Twenty in '20: The Psychology of Time Travel

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading twenty books in 2020. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

11/20: The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

The blurb: 1967. Four female scientists invent a time travel machine. But then one of them suffers a breakdown and puts the whole project in peril...

2017. Ruby knows her Granny Bee was the scientist who went mad, but they never talk about it. Until they receive a message from the future, warning of an elderly woman's violent death...

2018. Odette found the dead women at work – shot in the head, door bolted from the inside. Now she can't get her out of her mind. Who was she? And why is everyone determined to cover up her murder?

The review: I'm a sucker for a well-written or inventive time travel tale, and that's what led me to read a story by an author with whom I was unfamiliar. But maybe I'm in the minority in this respect, because if you just made your purchasing decision based on the blurb, you'd think that this was primarily a murder mystery tale, wouldn't you? Albeit one with a twist.

The thing is, whilst the whodunnit works well enough, without being outstanding, what does stand out in Mascharenas's novel is the inventiveness of imagining a world in which time travel has become routine, a commercial activity, governed with rules and organisations - a world in which "time traveller" is a career choice, a vocation with its own slang, initiation rites, protocols and faux pas. This aspect of the novel is very well realised, not least through the inclusion of two appendices, one a glossary of time travelling terminology and another detailing the psychometric tests that time travellers have to go through.

So, I said I was a sucker for a well-written or inventive time travel tale, and this is certainly inventive ... but is it well written too? Well ... for the most part, yes, it's pretty fair. Having said that, Mascarenhas is a little too prone to making bald statements - she tells, rather than shows. And maybe I just didn't notice it at the start, but it seemed to me that this overt storytelling increased as the novel progressed. It was almost like either the author or her editor got tired of making the subtle changes that would be necessary to remedy the problem (and it did become problematic, at times, for me).

Another point of note with The Psychology of Time Travel is that just about every protagonist is female - I'm trying to think of one significant male character, and am failing. This stands out, and is welcome, though it did make for little variation in the romantic and sexual sub-plots. It is refreshing ... but it feels like it's pushing at the bounds of credulity. Of course I accept that I'm a middle-aged man, with a whole host of subconscious preconceptions and biases ... but I do think that an invention of such global impact and significance, made by four women in the 1960s, would almost certainly have been subsumed by the patriarchy by 2018, sadly...

The bottom line: a decent book that describes a time-travelling world in a very satisfying way, with a serviceable if unremarkable murder-mystery tagged on.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★☆☆

Twenty in '20: If It Bleeds

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading twenty books in 2020. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

10/20: If It Bleeds by Stephen King

The blurb: News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realises there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins If It Bleeds, a stand-alone sequel to the No. 1 bestselling The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case - and also the riveting title story in Stephen King's brilliant new collection.

Dancing alongside are three more wonderful long stories from this 'formidably versatile author' (The Sunday Times) - Mr Harrigan's Phone, The Life of Chuck and Rat. All four display the richness of King's storytelling with grace, humour, horror and breathtaking suspense. A fascinating Author's Note gives us a wonderful insight into the origin of each story and the writer's unparalleled imagination.

The review: so here are four novellas from the prodigious and prolific Stephen King. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I am a fan, a so-called Constant Reader: basically, I am genetically predisposed to like this book. And I do, very much. Of the four stories, the real hook, the sales driver if you like, is the title story. A follow-up to the Bill Hodges trilogy and The Outsider, in that it features the much-loved character Holly Gibney, with a cameo from Jerome. We learn, from the author's afterword, that Holly is much-loved by King too, so I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that this novella gives her story a fitting end. Multiple ends, actually, as this is a novella that doesn't quite know when to stop.

And what of the other novellas on offer here? Mr Harrigan's Phone opens the collection and, in some ways, sets the tone for the whole book in some of its themes: the all-pervasive reach of technology, the awfulness of one Donald Trump and a general feeling of how things aren't as good as they used to be. Isolation too, of course, whether that's geographical or social. So in this tale, we have a young loner communicating with his late employer, a wealthy old man who had retired to the middle of nowhere to get away from it all, via an iPhone that the boy slipped into the old man's jacket pocket as he lay in an open coffin. So far, so King... but also so Poe, to me at least.

In many ways, The Life of Chuck is the most interesting story here. Told in three parts, in reverse chronological order, it opens with a dystopian end-of-days scenario, brilliantly and chillingly evoked - it feels like it could be 2021. But as the tale unwinds, from Act III back to Act I, it becomes apparent that the world as we know it, as depicted in this story, is driven by, and focused on, the life of everyman Chuck. I'm trying hard to avoid spoilers, but Chuck is ill. Very ill...

The collection closes with my favourite of the four tales, Rat. This concerns another of King's favoured recurrent themes, that of a writer who just can't deliver any more. Specifically, in this case, it concerns an author who's had minor success with short stories but whose last attempt at a novel led him to a nervous breakdown and a narrowly averted disaster. So when our protagonist hits upon a new idea for a novel, and proposes to hole up in a cabin in the woods to write it, well, unsurprisingly his wife is unimpressed. But he goes ahead anyway, picking up a bad cold and fever from a shopkeeper at his last stop before the woods, for good measure. Oh, and did I mention that a big storm is on its way, that will take out the power and the phonelines? Quite a set-up, isn't it? And we haven't even got to the rat yet. But better than the premise, better than the tropes of isolation and adversity, is the insight into a writer who is driven mad by an inability to choose words - he has so many at his disposal, and can lose hours (days?) agonising over which metaphor is better. It's a feeling this aspiring but perennially underachieving author can identify with. I have never been holed up in a cabin in the Maine woods, deprived of all power, cut-off from the outside world. But this story felt so real to me.

All in all, this is a fine book - King has successfully extended his record of releasing four-novella collections. I raced through it, and enjoyed all four stories - they are recognisably King, no apples have fallen far from the tree here, with the possible slight exception of The Life of Chuck. Fans will eat it up; equally, it is unlikely to win over many converts to the King cause. One closing observation though - the eponymous If It Bleeds has a conventional climactic ending (followed by a number of codas), but none of the other three do. They are stories that just come to an end, sometimes satisfyingly, sometimes leaving questions unanswered. There's no showboating, they are just stories that are told. King can get away with this because he's Stephen King. I did wonder though whether an unknown or unheralded author would have had these stories published, in this format, with these endings. Based on my admittedly limited experience of agents and publishers, I think not - there would be a lot of editing required (demanded), more of the loose strings would have to be tied up. But I'm not complaining - sometimes it's enough, I think, just to tell the story.

The bottom line: four fine, original tales that King fans will love, with favourite themes revisited and a nice epilogue to the Holly Gibney story.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★☆

Twenty in '20: The Snakes

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading twenty books in 2020. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

9/20: The Snakes by Sadie Jones

The blurb: Newly-weds Dan and Bea decide to escape London. Driving through France in their beaten-up car they anticipate a long lazy summer, worlds away from their ordinary lives.

But their idyll cannot last. Stopping off to see Bea’s brother at his crumbling hotel, the trio are joined unexpectedly by Bea’s ultra-wealthy parents. Dan has never understood Bea’s deep discomfort around them but living together in such close proximity he begins to sense something is very wrong.

Just as tensions reach breaking point, brutal tragedy strikes, exposing decades of secrets and silence that threaten to destroy them all.

The review: the name Sadie Jones might ring a bell with you. Her 2008 debut novel, The Outcast, won all kinds of awards and was adapted for television by the BBC. It's very good. So, too, is The Snakes.

An interesting thing here is the blurb - these so often fall into hyperbole, overselling the book. Here, that is not the case - indeed, it almost undersells. I know it's hard to avoid spoilers but... (spoiler alert) there's a murder in this book (the "brutal tragedy"), in the wake of which a tangled web of power, corruption and lies unravels...

Like so many of the writers I admire, Jones has a concise prose style that wastes no words. This, when applied to quite emotional content, can be disarming. There were several moments, reading this, where I had to lower the book to my lap, take a breath and think, "Blimey." And yes, that's partly down to the twisting, sinusoidal path of the plot (snake-like, perhaps) but also thanks to that disarming quality that Jones's writing has. I've been thinking a lot about how she achieves this, and I think it's something to do with a change of pace in her prose - dropping a line of aching beauty or stunning imagery into an otherwise functional paragraph, for example. Do this too often and it might grate, but Sadie gets it right, so very right, every time. Its a real, and very enviable, skill.

Another interesting aspect of The Snakes is the way in which the author plays with your feelings about the characters. Bea is the novel's heart, the likeable, relatable heroine in a book populated with unpleasant characters. But her husband, Dan... your mileage may vary, but my opinion of him was up and down like a yo-yo, from likeable everyman to shallow and flawed, and back again. In the end, you conclude that he's essentially decent but just a bit messed-up... and so is probably the most realistic, relatable character in the whole thing.

The ending of this book has attracted a lot of attention, and comments from online reviewers, many of which seem to be along the lines of "how could it end like that?" But for me, I don't see how else it could have ended. No, it may not appeal to readers who want everything tied up in a neat bow, with a happy ending for everybody. But I'm not interested in pat, feelgood endings. This ending feels real, and so what if there are some loose ends? The crux of the story is resolved - you might not like it, but that's how it is. And if you're the sort of reader who expects to feel a sense of loss after finishing a good book... well, this is for you.

The bottom line: gripping and unusual story, part family drama, part suspense, played out in Jones's glorious prose, scalpel-sharp and laser-guided. The best book I've read this year.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★★

Twenty in '20: Drowning With Others

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading twenty books in 2020. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

8/20: Drowning With Others by Linda Keir

The blurb: They have the perfect marriage. Did one of them kill to get it?

Prep school sweethearts Ian and Andi Copeland are envied by everyone they know. They have successful businesses, a beautiful house in St. Louis, and their eldest daughter, Cassidy, is following in their footsteps by attending prestigious Glenlake Academy. Then, a submerged car is dredged from the bottom of a swimming hole near the campus. So are the remains of a former writer-in-residence who vanished twenty years ago—during Ian and Andi’s senior year.

When Cassidy’s journalism class begins investigating the death, Ian and Andi’s high school secrets rise to the surface. Each has a troubled link to the man whose arrival and sudden disappearance once set the school on edge. And each had a reason to want him gone. As Cassidy unwittingly edges closer to the truth, unspoken words, locked away for decades, will force Ian and Andi to question what they really know—about themselves, about the past, and about a marriage built on a murderous lie.

The review: I need to start by saying that I didn't buy this book. I got it as a freebie e-book from Amazon. And the fact that I feel the need to make it clear I didn't part with my hard-earned to read this probably gives you an idea of how this review is going to go.

Maybe that's a harsh way to start a review so, to redress the balance, I should make it clear that the authors (plural, for Linda Keir is actually a collaboration between Linda Joffe Hull and Keir Graff) have produced a perfectly serviceable pot-boiler that keeps the pages turning. It feels a bit like they looked at the success of books like Gone Girl and The Girl On The Train, and tried to write something in a similar vein. Nothing wrong with that. They aren't the first to try it, and they won't be the last either. The thing is... whilst I'm not holding Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins up as literary gods or anything (though Hawkins definitely has something), Hull and Graff don't measure up.

There are times, for example, when the prose is just too expository, too often. In my view all good fiction should allow the reader to join the dots, and this is especially true in the kind of suspense/whodunnit thriller that Drowning With Others aspires to be. And there are places, here, where Linda Keir hasn't just joined the dots but done so with a Sharpie. It's a shame... and I couldn't help but wonder whether Hull or Graff was the culprit. Maybe they were both at it!

It isn't all bad, of course. Handling the flashbacks with extracts from the protagonists' high school journals is a neat device, and works well. And despite a distinct lack of likeable or relatable characters (honestly, they're a rotten bunch of spoilt rich kids), the pages do keep on turning, so some of the basics of storytelling must be there. But surely it's fundamental for a whodunnit to keep you guessing, right to the end? And this didn't, unfortunately - I had the big reveal sussed quite early on. I'm glad, then, that I got this for free, because Drowning With Others just isn't a book I feel I could honestly recommend to anyone who had to pay for it. As an aspiring writer, I have the utmost admiration for anyone that writes a novel, and I don't begrudge Hull and Graff their success... but I won't be rushing out to sample their other work, put it that way.

The bottom line: serviceable but unremarkable page-turning pot-boiler; the sort of book you'd take on holiday and deliberately leave in the hotel at the end of the week.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★☆☆☆

Twenty in '20: Wakenhyrst

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading twenty books in 2020. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

7/20: Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver

The blurb: In Edwardian Suffolk, a manor house stands alone in a lost corner of the Fens: a glinting wilderness of water whose whispering reeds guard ancient secrets. Maud is a lonely child growing up without a mother, ruled by her repressive father.

When he finds a painted medieval devil in a graveyard, unhallowed forces are awakened.

Maud's battle has begun. She must survive a world haunted by witchcraft, the age-old legends of her beloved fen – and the even more nightmarish demons of her father's past.

Spanning five centuries, Wakenhyrst is a darkly gothic thriller about murderous obsession and one girl's longing to fly free by the bestselling author of Dark Matter and Thin Air. Wakenhyrst is an outstanding new piece of story-telling, a tale of mystery and imagination laced with terror. It is a masterwork in the modern gothic tradition that ranges from Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker to Neil Gaiman and Sarah Perry.

The review: regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of Michelle Paver's work - indeed, I wrote (and raved) about her previous novel, Thin Air as part of last year's reading challenge. It's not just Paver's fluid prose style that makes me such an admirer - it's her ability to evoke a setting. I have quite a thing about "setting as character", both as a reader and an aspiring writer, and the setting for Wakenhyrst - the fens, and a remote fenland country house - is as much a character in this novel as any of the human protagonists.

It's no mean feat, particularly since Paver has to deal with two time periods, the early years of the Twentieth Century and the middle of the Sixteenth. And yet at no time does the setting, the cast of characters, their dialogue and the practices of the day feel anything other than entirely authentic. This is testament to Paver's research - she's clearly read a lot about the fens in those times, and this has informed everything she's written here.

Indeed, without giving spoilers, it is interesting to note that the genesis of this story came from Paver combining, and then extrapolating from, three real-life events (yes, the author's note at the end of the book is also worth a read).

As in Thin Air and Dark Matter before that, Paver uses isolation to great effect, to apply pressure on her heroine and reinforce feelings of the uncanny, of otherness. Wakenhyrst didn't scare me in the same way that Dark Matter did, but it did unsettle me, and that's almost better (or worse, depending on how much you appreciate being scared). And for a novel that deals in historical language and practices, this gallops along at a fair old pace. The reproduction of journal entries helps in this regard, I think. Either way, I found it hard to put down.

The bottom line: classic gothic suspense, in the truest sense of those words, with terrific setting, characterisation and pace. Recommended to all.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★☆

Twenty in '20: Nameless

Having failed to read nineteen books in 2019, I'm going to have another go with, guess what, twenty books in 2020. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

1-6/20: The Nameless books by Dean Koontz

The blurb: If our memories make us who we are, who is a man without any? Nameless has only a gun, missions from a shadowy agency, and one dead aim: dispense justice when the law fails. As he moves from town to town, driven by splintered visions of the past and future, he’s headed toward the ultimate confrontation in this propulsive series of short thrillers.

The review: you might not remember, but when Stephen King's The Green Mile was first published in 1996 it was as a serial, six books released at monthly intervals between March and August. I loved that, bought each and devoured it in a hurry, then spent the rest of the month waiting for the next instalment. Well, Koontz's Nameless series is similar: six novellas linked by a common character, a common theme and a persistent arc. Unlike King's serial, the Nameless titles work as standalone short stories too, to be read in isolation... but there is a satisfaction to be had from reading them sequentially. Having said that, to make them work as standalone stories there's a necessary degree of repetition, sometimes word for word. Curiously, this doesn't grate - indeed, it becomes something of a trope that you start to look for, and pat yourself on the back for spotting.

Anyway, the books. You've read the blurb, so you know the premise. The titular hero is not only nameless but, for a character in their mid-thirties, only has two years of back-story. He is almost literally a blank slate. This ought to make him hard to like, but there's enough in his actions throughout these titles to endear him to the reader. This reader, at least. And the fact that he's basically a modern-day Equalizer helps too, especially as he seeks out those in need of his help, rather than waiting for them to reply to a newspaper ad.

It's an intriguing premise, certainly good enough for Amazon who, I think, are delivering these as exclusive e-books to help push their Prime Reading offering. But what of the writing? Well in the past I had, somewhat unfairly perhaps, thought of Koontz as a kind of cut-price King. Good, but not quite as good. And these novellas have done nothing to change that view really - I rattled through them quickly enough, and certainly enjoyed them, but I can't quite rave about them. Why? Well, for most of these stories Koontz adopts a prosaic, almost journalistic style that suits the dark subject matter and the anonymous (anti-)hero very well. It keeps the pages turning nicely, but it's not prose you could love. And then, periodically, Koontz suddenly drops in a paragraph of purple prose that seems at odds with the clinical writing on either side. This jars, somewhat. It also only seems to happen when the author is trying to make a grand point, about people in general, or life today. It feels a little pompous, like the writer, or at least the omnipotent narrator, is taking himself too seriously. And since this happens in all six books, it's a little hard to overlook.

Maybe I'm being a little hard - these are good stories, well told. I enjoyed reading them, despite the often bleak themes, and my opinion of Koontz's work has gone up after reading them. I just wish I knew what he was trying to achieve with what I came to think of as the grand diversions.

The bottom line: if you like Koontz (or King) already, you'll like these too. They won't change the world, but would make intriguing films or, better still, a mini-series. Maybe another one for Amazon...

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★☆☆