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.

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.

A Soviet era fairytale #ReadingTheTheatre

© C A Lovegrove

The Dragon:
A Satiric Fable in Three Acts
by Eugene Schwarz [1944]. 
Дракон. Пьеса в трех действиях translated from the Russian by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (1961),
introduction by Norris Houghton, 
production notes by Gillian Phillips.
Heinemann Educational Books, 1969.

In his introduction to Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood’s translation of Evgeny Schwartz’s play Norris Houghton outlines how Soviet-era authors often camouflaged their satire and closet criticism of Soviet policies by presenting them as fairytales, a practice with a long tradition in Russia.

And so it is with The Dragon: superficially a pantomime with comic characters, romance and a mythical beast, it nevertheless has a deadly serious purpose underlying the fun and games. Does the dragon get slain? The audience waits with baited breath to see if the hero fulfils his task and gets the girl or dies in the attempt.

But if the beast is indeed defeated, who or what will take its place, and will the replacement be an improvement or simply a repeat of what came before? And what would be the reaction of the townsfolk if the hero did succeed?

Mischiefs feed like beasts #ReadingTheTheatre

Doorknocker © C A Lovegrove

Volpone,
[or The Foxe: A Comedie]
by Ben Jonson (1606-7).
Edited by Philip Brockbank.
New Mermaids: A & C Black / W W Norton & Company, 1989 (1969).

‘Riches, the dumb god, that giv’st all men tongues;
That canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things.’ — Volpone.

I:1

Ben Jonson’s play, first performed around 1606 and published the year after, is set in Venice, a setting which Shakespeare had already used for The Merchant of Venice and for Othello and a city state which had a reputation for mendacity and duplicity.

Above all Venice represented the wealth that comes from extensive trading and banking, and which Tudor and Jacobean traders envied. But, as the First Avocatore or prosecutor declares (Act 5 scene xii) ‘These possess wealth, as sick men possess fevers, | Which, trulier, may be said to possess them.’

Here then is a story about possessions – possessing riches, being possessed by the desire to have riches, and faking possession by disease and by devils. It’s not a pretty story but it’s entertaining – and there’s a very moral ending.

No cure for nostalgia: #1937Club

Gulácsy, Lajos (1882-1932): ‘Apparition’ 1903.

Journey by Moonlight (1937)
by Antal Szerb,
Utas és holdvilág
translated by Len Rix.
Pushkin Press, 2000.

We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

XX

In the 1830s Franz Liszt began an affair with a married woman, spending time in Italy, out of which sprang the celebrated piano compositions entitled Années de pèlerinage, meditations which frequently referenced Italian themes.

A century later a fellow Hungarian, Mihály, embarks on a honeymoon in Italy with the former wife of Zoltán Pataki, Erzsi, travelling from the northeast of the country across the Apennines to the Eternal City; thereafter any parallels with Liszt become less obvious.

Much of Mihály’s pilgrimage, moreover, won’t be in the company of his wife; and much of it will involve an internal odyssey even while he follows a roundabout route to where all roads are said to lead. A strange journey it will be, full of coincidences, nostalgia, lethargy and near-death experiences.

Intrepidity personified: #1937Club

Detail from front cover design.

The Black Island (1937) by Hergé (Georges Remi).
L’île noire (1956) translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (1966).
Egmont, 2009.

Young reporter Tintin doesn’t find trouble; trouble finds him. As with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, say, he just happens to be on hand when dastardly deeds are being committed; yet despite setback after setback he remains intrepidity personified.

This is no more evident than when his efforts to help those in a stricken aircraft during a casual stroll in the Belgian countryside are viciously rebuffed, leading in time to an impromptu cross-channel trip to Sussex followed by a flight to Scotland.

And all the while we are left to wonder how a teenage newspaper reporter somehow always seems to be the subject of press reports but never the writer of them, and how the long arm of the law seems to always be grasping the wrong end of the stick.

Horrors! #1937Club

From Weird Tales 29/1 (1937): ‘The Thing on the Door-Step’ by Virgil Finlay

The Thing on the Doorstep
by H P Lovecraft.
CreateSpace Publishing, 2017 (Weird Tales, 1937).

Written in 1933 but not published till 1937 – the year Lovecraft died – ‘The Thing on the Door-Step’ is typical of the author’s weird fiction with its overused adjectives implying horror too obscure, obscene and terrifying to be described, often expressed by an innocent narrator too appalled by what they’re witnessing to join up the dots until it’s too late.

On one level the writing is laughable, the familiar clichés piling Pelion upon Ossa in their determination to shock the reader, the repeated alien names, the constant references to prohibited arcane texts to imply ancient but forbidden knowledge.

On another level Lovecraft’s fiction is deeply uncomfortable to read, here as elsewhere, not for the horror (which by modern standards is tame enough) but for what I and other critics abhor, namely the misogyny, homophobia and racism implicit in the narratives.

A fearful thing: #ReadingTheTheatre

© C A Lovegrove.

Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson.
Also issued as The Reluctant Heiress (2009).
Young Picador, 2008 (1982).

‘I believed it. I believed it all,’ said Tessa. ‘That you served music, all of you, because it was above pettiness and rank. Because it makes everybody one: rich and poor, sick and well. Because it comes to us from God.’

Chapter 8

As the 1983 winner of the Romantic Novelists Association award for the year’s best romantic novel there’s little doubt that Magic Flutes fits all the criteria for that genre – girl meets boy but then events soon threaten a happy ending. Yet Ibbotson’s novel is so much more than the expected fairytale clichés.

Like Tessa believing in the power of great music to achieve good things I wanted to believe that the details of this story reflected truths about life, and that was because of the positive effect Ibbotson’s craft had on me. I wanted to believe that although I know bad things happen and bad people exist that wrongs could be righted and the balance of things could be restored.

As the title strongly hints, Magic Flutes is related to a single performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a performance which takes place in 1922 in an Austrian castle within sight of the Alps. And, as if to add resonance to Ibbotson’s story, much of the action of the story seems to echo details and characters from the opera – but not so closely that we can guess exactly how things will turn out!

The last visions

The flag of San Marino showing the three towers of Monte Titano

The Third Tower: journeys in Italy by Antal Szerb.
A harmadik torony translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix.
Pushkin Press, 2014 (1936).

I felt bereft when Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy stopped mid-sentence only in sight of Lyon. Mr Yorick was due to travel down western Italy via Turin, Milan, Florence and Rome as far as Naples but, unhappily for all, the full account was cut short by the small matter of the writer’s death.

Fortunately there was Antal Szerb’s The Third Tower recently published in English to console me, though the Hungarian’s travels were essentially down the east coast of Italy only as far south as San Marino.

But, just as with Sterne’s writings, this was as much — if not more — about the person than the places visited.

Never what it seems: #Begorrathon24

© C A Lovegrove

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods.
One More Chapter, 2024 (2023).

‘The thing about books,’ [Martha] said, ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.’ — Epilogue.

Hovering between magic realism and fantasy, romance and historical fiction, The Lost Bookshop slyly plays with the reader’s expectations of a straightforward narrative. How can a bookshop be lost? Who are Opaline, Martha and Henry, and how – and more to the point, why – are their lives fated to intersect?

A twisting intertwining plotline, like the roots and branches of a tree, takes in townhouses in Dublin and London, a famous Paris bookshop, an institution in Connacht, a dilapidated building in Italy and the First World War battlefields of Northern Europe, and involves births, deaths, liaisons, failed marriages and family secrets. We fairly accurately guess at some of the connections but others will elude our suspicions till the very end.

However, as Opaline tells us in Chapter 1, ‘A book is never what it seems,’ alerting us to the need to peer behind and beyond the words on the page; her words are unconsciously echoed by a tipsy Henry a few chapters later when he bombastically declares, ‘A book is so much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.’ What are we expected to glean from these portentous pronouncements?

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.

Death, wizards and hats: #MarchMagics2024

“… and still the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew.” – Oliver Goldsmith.

A Slip of the Keyboard:
Collected Non-Fiction
by Terry Pratchett.
Forward by Neil Gaiman.
Corgi, 2015 (2014).

I’ve come late to Pratchett’s writings. I had tried some comic fantasy and sci-fi and found it wanting; it mostly seemed to be trying too hard to be funny and witty. I enjoyed Red Dwarf on TV and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the radio but somehow on the page much of this genre writing seemed to consist of dull, lifeless things, full of their own cleverness.

So, despite everyone saying I ought to try Pratchett, that I’d like his stuff, I resisted it. Perhaps it was the cover illustrations that put me off: “This is a wickedly weird funny book!” they seemed to scream at me.

Finally I recently took the plunge. Somehow the Piaf song Je ne regrette rien now rings a little hollow…

A house with strangers: #Begorrathon24

The Irish Sea, from Cardigan Bay © C A Lovegrove

Foster by Claire Keegan.
Faber & Faber, 2022 (2010).

At the end of the lane there’s a long, white house with trees whose limbs are trailing the ground.

‘Da,’ I say. ‘The trees.’
‘What about ’em?’
‘They’re sick,’ I say.
‘They’re weeping willows,’ he says, and clears his throat.

It’s the hot summer of 1981 and a young girl is being taken by car in her father’s car from her family farm, near where County Carlow becomes County Wicklow, to stay with relatives on another farm not far from the shores of the Irish Sea.

Why is being taken away from her several siblings? It seems to be because her mother is imminently expecting another child, but there may be more to this than what meets the eye: we are only told matters from the child’s point of view and have to read between the lines.

But if there are unspoken mysteries about her family, what are the secrets kept by the kind couple who have agreed to take her in?