Invisible organs that flex

“Le Drapeau noir” by René Magritte (1937)

The Last Days of New Paris:
A Novella by China Miéville.
Picador, 2017 (2016).

‘In the post-blast miasma, all Parisians grew invisible organs that flex in the presence of the marvelous. Thibaut’s are strong.’ — Chapter One.

Manifs. Fall Rot. Exquisite corpses. S-blast. Miéville’s alternative history requires the rapid assimilation of new vocabulary by readers who happen to find themselves in an urban landscape, one however that makes little or no sense despite a litany of familiar Parisian streets and landmarks.

And who are these characters from 1950 who negotiate the mean streets of Paris where Nazis, demons, partisans and surrealist manifestations play cat and mouse? Who is Thibaut, whose name recalls Tybalt the Prince of Cats from medieval beast fables and who, not unnaturally, seems to have nine lives? Who is Sam, a photographer whose gender neutral name suggests she may not be what she either seems or claims to be?

And who is Jack Parsons, en route to Prague but holed up in Marseille in 1941, having fallen in with a diverse group of Surrealist “artists and radicals, writers, the philosophers that bleeding-heart Americans wanted to smuggle out of France”? These are questions that eventually find their answers but not before we too find ourselves growing invisible organs that flex at the marvels that litter the pages of this novella.

Intercity armchair travel

Photo of Hong Kong harbour by Nitin Sharma on Pexels.com

At heart I’m an urban child: I was brought up in Hong Kong, only transferring to Bristol as I approached my teens, a city where I lived until a couple of decades ago.

Since then we’ve either lived in an isolated Welsh farmhouse or a small town in the Welsh Marches, but I still have a fascination with cities, either through physically spending time in them or doing so virtually, through books.

As part of my determination to tackle my personal Mount TBR three or four titles have worked their way to the surface, and it won’t surprise you to know that they each have the word “city” in the title.

Missing links

© C A Lovegrove

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge.
Macmillan Children’s Books, 2015.

‘Listen, Faith. A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing. Do you understand?’
— Chapter 9: Confession.

A novel that hovers in the No Man’s Land between the borders of magical realism, fantasy, myth and social commentary is sure to draw me in, and Hardinge’s award-winning novel does exactly this.

But it’s also an angry novel, and despite a slow-ish but scene-setting start it soon becomes clear where the anger comes from: patriarchy, patronising sexism and misogyny which, although The Lie Tree is set in 1865, is no less rampant now even if expressed in different ways.

And it’s also a murder mystery cloaked as historical fiction, and a metafictional narrative, one that in exploring the effects which falsehoods have on truth, is meant – I think – to cast suspicion on the role of the author in presenting fiction as fact, and to question our willing acceptance of this state of affairs.

To the Wounded City

One of Piranesi’s ‘carceri’ or prisons.

The Relic Master by Catherine Fisher.
Volume One of The Book of the Crow Quartet.
[Also published as The Dark City,
Book 1 of The Relic Master series.]
Red Fox, 1999 (1998).

A wonder worker and an apprentice are wandering through a sparsely populated, almost desolate landscape, bearing dangerous secrets and in fear of both strangers and of a ruthless authority.

But someone is following their trail with motives of her own. And then a horseman appears to ask for the wonder worker’s help. How will Galen and his young apprentice Raffi respond to this and other potential threats?

“The Relic Master was the first book I wrote as a full-time writer,” the author tells us, “and I think a lot of pent-up energy went sweeping into it.” That transferred energy is evident right from the start and continues right to the end of this first instalment.

Spine tingles

Haunting bedtime reading? © C A Lovegrove

A Touch of Chill:
Stories of Horror, Suspense and Fantasy by Joan Aiken.
Fontana Lions, 1981 (1979).

These fifteen short stories, six published for the first time in this collection, are full of mystery and surprises, not least because UK and US editions feature — apart from a core of eight — different selections.

I first read these tales in the early eighties, but apart from the odd déjà-vu moment I regret I didn’t remember any of them in this reread — my failing, not Joan Aiken’s, because these are wonderfully dark narratives.

I don’t know who made the final choice for the order of the UK edition but it was curious that pairs of succeeding stories are often linked — witches both black and white, Irish or Welsh characters, youngsters climbing through windows, murder intentional or otherwise, sinister automatons, and finally tales which somehow become true. But despite commonalities each story is very different, very distinct.

Rooted in truth

‘Landscape with Psyche Outside the Palace of Cupid’ (‘The Enchanted Castle’): Claude Lorrain (1664).

The Little White Horse
by Elizabeth Goudge.
Lion Hudson, 2000 (1946).

“As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that makes an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.” — Elizabeth Goudge, 1960.

When, as a founding member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Elizabeth Goudge wrote that fairytales are rooted in truth at the same time as she commended imagination and happy endings, she could equally have been giving a heartfelt justification for the optimism and positivity of her award-winning The Little White Horse.

For this postwar children’s fantasy has all the same hallmarks as any fairytale or medieval romance – hearty dollops of imaginative details, a satisfying serving of what Tolkien called eucatastrophe, and the recognisable quintessence which Charles Kingsley defined as a concept so beautiful it must be true.

Set in 1842, in a hidden valley that’s not in the outer world but partakes of Faërie, this novel may present as pure escapism but there’s no denying that it reminds us that there is goodness to be found in the world, that reconciliation is possible, and that spring is a time of hope and renewal.

Corresponding with DWJ: #MarchMagics2024

Diana Wynne Jones, 1934–2011

I have a treasured letter from the writer Diana Wynne Jones in response to a missive from me, which I’d like to share with you as part of this year’s March Magics.

I’d sent her some copies of a magazine journal I used to edit, along with a covering note, and she was kind enough to respond. I subsequently drafted a letter back to her, but it was only a few months after her death in 2011 that I found the original in an envelope, awaiting a stamp, which to my great regret I hadn’t got round to sending.

But the route I took to this briefest of correspondence might be of interest to fans of Diana, and it involves another writer, one with whom I was in more regular correspondence, and I’d like to expand on the background to how I got to write to DWJ.

Hayley and the Mythosphere: #MarchMagics2024

Comet impact on Jupiter, 1993

The Game by Diana Wynne Jones. Firebird Books, 2007.

The concept of the mythosphere is a wonderful thing, typical of Diana Wynne Jones and full of creative potential. It is the place we go to in dreams, the realm of the Collective Unconscious, the landscape where mythical archetypes roam and Jungian symbols are to be encountered, collected and treasured.

Young Hayley gets drawn into the mythosphere when she is sent by her grandparents to stay with relatives in Ireland, who have invented a pastime called The Game where they have to fetch back mythical objects against the clock. However, there are repercussions which not only put her in danger but also reveal who she really is and the nature of her large extended family.

A clue comes from her name which, as in many of Jones’ books, has a significance beyond it being a girl’s name chosen at random: it is a not-so-closet reference to Edmond Halley who identified the periodicity of the comet that bears his name and whose surname is popularly pronounced as in the girl’s forename. And in The Game Hayley, like the comet, has the capacity to blaze away in the heavens.

Another type of normal: #MarchMagics2024

© C A Lovegrove

Making Money by Terry Pratchett.
Discworld novel No 36,
Moist von Lipwig No 2.
Corgi, 2008 (2007).

‘Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr Lipwig?’
‘Because people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.’
— Chapter 5.

The unlikely but genial antihero Moist Von Lipwig first appeared in the 33rd Discworld novel Going Postal (2004), in which he ended up as Postmaster General of Ankh-Morpork’s Post Office, thereby becoming the hero of the hour.

In that previous novel the Lord Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the tyrant Havelock Vetinari, had made con-man Moist an offer he couldn’t refuse; and now another irrefusable offer is being made: to take effective charge of the Royal Mint and Royal Bank.

Moist decides, wisely, not to turn down the offer and begins to envisage and put into place schemes to revolutionise banking. But the schemes of others – his girlfriend Adora Belle Dearheart, for example, and some of the bank’s avaricious shareholders – threaten to make his own schemes go quite agley.

Honesty: #MarchMagics2024

‘Honesty’ (detail from photo by Anja Huisman).

Poems by Diana Wynne Jones.
Edited by Isobel Armstrong.
Moondust Books, 2019.

The cover of this posthumous collection of poems by Diana Wynne Jones, who died in 2011, has a photo by Anja Huisman of some seed pods (or rather, siliques) from the plant called honesty.

Sometimes called moonpennies, the pods’ technical name derives from the Latin siliquæ, silver coins from the Roman period, perhaps because their mother of pearl appearance suggested coinage; and because the seeds are clearly visible between the transparent membranes the plant came to be called ‘honesty’ in the Middle Ages.

The impetus for including this photo in the cover design is therefore easily explained: it comes from the poem ‘Upon the Cover Design of a Book of Poems’, the subject of which is ‘a dry plant, | Honesty, a nacreous vegetable’. And, truly, one could say that many of the pieces included here are not only honest but also coins of no small value.

#MarchMagics2024 and Dido Twite Day

Remembering a piece of advice that a sailor had once given her, [Dido] said to the boy, “When’s your birthday? Mine’s the first of March.”

‘When you talk to a savage or a native,’ Noah Gusset had said, ‘always tell him some secret about yourself — your birthday, your father’s name, your favourite food — tell him your secret and ask him his. That’s a token of trust; soon’s you know each other a bit, then you can be friends.’

— From Dido and Pa (1986) by Joan Aiken

TODAY is a very special Dido Twite Day. The young cockney sparrow who dominates Joan Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles was born (as I estimate) exactly 200 years ago today on the first day of March 1824, a whole century before the author’s own birth. Dido also happens to share the same birthday as Joan’s mother, Jessie McDonald, who was born in 1889.

Later this year, at the end of October, Witch Week 2024 will be focusing on the life and work of Joan Aiken, whose own birthday was 4th September 1924. Between now and then this blog will feature the occasional post related to Joan’s fiction as well as wrapping up my long exploration of the Wolves Chronicles, a series which starred the irrepressible Dido in so many of its instalments.

But I’m leaping ahead of myself: as well as Dido Twite Day today sees the start of March Magics 2024 in which we celebrate two other inimitable British fantasy writers who left us during this month, namely Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett.

When thoughts can’t be unthought

The 12th-century Manor, Hemingford Grey, by Jason Ballard. CC BY 2.0

An Enemy at Green Knowe
by Lucy M Boston,
illustrated by Peter Boston.
Green Knowe No 5.
Oldknow Books, 2003 (1964).

The darkness was full of the stirrings that come when power is challenged, as if the upshot could be certain.

It’s September. Young Tolly, whom we first met in The Children of Green Knowe, and Hsu – also known as Ping – whose acquaintance we made in The River at Green Knowe, are staying with Mrs Oldknow at her ancient manor house in Cambridgeshire.

They’ve just returned from a holiday at the seaside on Anglesey, bringing back a holed stone for Mrs Oldknow to wear as an amulet on a string round her neck. Little do they know how crucial this gift will prove as the days draw nearer to a solar eclipse.

For who is the strange scholar who is staying by the house, researching ninth-century manuscripts? And who is the even stranger and increasingly sinister woman staying at The Firs who takes an uncomfortable interest in what secrets Green Knowe may hold?

The fiery arc: #LoveHain

© C A Lovegrove

The Birthday of the World
by Ursula K Le Guin.
Orion Publishing Group, 2004 (2002).

“Create difference—establish strangeness—then let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap.” — Ursula K Le Guin on writing SF, from the Foreword.

Difference, strangeness, humanity – they’re all here. For example: Gethen, Seggri, O, Eleven-Soro, Werel – a catalogue of names, but to what do they refer? What is meant by a world having a birthday? And what and where are the paradises that are lost?

Le Guin’s collection The Birthday of the World consists of eight pieces of speculative fiction, six of which fit within her Hainish universe. The two which don’t consist of a short story portraying the effects of outside pressures on an otherwise stable theocracy, and a novella-length narrative concerning a troubled multi-generational starship.

Mostly written in the last decade of the 20th century, these tales run counter to the stereotypical space operas familiar then from many SF novels, films and comics: deeply psychological, profoundly disturbing, for all that they mostly concern aliens Le Guin’s offerings explore what it means to be human and how individuals might struggle to fit into widely differing societies.

The turning of the year

Image by Rhŷn Williams based on Y Fari Lwyd

Winter solstice 2023

‘It was the skeleton of a giant horse, staring with the blind eye-sockets of a skull, running and leaping and prancing on legs of bone driven by ghostly muscles long rotted away. Faster than any living horse it galloped, and without any sound. Silently it overtook them, head turned, grinning, an impossible horror. The white bones of its great rib-cage glittered in the sun. It tossed its dreadful silent head, and red ribbons dangled and fluttered like long banners from the grinning lower jaw.’

‘”The Mari Llwyd!” he whispered. “The Mari Llwyd!”‘

Pt 3

At the end of my last discussion post in 2022 on Susan Cooper’s fantasy Silver on the Tree I promised a piece on Welsh folkloric aspects in the novel – but nearly a year has elapsed and that post has yet to appear! It’s well overdue, then, but as we approach the turning of the year the time to present it happily now proves opportune.¹

My reviews and related posts about the whole series of novels, known as The Dark is Rising sequence, were in response to Annabel’s #TDiRS22 readalong which took place between late summer and midwinter of 2022. (All my posts under the #TDiRS22 tag can be found in chronological order here, if you’re interested.)

Now, though Silver on the Tree doesn’t take place around the winter solstice (it’s set at midsummer, around the summer solstice) one of the Welsh folklore customs mentioned in it does, and so it is with the Mari Lwyd figure that I begin.²

The unexplained and the unexplainable

George Frederick Watts, ‘The Sower of Systems’ (1902)

Writing Fantasy Fiction
by Sarah LeFanu.
A & C Black, 1996.

Teacher, editor, biographer, feminist, author of works such as In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (1988), Sarah LeFanu was an ideal writer to pen this entry in A & C Black’s ‘Writing’ series which offered advice to would-be authors in various genres.

As she explains in her preface she was attempting to answer – quite successfully I think – several questions on the nature of fantasy, its origins, and why it was both important and necessary, while also offering practical suggestions on how to proceed.

So in ten chapters she ranges from a consideration of fantasy through worldbuilding, characters and plots on to the subgenres of children’s fantasy, dark fantasy and comic fantasy before outlining the work and pitfalls from drafting to publication, finally offering ‘last words of encouragement.’ Given that this guide is now nearly three decades old does it still have useful things to say?