13. Days of the Bagnold Summer

By Joff Winterhart

I remember Olman getting this 2012 comic from his sister or mom for Xmas a few years ago, but didn't think to read it myself.  

 

Fast forward to 2026.  Our 13 yo daughter has been showing strong signs of teenager-dom, to put it mildly.  She's always been a bit moody and sulky as a child, but lately, she's become even more sensitive to things we say or how we say them.  The smallest comment can trigger a storm of emotions. Her moods have been swingier and her sulks, which used to last a couple of days at most, can now last several days, if not weeks.  What's more, she can also be cruel and mean.  It's like she's become an entirely different person, and in many ways, she is, as she's no longer our sweet little daugher, but a teenager with a raging temper (and hormones).  

So the days leading up to my birthday, we were going through one of her sulks where she would shut herself in her room for hours and give short, neutral yet polite responses to our quotidian inquiries. We would provide snacks and drinks by leaving them outside her door, as if she were our prisoner (Olman quickly ran out of prison references for our little shut-in), though she'd emerge to join us at the table for dinner and weekend meals.  It was a challenge trying to remain supportive while our kid seemed to be turning into a hikikomori, though that wasn't quite accurate, as she was still going to school, keeping up with her studies, seeing her friends and going to her regular Kpop dance classes.  She was just a hikkomori with her parents, whom she found embarrassing and exasperating.  It was clear she was going through a phase and trying to assert her own self/space, but my feeling was, did she have to be such a b*tch about it!

Olman and I would quietly talk about our frustrations and this was when he asked if I had read The Days of Bagnold Summer.  Even though it focuses on middle-aged Sue and Daniel, her 15-year-old metal-head son, there were definitely aspects of their awkward relationship that I could relate to!  

"Poor Sue. She knows she is boring. She knows she cannot communicate with her son, who looks to her "like a big, black, sad kangaroo". Her attempts at bonding – listening to his Megadeth CDs in the car, admiring his "poems" (actually, just the lyrics of a Metallica song he has copied out) – always seem to end in disaster." (from a Guardian review)

Sue and Daniel were supposed to be spending the summer apart, with Daniel visiting his father and pregnant stepmother in Florida and Sue in her suburban England home. But the trip got cancelled and what ensued was a series of awkward, embarrassing, hurtful but sometimes funny and poignant moments between mother and son.  Days of the Bagnold Summer was structured over the six week school holiday, one week per chapter.  One over-arching plot was Sue trying to find suitable shoes for Daniel as they were to attend a wedding to be held at the end of summer.  Eventually, Sue and Daniel found a compromise of sorts, which also symbolized a better understanding of each other as they walked towards the ceremony.  

For me, I thought my daughter's self-imposed isolation would never end and that this dark sulky phase of hers would be the new normal for god knows how long until she grows out of it.  Eventually, she did warm to us again, and then something else triggered her and we were back to where this nightmare started.  

 

Now it's the beginning of June as I write this, and once again, our "real" daughter is back.  She's engaging more with us, listening to her Kpop in the common area and practicing her dance moves in our presence.  She still likes to stay inside her room with the door closed, but sometimes, she'll leave the door open!  I'm learning as a parent of a "new" teenager that the real parenting comes with being able to weather out the storms in understanding and positivity!

There's a 2019 film adaptation (directed by one of the actors from The Inbetweeners) which seems to be well-liked.  Maybe it would make a good candidate for family movie night?  

17. The Midnight Library

By Matt Haig

It’s nice to read an international bestseller now and then, to consume something "of the now" so I can feel like a part of the crowd or something (and also have an opinion if the occasion arises).  The Midnight Library was one of two bestsellers I’ve read this past year (the other being Gone Girl).

 

The Midnight Library was also chosen for the last book club meeting at my workplace.  Although I haven’t participated in the book club for some time (I tried once with Wherethe Crawdads Sing),seeing that they were doing The Midnight Library spurred me to read it on my own as I had a copy thanks to my last visit to Encore Books.

 

As expected, The Midnight Library was a breezy read, like a feel-good version of Ken Grimwood’s Replay.  Instead of dying of a heart attack at 43 and reincarnating 25 years earlier in your younger body with all memories intact, with each "re-awakening" having the opportunity for a new do-over, Nora Seed overdoses on sleeping pills and ends up in The Midnight Library, a magical place containing an infinite number of books each representing a parallel life of hers had she made different choices, big or trivial.  The library is managed by someone who was dear to you (in Nora’s case, her school librarian Mrs. Elm, and is also a place where time stops at midnight as she hovers between life and death.  While in this state, Nora can slip into another version of her life in a parallel universe simply by choosing a book and reading the first line.

 

What reminded me of Replay was in one of Nora's lives as a glaciologist, she met a man named Hugo, who was also a “slider” or “life jumper”.  He had the same ability as her, except that he’d done this a lot longer, having sampled dozens, if not hundreds, of lives.  Instead of a library though, Hugo’s quantum Shroedinger-esque in-between state was represented by a Midnight Video Store.  Pretty cute, huh?

 

While Replay was an awesome sci-fi/fantasy novel, The Midnight Library was appealing and cute, as author Matt Haig clearly had aspirations for his novel to be inspiring, life-affirming, etc. etc. I've read feel-good books that have really rubbed me the wrong way, like The House by the Cerulean Sea, which I truly regret reading.  Had I known it was going to be such a saccharine piece of tripe, I wouldn't have read it.  Actually that's not fair to tripe, which I would've probably derived more enjoyment out of consuming.  The House... was something that would've belonged in my very own Book of Regrets.  Or more like Book of Books I Regret Reading!

 

In any case, I don't regret having read The Midnight Library. It was better written than The House by the Cerulean Sea, and I even got emotionally caught up in parts of it.  Also, Matt Haig is really British while TJ Klune is American trying to write British.  I also, by default, like any book featuring a cat.  Still, The Midnight Library had its flaws.  There were parts that were a little too simple, or indulgent, or went on for too long.  For example, the part where it listed all the lives that Nora lead.  Whatevs - I just skimmed that section.  Also, some of the lives Nora lead were too far-fetched.  In one life she was the Olympian swimmer she could’ve been. Ok fine. But in another, she was a famous rock on the same level as Radiohead (and even dated a Hollywood star)!  Some metaphors were also a little too pat.  Like the protagonist's name, for instance.  Nora Seed.  She has to experience the multiple branches of her life before she can truly appreciate her “root life”.  Get it?

 

I can also see how The Midnight Library would’ve been The House by the Cerulean Sea for some readers, as it really does over-simplify the complexities of why someone would want to end their life.  One Goodreads reviewer summed it up nicely:

I liked this book until it suddenly decided to moonlight as a self-help manual, replete with messages that would look great and profound on an Instagram post next to a well-posed cup of coffee with those foam pictures on top. Or embroidered on a pillow — pick your poison.

And these messages have the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Another Goodreads reviewer also had a good point about how The Midnight Library could even be problematic in regards to mental illness:

I also have issues with the core messages in this book. Nora finally learns her lesson, but it's only after having fixated on each regret, remade every decision, and lived all subsequent lives. Like come on, at some point, you just have to be okay with who you are and the decisions you've made without knowing every single possible outcome.

 

But my biggest issue is that I'm really uncomfortable with this book's implication that if you're depressed, you only need to change your mindset and you will feel better. That goes against everything we understand about mental illness, including that it's important to seek professional help, that it can be chemically based, and that it's not a matter of not trying hard enough.

 

We already have enough trouble as a society getting depression and mental illness taken seriously, without a "feelgood" book coming along and implying that you need nothing more than an attitude adjustment to cure it. That puts the blame squarely where it doesn't belong, on the hundreds of millions of people who are suffering from depression. But it isn't just the layman who harbors such misunderstandings. It also includes people who work in the mental health field, and even some therapists and psychiatrists. So you can understand my dismay at the continued popularity of this book, which further perpetrates this extremely toxic point of view 

In any case, I wanted to get this review done so I can pass this book on, probably resell it even.

 

April 2026 update: Encore Books wouldn't take this back as they have copies already.  I thought with Matt Haig's sequel The Midnight Train there might be renewed interest in having multiple copies - apparently not.  So this copy was dropped off at my neighbourhood Free Library shelf.

 

13. Affinity

By Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters’ first three novels explored the lives of lesbians in the criminal underworld during the Victorian era.  Two I’ve already read some time ago, and finally, Affinity when I spotted this used hardcopy at the People’s Coop Bookstore in Vancouver this summer.

Fingersmith remains my favourite, with Affinity a close second and Tipping the Velvet dead last.  Affinity (1999) shared many similarities with Fingersmith (2002).  It's my belief that after Affinity's success, Waters sharpened her writing skills even further to create the masterpiece that was Fingersmith.
 
Both novels featured a long, deliberate con game involving two women who have passionate feelings for each other and a terrible betrayal.  I admit I fell for the deceptive twist in Affinity (thus launching into major spoiler territory), mainly because Waters did such an excellent job deliberately misleading and/or withholding information from the reader.  

While Fingersmith ended with a hopeful future for our anti-heroines Sue and Maud, Affinity ended tragically with an utterly devastated Margaret Prior, with no hope for forgiveness or redemption.  Poor, poor Margaret!  Even though I didn't much like her as a character due to her failings and weaknesses, yet Waters managed to make her a sympathetic figure somehow.

Of the three Prior siblings (Stephen, Margaret, Priscilla), Margaret was closest to her father.  We learned via brief “flashbacks” that Margaret lead a fulfilling, intellectual life assisting her father’s scholarly studies.  It was accompanying her father to a lecture where she met the brilliant Helen, who was soon employed by Mr Prior as a second assistant.  Margaret and Helen fell in love, and under the guise of a close friendship, were able to carry on a secret affair.  It was also possible that Mr. Prior encouraged their relationship.  In fact, the trio were planning a trip to Italy to further their scholarly pursuits when Mr Prior became ill and died.  Helen lost the courage to continue her relationship with Margaret and at some point, accepted Stephen’s proposal of marriage, breaking Margaret’s heart even further, as she was still mourning the loss of her father. Soon after, Margaret tried to kill herself by overdosing in chloral.

Affinity began Margaret’s storyline about a year after her suicide attempt.  Margaret had been granted permission to visit Millbank, a rather bleak, Dickensian prison for women.  Since suicide was punishable by law (if one was unlucky enough to survive), Margaret was spared the penitentiary as she belonged to the upper-class.  Margaret’s motive for becoming a 'lady visitor' of Millbank was never clear; she could’ve been looking for a purpose after recovering from her self-poisoning, and an excuse to get away from her over-bearing mother and self-centred sister, Priscilla.  There could’ve been guilt and curiosity mixed in there too, and it’s possible she also wanted to see how miserable the prisoners were to make herself feel better (as Selina so bluntly pointed out to her later).

Margaret was also dealing with unresolved feelings for her ex-lover.  Helen was an example of a closet lesbian who could adapt by passing as straight and thus, find some measure of happiness within the confines of patriarchal Victorian society.  Her marriage to Stephen was a way of staying close to Margaret, not realizing how painful it would be for Margaret to interact with her ex-lover as a sister-in-law. Helen later admitted to Margaret how cowardly it was of her to leave her.  In contrast, Margaret was more of a romantic idealist; quiet yet full of passion beneath her meek exterior.  She was incapable of faking it by role-playing an upper class normie.  Since Margaret failed at taking her own life, she remained trapped in her situation.  This essay explains Margaret's predicament perfectly:

At this stage, Margaret is not yet, technically speaking, a spinster. She becomes so only when her younger sister Priscilla marries a dreamlike suitor, only one day after the official two years of mourning for her father. This marriage was doubly painful for Margaret, firstly because the couple chose Italy for their honeymoon and secondly because, as Margaret reflects, while her social status did not change after her brother married Helen, Priscilla’s wedding completely changed her position within the familial and social structure, transforming her from her ‘mother’s burden’ to ‘her consolation’ (Waters 199), that is, from still marriageable woman past her prime to spinster.

As a spinster, Margaret was doomed to live alone as a closeted lesbian with her disappointed and domineering mother, watching from the sidelines as Priscilla, Stephen and Helen get on with their conventional lives in Victorian society.  However, Margaret was not completely dependent, as she learned from Stephen that their father left her a sizable fortune that would allow her to live out the rest of her life comfortably—as long as she doesn’t marry.  Even Selina and Ruth were not able to swindle Margaret’s entire fortune.  But what was wealth, really, when you’ve been utterly betrayed, broken-hearted, and emotionally bereft with suicidal tendencies?

What made Margaret somewhat pathetic was how she made the perfect victim for Selina and Ruth's endgame.  Selina quickly deduced what her target most longed for and exploited that to her advantage. So much so that Margaret (and Mrs Jelf) became convinced that Selina could make miracles happen, if only she could believe!  The part where Margaret was crying out to Selina from her window at night was rather heart-wrenching.   

Now that I think about it, there was usually a rational explanation for all the supposedly supernatural things that occurred around Selina.  Like the little violet that Selina was holding when Margeret first saw her. We can assume that Selina already had Mrs Jelf under her influence, and Mrs Jelf was already relaying messages from Ruth to Selina, so Ruth must have gave the violet to Selina via Mrs J as a little gift to keep her spirits up.  It was a lucky coincidence that Margaret happened to see Selina with it – a coincidence that savvy Selina was able to exploit to her advantage.

I did go back some chapters to check the timing of events.  Soon after the Margaret’s initial meeting with the prisoner, Selina Dawes, Selina must have passed a message on to Ruth to look into Margaret to see if she’d make a worthy target.  Ruth promptly found out where Margaret lived (and that she was obvs wealthy) and bribed the maid Boyd to give her notice to the Prior family.  Before leaving, Boyd mentioned a ‘friend’ named Vigers who was willing to take up the post. Vigers only condition was to be given a small room of her own (to be near her ‘friend’ who lived near the river – a very tiny clue!).  Vigers was soon hired into the household and all the author had to do was to never mention the first name of the new maid!

That was exactly how Selina was able to “sense” the source of Margret's sadness, as Vigers had been regularly passing intel to Selina via Mrs Jelf!  Even if Selina did not possess ANY abilities as a spiritualist-medium, she was cunning and keenly observant (like keying in on the notebook that was peeking out of Margaret’s pocket).  She was also a talented method actress – convincingly spooking her prison inmates by mimicking the voices of ghosts.  Waters seemed to support the argument that spiritualists are mere tricksters and con artists!

Another factor that made the twist so successful (for me, at least) was using Selina Dawes as an unreliable narrator, which helped to deliberately mislead the reader.  Selina’s journal entries alternated with the chapters containing Margaret’s POV.  It was not until the final chapter that we learn how Selina’s accounting of events leading up to that fateful night had been completely falsified.  When they were back in Mrs Brinks house, Ruth asked Selina what she was writing, and Selina only responded, rather mysteriously, that she’s writing for her “Guardian’s eyes”. ‘Him’, Ruth said.

That was the only clue given.  And I have a few theories:  Selina may believe in a higher power and/or she has a modicum of conscience, and writing her journal was a way of justifying her deception.  However, it was mostly likely that Selina was thinking ahead in terms of the law.  If she was ever caught, her journal entries could be used as proof of her ‘innocence’, as she truly believed in her abilities as a spiritualist.

The only thing I wasn’t sure about was how Selina could've deceived Mrs Brinks when they were alone inside her room each night. It was clear Ruth had access to Mrs Brinks' personal items and could feed intel to Selina.  Perhaps Mrs Brinks longed so much to see her departed mother it didn't much for Selina to convince Mrs Brinks that she could summon the spirit of her mother.  It was also possible that Ruth drugged Mrs Brinks’ tea so she’d have mild hallucinations. When Margaret came under the spell of Selina, her imagination was heightened by her nightly doses of chloral hydrate and later, laudanum (pushed by her own mother).

As this reviewer wrote:  Waters’ captured some of the same Gothic tone of dread and unreality [associated] with Wilkie Collins. As I read it, I had almost as hard a time as the protagonist did figuring out what was real, what was supernatural, and what was skillful con.

Some further insight on the ending:

The big one: Ruth was Peter Quick.  I didn’t get this the first time, but re-reading it, it was so obvious.  Disguised as Peter Quick, Ruth could flirt with the ladies, sidle up close and touch them while Selina was tied up.  When the attendants of the seance were helping Selina recover, Ruth would take off her costume and dress in her maid's uniform again.  Mrs. Brink never attended the large seances so when she walked in on one and saw Ruth dressed up as Peter, she went into shock, unable to say anything to out Selina as a charlatan before dying of a heart attack.

Margaret’s ending was even more subtle but we decided from the end of her narrative that she had decided to commit suicide.  The line is “Selina…[y]our twisting is done- you have the last thread of my heart.  I wonder; when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?” (351).  We took the thread going slack as Margaret no longer being alive to hold it up.

And finally, from Lesbian Invisibility and the Politics of Representation of the Lady and the Humble Servant in Sarah Waters’s Affinity

Miss Prior’s incapacity to break out of the immaterial prison house of familial and social conventions while Selina and Ruth initiate a new life of freedom, sexual fulfilment, and social ascent, points to class as the decisive blocking element in Margaret’s quest for individuation. However, although her impending suicide provides a chilling picture of the physical and psychical traumas affecting upper-class lesbian women in the Victorian period, it should not be forgotten that Selina is the only convict who manages to break out of Millbank, a tenebrous Gothic prison, designed after Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon so as to keep all inmates potentially under constant surveillance by an unseen official.28 This awe-inspiring picture of the disciplinary mechanisms reserved for poor women in the Victorian era provides the counterpoint to the portrait of the Lady Visitor’s tragic fate. When both pictures are set against each other, it becomes evident that the difference in the punitive and disciplinary treatment of transgressive working-class and upper-class Victorian women was more apparent than real, a simple difference in the materiality or immateriality of the cell they were respectively condemned to inhabit. In the last reading, therefore, Ruth’s double invisibility as a humble lady’s maid and as an apparitional lesbian may be seen as representative of the general condition of late nineteenth-century working-class women forced to fend for themselves in a thoroughly hostile and pitiless patriarchal word. It is against this oppressive background that the ethicality of Selina and Ruth’s self-humbling tactics as a means to accomplish their picaresque quest for freedom and social ascent should be measured.

All in all, it was a very satisfying, if rather depressing, read.  And it more than made up for the dissatisfaction with Little Women, which I found even more depressing.

1. Rawblood

 By Catriona Ward

I first heard of Rawblood from a Goodreads recommendation, something like the 100 Best Horror novels since 2000.  It also won the British Fantasy award for best horror novel in 2016. The premise was unbearably intriguing:  a gothic love story with supernatural horror elements set in the Devon moors of the early 20^th century.  

 

Reader, if you’re intrigued as I was, stop reading now, there be big time spoilers ahead!

 

With a title like Rawblood, I assumed it was going to be a modern spin on Wuthering Heights with vampirism, or cannibalism, thrown in (the romantic cannibal flick, Bones and All, has been getting some hype).

 

Well, the North American version is titled The Girl from Rawblood and the hardcover isn’t available yet in Canada (it will also be full price as it’ll be a new release).  However, since Rawblood had been published years ago in the UK, I was able to place an order on Abe Books (along with two Eve Babitz books) for a new UK paperback (for less than $10 USD!) to arrive at my in-laws address during the Xmas holiday. 

 

On New Year’s Day, I flew home solo while hubs and daughter stayed in Berkeley a few more days.  My mild cold had blossomed into a miasma of mucus and phlegm, so my first few days back in Montreal was spent working, eating, horking, and lots of streaming entertainment.  After a few days, I was ready to pick up a book, and chose Rawblood to kick off the year.

Rawblood. Home. It sounds like a battle, like grief, but it’s a gentle name. ‘Raw’ from ‘Straw’, which means ‘flowing’, for the Dart River that runs nearby. ‘Blood’ from ‘Bont’, a bridge. Old words. The house by the bridge over flowing water. It has been in my family since I don’t know when. Rawblood is us and we, the Villarcas, are Rawblood.

The chapter begins in 1910, with eleven year old Iris Villarca and her friendship with the slightly older Tom Gilmore, who works as a groom on the estate, Rawblood.  Iris’ father, Alfonso, forbids her from having close associations with outsiders, so Iris and Tom have to sneak around at night to hang out.

These are among the first things I recall my father teaching me: that I must keep quiet and may not go among many people or to towns, because of the disease; and that Rawblood is written into us.

The reason behind Alfonso’ strict rules is because there is a dreaded family curse.  The nature of the curse is a close-kept secret, but Alfonso tells Iris that it’s horror autotoxicus, a kind of auto-immune disease, and that she must always control her emotions and to never to fall in love with anyone, because that’s when the disease arises, from strong, unbridled emotions.

Loneliness is not what people think it is. It is not a song. It's a little bitter thing you keep close, like an egg under a hen. What happens when the shell cracks? What comes forth?

When Iris realizes that horror autotoxicus isn’t a real disease, and that she had a terrifying vision the night she went to the cave with Tom, Alfonso finally tells her that the family curse is really an apparition in the form of a horribly mutilated woman (always referred to as her) who haunts Rawblood, and somehow causes the untimely death of a family member.  As one Goodreads reviewer put it:  Some see her and go mad, and kill their loved one before she can. Others simply die of fright. Still more claw their own eyes out to rid themselves of the sight of her.

Once Iris asked her father:

What does she want?  From us.

‘It is so strange,’ he says. He’s thoughtful of a sudden, removed. It is moments like this that I remember that my father was a doctor, once. ‘So inconstant, her wishes … they are crude like the desires of a child. She wants us close – she wants us here. But she does not like us to grow, to live.  It is as if she would have Rawblood and all of us in it suspended for ever, unchanging… under glass, in a museum case. What for? Do we amuse her? Sometime I have thought, over the years, that we are merely playthings of a kind.  But she kills her toys, in the end.’

Alternating timelines were devoted to Alfonso’s old friend, Charles Danforth.  Chapter Two introduced Charles in 1881, while he was travelling by train to see Alfonso at Rawblood.  The two men were medical students and roommates, but they had lost touch over the years.  It’s hinted that Charles, being a man of faith, was horrified when he consummated his love for Alfonso.  Meanwhile Alfonso had always been obsessed with finding a cure for the family curse.  Being a man of science, he believed the curse was a form of congenital madness that has plagued the Villarcas-Hopewells bloodlines for generations. Charles was coming to help Alfonso with his research, just like old times.

 

While Charles and Alfonso conducted their strange experiments in the bowels of Rawblood, their relationship was fraught with tension, dead tortured lab animals, repressed secrets, laudenam and latent homosexuality.  When Charles finally set eyes on her, he was traumatized as he realized there was no God, and ended up committing suicide.  We learn later that Iris’ mother was Charles’ estranged younger sister, Meg, whom Alfonso had promised to take care of and later married. 

Sometimes, I walk through it in my dreams - the interior of my heart. It is like a black land, where black flags hang in tatters and venomous plants grow in sickly clumps and serpents writhe...A deadly night garden, my heart.

Eventually, Iris met a grim fate after her father died because the apparition appeared just when Iris attempted to escape from Alfonso’s control.  Iris was then committed to an insane asylum, as the authorities thought she had killed her father.  I was like, holy shit, this really sucks.  Maybe Tom will help her escape somehow and they’ll figure out how to end the curse.  At some point, I came to realize that Iris wasn’t going to get out -- it was looking like she was going to waste away inside that institution for the rest of her life… and then she just died.  I was like, WTF.  This is one dark motherfucker of a book!  

 

The book also jumped back in time to Iris’ grandparents, Don Vallarca and Mary Hopewell, to when they first met.  It was a lovely story that diverted from Iris’ horrible fate, and that section alone could’ve made a nice gothic romance.  But it was also a kind of red herring, as it strengthened my belief that there was some malevolent supernatural entity and made me wonder how it could’ve latched onto the Vallarca and Hopewell family.

 

The reveal of the Rawblood Ghost’s identity was not as revelatory as it could’ve been by no fault of the author.  It’s because the time-transcending nature of the apparition immediately made me think of The Bent Neck Lady from the hit Netflix series, The Haunting of Hill House.  Time-travelling ghosts probably aren’t a novel idea, but probably not common either.  Rawblood was published in 2015, so it’s possible that Mike Flanagan was inspired by the very cool idea that entities from the spiritual realm are not bound by space and the linear advancement of time.  

 

But yeah, it turned out that the authorities were right, Iris did kill her father, but not in the way they had thought!  And yes, dear reader, Iris was, had become, and will always be The Bent Neck Lady.  Ooooh, brrrrrr, shiver!

 

It was a slow burning, very detailed and meandering (if at times, uneven) build up to that shocking ending.  Because of that, Rawblood was ultimately a satisfying read – with a tragic ending of all endings.  What also elevated this book was Ward’s writing – haunting and evocative without being too prosey, and powerful enough to make you feel the pangs of Iris’ isolation and how generational trauma can reverberate backwards in time.  An amazing feat.  

 

I would never dare to read Rawblood again, it was so bleak and dark in its melancholic beauty.  But I appreciate that other readers also loved this book.

14. Crusoe’s Daughter

By Jane Gardam 

Crusoe’s Daughter (1985) been on my list for some time with this short description:  Book-loving girl lives with 2 isolated maiden aunts by Irish Sea; off-beat female British writer.

This is obvs in my wheelhouse, so imagine my delight when I found a used copy somewhere for 8 bucks (can’t remember where exactly).

In 1904, six year-old Polly Flint goes to live with her two spinster aunts in their house by the sea, near a village so isolated that she “might have been marooned on an island”.  And there she stays for eighty-one years while the century raged around her.

This was my first book by Jane Gardam, apparently a well-loved but less well-known author compared to her contemporaries (like Maeve Binchy maybe).  I wonder if it’s because Gardam didn’t start writing fiction until well into her forties, though she had a career in journalism and the book industry.  Crusoe’s Daughter is one of Gardam’s earlier works of adult fiction (she began writing books for children) and according to her, is her personal favourite among all the books she has written.

Crusoe’s Daughter was simply a lovely and lovingly written book; the kind of book that you can curl up to under a wool blanket with a hot mug of tea.  There were some really nice reviews on Goodreads that pretty much encapsulated how I felt, so will just paraphrase them here (and save myself some time!):

   Northern England, 1904, and young Polly Flint is brought to stay and to be raised by her two very Christian aunts. Books are her solace and Robinson Crusoe her favorite. Throughout the years she would turn again and again to this book, so identifying with him and his situation.
   She would very seldom leave the island again, due to circumstances, tragedies and obligation. She would compare the plight of being a woman as being stuck and imprisoned, like her hero Robinson Crusoe.
   Although she would seldom leave, history would be brought to her, World War I and II, would both change her life in various ways.
Although this is an early Gardam, her wonderful writing ability, which would only get stronger in subsequent books, is already apparent. Beautiful descriptions, especially of the marsh, humorous passages, quirky characters and a story that covers over six decades in very few pages.
   A profound and entertaining look at a young woman's survival, her fight to find a life for herself within the limitations and tragedies inherent in her situation. Enjoyed this very much. Made me want to re-read Robinson Crusoe.

 --------------

It's hard to write a review for a book I loved so much because I want to gush over it. I have read a couple of other Jane Gardam books and loved them, but this one really resonated with me on a very personal level. In short, Polly Flint read "Robinson Crusoe" as a child and used him as a guide for her life. She was marooned with two very religious maiden aunts in a house by the sea, but created a landscape for herself from the fiction she read. It's a book about how fiction can save us, and how we can also get lost in it if we're not careful. Like Crusoe, she finds her Friday who helps to save her from an island of her own making. Eighty years in the life of a woman who uses a book written in the eighteenth century to navigate her life in the twentieth. Wonderful!

 

13. The Bone Clocks

By David Mitchell

Last year I tried selling some trade paperback fiction on PPG, ie. Neal Stephenson, Dawn Powell (I had two copies)... the good stuff. Surprisingly, there were no takers (did no one read during the pandemic?), so I ended up selling them to SW Welch when his store reopened.  Someone on PPG responded saying 'I’m not interested but I’ll lend you my copy of The Bone Clocks, I think you’ll love it.'  I guess from the 5 or 6 books I was trying to sell, she deduced that I’d like The Bone Clocks?  I thanked her but did not take her up on her offer.  Yet I did put The Bone Clocks on my list, knowing that David Mitchell can be a damn fine writer when he wants to be.

When I was in Abbotsford visiting my brother in September, we went downtown for lunch and walked around the area.  We stopped by a pretty good used bookstore, which was where I found this copy of The Bone Clocks.

Overall, I really enjoyed the novel.  But it didn’t need to be 600+ pages, even for a writer like David bloody Mitchell!  I will say that I’d rather read 666 pages of Mitchell than slog through 99 pages of TJ Klune any day!

The Bone Clocks was rather misleading as a contemporary fantasy.  The fantastical elements comprised perhaps about 18% of the novel, at best?  It began conventionally enough:  girl runs away, girl meets boy, girl gets entangled with supernatural forces, girl gets memory wiped, girl grants asylum to immortal being to reside in the back of her mind for two decades.

Then the next chapter takes place about a decade later from the POV of a new character:  a university student named Hugo Lamb who harbors a double life. The fantasy elements take a back seat... of a very long touring bus.  Basically, the bulk of the book is from the POV of men who knew and loved Holly Sykes.  But the fantasy stuff, when they do come back, is really great.  David Mitchel can write and he can do fantasy, ie. believable world-building, a good backstory about ancient beings known as Atemporals, who are basically split between two warring factions.

Having watched Doctor Sleep on Netflix recently, the “psychoteric” war between the Horologists and the Anchorites shared amazing similarities with the psychic battles portrayed in the Stephen King adaptation, so much so that I had to look it up.   Doctor Sleep was published in 2013 and The Bone Clocks in 2014, so they were very close together and apparently, it was really by chance!

According to the Horologists, the Anchorites are “carnivores” because they murder and feed off children who are gifted with psychic voltage.  They then ‘decant’ their souls and drink from the Black Wine and this halts the aging process, as long as they perform this sacrifice every three months.  Unlike the self-serving Anchorites, the Horologists are "good" Atemporals since they allow themselves to age; when their bodies die, their souls enter the body of a child who had just died of natural causes.  Unlike the Anchorites, who get to keep their bodies, their immortality is based on reincarnation.  The Horologists have made it their mission to fight the Anchorites because what they do is simply wrong, if not downright evil.  Regular humans are known as Bone Clocks because they can't perceive this eternal battle that's been waging around their limited perceptions of space and time.  Mitchell did a good job fleshing out the individual Horologists, though the Anchorites were portrayed pretty two-dimensionally. 

In Doctor Sleep, an evil gang of supernatural beings retain their longevity by feeding on the psychic abilities (aka "steam") of children.  Instead of the Horologists, you have middle-aged Danny and his young charge fighting the bad guys.  I found the psychic premise and warfare in the Doctor Sleep movie quite thrilling so would like to read the book one day.  Same for the final “psychoteric” war in The Bone Clocks… when it finally occurred!  The best and worst thing about The Bone Clocks was that it’s the work of David Mitchell.  It’s not that Mitchell can't write a tightly structured, conventional genre novel.  He just won't -- he'd consider it beneath him. So he makes what should be a tightly structured, conventional work of genre fiction into a dense, literary novel.  Rather arrogant, if you ask me!

Back to the amoral, womanizing posh boy, Hugo Lamb.  He eventually gets recruited by the Anchorites, but before this happens, Mitchell goes on and on about his life in great detail. When Hugo meets Holly, many pages are devoted to Hugo wooing Holly, so you'd think that their brief fling would have some significance later.  Then Holly's high school crush, Dave Brubeck, comes back in first-person - now a 30-something war journalist married to Holly and saddled with an adorable toddler daughter.  Dave is torn between two loves and two duties: his family and profession.

Next comes Crispin Hershey, the most superfluous character in the entire novel.  Again, Mitchell devotes countless pages to Crispin’s life as a former Wild Child of literary fiction.  There's even an unnecessary subplot where Crispin’s revenge on a harsh critic ends up sending said critic to a South American prison for 3 years.  The critic was none other than Richard Cheeseman, an old university friend of Hugo Lamb.

You’re led to think that Crispin will have a bigger part to play in the fantasy subplot, but nothing comes of it.  An editor for any other writer would’ve excised this, but because it's David Mitchell, he got to keep all these irrevelant details because he had written so much of himself into Crispin Hershey - a male writer having a midlife crisis, whose star is fading, but his wit is still as sharp as ever, etc.  Most of all, Mitchell could make fun of himself in a self-referential way, like via this very meta scathing review of Hershey's latest novel:

So why is Echo Must Die such a decomposing hog?  One: Hershey is so bent on avoiding cliché that each sentence is as tortured as an American whistleblower. Two: The fantasy subplot clashes so violently with the book’s State of the World pretensions, I cannot bear to look. Three: What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character?

Check, check and check for The Bone Clocks! Even though it could've easily been 200 pages shorter and a better book, would it have been a David Mitchell book?  I did get a tiny thrill when I read that Crispin’s ex-wife and daughters had a “little pied-a-terre in Montreal’s well-heeled Outremont neighborhood”, which I don't live far from. Those details can be fun.

What was disappointing was that nothing ever came out of Hugo’s fling with Holly.  His only connection was that he was recruited by the same Anchorite who had stalked Holly as a child.  Nor did Hugo’s past love for Holly alter the course of the final psychic battle in any way.  He merely followed Marinus out of the Chapel of Dust, managed to escape the collapsing wreckage, became an ordinary human again, and… was never heard from again!   Crispin was even worse.  He simply got killed off by a seemingly random person, Soleil Moore.  The only purpose that his character served was that he was another man who loved Holly in her middle age, and who witnessed Holly having a vision.  At least Dave Brubeck had a daughter with Holly. 

In the reader’s guide at the end, Hugo and Crispin, and to some extent, Dave Brubeck, were men who became better people because of Holly.  But what did this have to do with the novel's overarching narrative or theme?  

The final narrator, the Horologist named Marinus, was what brought everything back full circle. His chapter was the best one, not only because it explained everything, but was also the most creatively interesting because Marinus was convincing in his first life as a man and then as a young peasant girl who makes her way up in 16th c. society.  Marinus appearing in the final chapter when Holly was a grandmother in post-apocalyptic Ireland was pretty cool because he was able to finally return the favour by rescuing Holly's granddaughter and adopted grandson.

In the Guardian article, Mitchell spoke about ‘delayed gratification’ and not doing what other writers were doing.  The one thing I did appreciate with the ‘delayed gratification’ was that when the fantasy stuff came back in full force, it picked up the plot where it left off, made me revisit Holly’s section again, and then her encounter with Esther Little and Marinus made more sense.

The reader may have clean forgot what happened in the early chapters because several hundred pages have passed.  So all the weird stuff that happened to Holly when she was a teen, it all gets explained at the end. Holly, as a child, was plagued by visions and voices.  Immaculée Constantin stalked Holly as the next decanting victim for her immortal cult.  The doctor who treated Holly was Dr. Marinus who neutralized her psychic voltage to protect her from the cult.   Immaculée then kidnapped and murdered Holly’s little brother, who had actually died from hepatitis a year earlier and whose body was inhabited by a powerful Horologist.

This review “gets” The Bone Clocks and sums up what Mitchell was trying to achieve.

I mostly agree with this assessment, but still felt The Bone Clocks could’ve been a truly great fantasy book had it been structurally tighter.  As a literary work, the portrayal of three very different men having been affected by one woman makes an enjoyable enough novel, but certainly not a great one either.  The combination of the fantastical with the 'normal human stuff' makes it unusual and interesting, but that's about it. It was only Mitchell’s talents and humour that made the sloggy filler bits bearable, much like how I felt about Cloud Atlas. 

So glad I was able to finish before flying off the CA to join my fam for the holiday.