I kicked off the second half of the year with a re-read from the bookshelves. Pamela Zoline does not write accessible stories. She’s a writer, an artist, an activist and a caretaker, and her words reflect the complexity of her thoughts. Perhaps that’s why she’s one of the lesser known sf writers of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when women’s sf was enjoying a brief period in the sun.
‘Busy About the Tree of Life and Other Stories’ was published by The Women’s Press in the late 1980s, but not under its science fiction imprint. Luckily for me, it was shelved as such in the indie bookshops and I got a copy. It’s quite rare now, and if my copy hadn’t had a squashed bluebottle between the cover and the first page for the last fifteen years or so, it might be worth something … let it go.
‘Busy About the Tree of Life’ is an entertaining look at a very unusual family tree, and the ultimate and single fruit of it, via a series of historical catastrophes. I’d forgotten how much I love this story.
‘The Heat Death of the Universe’ concerns, as many great stories do, the life of a great, hugely intelligent woman who is exhausted and destroyed by her lonely existence as a mother. The repetition of the idea that our protagonist isn’t even sure how many children she has, got to me at a very basic level.
‘The Holland of the Mind’ concerns a couple and their child who move from the USA to Holland, maybe for a few weeks, maybe for longer. They feel a need to change their lives, but as we know, we can’t escape ourselves. Against a background of collapse, they play out their inevitable future.
‘Instructions for Exiting this Building in case of Fire’ is now, and has been for decades, one of my favourite short stories. I have another copy of this story in the Women’s Press SF collection ‘Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind’ edited by Jen Green and Sarah Lefanu. So, credits aside, this story concerns the ends justifying the means, even when the means are cruel. The beginning of the story, in which the reader is invited to imagine a specific child, is one of the hardest hitting things I’ve ever read. Imagine how she looks, the sound of her voice, her weight in your arms, imagine her scent, the way she turns her head …
Anyway, lucky you, this story is available online. Just copy and paste https://www.mcphersonco.com/uploads/1…
The final, and the longest, story in the collection is ‘Sheep’, in which the counting of sheep is interwoven with several other stories in a complex web. It’s hard to follow in places, and although there is obviously a depth of meaning to it, I struggled to fathom what it was. Zoline is smarter than me, and it shows. Still, I read to the end.
So, from a much underappreciated genre writer to probably THE most appreciated one. Never Flinch. It’s King, of course I bought the hardback … and yeah, I know he doesn’t need the sale and I should wait for it to turn up in a charity shop, or read the library book … but I wanted it NOW.
So, book 4 in the Holly Gibney series, or book 7 if you include the Bill Hodges trilogy where she first made her appearance. Holly and her friends face up to not one, but two antagonists as a serial killer takes a twisted revenge on behalf of a falsely accused murder victim, and an indoctrinated church goer goes after a celebrity feminist. By and large, I enjoyed the book, but there were two points that bugged me. The first one was that it was hard to work out the identity of the serial killer. Admittedly I’m not a fan of murder mysteries but I do watch them on tv, and I would have appreciated more early hints at their identity … surely that’s where the fun of the genre lies? The second point is that there’s an unnecessary and unacknowledged red herring in the book, which lies in the name of one of the characters. All through the book, I thought it was a clue, but no …
None of this, of course, will stop me from re-reading the entire Hodges / Gibney series when I start my King re-read binge very soon.
‘Never Flinch’ has a great cast of very human characters, and a slight supernatural kick at the end that will please fans of more traditional King novels.
Next, another much anticipated read … ‘The Fates’ is a change of direction for Rosie Garland. Historical fiction with a wave to the weird comes naturally to her, but this is her first dip into actual mythology (to my knowledge).
This novel concerns the Fates, and their desire for a gracious retirement from the affairs of humanity. It tells a tale of Atalanta, a great huntress, and Meleager, a hero. It’s a great read, with an absorbing storyline and vivid characters. Zeus and his court are portrayed as a squabbling, terrified playground ruled by a nasty boychild with more powers than he can safely handle. I quite liked that, and I LOVED Zeus’ self reinvention at the end of the book.
Next – Jyn and Tonic, by Pete Hartley. In my review of ‘Ice and Lemon’, the previous book in this duology, I wondered if there would be a sequel. Silly me, of course there was, I just didn’t look hard enough. I found it almost by accident, when Pete Hartley and I had stalls at the same book fair in North Lancashire earlier this year. We did a swap and I hope that he was as happy with my book as I was with his.
‘Jyn and Tonic’ continues the story of the survivors of the global catastrophe and mass die off chronicled in ‘Ice and Lemon’. Our hero and his increasingly malignant ward travel around England and Wales, dealing with unsympathetic communities and narcissistic military units. Eventually, Lemon’s plans become clear, and a change of name heralds a change of tactics. Meanwhile, in France, a new force arises.
My next read was also an indie read, from the lovely Dan Forrester.
‘Havock’ is basically slapstick sword and sorcery. A fun light read with an absolutely massive body count and the funniest elf slaughter scene I’ve read in a long time.
I did start a Datlow anthology before the end of the month, but as I finished it in August, I’ll leave it until my next book blog.