March’s reading was very much a mixed bag, with three library books, one December book, and two re-reads.
After the fun of the Elysium Cycle, I decided to widen my horizons a little and picked up Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s ‘Mexican Gothic’ from the library shelves. This book has been on the edge of my consciousness since it was published, it has a cool cover and made it onto several popular reading lists. I’ve read it now, and consider myself Gothicked out for the time being. I think that’s enough ‘Gothic’ for the time being.
The plot of this book and of Ava Reid’s ‘A Study in Drowning’ were pretty much identical, although the setting was different. Reid’s book was set in an imagined future Wales, whereas this was set in mid 20th century Mexico.
Basically – evil English immigrants settle on top of a mountain in Mexico, start mining silver, terrible things happen to everyone connected with them. A scion of the family marries a girl from Mexico City and takes her back to the gothic house, the bride soon after sends a garbled letter, begging for help, to her own family. The girl’s cousin, the heroine of the story, travels to the gothic house to try to save the bride, and inevitably becomes embroiled in shenanigans.
OK, I enjoyed it, is that so bad?
And so to a re-read of a book that’s been on my shelves for at least forty years, and has been sadly neglected for the last twenty. I used to read this book on at least an annual basis, back in the days when I only had a hundred books or so. It deserves an in depth report.
In a time when once again, young men are expressing surprise that there are female authors of sf / fantasy / horror, and when people who are approaching middle age and should know better really DO think that Joke Rowling was the first woman to ever write a book, it’s refreshing and somewhat humbling to revisit this book. The book itself, a celebration of women in sf, is almost fifty years old, so when it looks back in time to the 1940s, it gives us an even longer reach.
What’s even more astonishing is that the editor, Pamela Sargent, is still with us, and was still in her twenties when she was commissioned to put this book together and given the space to write a long essay about women in sf, both as characters, readers and authors. If you do read this book, take the time to read the essay, it’s well worth it.
Having got all that out of the way, what of the stories? We have here a slim collection of short stories / novellas, mostly by writers who I met in the 1980s / 90s The Women’s Press SF imprint. The first story though, is an 85 year old sword and sorcery tale by CL Moore, a frequent contributor to the pulp sf scene. Her hero, Jirel of Joiry, is a tough, determined warrior monarch. In this story, Jirel encounters an adversary who seems to be her match, but proves that sheer bloody mindedness is sometimes enough to save the day. Jirel’s stubborn refusal to give in to powers greater than her own is an absolute joy.
Leigh Brackett is a familiar name to lovers of golden age sf, and like CL Moore, wrote under a gender ambiguous byline. As a screenwriter and novelist, she was well known in mid 20th century sf circles, and wrote a draft screenplay for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. In ‘The Lake of the Gone Forever’ we see a typical sf rockets and colonisation story set in a future solar system. There is no female main character, but the male main character is strongly influenced by the native woman who guides him through his troubles.
I was born in the early 1960s, and suffer from the common mindset that anything before I was born is ‘historical’ and anything after it is ‘modern’. And so, to the first ‘modern’ story in the book, Joanna Russ’s ‘The Second Inquisition’. I’ve read this book so many times, and have enjoyed finding more little details every time. Russ’s intellect vastly overshadows my own, and it’s always a pleasure to read a story for the fifteenth time and know that I’ll still be wowed by it the next time. Of course, Joanna Russ should need no introduction, but if you’re wondering, most of her books are still gloriously in print. Another of my favourite authors, Gwyneth Jones, has written a great book about Russ, which is well worth reading.
‘The Power of Time’ by Josephine Saxton is so absolutely, purely, Josephine Saxton that nobody else could have written it. I ‘met’ Saxton in her Womens Press novels, and have enjoyed her work ever since. She writes with dry humour and wild imagination. This story is an entertaining dual perspective look at the adventures of a British housewife on an all expenses paid luxury trip to New York, and her many times great granddaughter as a left behind trillionaire on a far future earth, following her ancestor’s dreams.
Kate Wilhelm is another big name from the mid 20th century, and her 1972 story ‘The Funeral’ deserves to be in many more collections. It gives very strong ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ vibes but with, of course, a different perspective. This is a beautiful tale of rebellion against the destruction of love and spirit. It should be on all the school reading lists.
Joan D Vinge breaks my heart on a regular basis, it’s my own fault, I know what’s going to happen every time I pick up ‘The Snow Queen’, but I just can’t resist. The story in this collection, ‘Tin Soldier’ is another reworking of an old tale, and again, it’s a heartbreaker. It’s absolutely solid sf romance and I urge everyone who loves a bit of ‘romantasy’ to find it and read it.
The last story in the collection is Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 novella, ‘The Day before the Revolution’ is a prequel to her wonderful novel ‘The Dispossessed’ and is a perfect way to end the collection. We all have to let go at some point.
And so, back to the library. I gave C J Cooke’s ‘A Haunting in the Arctic’ five stars on Goodreads because it’s well written and does what it says on the tin. It’s a ghost story set in the arctic.
SPOILER
A warning, just in case anyone doesn’t figure out within the first few pages that Nicky = Dominique. This seems to be the big reveal, and the point of the story, but it’s way too obvious, and is even signalled at least once. To be fair, it’s a hard trope to get away with successfully, especially in a ghost story. It still managed to keep my interest because I wanted to know if the other three characters were also ghosts or if they were running a seance, and what their connection was with the ship. I won’t tell you that.
Also spoilerish, there are a lot of rape and mutilation scenes, which didn’t exactly rock my boat (sorry …).
The book conveyed the cruelty and brutality of late nineteenth century arctic whaling very well.
I read it very quickly because it’s a library book, I picked it up because I’m only reading women writers for the first half of the year, and I’m also trying to use my local library more. Sadly, my library doesn’t stock an awful lot of sf / fantasy / horror, so I keep going off genre. Ghost stories are kind of horror adjacent, but this one didn’t light up the spooky / weird bulb for me.
And so to another library book, this time Belinda Bauer’s debut, ‘Blacklands’ One of the things about selling my own books at events is that it gives me time to read, and I polished off most of this book yesterday whilst sat behind a stall at a craft / artisan fair near Manchester. It’s not my usual choice of books, but I read and enjoyed ‘Exit’ last year, and when I saw ‘Blacklands’ displayed prominently in a local library, I couldn’t resist picking it up.
I was expecting a cozy crime novel, something like ‘Exit’ and got a harrowing tale of a psychopathic serial rapist and murderer of small children, and his correspondence with the wise young nephew of one of his long ago victims. This book looks at the devastation that murder leaves in its wake, at the damage it does to families, and the wisdom that lurks in unexpected corners. Apart from my visceral reaction to the evil that the killer has wrought, the main thing I’m taking away from this book is the lovely relationship between Stephen (the victim’s nephew) and his next door neighbour / best friend, Lewis. Lewis constantly and consistently takes Stephen for granted, and Stephen knows this, but forgives him anyway. Lewis is a bit dim, and Stephen knows this, and gives him the leeway he needs to keep his self confidence. It’s a lovely bit of character development.
Bauer won the Golden Dagger for this book, and I’m not in the least bit surprised.
And then, on to a book that I bought with my Christmas / birthday book money. Charlie Jane Anders is one of my favourite ‘new’ writers, and I loved her sf anthology ‘Even Greater Mistakes’. A generously thick collection of science fiction stories that will appeal to readers right across the genre. I loved the imagination and sense of fun that pervaded the book, even when tackling difficult and intensely personal issues.
My last read of the month was Suzette Haden Elgin’s ‘Native Tongue’. It’s one of those books that shaped me, its a book that I love beyond measure, and it’s a book that seems to have disappeared from my shelves. There’s a solution to that, I bought it again. Reading this book was like sinking into a hot bath.
The re-read did not disappoint, the characters were warm and funny and relatable, the story was multi layered and fascinating, and the ending was pretty much perfect. On to Book 2 of the trilogy …