An unexpected holiday this month meant that I was able to read eleven books, ranging from classics of world literature like Ruslan and Ludmilla, to brilliant genre fiction like The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Singularity Sky, to amusing trash like The Sea Wolf and The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.
The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London
This was the first Jack London book I ever tried to read, which is hilarious in hindsight. This is the absolute worst Jack London novel to give to a twelve year-old. It starts with Humphrey Van Leyden, a weedy literary critic, being knocked overboard whilst sailing through San Francisco bay and picked up by a sealing ship. Its captain, the Nietzschean Superman Wolf Larsen, insists on kidnapping him and breaking him to the life of the sea. They debate Darwinism and early 20th century philosophy, which would have gone right over my head as a kid, and there are moments of the most sublime camp, as when Hump is marvelling at Larsen’s astonishing muscles so much that a roll of white bandage falls out of his hand. And that’s before the ship picks up a tender shipwrecked poetess, subject of Hump’s most ecstatic reviews in his previous life, whose attentions Larsen and van Weyden contend for. It’s a deeply peculiar blend of Joseph Conrad and Edgar Allan Poe, never less than entertaining, but very far from convincing.
The Book of the Duchess, by Geoffrey Chaucer, trans. E.B. Richmond
A facing page translation of Chaucer’s earliest long poem–the translation being clever, modern and adept at conveying the tone of a passage, which is one of the hardest things to grasp in the medieval English. Some of the beauty is lost, but it makes for an effective crib and a metrically capable update. For a first work, it’s striking how much of Chaucer is already here in his gifts for natural description, metrical dialogue and realistic human emotion. All it lacks is the bawdy comedy of his later works.
Sharpe’s Gold, by Bernard Cornwell
Tempermentally, I’m more suited to Flashman or Aubrey and Maturin than Sharpe, but this is more than up to snuff, delivering trhills, battles, sultry beauties, sneering villains, officer-class twits and ill-gotten loot. This one has a great ending, with Sharpe given an agonising, morally ambiguous choice of the kind I’m not sure if I could make myself or can think of the character in the same way afterwards.
Ruslan and Ludmila, by Alexander Pushkin, trans. D.J. Thomas
This is utterly delightful–not a surprise, given it was written by Pushkin whom, as I may have mentioned earlier in the blog, I adore. The real surprise for me is how much fresher and more memorable it is in this rhymed translation than the unrhymed one from Carcanet I read a year ago. D. J. Thomas is not so fine a metrical craftsman as Anthony Wood or Stanley Mitchell but the looser style suits this 6 canto romp through Russian folktale, blending genuine drama with hilarious self parody. Having spent much of lockdown trying to retell a Chinese fairytale in tetrameter couplets, I’m in a unique postion to judge how difficult this is. More than that, it’s a deeply joyful escapist read. For one of the founding poets of a nation, Pushkin is so joyous, so deeply unstuffy and unbound by convention that any comparison with Wordsworth or even Byron makes them look priggish.
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia A. McKillip
One of those 200 page fantasy novels that feel more substantial than a shelf full of 600pp+ behemoths. I particularly like how this one started with a Dunsanian catalogue of marvels, enumerating a fantaliscal bestiary including a loosely Celtic riddle-speaking boar, a witch’s cat, and a dragon stolen wholesale from Beowulf. Almost directly afterwards, it merges into a meditation on free will, love and power that recalls Ursula K. Le Guin. I particularly appreciated the structure, with the moment of greatest danger for the heroine occuring in Chapter 6, the midpoint, and the rest of the book exploring its emotional ramifications rather than building to an epic battle.
Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross
It’s interesting to read someone’s first novel after you’ve already devoured most of their back catalogue. With hindsight, I can see the default Stross romantic pairing getting its start here: Martin and Rachel are two workaholic ultracompetents, with Rachel having seniority. There’s also Stross’s fascination with technology and its impact on society, seen here when a post-scarcity culture called the Festival visits a colony world that’s regressed to Russian feudalism. Structurally, Stross isn’t there yet, meaning that the ending is a damp squib, but there’s a deluge of undisciplined ideas that’s wholly invigorating, and enough moments of brilliance to make it well worth seeking out.
Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross
This is, not particularly helpfully, known as his ‘space Nazi’ novel. Sadly, this is so far in the future everyone concerned has forgotten about this particular flavour of fascism, so no-one gets to go “Good grief, it’s the Nazis! In space!” The book’s clever about letting you grasp the horrors of the ideology without naming them directly, but there’s something a little off in the ration of setup to payback that later Stross will correct. It’s noticeably a project from Stross’s bad management period, where the bureaucratic horrors of middle management cover for something much darker and more controlling. While Singularity Sky felt like it still had a unique take on concepts familiar from Stross’s later novels, I feel that the ideas in Iron Sunrise have been superseded by later works like The Laundry Files or Glasshouse, meaning that it’s enjoyable but inessential.
Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L Sayers
An enjoyable Lord Peter Wimsey whodunnit, with the USP of a trial for murder in the House of Lords, which is as elaborate and theatrical as one might wish for. The story also takes us to the Soviet Club, by way of contrast, and has a good deal of range and excitement. A treat, when the floor plans in the early pages made me fear we’d be trapped in the country house for most of the book.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson
After the low-level paranoia induced by Iron Sunrise, this was an ideal antidote: a 30s romp, set across the course of 24 hours and devoured in a day. It’s impossible not to empathise with Miss Pettigrew, austerely raise and trembling on the brink of destitution, as she finds friendship and affection among the smart set. All that remains is to recommend it to everyone I meet.
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, by Jilly Cooper, read by Shelley Baines
This is the first Jilly where I went ‘ick’ instead of ‘aah’ at the romantic interest. The conceit isn’t bad: Lysander Hawkley is a life coach-cum-gigolo, hired by cuckolded wives to make their husbands jealous and so return to the fold. It would sustain a Restoration comedy admirably, but over the course of a 26 hour audiobook it flags a bit, and the plot lacks the focus that showjumping, regional television and polo brought to the three previous novels, meaning that the book gets centred on Rutshire’s upper middle class couples without, say, the trips to Palm Beach and Argentina that gave Polo some of its interest. There’s also the fact that Lysander’s relationship with Kitty–who is portrayed as the romantic substitute for his dead mother–just makes me squirm.
The Iron Wolf, by Ted Hughes
A book of animal poems for children, beautifully reprinted in hardback for its 25th anniversary. Some are arresting images, others diverting jokes, and others fail to land, at least for me. But their bitesize nature and the sheer variety of the beasts keep the pages turning, as do the Chris Riddell illustrations, which are recognisably earlier and scrappier than his work on the Edge Chronicles and his polished political cartoons, but all the more interesting for this. There are some poets whose collections for children I find more sympathetic than their adult work, and I’m thinking of putting Ted Hughes with Robert Frost on this list.
A Fool Grows Wise 