stars in the business. Then she made a comment on Twitter which was deemed to be homophobic and, following the “social media pile on”, killed herself. Her husband, Kevin, took to the stage at an industry award ceremony to call out those he held responsible, as well as posting a screed on her still active Twitter account naming and shaming them for killing her.

So, obviously, trigger warning on this for the hows and the circumstances surrounding it. It’s factual, but it’s also graphic due to a discussion of whether she could have taken such an action unaided.

The Last Days of August is just as gripping as Ronson’s previous podcast, but unfortunately has many of the same problems as The Butterfly Effect, and his other works.

Initially it’s really quite difficult to get on board with this. August’s tweet concerned a shoot she had pulled out of. In it, she “warned” whoever had taken on the job that the male actor involved also did M/M scenes. She then went on to defend herself against criticism by saying she was worried about catching something. In my view, these tweets are most certainly in need of criticism. The concern that your gloveless partner may pass something on to you should not be limited to those who have partaken in hot boy action.

But Ronson is not a journalist who pushes back and there is no comment passed on what August actually said, only the very clear idea that the criticism and “pile-on” of her was wrong.

It is a difficult line to tread. Ronson enters the story soon after August’s death. He’s invited to the Adult Awards to see her husband make his stand. It would take a greater jerk than I to point out to the freshly grieving Kevin that August’s critics had a point, or that Kevin’s speech reframes the narrative as a “my body, my choice” situation (which it sounds like it was - she didn’t want to do the scene, she pulled out of the job), but I do feel it was remiss and damaging of Ronson to take the line in his narrative that the “pile-on” was the crime. He has a history with this, in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? for instance, and he often remains a defender of the called out and does not acknowledge those who lives are damaged by the actions of those who have been.

Really though, especially in those first couple of episode, I wonder should Ronson have been there at all. The Kevin we meet initially is angry and grieving and striking out in a very public way. The Kevin interviewed at the end - a year later for Ronson’s recording - is a very different person indeed. Obviously Kevin did not merely agree to be featured, he was eager to have Ronson be part of his quest to bring the people he held responsible to justice - he initiated contact. Before the big speech, to his credit Ronson raises his misgivings, despite not knowing what will be said, only having been reassured that it will be explosive.

Ronson’s story leads away from Kevin’s targets of vengeance, delving into Ames’ life before and after she came into the industry, and it is a sad one. It is one, I suspect, could be told about many of the industry performers.

Although I found the whole thing fascinating, I feel there are ethical questions to be raised of Ronson and his producer. A man who contacts you a month after his wife’s suicide asking you to do a story on the cyber-bullying which caused her death is a man who may not be in the best mind to make such a decision. And although the quest ends up not being the story of cyber-bullying Ronson expected to investigate, he follows it, sometimes to the distress of those involved. It is a gossipy, addictive account which I could not stop listening to, but at the same time I wonder if it was a humanitarian thing to do. I feel sad for Kevin, for a lot of complicated reasons, but mostly I feel sad for August.

I’m left feeling that there are more stories to be told about this industry and Ronson is somebody whose telling I would listen to, despite my misgivings. He does not ask questions, or provide answers, but he puts facts together in a way that is addictive and compelling.

4 stars


Wednesday 1 May 2019

I swore I wouldn't request any more ARCs ever. I failed - The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

[I received this book as an ARC from the publisher for the cost of no monies. I thank them kindly for their unrivalled generosity. The Unlikely Adventures of The Shergill Sisters is out June 13th in the UK or now if you're an American.]

Rajni is the oldest of the Shergill sisters. She’s organised (bossy) and dutiful, so when her mother makes a deathbed request that she and her sisters pilgrimage across India to scatter her ashes, Rajni is the one to make it happen, despite her vow to never return there.

Jezmeen, a decade Rajni’s junior, has found herself unexpectedly free of work commitments over the coming weeks. A trip half-way across the world seems like a good as plan as any to let the fuss die down, re-group and work out how she’s going to re-launch her stalled acting career after what’s happened.

Sherina the youngest is quiet and good, a dutiful wife to her perfect husband, respectful to her in-laws. But their - and her husband’s - expectations of her are reaching a crisis point, and the time to make a decision is running out.

Billed as an Indian This Is Where I Leave You, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a really good read by an author who has the skill to write flawed characters I really connected with and never once felt like shrieking at. It sounds like such a simple thing but it really isn’t: kudos to Balli Kaur Jaswal for making it look so easy.

It’s an interesting read, rich with cultural detail deftly observed family dynamics. Rajni and Jezmeen dominate the first part of the story - they have plenty of problems with themselves and with each other. It allows Sherina to fade into their background, quiet, trying to get along with everybody, her problems unnoticed and unsuspected by her louder sisters.

However, I did find the premise and its implementation by Rajni a bit contrived. Each chapter is headed by their mother’s guidance notes, where they are to go, what they are to do, what she hopes they will get out of it. I am a big adherent of realism when it comes to found documents in stories so these notes seemed a bit too perfect, although they come into their own as the book goes on. Rajni’s dogged insistence that this show must go on to the end of the line lacked … something.

It also felt as though it lacked the space to breathe. Each of the sisters comes to the journey with their own baggage, they have their fractured relationship, there is What Happened when their mother died, and there is What Will They Go Home To. It’s quite a lot to cram in, and while the gradual unveiling of each story is done well, unspooling in ways I didn’t expect, the resolutions are hit and miss, feeling unexamined for a book which does family dynamics so well.

But, I did enjoy it, despite being unreasonably annoyed at a reference to cilantro (I await correction on what coriander is called in India). It’s funny at times although I’d pull a little short of calling it heartfelt. I think it has the bones to be a terrific film. I also feel like I’m going to get a lot more out of it on a second reading. If the blurb appeals, you should definitely read it.

3.5 stars




Wednesday 24 April 2019

I prefer to think of it as Throne of Stupid - Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

This is a terrible book. Really, really terrible. It’s terrible is a similar way to Keira Cass’s The Selection. Both have terrible protagonists, both have that terrible fan-fiction-y wish-fulfilment thing going on and both have found a wide audience who can read them with the enthusiasm every book hopes for rather than a facial expression suggesting the reader is thinking “Wow, this is a seriously terrible book”. So, really, my opinion doesn’t really matter here. Lots of people love Throne of Glass. I did not.

Celaena Sardothian is the greatest Assassin in the world. Everybody knows her name, and that she was caught and sent to the mines of Endovia. What everybody doesn’t know is that she’s a 17 year-old blonde who absolutely adores candy.

I was listening to the audiobook. I can’t get the narrator’s “Ohhhhh, how she ADORED candy!!!! *tinkling laugh*” line out of my head. (And while we’re here, Elizabeth Evans who narrates is very good, her rhyming of shone with bone aside, and I would absolutely listen to her again).

Celaena is offered a chance to get out. The King of Endovia needs a champion and intends to hold a competition to find one. Dorian, the crown prince, will enter Celaena as his candidate. If she wins, after four years she is free; if she loses, she’s back to the mines.

So, one of the things I hate about terrible YA: logic has no place in our premise.

If I wanted a king’s champion, what I would not do is spend the best part of a year having a bunch of people show me they know how to use a bow and arrow, climb a tower, or other sedate things. This is, presumably, an open vacancy. Most people would want to fill it quickly. It seems terribly unfair to expect your champion to deal with a massive backlog of work because you were procrastinating.

And it’s more unforgivable because during the whole competition people don’t generally progress to the next round because they are rubbish at whatever boring test they’ve been given, they get there because their opponents get crunchily eaten by something mysterious which seems to be roaming the castle by night - and thank heavens for that storyline because I dread to think how long we would have been whittling it down to the final four otherwise. Kicking them out one at a time, as the official rules seem to play it, does not add to the non-existent tension. Mind you, neither does “person you’ve never heard of is messily dead! Let’s all not do anything about it!”.

I’m also not even sure what a King’s Champion is supposed to do in this world. Usually, your champion is your best warrior for one-to-one combat. You can send them out and decide the whole battle thing with a single fight against your enemy’s champion and avoid everybody having to get their armour sticky. But the suggestion is that an assassin is going to be a good candidate here, so let’s roll with it, just like we’re going to roll with the idea that Celaena is actually an assassin, and a good one. This review would be three times this length otherwise.

Then there are the names. They’re like normal names, but special, because this is terrible YA. Maas is particularly irritating in this regard. It’s like being stuck in an episode of Sesame Street where today’s letter is K.

We have Kale (or Chaol as the text has him), hunky guard captain and totally not candidate for a lurve triangle, Cain, named opponent for Celaena’s new job, and Kaltain, teh evuls scheming lady-bitch who insta-hates Celaena (which is at least pronounced with an Sss). I am not good with names at the best of times; even when I could remember what they were I couldn’t remember which belonged with which trope. Then we have Celaena and Elena because rhyming names are totally the next big thing.

Celaena herself is awful. We are told repeatedly how interesting she is - she even has a relatable hobby! - but she is not interesting. She lives up to precisely none of the promise her description offers. She doesn’t even have proper angst.

At first this was terrible but entertaining, and I did appreciate the presence of a period because I am British and the kind of person who instead of sleeping wonders if any of the Districts ever send oats to their lady tributes when food is scarce. I also thought the premise had potential.

But the longer it went on, the more boring it became. One of the challenges of these kinds of books is keeping it interesting even though everybody knows Celaena is going to win the competition. There need to be stakes and this doesn’t have any. There’s no real investment in any of the side characters - even when we’re in their POV they’re thinking and talking about Celaena. (“When Poochie is not around, the other characters should say things like, ‘Where’s Poochie’”)

If somebody told me this got better in the rest of the series I would believe them. There’s plenty of potential especially once you actually give Celaena something to do other than lounge around reading books and looking attractive. However, I’m not going to find out because I would rather eat my own head.

1 star.


Wednesday 17 April 2019

A Butterfly Faps in New York... -The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson

Technically, this isn’t a book, it’s a podcast, but it’s available for free for those with an Audible subscription, so it counts. Sort of.

In the 1990s, a Belgian lad called Fabian had a wonderful idea: Free Pr0n. He belonged to an internet group which would share passwords to porn sites enabling those unable or unwilling to use a credit card to pay themselves the joy of fapping merrily along to the onscreen antics. Years later he would realise his dream, becoming the owner of sites like Pornhub, RedTube and others, as well as becoming the kind of multi-millionaire who has an underground aquarium and employs a diver to scrub the inside of it.

I, too, was a teenager in the 90’s and remember the dark days in which Fabian’s dream grew. Those lucky few who had Sky TV installed would immediately be asked if they received the German sex channels and a mental note subsequently made about whether one should begin being nicer to them. My first job was as the Saturday girl in a paper shop where every week a man who lived with his mother and looked like Michael Gove after 20 years of pie would buy a wank mag and smoothly stick it in his copy of The Telegraph for his walk back up the hill.

The Butterfly Effect is Ronson’s investigation into the consequences of Fabian’s Free Porn empire, from the performers and their shrinking paychecks to the thousand percent increase in erectile dysfunction in young men. It is a fascinating journey which has been intelligently put together. His first trip is to the computer programmers - a subject I would have been enthusiastic about anyway - where he learns about the breakdown of data and how this is used to design website, how they get people connected with the things they want to see. This leads him to the porn director, who tells him about how he now has to create his pornography for the website keywords, for a particular niche, Cheerleader Step-Daughter Gang Bang volume 2 etc. This leads him somewhere else, and so on.

I’ve listened to few of Audible’s free shows but I’ve never been very impressed (I like audible, but their original content is not great) so I had few hopes for this, despite enjoying Jon Ronson’s books and journalism. I was wrong. As I got to the end of each episode I was fastforwarding through the credits to get to the next. It is fascinating.

Ronson is a British journalist, not a thousand light years from Louis Theroux, whose previous work has included Them: Adventures with Extremists, and The Men Who Stare At Goats (made into a film with George Clooney). He’s a pretty good host for this journey and comes across as somebody who finds it all as fascinating as I do. He’s affable and has Theroux’s gift for taking anything anybody tells him with equanimity.

But Ronson is a listener. Unlike Theroux, he doesn’t push back, merely asks people for their stories. When his questions are included in the recording, they tend to be seeking an expansion of information rather than challenging their view or finding out more about why they hold it. This is sometimes frustrating, especially when there is something blindingly obvious to be asked, and sometimes problematic, because Ronson does have an agenda. You just don’t know about it until the final episode when he takes all he has found out and “confronts” Fabian, the man who dreamed of free porn, with everything his dream has “caused”. I am especially troubled by the implied connection between a man’s suicide, the Ashley Madison hack, and Fabian’s websites. It was not the only thing.

In the most frustrating part, Ronson challenges Fabian about the copyrighted work which is on his website. Fabian rejects the idea he is a thief - he has not uploaded it, users have, and if the makers want it removed then here is how you do that. It’s totally not Fabian’s fault that the site users don’t care about copyright. Except it is. The site owner is responsible for what is on the site. And Ronson doesn’t point this out, he doesn’t bring up comparable issues, like The Pirate Bay’s legal battles - it’s just… welp.

Then in an attempt to show it’s not all bad, Ronson presents something good he found in the industry. A group of people who act with incredible humanity and compassion to try and help somebody they don’t know and will never meet without asking for payment or even knowing if it will be received or do any good. Which, you know, is gives-me-hope-for-humanity levels of kindness, but hardly unique to the industry. It feels very much as though Ronson knew before he started what he thought about this and didn’t bother to go over it much making the investigation feel like an exercise in fulfilling a contract. Which is coincidentally the same problem I had with his book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed”.

There are plenty of other niggles, such as a man Ronson describes as being “harassed” into speaking with them (srsly, don’t do that), the focus on the involvement of porn in a story when it’s really more of an accessory to a problem, such as the young man who sent a girl 50 explicit messages in an attempt to impress her, and the focus on straight heterosexual porn aimed at young men.

The first 6 episodes are mainly terrific, interesting and massively educational. Then we have to have that final episode. Ronson attempts to paint Fabian as a villain but I respect him very much for his refusal to have any of it, especially as he is not responsible. Porn can be damaging in lots of ways, but it has as much to do with us as a society as with the product itself, and Ronson never seems to consider this as a factor.

4.5 stars for the first 6 episodes, I’ll pretend that final one doesn’t exist.


Wednesday 10 April 2019

It's Grim oop North - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

I’ve read this one at least twice before - in fact, I have a feeling it was the first book I ever read on my Kindle Keyboard, providing me with the happy knowledge that I *could* manage to read Victorian literature and the problem lay, in part, with the font rather than my ability. Srsly, if you are dyslexic, consider a Kindle. It will change your life. Maybe.

This time I was giving the audiobook version a whirl, read by Juliet Stevenson, who is marvellous. She speaks clearly, she does the voices, she is everything I could want in a reader.

North and South is the story of clergyman’s daughter Margaret Hale. Having been brought up in her aunt’s household, her cousin’s marriage means Margaret is to return home, to Hampshire. Except, her father hides a terrible secret: he is a dissenter who is no longer able to serve the Church of England. He will quit his modest living and they will move north, to the smoke filled air of Milton, where he will earn money as a tutor thanks to the kindness and connections of an old friend.

Initially it’s difficult to like Margaret. She has an arrogance borne of ignorance - she has things to say about how much she will not be consorting with the men of trade. She dislikes Milton. But she has a tenacity to her - this is her situation and she is going to do what she can to get on with it.

Mr Hale’s student is on Mr John Thornton, a self-made mill owner whom Margaret initially holds in contempt for that unlofty position. But he is a gentleman, and the dance of calls and obligations between the two families bring them into familiarity.

This is a Victorian novel, so there is obviously a deeply boring and preachy bit: Bessie Higgins, the millworker Margaret visits who suffers from Stagnation o’t’Lungs (possibly) is even worse in audio form. Maybe you have more patience than I and will not spend the hours she spends going on about how she is going to die, and how she is looking forward to it, and how fabulous Margaret is, thinking “Jesus, would you throw yourself in a well, already?”. Grit your teeth through these bits, it does improve.

And this is, at its heart a romance. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that Thornton will fall for Margaret while she has vowed she will never get married. His declarations, his mother’s reactions, the development of her feelings and the blocks which stand between them feel realistic, as does the way they resolve themselves.

I particularly liked that everybody involved seemed, to my modern ears, to have a bit of a point. Margaret is right to think an employer has a responsibility to his employees, Thornton is right to say it’s none of his business what they do outside their contracted hours, and Higgins, Bessie’s father, is right to value himself and his skills and fight with the union to protect their employment.

It’s an interesting novel to read in these modern times. The questions about wages, the import of cheap labour, the downward race in contracted hours, the power of the unions, are all still extremely pertinent. North and South would lend itself very easily to a modern update.

The thing I most liked is the way everybody feels the consequences of their actions, good and bad. None of them are completely right and none completely wrong. Gaskell has terrific fidelity of character - they change, but what they are remains.

Most people describe North and South as a Northern Pride and Prejudice, which is not an unreasonable comparison, but North and South has far more story, and Margaret Hale far more impetus and independence than Lizzie Bennett (helped greatly by the 50 odd years between them). That said, she also has Bessie Higgins to put up with.

I’m sure there’s a well around here somewhere.

4 stars



Wednesday 3 April 2019

Feminist Dystopia A-go-go - The Power by Naomi Alderman

Image of The Power's book cover
Cosmopolitan magazine describes The Power as “The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid’s Tale”. I assume the description was written by somebody who has heard of both of those things but experienced neither.

Teenage girls can hurt. Something has given them the power to generate electricity - a flick of a finger brings a target agony, or death. The power can be woken in adult women, too. And with power comes freedom.

I found The Power to be something of a mixed bag. Naomi Alderman splits her story between a variety of characters - a US mayor, a runaway teen, a Nigerian man who becomes the journalist charting the female uprisings, the daughter of an east end gangster - to give this story a world stage. This sort of structure is only as good as its least draggable character. Alderman’s… vary.

When it’s good, it’s brilliant. I have particular love for the snide background development of the CNN anchors. But in other ways it’s a touch weak - Roxy, in particular, feels, shall we say, underdeveloped when compared with the creations of an author like Martina Cole, who specialises in the gangland culture Roxy supposedly hails from. Her transition from being her father’s daughter to the place she ends up feels inauthentic and suspiciously easily achieved. 

I also felt like it was weakened by its adherence to its story, which drives toward a particular crisis point losing some sense of the organic in its desire to adhere to its central idea. And in spreading the story so widely across the world, it left gaps. All the small human questions I had were overlooked, or dealt with in the briefest way. Obviously it would be a ridiculous - and extremely long - book which had some kind of checklist to ensure all points of view were represented, but still, I was never quite sold on the idea that the universal response to the gaining of the power would be to use it, as though our inability to cause harm is what stops us from ruling the world. Most women have the ability to pick up a chair and whack somebody with it, but we don’t, because… it’s illegal? Or because it’s really mentally difficult to physically hurt somebody, even when we are threatened ourselves? (The effect on women of causing this hurt is touched on very lightly) Or because a lifetime of indoctrination (that we don’t run, we don’t shout, we are nice and neat and polite) does not evaporate with the ability to zap somebody, whatever your culture.

Women are their own jailers as much as men. The Smurfette Principle (the idea that there can only be one woman in the room) makes us compete against each other for that single available space, so we put each other down and we define our value by how much the boys like us. That was the biggest gap in this book: the LadyShields; the Anne Coulters and Kelly Ann Conways; the blonde soccer moms who warn their sons to be careful because girls will lie about them to ruin their lives. 

It also, understandably, steers away from what could have been a controversial and badly handled element: transgender people. Transgender people should exist in this novel, even if only as a background story, but they don’t. All of this said, it’s the mark of a good book that I’ve got all of these What about…? scenarios to complain about - I’m engaged with it.

Overall, I did enjoy it, very much. It should be a definite read for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood is Alderman’s mentor - not only for the feminist dystopia element, but because of the way Alderman has used reality. She’s taken her cue from the history of female oppression and applied it intelligently to her world. It makes for difficult reading at times. 

The best dystopian fiction is a mirror and we are not wrong to be afraid.

4 stars




Saturday 23 March 2019

Baby Spart(an) Do Do Do Do Do Do - The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the Iliad because it’s been out a while, so, Spoilers, I guess?

The Song of Achilles is a retelling, one which takes the myth and runs with it. Here Achilles really is the son of a sea nymph, he is trained by a centaur, and gods play their part in the lives of man.

I used to know my Classics a lot better that I do now - Roger Lancelyn Green’s books were a staple of my childhood library - so this was a book which unfolded for me. I remembered each plot point as we hit it, so I’m entirely the wrong person to ask if it makes any logical sense. It probably doesn’t. It certainly could have done a better job of selling ancient motivations to a modern audience.

The story is told by Patroclus, a prince and, when he begins this story, unlikely candidate for Helen’s hand in marriage. I am super here for a room full of men deciding what will happen to a teenage girl, as you can imagine. This is a male story, though, and Miller doesn’t attempt to change that.

However, when Patroclus inadvertently kills another boy, he is exiled to the court of Peleus where he falls swooningly in love with Mary Sue Achilles, who’s super perfect at everything (as one expects from a demi-god). Thetis, Achilles’ mother, really hates Patroclus. The boys go off to learn things on a mountain. They are swoonily swoony. They come back. Thetis hates Patroclus. Then she hides Achilles because she doesn’t want him to go to Troy as he will be killed.

Once the war actually begins, a good half way through the book, things improve, in part because there’s actually things happening. There is air of inexorability to the whole thing which really gets into its stride in the last third as we make the drive towards what is fated to happen (and we’re no longer reading rambling scenes about how swoony teenage Achilles is).

When Miller hits the predetermined narrative events, she’s good. When she’s making her own way between, she’s… less good.

For a book which treats the gods as real, there’s an awful lot of “something’s happening because the gods are displeased” conversations, followed by “here’s the solution to that” conversations. Obviously there’s no one correct version of many of the myths, but sometimes Miller takes the path of most boredom, such as the demand for the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Apollo’s appearance on the walls of Troy especially charmed me, so the omission of the gods involvement in other ways, even as a background, felt disappointing.

I am also critical of the characterisation. Odysseus is great, true, but everybody else? Eh.

Achilles lives his whole life chained to the prophecies made about him, but whatever this does to him remains unexplored. He’s just some guy. Admittedly one who is super good at everything and jolly good looking. And when we’re reading the narrative of a boy, then man, who is in love with him, I’d really have preferred to grasp the appeal.

Thetis is especially poorly done. Like her son she is chained to the pronouncements of the Fates, but here she is a pure JustNoMil. She’s such a central figure in the original myth - the Trojan war begins because of a prophecy made about her: the son of Thetis will be greater than his father, hence “marriage” to Peleus, hence somebody not doing the invitations right, hence golden apple etc etc etc

I was also unreasonably annoyed that Miller chooses to not use the one thing everybody knows about our demi-god: that he really should have invested in some foot armour. Google assures me Homer doesn’t include the story of Thetis’s attempt to make her son invulnerable and immortal, but Homer doesn’t include Achilles’ death, either. Or the romantic relationship between him and Patroclus. It felt like a massive oversight rather than a deliberate decision.

The beginning was interesting if not grippy. Then it got a bit dull. Then a bit duller. Then, by the end, it was very good indeed. I don’t rule out reading Circe, Miller’s second full length novel, but I could just as easily not. Overall?

3 stars



Wednesday 20 March 2019

There’s no point in separating the reviews for these three - Call the Midwife Omnibus by Jennifer Worth



You may have heard, only very vaguely mind, of this show on BBC1 on Sunday nights. It’s set in 50’s London, in the east end, and is about a cabal of nuns who train a gang of young women to rip 9 month-old fetuses from the wombs of the desperately poor. It was based on a series of books, Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End. Because I am lazy, I’ll be offering a very vague review which covers all three books.

Basically, it’s like the TV series but with more words.

Call The Midwife covers Jenny Lee’s entry to Poplar and her early days as a midwife. Shadows of the Workhouse is largely concerned with stories from the community, about the poverty and deprivation which existed in the first half of the century. Farewell to the East End concentrates on the cases attended by Worth’s co-workers, Trixie, Chummy and Cynthia.

There was less focus on midwifery than I expected but Worth is a good writer who can tell an engaging tale in a largely non judgemental way - the worst I could say of her is that she thinks like somebody born before the war. She represents the time and the struggles well but keeps a veil drawn across her own life and her own circumstances. I think there are questions to be asked about the morality of profiting from stories which don’t belong to you, but I recognise that without Worth, they would have been lost: the people whose stories she tells have nobody else.

I enjoyed the third book the most, coincidentally the first of the three I read. It focussed on the midwifery and took a more technical approach to things. I’ve yet to find anybody willing to impregnate me, so I had little appreciation for quite how much goes on as one attempts to extract life from one’s vagina - let me tell you, it is fascinating.

The books don’t quite have that terrific mix of edge and cosy the TV show has, but the bones are here. Chummy, Trixie et al are not significant side characters in the way Siegfried and Tristan are in James Herriot’s memoirs, and there’s no overarching “story”, so those hoping for an expansion on the show - in the way books often are to their screen counterparts - will leave disappointed.

I liked them, but I didn’t love them. There’s honestly not much to pick one over the other, so don’t be afeered to start out of order, there’s no story arc here. They were interesting, though, and with me that counts for a lot.

3.5 stars



Wednesday 13 March 2019

That's one word for them - Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Rachel Chu is about to spend her first summer in Singapore in the company of her loving boyfriend, Nick. While there, she will attend his best friend’s wedding (which she doesn’t yet realise is the society ticket of the century) and meet his family (who, she doesn’t yet realise, are the possessors of most of Asia’s wealth). Nothing here could possibly go wrong.

So, the problem I had with this book is that it has a premise, not a story. Chinese American girl is going to find out her boyfriend is from an uber rich family. So, where’s the conflict? You’ll have to wait for the end of the book for that to be introduced. Oh, we try, with some boring meangirl antics (because Nick is a very eligible bachelor indeed), but it’s never a battle and it’s never entertaining. Something is done to Rachel. Something else is done to Rachel. We’re supposed to be on her side, I guess, she is the everygirl whose terrific fortune we wish could be ours. She and Nick were dull, two dimensional, and I didn’t find them believable to root for.

I couldn’t buy Nick’s naivete, his surprise that he might need to prepare Rachel for the extent of his family’s wealth, or the circles they move in. I couldn’t buy Rachel’s surprise, either. She’s supposed to be have brought up in a slightly hand-to-mouth fashion, her mother having cash-in-hand jobs at Chinese Restaurants and frequently moving. Are you seriously expecting me to buy that she didn’t notice Nick’s obliviousness to the stresses and strains of normal life? That he, brought up in a world of Balliol college, private chefs, and hundred thousand dollar outfits, could pass for a normal income person?

The story also follows Nick’s mother Eleanor - who has no intention of letting her son be hitched to an mainland China born nobody - and Nick’s cousin Astrid - who’s developing concerns about what her husband may be getting up to on his business trips.

I liked Astrid, very much. Eagerness to get back to her story got me through the early stages of the book, but towards the end her story feels too rapidly wrapped up. We’re told early on in the book what will happen with her husband but the way it gets there is terribly put together.

Eleanor’s story is a mixed bag. The account of her life and her set make for a far more interesting backdrop than Rachel’s hotel suites and island resorts, but her rather predictable quest to find some dirt on the potential daughter-in-law is enlivened by what she finds out.

I can see this has the bones to be really good film but on paper everything is too thin, the writing too janky, and the main characters too tepid to be really good. That said, it was very enjoyable in part because it’s so different to a lot of what I’ve read. It’s unapologetically trashy and I liked that. While I’d certainly read Kwan’s other books, it would be from the library rather than a purchase.

3.5 stars



Wednesday 6 March 2019

What's big and green and slightly annoying? - Watermelon by Marian Keyes

Looking at the scores I tend to give Marian Keyes, one could be forgiven for thinking I didn’t like her books very much. Actually, I do. I like her very much. In times of crisis, when my head is elsewhere and things are (hopefully metaphorically) on fire, I reach for Keyes. Ditto Sophie Kinsella. I have the same problem with The Hunger Games books - I didn’t rate them terribly highly but I’ve read them in hardcopy and audiobook form half-a-dozen times. So, although I must have read this several times over the last few years, I’ve never written a review of it.

Claire Walsh has had an eventful day. Not only has she given birth to her first child, her husband has up and left her for the downstairs neighbour. So, in full Scarlett O’Hara mode, she heads home to Tar- to Dublin, baby in tow. Shenanigans ensue.

Watermelon was Keyes debut, first published in 1995 - the year Bridget Jones’ Diary was first published in the Independent - before chick lit was even a thing. I’m not sure who actually bears the credit for inventing the genre, but there’s probably a good case to be made for this book being one of the first. Some staples of the genre are here: the chatty style, the smexy good times, the young lady getting her fella, but not the shopping, hateful office job and drinking culture which would come with Keye’s second novel.

Keye’s major strength is her writing style (which also extends to her Twitter account.). She’s got this pleasing, humorous intimacy, exactly like your best mate is relating what’s gone on with her recently (presuming your best mate is really good at telling a story). And Keyes is also brilliant at the supporting characters - Helen Walsh is a legend who only gets greater with each Walsh family novel while Mammy Walsh has her title written on her soul.

However, Keye’s writing has certainly got better over the years.

Too often the prose is broken down.

And let me tell you, it’s pretty tiresome.

It makes it look as though the formatting on my kindle has met with a hideous accident.

I’m not a fan.

And then there’s Adam, hunky love interest. The development of his relationship with Claire is … troublesome. Claire, as might be expected for a woman who’s been hit with the “I don’t love you and I’ve already moved my clothes into the new apartment I’m sharing with Nice Denise” bombshell by her husband a few hours after dropping their sprog, finds it difficult to trust Adam. When he takes longer than expected to buy a cup of coffee, she becomes convinced he’s legged it and makes preparations to leave only for him to reappear and begin acting as though she’s spat in that beverage he’s clutching. What an insult! That she could think he’d do that! What kind of terrible person is she, to think something like that about him? It could be lifted straight from a book about a woman in an abusive relationship and made me want to tell him to get in the fucking sea.

More generally things feel convenient in the way of a novel - Claire can’t sleep so she cycles madly for nights and gets her figure back super fast, that sort of thing.

The main flaw is the one I have with all my least favourite Keye’s novels - the heroine has no direction. Claire has this terrible thing happen to her and this is the story of how she copes with it, but she’s not actively doing anything except getting through the days. It’s the same problem I have with Angels, and The Woman Who Stole My Life. Although they’re entertaining enough, they lack the drive (and subsequently the stakes) of her best work: Rachel’s Holiday. Claire has no fail state to avoid.

If you’ve never read Keyes, do yourself a favour and don’t start here, but if you enjoy her it’s worth picking up. It shows the promise of what Keyes would go on to become: a really good writer who is worth reading even at her weakest. And a really good place to go when everything has gone horribly wrong.

3 Stars



Wednesday 27 February 2019

More like Thin Story - Thin Air by Michelle Paver

Thin Air by Michelle Paver
1935. There’s a mountain. It shall be climbed. For God and Empire, five plucky Englishmen will undertake to be the first heroic men to reach the top of the mountain which has claimed, oh gosh, many lives. They, alone, with all of their porters, will climb the mountain. They will be heroes. 

It probably didn’t help that I’ve not long since read Sarah Lotz’s The White Road, also a ghost story about a mountain climbing expedition (in that instance, Everest to Thin Air’s Kangchenjunga) and really loved it. I found it difficult not to compare the two books, especially as they cover much of the same ground and same ideas - as one would understandably expect for ghost stories about mountain climbing. Thin Air definitely came out wanting.

It takes a while to get going. Our narrator is Dr Stephen Pearce, younger brother (and very much the spare) to Kits, the driving force behind the expedition. As children, the brothers were obsessed with Bloody But Unbowed, Edmund Lyell’s account of his heroic failure to climb the mountain. Now they’re ready to succeed, hopefully with a lower body count than the Lyall expedition managed. 

Their expedition begins by calling in at the home of Charles Tennant, one of the survivors of the aforementioned expedition. Tennant has never spoken about what happened on the mountain and isn’t keen to now. Especially not to Stephen, who stumbles in on his private rooms to be given hints Lyell left much out of his account and that Tennant is terrified of the great hunk of rock he’s chosen to live out his life in the shadow of. Dun dun DUUUUUN. 

From there, we have the long trek to the base of the mountain. It serves to introduce our team, their dynamics, and the scale of the challenge ahead. There’s some attempts at foreshadowing the spooky stuff to come, but even when that does arrive spooky it is not.

Paver makes a stab at a 30’s setting. I was glad to see her include a degree of casual racism (because I think it’s important not to act like we white people weren’t all arseholes back then and still have much to learn today) but at the same time there felt to be a certain degree of pulling back - an effort to acknowledge without being too offensive. 

It’s a short book and shorter on period context. Although the style tends towards that of a Boys Own adventure, these characters didn’t strike me as existing in a 30’s way beyond their discussion that it’s unsporting to use oxygen cylinders to get the the peak and looking down on people for being German (although - would they?). The plucky middle-class voice of the narrator isn’t great and seriously weakens the descriptions of the “spooky” goings on.

There are also some odd mistakes which really should have been picked up by the editor, such as a reference to their base serving as GCHQ which is off because 1) it wasn’t called GCHQ until after WW2, and b) there’s not much encryption and intelligence gathering done at base camp. 

Finally, the grand “why” lacked any real horror. Again, it came down to the style of the writing for me - what should have been this grotesque reveal was just… meh. I didn’t feel much was done with it once it was revealed. It didn’t change anything.

I’ve tried to put my finger on why this didn’t work for me without spoilers or without going down the road of “the book should have been written this way”. I think it’s because I never felt as though there was an antagonist. In a ghost story, the antagonist can often be a setting: the haunted house which is trying to get the occupiers to leave or whatever, but Paver doesn’t do this. The fearsome mountain never feels like it’s anything but a mountain they’re climbing, for all that initial buildup. Pearce never feels as though he is being targeted. I didn’t feel there was anything deliberately working against them, which is vital for pretty much any story. Without an antagonist, there’s just a bunch of lads doing stuff.

I didn’t care for Thin Air. The writing was clunky, the story was pretty dull, and - having recently read another mountain climbing story - there wasn’t enough of other stuff to interest me. Read The White Road by Sarah Lotz instead.

2 stars.



Wednesday 20 February 2019

I have nothing flippant to say here - The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This book is great and you should read it.

Except maybe if you really hate YA, because this is certainly a YA book.

That said, Thomas is a clever writer who neatly cuts through the usual “YA protag is the center of the universe” with a single line of dialogue from her mother.

I felt conscious while reading it that YA success lies in appealing to white 30-something women like me, who - incidentally - watched the Fresh Prince and sang along to 90s music first time around, and it felt a little hamstrung as a result.

Even so, this book will hopefully be the gateway drug for those who weren’t yet ready for the truths of Dr Maya Angelou et al. Like I wasn’t the first time I read them. THUG has made me want to read something which wasn’t written for me.

It’s not racist towards white people.

No, really, that’s not a thing.

When Starr tells her boyfriend he can’t understand because he’s white, that’s not racism towards white people, that’s a 16 year-old not having the language to articulate in a moment of emotion that if you have not lived an experience, you are unlikely to have a full appreciation of what it means for the people who do. This is true.

The white-people/black-people conversation feels a bit shoehorned in.

I felt like Thomas missed a trick. The racism Starr is subjected to has given her blinkers about the ways other races navigate the white world. This doesn’t change and there feels a very obvious moment when it could.

But yes, it’s great.

4.5 stars




Wednesday 13 February 2019

Eventually I will manage to work out what the title refers to - Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

So we finally know who The Faceless Man is! Harumble!

It doesn’t make much difference! Hurumble…?

Okay, from here there will be spoilers for the previous book in the series, The Hanging Tree, in which the identity of The Faceless Man is revealed and it will really wreck your enjoyment of that one if you know from the start who it is. SPOILERS FOR THE HANGING TREE from here on out.



Wednesday 6 February 2019

Not as bad as last time - The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

The Hanging Tree Book Cover
I had been looking forwards to this book for a long time, with some reservations. Forward because Tyburn, London, and some actual movements towards resolution of the larger story arc. Reservations, because there's rarely a good reason for publication dates to shift, then shift again, then again.

This time we're back in London and The Lady Tyburn is ready to call that favour she's owed. A teenager is dead following a party in a pricey piece of London estate and Lady Ty's daughter was there at the time. It would be very nice if this whole thing could be made to go away, by, say, Peter Grant, but there's more to this than a poor choice in recreational activity, and it has the feeling of a razor against leather...

The Hanging Tree continues the distressing trend of Ben Aaronovitch's books: they're great, you read furiously and then - alas. The ending. This review is being written off the back of the pre-Lies Sleeping re-read and the ending is even weaker the second time around. There's great drama, a race to get there before <something> happens, and then! Turns out that's not a problem because of Weak And Curiously Convenient Reason; let normal Grant'n'Nightingale vs The Faceless Man service commence.

And that weak plotting is not restricted to the end. The very fact that Peter is called in to help smooth things over for Lady Ty's daughter is a pretty odd move for a lady who is very good at getting things done and likely has many better favours she can call in. It feels like a lazy move to get Peter to the right place to discover, gasp, that there are Falcon elements to this after all. To bring up more examples would be spoilers. Is Deus ex Fabula a thing? Because it is all over this book like a rash.

However, I'm still a sucker for these books. The writing has this great conversational style which I love, they're witty, they make a better stab at diversity than the usual White Male author bothers to.

As ever, nobody who starts at the wrong end of this series is going to be convinced, but I do enjoy them far more than my star ratings suggest I do.

3.5 stars

Graphic representing 3.5 stars





Wednesday 30 January 2019

*starts making a list* - Where does it Hurt? by Max Pemberton

Cover of Max Pemberton's Where Does It Hurt?
As you can probably guess from the title, this is one of those “Medical Professional writes about their job in an amusing fashion” books. I like these kinds of books but they can have difficulty standing out from one another, especially as even the terrific ones (like Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt) can’t manage to avoid the Junior-Doctor-Book Bingo Card. Happily, this one pretty much does.

This time round, Pemberton is attached to the Phoenix Outreach Project, dealing with the homeless, the drug addicted, and the octogenarian former prostitute.

Pemberton is a decent writer who has a nice line in fish-out-of-water humility going on. There’s a good variety of stories, interesting, funny and sad, if never quite as emotionally wrenching as the end of the Kay book mentioned above.

If you like this sort of thing, which I do, it’s well worth sticking Pemberton on your TBR pile - his first is the usual Junior Doctor in a hospital stuff, while his third is about his stint in Geriatrics. This one was great and I really quite enjoyed it.

4 stars
Graphic of Four Teapots representing score given

Wednesday 23 January 2019

As you do - Round Ireland With a Fridge by Tony Hawks

Cover image of Tony Hawks Round Ireland With A Fridge
The late 90’s was responsible for so much: New Labour, Cool Britannia, and the now forgotten non-fiction genre: white-male-comedian-undertakes-wacky-journey-because -they-lost-a-bet-while-trollied-and-writes-a-book-about-it. Dave Gorman (meeting people called Dave Gorman), Pete McCarthy (visiting pubs with his name on), Dave Gorman (meeting people who are singular on Google), Danny Wallace (saying yes to things), Dave Gorman (travelling across America avoiding The Man)... so many wacky, wacky journeys.

Tony Hawks (not to be confused with the pro-skateboarder), having recounted an amusing anecdote to his friends about seeing a man in Ireland attempting to hitchhike with a fridge, accepts a challenge to do the same. If he can get around the coast of the Republic, with a fridge, in a month, he will win the grand sum of £100. Less than the fridge he’s travelling with ends up costing him.

This is a bittersweet one for me. At the time of writing, I’m going to hit the first anniversary moving back to the UK having lived in the Republic since 2003. The Ireland I lived in was very different to Hawks 1996 version. Hawks book takes place in that short space of time when mobile phones were a thing for professional people but the internet hadn’t made the average home (well, not my home, anyway). Post Riverdance, but pre Celtic Tiger and Good Friday Agreement.

A travelogue this is not. This is the story of a wacky journey. While Hawks begins with a degree of engagement, visiting the King of Tory etc, the journey grows increasingly more concerned with recounting Hawks’ stagger from pub to bar to roadside and back again, until it’s just a case of making it back to Dublin. The Cork-Waterford stretch is a couple of hours he spends in a car. His time in Wexford Town (which he insists on referring to as Wexford, annoying me terribly) is mainly about his seduction of a lady.

There’s a lot of that - Tony attempting to chat up ladies and failing - and post #meToo it feels more than a little creeptacular. His continuing lamentations that a particular lady hadn’t called him don’t do much to improve matters.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Hawks himself, and he’s a terrific reader who makes a decent stab at the accents (if not the Irish regional variations), although he’s more occasionally-raise-a-smile funny rather than actual laughter funny. He’s pleasing.

These sorts of books always need to tread carefully with me. They’re so often written from the perspective of this everyman who just happens to be taking this wacky, wacky journey when, in reality, they have the financial backing of a book deal or a comedy tour from the get go. Hawks is open about the support he receives from the (late) Gerry Ryan and his morning radio show, but I suspect there would have been less support if it truly had been your everyman performing the stunt rather than a comedian with a decade strong career. Behind almost every viral internet sensation is a promotional algorithm which has been paid for. I like my wacky journeys with appropriate amounts of disclosure.

So, the first half was pretty good, but the whole thing got more and more repetitive as it went on. Although I find Tony Hawks very easy to listen to, I honestly can’t see myself replaying this or checking out his other work. I can’t recommend it as something funny, or interesting, but his voice is extremely soothing.

2 stars