The Horseman (Novel), Tim Pears

 

This is the first volume of a trilogy. Set in rural England in 1911 it includes vivid, detailed accounts of the routines followed by ploughmen, servants, blacksmiths, housewives, wheelwrights, children, grooms and carters hour by hour, day by day, season by season. Cows, pigs, horses and sheep are born, raised, worked and slaughtered. The class system rules society so harshly that the occasional kindness or intimacy across the class line only serves to emphasise just how omnipresent the system is. Yet the overall effect (on me, anyhow) is to emphasise how impressive people sometimes are even in awful circumstances. I was reminded of George Orwell's definition of tragedy: "A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him."

I'll be reading the remaining two volumes of this series.

An Honorable (sic) Man (novel), Paul Vidich

 A first novel which cries out to be made into a black-and-white film. Since it deals with espionage in Washington just after the death of Stalin, you should not be  surprised that goodies and baddies are hard to distinguish. A little bit of Alan Furst, a smidgin of early Le  Carré and a dash of originality. 

Dead Man's Time (Novel), Peter James

 Another in the Roy Grace series and well up to the standard of its predecessors. The mystery in the main character's personal life is becoming clearer to the reader but not, so far, to Roy.  

Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum

 Anything Anne Applebaum writes is worth reading. She is particularly well placed to comment on the rise of authoritarian politics in theoretical democracies and has written a really good book about it. 

Bringing Everything Up to Date

 Here are the books I've read recently but haven't yet posted about. Most of these are books I have just read for the first time but one is an old favourite that I've been  re-reading.

Non-Fiction

Fifth Sun. A new history of the Aztecs,   Camilla Townsend  Largely based on non-Spanish sources. I was interested to learn the extent to which the colonial regime tried to keep the Aztec aristocracy influential in the social hierarchy. 

A Secret History of Torture,  Ian Cobain. The shameful and unacknowledged practice of torture by British governments from the Second World War, through the dissolution of their empire, to their current position as spear-carriers to the Americans. 

Fiction

Not Dead Yet,  Peter James.  Another in the Roy Grace series.  

Island. Alistair Macleod. A wonderful collection of short stories including the most visceral story I've ever read,  "In The Fall" (I defy anybody to read it without crying).  

Dead Man's Grip (novel), Peter James

 This book is my most recent immersion in the life of a fictional British policeman named Roy Grace (see earlier posts). In dealing with books of this kin, where plot details are all-important,  it is most important not to give away anything crucial, so I have been carefully trying to avoid that unforgivable sin.

It's always a good sign in a book series if you can see the author becoming more skilled, more self assured, with each instalment. That is certainly the case with these novels, of which I have now read seven. Roy himself is less annoying than he was at first and Mr James seems to be enjoying himself by explaining the various social and occupational contexts with which the characters find themselves interacting. Perhaps it is significant that some of these contexts are the kinds that I am personally attracted to: manufacturing processes, industrial plant, harbours, decaying buildings.   When I was young and worked in settings like those I sometimes amused myself by devising, while I worked, scenes for thrillers set in similar locations. God knows what my colleagues would have thought had they known; probably: "I always knew he was mad."

As I've said before, interwoven with the plot of the individual novels  is a mysterious episode lurking  in Roy Grace's past. From time to time we get hints about its cause and ramifications. The hints are getting stronger as the series progresses and the pot is given a nice old swirl right at the end of Dead Man's Grip.

What are the essential qualities of a good thriller? At the very least it should be interesting, suspenseful and gripping. This book meets those standards comfortably and I've already ordered the next one.

The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism (History). David Olusoga & Casper W. Erichsen

I've often thought that we tend to overlook the continuities between aspects of German policy in 1933-45 and in 1890-1919.  The Russian territory that Germany occupied late in the First World War, for instance,  was the same general area that was again conquered in 1941- 42. Perhaps it would be useful to think of  land grabs in the East as part of a long-standing German preoccupation rather than a specifically Nazi policy. In the same way, the ruthless colonial exploitation of occupied Russian land was presaged by the similarly ruthless treatment of  South-West Africa in the 1900s. Some common features of both regimes give pause for reflection: dispossession,  exploitation, extermination camps and racially charged medical experiments. Perhaps these, too, were German obsessions rather than Nazi ones.  Not that other European colonisers were much better, as the pre-European occupants of North and South America, Australia, Africa and most of Asia could testify but I've always been vaguely aware that Germany's treatment of its African colonies was disgraceful even by the general standards of imperial powers. This book puts flesh on the bones of my limited understanding of a regime that made the neighbouring Afrikaners seem almost benevolent.

 The virtues of the book are that, while giving specific details of how Germany came  to control  South-West Africa and explaining the origins and cultures of the Herero and Nama peoples, it describes some continuities (even certain surnames recur) between colonial oppression in Africa and the occupation of Eastern Europe during the Second World War. It also points out how  many of the attitudes that underlay German excesses (Social Darwinism, for one instance; strange racial theories for another) were common to most European cultures at the time.

One war, the Nama uprising of 1905 was, in one sense, a cliché  of the Boys' Own version of colonial wars: one side enters into hostilities on a matter of principle as befits a civilised power conscious of its humanitarian obligations. It complies with all the standards one would expect: a formal declaration of hostilities, organised protection of  non-combatants, appropriate  respect for enemy dead and wounded. The opposing side feels untrammeled by such constraints and its relationship with its opponents is characterised by treachery, deceit, cruelty  and contempt. The civilised side was the Nama, in case you're wondering; the other one was the Germans.

Someone might write a history of Wilhelmine Germany specifically to emphasise the number of times it aped the worst aspects of Victorian Britain simply because Wilhelm II felt inferior to his British relatives. Bankrupting yourself by starting (as a land power) a ruinous naval armaments race might be one example. Casting around for an example of British expertise at which to excel them and saying to yourself "I have it! Concentration camps!" is another).

It seems that the Germans classified the various indigenous peoples who had fallen into their power as either potential serfs (to be cowed and dispossessed) or as unfitted for manual labour (and therefore to be exterminated). The concentration camp at Shark Island made no serious pretence to have any other purpose than killing the prisoners and little attempt was made to hide that purpose, either from the local German population or from the Government back in Germany. 

I liked this book for one of the best reasons I ever like any book. It taught me a lot about a subject on which I had previously known a little. I recommend it heartily. However I must have another whinge about the unwieldy sub-title epidemic: this book should be known as The Kaiser's Holocaust and nothing more. I'm sure the  graduates of university courses in marketing can expatiate about the purposes of long sub-titles that try to summarise the book. That's just one more good reason to ignore them (I refer to both the marketing graduates and the silly sub-titles).

Dead Like You (Novel). Peter James

 This is another in Peter James' series of police novels about Roy Grace. In discussing a good police thriller, especially one that is part of a series, there is a limit to what one can usefully say without giving the plot away. Is it up to the high  standard I've come to expect?  Yes. Are the permanent characters still interesting? Yes. Are the hero's personal problems still bubbling away  in the background? Yes. Have they progressed in the direction of a final resolution?  Maybe.  Most importantly, did I enjoy reading Dead Like You? Yes.

In books like this there are often three puzzles going on at the same time.  The police are trying to solve the case using evidence that they gradually uncover. At the same time the criminals are doing their own planning, partly  on the basis of what they know of the police investigation. And in the foreground the reader (who knows some things that are unknown to the cops and some that are unknown to the crims) is making his own guess about the final outcome.

Sometimes I think there is a PhD to be had in drawing an extensive analogy between literature and cricket. Plotting a novel must be like the art of bowling. If I grip the ball in such a way as to conceal the position of its seam the batsman will be uncertain about which way the  ball will move after it bounces. If I bowl two balls that pitch in the same spot and  move in the same direction I then aim for the next ball  to hit that same spot but move in a different direction. What makes the writer's task more difficult than the bowler's is that the writer can't observe the reader.  The bowler can ask specific questions and expect the answer to be revealed. What makes the batsman uncertain?  How quickly does he change his mind?  What sort of puzzles does he solve readily? The writer, unaware of how any specific reader is likely to react, must set his traps in the hope of catching most readers most of the time.

A side benefit of good crime novels is that the reader benefits from the author's research. There is nearly always some aspect of the setting which is unfamiliar to the ordinary reader and the incorporation of that subject in the plot,  if it is well done, adds to the reader's interest and enjoyment.

By these standards the Roy Grace novels are among the best of their kind that I've read.  After some initial reluctance, I am an enthusiastic convert. Hallelujah!

Cage of Souls (Novel) Adam Tchaikovsky

 I've been on an Adam Tchaikovsky binge lately.  His novels are big and his plots are complicated but the stories zing along and are overflowing with interesting ideas. Cage of Souls is not a successor to the two Children of ... novels that I read recently but some themes are common to all three: the possibilities of hyper-accelerated evolution (whether or not caused by human intervention); the effects of a lack of continuity in  culture; an Earth that is gradually becoming uninhabitable.

We meet Stefan Advani as he is being hauled off from the last remaining city in the world to a floating prison in the jungle where the climate in enervating, the rules harsh, the vegetation exotic and the  bizarre animal life mostly dangerous.  Put like that his situation is not so very different from the one that my great-grandfather encountered  in the middle of the nineteenth century when the British government transported him to Tasmania. (Strictly speaking, I suppose, it might have been the Irish government but I doubt that the constitutional subtleties made much difference to him.)

The prisoners and guards are, to carry the analogy with my ancestor a bit further, a bizarre collection of maniacs,  desperadoes, jacks-in-office  and ordinary people swept along by social currents that are too strong for them.

Stefan's narrative of his time in prison is interspersed with flashbacks to  his early life and misadventures which provide a good idea  of the civilisation into which he was born. We are given a wealth of detail about the constitutional, academic, industrial and recreational life of the City of Shadrapar but that detail is so well integrated in the story that there is no hint of dryness in it.  

The basic definition  given in  E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel  has stuck in my mind since I was quite young: "Yes - oh dear yes - the novel tells a story." A book may do many other things as well but if it doesn't tell a story it isn't a novel. Novels that deal in ideas run a particular risk of becoming so caught up in  their own cleverness that they forget to keep answering the reader's constant question "What happened next?" I've so far read three of Adam Tchaikovsky's novels and he's never yet fallen into that trap.

Children of Ruin (novel). Adrian Tchaikovsky

 This novel follows on from  Children of Time, about which I wrote a couple of weeks ago. That first book set a standard of originality which almost inevitably relegates any sequel to the minor placings but the two, taken as a whole, are an astonishing feat of imagination (and I understand that a third volume is on the way). Together they comprise a tribute to, a celebration of,  the almost unlimited possibilities of evolution, the interface between biology and technology. the creation of  tradition and the power of compromise working across scarcely imaginable separations (of time, of space, of species).

Don't think, though, that Mr Tchaikovsky's works  are simply tracts or displays of scientific erudition for its own sake. These are genuine novels, inhabited  by genuine individuals  and if you think Charles Dickens has a wide range of characters, wait until you've finished Children of Ruin.

Even more than Children of Time, this second book requires the reader to be aware of the passage of time. The consequences of an event only become fully apparent after an interval of some thousands of years. Part of the magic of these novels  is that the reader is coaxed into accepting that "thousands of years" is a legitimate perspective in which to observe  and consider the implications of decisions made by fallible creatures like us.

Dead Tomorrow (Novel). Peter James

 This blog was intended to be a record of the books I read, more or less in the order that I read them. Things get a bit tricky when I write about a novel which, though essentially self-contained, is part of a sequence of books featuring the same characters and settings. 

Dead Tomorrow is the fifth novel in a sequence of police procedurals about an English detective named Roy Grace.   I began to read the first novel, Dead Simple,  a few years ago but didn't finish it. I can't be sure why it didn't grab me but, for whatever reason,  I abandoned it half-way through. Since then I have read several other series of English police novels and enjoyed them. (I particularly recommend the Charlie Resnick sequence by John Harvey and the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson.) Being subsequently at a loose end for English criminality I decided to try Roy Grace again and have now read five of the books.

In returning to Roy I was on the lookout for some clue (!) as to why I had lost interest in him the first time round. The best reason I can come up with is his belief in  spiritualism, communications from the dead and similar malarkey.   I did find it irritating, even the second time around. I did find that I had to metaphorically hold my nose every time he engaged in this nonsense.  But I had to acknowledge that the world is full of religious people whose beliefs are just as absurd as Roy's. I have ridden in cars driven by people who believed that there is a god; I have lived in houses built by men who believed that Jesus rose from the dead; I have travelled in an aeroplane piloted by someone who believed that Mohammed went from Mecca to Jerusalem on a flying horse. At no time did I fear that the car would roll over or the house would collapse or the plane would crash simply because the person in charge held certain insane beliefs. If I am to be consistent I must accept that Roy Grace could be a competent detective even though he believes that seances might impart genuine information. (Mind you there is probably a limit to my tolerance in these matters: if I learned that the driver believed in snake handling as an expression of religion or the builder was a Scientologist or the pilot had voted for Donald Trump I'd be looking to make alternative arrangements).

Fictional detectives are like diets: invariably  they are  advertised as being completely different from all the others. "This is not a diet! It's an eating plan  for life!"  or "Our hero is not your usual copper.  He's quirky! ".  Roy's  spiritualist inclinations are given a certain relevance by a mysterious event which occurred in his personal life, some years before the opening of the first book.  From time to time we learn a little bit more about it and perhaps by the end of the last volume all will be revealed. But Roy's desperation to understand the past is quite consistent with his ridiculous beliefs and I no longer find that they interfere with my enjoyment of the novels, which are strongly plotted and well written.

Jude the Obscure (Novel). Thomas Hardy

 I don't suppose I'm giving too much away if I say that this Thomas Hardy novel doesn't end well for the eponymous Jude. Inevitably I'm reminded of GK Chesterton's cruel but funny description of Hardy's novels: the village atheist brooding over the fate of the village idiot. But Jude is not an idiot.  The point of the novel is that, seeing the position in society occupied by people of a certain intellectual stamp, he measures himself against them and, finding himself their equal, expects to rise to their level. The only obstacles in his way are his social class, his poverty and his openness to argument on moral issues. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course it isn't quite as simple as all that. Jude is himself enmeshed in the toils of  English Christianity, at  a time when Christianity not only meant most of what it said but exercised a baleful social and political power over the general population.

The novel follows Jude's relationship with his cousin, Sue Bridehead and her parallel relationship with Mr Phillotson (Jude's schoolteacher at the beginning of the book). All three possess a lively moral sense and a willingness to look at moral issues in non-conventional ways. At some times each of them conforms to the rules imposed by the Church of England  and at others  each reacts against those standards.  

This is one of those novels that I read for the first time when I was too young for it (early teens, I think). Re-reading it in the last couple of weeks I was struck by just how much influence religion had on the everyday lives of ordinary people in the late 19th Century. However I'm compelled to admit that you don't have to go back that far to find  similar influences. The experience of my own life underlines the fact that the Catholic Church in Australia, while not having the protected political position of the Anglican Church in England, still sooled its clerical heelers on to any member of its flock who showed signs of straying from the path. It would have been in the early 1960s that one of my father's friends ( a Protestant) asked him to be best man at his wedding. The wedding, of course, was to be in a Protestant church and therefore counted as a Protestant religious ceremony in which Catholics were forbidden (by their own Church) to participate.  Dad wanted very much to do this favour for his friend and he agonised about it for some time.  Eventually he discussed it with the Parish Priest  (a kindly, decent man, incidentally) who said "No dice. The Church's rules are clear.  You can't do it." Dad obeyed the Church, even though he felt that he was letting his friend down.

Sometimes I reflect on the changes in society since I was a kid and regret this alteration or that one: but let there be no doubt that our society in 2020 is saner and healthier than it was in 1960 if for no other reason than that religion has less power and less influence. If I'm ever tempted to doubt this conclusion I might read Jude the Obscure again; on the other hand I might just remember my poor father, whose god insisted that he disappoint his friend.

The ‘45. Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Untold Story of the Jacobite Rising. (History) Christopher Duffy

 

This is the best book I have ever read about the 1745-46 civil war in which the Stuart family tried to recover the throne of “Great Britain” from the usurping German dynasty that still (November 2020) occupies it. In reality, of course, all kings are usurpers. Every monarchy began as a protection racket and no king has any more legitimacy than Al Capone.

Many accounts of the ‘45 make a point of trying to correct the sentimental excesses that have bedevilled so many tellings of the story.. The excision of romantic fantasy from history is always to be encouraged but ...how can I say this … much of the story is irretrievably romantic. Mr Duffy emphatically reminds us, however, that those genuine romantic elements are not the whole story. We must also take note of treachery, betrayal, execution by public torture, prisoners murdered or sold into slavery, an attempt to stamp out an ancient culture and other endearingly human traits. And, of course, Bonnie Prince Charlie wouldn’t have been a real Stuart unless, from time to time, he left his devoted followers in the lurch. Still, he was smart, brave and resourceful. If his command group had not been so divided, if he hadn’t been relying on the French and if he had had just a bit more luck he would have won. He deserved to. But then, Collingwood deserved to win the 2018 Grand Final and that’s another hard luck story.

The author of this book knows so much about 18th Century warfare that I was afraid the work would turn into a series of arid academic arguments. How wrong I was. He not only knows the relevance of weather, geology, drill, smuggling, agriculture and religion but he writes interestingly about them in the context of war.

History without anecdotes is like fish and chips without salt and Mr Duffy includes an appropriate seasoning. To give just a couple of examples:

“The MacDonalds of Glencoe insisted on mounting a guard to protect a mansion …(that) was the property of the Earl of Stair … whose grandfather …(had been) the author of the massacre of Glencoe in 1692.”

“... an old woman remained in a house … where some (Jacobite) officers were quartered. After they had supped, she said to them, “Gentlemen, I suppose you have done with your murdering today, I should be glad to know when the ravishing begins.”

That last story indicates one of the myths current at the time - that the Highlanders who formed part of the Jacobite army were all unprincipled barbarians not fit for decent society. It is part of the author’s rationale for writing the book that the myths perpetuated by both sides persist to this day.

“To test this claim I have made a point of asking professional historians at random about their impression of the Jacobite forces.With slight variations in wording, the answer has invariably been: “thieving Catholic Highland bastards”. “

Mr Duffy points out that one factor working against the Jacobites was England’s savage penal code, designed to protect the property of the rich, which had effectively disarmed a segment of the population from whom the Stuarts had reason to expect support. And I had not realised how much potential and actual help for the Jacobite cause came from smugglers, one of the few categories of Englishmen “who had firearms and were willing to use them.” They were “capable of bringing together 500 armed men at short notice”.If you’re interested in history at all you really should read The ‘45. It flows like a novel and I don’t think you’ll ever find a better treatment of this fascinating episode.

Children of Time (Novel). Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Every so often, in the course of the last 60 years or so, I have indulged a secret vice: a search for a literate and intelligent science fiction novelist. When I was kid I read and liked two novels on the prospect of nuclear annihilation (Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald and Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank). I’ve sometimes thought of getting hold of them for a second reading but I’m frightened they wouldn’t be as good in reality as they are now in my memory. Then from time to time in factory lunchrooms or half-abandoned bookcases I have found copies of Stranger in a Strange Land or Dune and struggled with them without being able to finish either (though I know what “grok” means!). Sometimes I have seen a previously unknown sci fi novel on a library shelf and, after a furtive glance to ensure that nobody has spotted me, tucked it under my coat and headed for the checkout. As in so many other facets of life optimism is subsumed into disappointment. I am speaking only partly from snobbery. My experience suggests that most works of science fiction are bad novels, the improbability of their plots not redeemed by the standard of their prose. But now I have a genuine contender.

I’ve read all 600 pages of Adrian Tchaikovsky;s Children of Time. It is literate, imaginative and thought-provoking. I am delighted that there is a sequel. Even more daringly, having learned that the author has also written a series of fantasy novels, I am going to give them a try, too.At first Children of Time seems to be an example of the hackneyed ark-ship-escaping- from-the-dying-earth genre but it soon becomes much more audacious than that.There was a point about two thirds of the way through the book when I thought the author might have lost control of the plot. Not for long, though. The mistake was mine. The book powered on to its inventive and satisfactory conclusion,

Hellhound on his Trail (History) Hampton Sides.

 

So impressed was I by the previous book that I sprinted to the library and grabbed another one by the same author. It was nearly as good. It tells the intertwined stories of Martin Luther King and James Earl Ray in the period leading up to Ray’s murder of King and their almost equally fascinating denouements. Some parts of it (the Ray thread) reminded me of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song and that is high praise from me.

My most poignant memory of this book is the scene where King and his brother talk to their mother on the telephone and play what seems to be a traditional game in their family of taking on one another’s identities to confuse her. So very human. 

King was the only orator of international status since Winston Churchill and I find it infinitely depressing that his great “I Have a Dream” speech has now been sidelined by the sneers of the “woke”.

Something has to be done about the plague of subtitles that has infected the publishing industry.   Sadly, Mr Sides seems to have caught the bug. This book's is "The Electrifying account of the Largest Manhunt in American History" while the previous one's was "The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette".  At least neither of them  includes the word “genius” (as an adjective) or “epic” or "adorable". Perhaps there’s still hope.