Keep Using Cash

I've never much liked the idea of a cashless society and Friday was an excellent example of why. Theoretically, I don't particularly want to give banks, credit card companies, or whatever applications I use them through so much free information about my spending habits, though in truth I don't think about that as much as I should. 

I try to avoid online shopping where possible partly to support local businesses - price matters but so does choice, a decent range of competitively paid jobs, the chance of some on hand expertise, human interaction, not having to negotiate around delivery times or drop boxes, not having packages stolen from your doorstep - and I don't believe Jeff Bezos got where he is by fair pricing and paying staff decently. The other reason is it lays you open to fraud from too many angles. 

I'm not a fan of high contactless limits either - lose your card and someone could spend hundreds of pounds on it in minutes, lose your phone and you're high and dry. I couldn't count the number of people using apps to pay via phones or watches who can't quite comprehend when the machines say no, it's time to verify your pin. I assumed Britain's relentless march towards a cashless society was a universal thing until I was in Vienna a few years ago and saw how many cash-only businesses there were there (they weren't big on Sunday opening either which was refreshing, if a little awkward when you arrive on a Sunday with no idea it's going to be an issue). 

After spending over a year and making at least 5 attempts with the Bank of Scotland to get a joint account I'm really not a fan of how banks have cut back on services either.  You need to have a face-to-face appointment to open a joint account. In some branches, the waiting list was over 6 months, in others there simply wasn't anybody who was authorised to set one up, but this is surely something people still need? The extravagant length of the queues whenever I go near a bank (never more than 2 tellers available on the desk) suggest there's no shortage of demand for them either. 

So with all this in mind, Friday was interesting. Our card machines were out for several hours with the Microsoft problems, and most of the day for some people depending on which systems their bank used. We've been seeing a bit more cash generally since the cost of living crisis hit - cash is easier to budget - which is my main reason for liking it. In the end a surprising number of people were ready with cash, they'd listened to the news and come prepared - there were also a fair few who hadn't and weren't. They were uniformly outraged that they couldn't pay as they wished and generally didn't have a bank card as a back up.

Are you, dear reader, cash or contactless people and if contactless have the recent outages made you think again about carrying at least some money around with you? 

Lessons in Crime - edited by Martin Edwards

It's been a while since I've read a crime classics anthology, and this one has been an absolute treat as well as perfectly timed for the start of the school holidays around here. At work we have a perennial debate; which is more stressful? Summer holidays or Christmas. The consensus is generally the school summer holidays on the grounds that not only do we not have the extra staff, but with our own holidays we have less than normal, and everyone is hot and bothered. Last Friday was the end of term here, a few thousand kids, very excited to be free of school for the next six weeks descended on the city center and it was chaos. 

If nothing else it absolutely put me in the mood for a few academic murders, kidnaps, and near misses. There are a couple of absolute gems in this collection - Herbert Harris's Low Marks for Murder where what seems like an excellent plan falls apart, somewhat to the readers relief as the culprit is a cold-blooded piece of work, The Harrowing of Henry Pygole which almost veers into horror territory, and Miriam Sharman's Battle of Wits all particularly stood out. 

It's a nicely put together anthology too with some old favourites - Dorothy L Sayers, Michael Innes, Arthur Conan Doyle, alongside some unexpected names - that Jacqueline Wilson and those 3 stories above all from names I didn't immediately recognise. I love an anthology that does this - gives me a few safe bets and introduces me to lots of new things, or encourages me to reassess a writer I don't normally care much for. Edmund Crispin for me in this case - but the example here is both short and effective and has temporarily made me forget why I generally dislike his books. 

The visits to Oxford are charming too, and altogether I thoroughly recommend this collection. It might partly be a timing thing and I've never been disappointed by any of the anthologies in the series, but one has gone straight onto my favourite list. 

Storm Pegs - Jen Hadfield

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this, and I'm not sure where to start with talking about it. I am on the other hand absolutely sure that one reading isn't enough to have properly got to grips with it, my copy is an uncorrected proof, in the fullness of time I'll buy the paperback edition and compare notes. 

Storm Pegs mixes biography, nature writing, poetry, travel, and an examination of language and place. It's both personal to the author's experience and full of moments of recognition and connection. Jen starts her introduction with a moment of wondering how to define a place like Shetland which defies easy definition. 'Where am I' She asks? I in turn am wondering how to define her book. 

The answer to both questions might be home. My relationship with Shetland informs how I've read 'Storm Pegs', not everyone will feel the same about it as I do, but reading this for me was like seeing a much loved view after a while away from it. When I wrote about Kathleen Jamie's 'Cairn' I talked about how these two books have become a sort of literary pair of meids to me - meid is a Shetland word for landmarks seen from the sea - line them up just so and you know where you are; you can find your way home, or mark a good fishing spot so. 

I stand by that. It's been an eventful few months full of change and planning, these books have been fixtures that continue to help me navigate through this current set of challenges. But why should you read 'Storm Pegs'? 

It's the structure of the book that makes it so special. If I've read Jen's posts about it correctly it's been years in the making, so most of the 17 years she covers are in the present tense and arranged roughly by season and by the sense of a word. There's a beginning, a first visit, the decision to stay, and an end for this book at least; the starting of a family. The middle part of all this exists outside of a strict chronology, it doesn't read like fiction, but it's compelling in a way I associate with fiction. 

It's Shetland that's at the center of this book, seen through Hadfield's eyes and experiences. She alludes to the things she's doing in that time - the travel for residencies and teaching, the poetry she's writing, the relationships she finds, and the house she builds, but they are peripheral things compared to the landscape she finds herself in and the elements that define it. If this book is like anything I've ever read it's Nan Shepherd's 'The Living Mountain' which must, I think, have been a key influence - references to it and to Nan's relationship with her beloved landscape run through the book. It's hard not to think of George Mackay Brown either, except that where he looks back, Jen looks forward or exists wholeheartedly in a moment. 

Hadfield's treatment of Shetland's language is interesting too - Storm Pegs is as much about exploring that language as anything else I think. Dialect as I remember it being spoken in the 1970s and 80s is fading away, but that's also been recognised and people are fighting for it. Mallachy Tallack talked about the twin pillars of accent and ancestry that gate keep a Shetland identity (I can't remember where exactly) with a sense of frustration of being kept out. 

Jen seems to have a less complicated delight in words that express something fundamental to her -  Lightsome/Lichtsome is one of them. She chooses to discuss it in the winter part of her book - I'd describe lightsome as something that you take joy in with others - good company and good times - an evening laughing with friends, though a person can also be lightsome. An example here is a group of women swimming through a sea filled with Mareel (bioluminescence - tiny luminous creatures in the sea that light up as anything moves through them). I have seen this, paddled in it, rowed a dinghy through it - it's magical, definitely lightsome, and so is the description of it here. 

The answer to Jen's question of where am I? Is somewhere a group of serious women can gather on a dark, drizzling winter's night to swim in a sea full of living light and for that to be both remarkable and not remarkable. I am not there but I wish I was. 

A Duke of One's Own - Emma Orchard

Another week has gone by in something of a blur. Work is busy; fortunately, after a not-great May, we've been flood-free for several weeks. There are interesting projects in hand, and on my part at least some excitement about today's election. I'm hoping for new faces and change, I'm not paying too much attention to polls - they've been wrong before. I'm not wildly optimistic about what the next few years will bring, the damage is too deeply rooted for a quick fix but if we can fix the water supply and work on the NHS as a country that would be something. 

I'm currently on a waiting list for an injection into my foot that will help with the referred pain arthritis is causing. I'm at the getting text messages to ask if I still need treatment stage of the process (yes I do, the arthritis has not gone away of its own accord). I hadn't considered the option of going private until the text landed, and haven't yet looked into it, but the pain is getting worse so at some point the consideration will be can I work like this? Or sleep. 

Altogether then there are a lot of distractions, so easy reading to keep my mind off the serious business of what kind of country we'll wake up to tomorrow is about all I can manage (current book is Lessons in Crime, the academic mystery themed British Library Crime Classics collection). I read A Duke of One's Own a little while ago, and because it was on a kindle app didn't exactly forget about it, but it was out of sight and therefore out of mind. 

Emma Orchard is a friend, we met during lockdown in the Georgette Heyer readalong on Twitter (as was). I like her books, I love the easter eggs for Heyer fans, the fact that her characters sometimes need to pee (I suppose it's part of the fantasy in a lot of romances that nobody has any bodily functions to contend with beyond sometimes being hungry). These books are funny, honest about female desire, and probably spicier than I would otherwise read.

The heroine of A Duke of One's Own is Georgie, sister to Lord Irlam, hero of the last book. Bridgerton style - because that's the current frame of reference, the Pendlebury's are a large and loving family of mostly boys. Georgie is a mess of a human being. She's young, stubborn, sexually curious, and full of hormones. It's a combination that has led to some very poor but entirely realistic decision making. 

The double standards applied to female sexuality are touched upon here, and although the consequences for stepping out of line might have been theoretically more severe in the past I sometimes winder how much they've really changed. I don't doubt for a moment that girls did mess around though, what mattered was not getting caught. For a woman in Georgie's position - a socially powerful family who will support her, and plenty of money, I also wonder how severe the consequences would even have been? 

This is Emma's third book, the tone is more assured each time, and again, the thing I really love here is that people might behave outrageously from time to time, but always in a way that makes sense for the character, and is understandable from a human perspective. Add to that humour, genuinely complex emotional situations, a hugely likable cast of side characters who get proper space and attention, and you have a series to really enjoy. 

D is for Death - Harriet F. Townson

I am so conflicted about this book. On the one hand, it's funny, pays homage to golden age crime fiction, specifically, but not only that of Dorothy L. Sayers, and does it with both wit and wholehearted enthusiasm. It's an entertaining setup for a series to come, has likable characters, dozens of easter eggs for like-minded fans of the aforementioned golden age crime writers, is set against a publishing and library background which is jolly, and makes some interesting social points.

On the other hand, it gets some silly details wrong - it's set in 1935, tights are mentioned instead of stockings, a man wonders around the Cafe de Paris holding a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne in 1 fist - it's a 38-kilo dead weight, I've tried lifting them, it's not a one-handed job. More importantly, there are some weird continuity issues around the main characters and all of it should have been picked up by an editor. Harriet F. Townson is a pen name for Harriet Evans which makes it all the more surprising. 

On the whole I really enjoyed it and think this is a series that's going to be worth following. I will never not appreciate a chapter heading of 'Miss Pym Supposes', it might be a while since I've read Dorothy L. Sayers but there were references I recognised instantly, and a very fitting almost direct quote from the punt scene in Gaudy Night (if you know, you know). The inclusion of people of colour, queer characters, and Jewish ones is done smartly and underlines both the diversity of pre-war London and the politics of the time. References to real-life characters such as Baba Metcalf and Brenda Dean Paul (I looked her up) are well used too. If you don't know or remember who they are and do look them up it adds depth to the reading and serves as a reminder of how much more colorful real life can be than fiction, but it's done with a light enough hand that there's no need to follow up if you're not inclined to.

My biggest issue was with Dora and her mysterious money. We meet her escaping from a thoroughly unpleasant fiance - initially, she's described as swiping all the cash she can find in the more or less abandoned for now family home, she's meant to have inherited money from her mother but doesn't know what's become of it, later there's talk of a bank account that she's using (an unlikely thing for a girl to have in 1935) then there are postal orders that she's spent on clothes, and finally, she's been saving every scrap of pocket money for her train fair. As the money discussions are generally accompanied by reflections on how financially precarious a woman's situation was in the 1930's especially those who had been bought up to be ladies it matters. 

There's an aristocratic male character who seems destined to recur who's troubling too. There's a reason that Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham made their aristocratic sleuths younger sons, so spoiler, the reveal about Ben (well sign posted throughout the book) undermines the believability of his character somewhat. 

Overall if you love Sayers read it for the references and the jokes, enjoy it for what it is, and hope that the continuity issues are sorted out before the next book comes out. If these kind if details ruin a book for you though, it's going to be best avoided. 

Not In Love - Ali Hazelwood

My reading is all over the place at the moment, it's also included a lot of advance review copies and I'm never quite sure what the etiquette is for those - do review when I've read them, in this case a month or more before they come out, or do I wait as I did with Cairn? I think I wait, which means my head is full of Jen Hadfield's extraordinary biography about her life in Shetland, but I'm looking at Not in Love which I read a couple of weeks ago pre-funeral when I was in a totally different mood.

Ali Hazelwood continues to be my favourite contemporary romance writer - and as I've given up dabbling much in that pool that'#s unlikely to change anytime soon. She has a note at the beginning to say this book is less romantic comedy and more erotic romance - which is sort of true although I'm not a hundred percent convinced it's markedly more erotic than her previous books. The mood is slightly different though and her plotting and characterisation improves with each book so I'm not complaining.

You know what you're getting with a book like this, and you definitely know what you're getting with Ali Hazelwood - is the heroine an intelligent and able scientist with her life mostly together but some personal issues - yes she is. Is the hero equally smart and capable in his daily life but emotionally flawed - yep. Do they work it out together - they certainly do.

This one skirts around kinks, is more sex-positive than some of the earlier books in that the characters unapologetically enjoy hookups (in this it's a more explicit take on Mallory's character in Check and Mate) but has the same enthusiasm for consent that previous books have. Consent is sexy so that's a plus in y reading. 

I liked that the villain here (SPOILER) was a not much more senior female scientist and the setting is industry rather than academia - not a huge difference at the end of the day, but with Hazelwood, it's the background details of the workplace and the associated politics that make her books stand out. Basically this does exactly what it says on the tin, it's intelligent and funny romance with a convincingly happy ending. 

Cairn - Kathleen Jamie

The last few weeks have been busy, a funeral followed by working at a book festival interspersed with normal work with the now traditional skeleton staff and all the problems that brings with it. It's been exhausting but I think the worst is over now and I can work on getting back to something normal. 

I read Kathleen Jamie's Cairn a couple of weeks ago after getting an advance copy through work, it blew me away (though how publication date has worked around so quickly is frankly frightening). It's a slim book that could be read in a couple of hours, though that would not be the best way to approach it - this is one to dip in and out of and consider at pleasure. 

Jamie has collected her thoughts here - sometimes just a paragraph at a time, and used them to build a marker of turning 60. She considers grieving the loss of her parents, seeing her children embark on independent adult life, how the climate crisis has developed - it's been a recurring theme in her writing. How it feels to get older and a hundred other things. It's a contemplative little miracle of a book that came to me at exactly the point I needed to read it - 50 and caught up with my own grief. 

I have loved Jamies's writing since I discovered her (late) in 2012, I don't know if this is her best book - maybe not, but the right book at the right time is a powerful thing. There is a Shetland word - meid, that refers to prominent landmarks, such as a hilltop cairn, seen from the sea. Line up 2 or 3 of these and they tell you exactly where you are, and help you maintain a fixed point at sea - generally a favoured fishing spot. This summer Cairn, and Jen Hadfield's Storm Pegs are the literary equivalent of meid's for me. Between them I've found a place of calm in uncertain times.

I read somewhere that this book really pushes the line between poetry and prose - I take the point and can't really argue with it, but I might be more inclined to say that for Jamie here there is no line to blur or cross. Anyway, it's a beautiful, meditative, book that says much about the experience of being well into middle age without trying to impart any particular wisdom, and for that last point I'm especially grateful. 

Queen Macbeth - Val McDermid

It's been a long couple of weeks, but it's time to look forward again and get organised. I've read and am reading some remarkable things, and whilst I'm trying not to be over hopeful I'm keeping everything crossed for an election that brings a certain amount of change with it. 

I think Val McDermid's Queen Macbeth is the 5th book in Polygon's Darkland tales series (I've checked, it is), and what an excellent series it's turning into, even if not all the books are for everyone. I didn't dislike Alan Warner's 'Nothing Left to Fear From Hell' but I doubt I'll revisit it. Equally, I still feel a little nagging guilt that Ginny Jones disliked Columba's Bones which will probably be one of my best books of the year. But dissent and discussion are a good thing and hopefully, she will forgive me/still more or less trust my judgment. 

Lady Macbeth is having quite a moment - there are 3 reasonably high profile feminist retellings of her story around at the moment. This book, Ava Reid's 'Lady Macbeth', and Isabelle Schuler's Lady MacBethad. And there is of course Shakespeare's play overshadowing all of them. Mcdermid departs quite quickly from Shakespeare's version of Gruoch, though she does keep the witches and I like the way she does it. 

This version relies more on a history that doesn't need to flatter a Stuart king and interestingly she has Gruoch betray her first husband to conceive her child with Macbeth himself. It's maybe another swipe at Shakespeare who conspicuously makes his Lord Macbeth incapable of fathering a child (last time I saw the play this seemed a key point in it to me). 

In this version, Gruoch and her closest companions have been in exile after the apparent loss of Macbeth in battle, and now the loss of her son before he could secure the Scottish crown. This Macbeth and his Lady have ruled the country well for some years, they have friends and loyal subjects as well as political enemies, but the tide has turned on them. Gruoch is a danger to Malcolm, the next man to claim the kingdom - there's enough support for her that she might prove a rallying point. We meet them as they're about to be discovered and be forced to flee.

What follows is a tense journey full of danger and heartbreaking loss set beside Gruoch's memories of his this all came to be. There's an unexpected twist at the end and a clever resolution - and as definitely the shortest of the 3 Lady Macbeth's around at the moment is a very good place to start with her. MacDermid's take is thought provoking and smart. If the Darkland series excels at one thing (it excels at a few) it's in getting a lot into a novella. This Gruoch is compellingly human and less morally grey than some depictions, less supernatural too - though again, the way prophecy is handled here is interesting. It's fun to see MacDermid writing ina  different genre too. 

How many books are you reading right now?

Way back when I started blogging one of the things it helped me do was focus my reading - one book at a time. It worked for years and then it all fell apart, a process accelerated by getting a job in a bookshop where the tempatation and the proofs are constant. Somebody somewhere, probably Twitter, was asking if they were the only person to have an upstairs and a downstairs book. 

Obviously, they were not. I live in a one-bedroom flat so I don't even have the excuse of stairs being an effort to justify the state I'm in here. So these are the books I have on the go. There is the bedroom reading - Storms' Edge is currently on the left hand side of the bed, Godkiller, which I started months ago, and was really enjoying but somehow never finished is on the right along with Silver Birch which has been my intended next book for a while but keeps getting pushed down the pile on the right hand side.

I'm not sure these really count, but they probably do - my collection of Slightly Foxed quarterlies live in the bathroom. It's ideal for reading in the bath if you want to avoid turning into a chilled prune whilst the water cools but you need to read one more page.

In the kitchen there's Greekish and Sebze which I'm cooking from extensively at the moment, Sebze is an interesting read as well if like me you don't really know much about Turkish food or culture. 

I'm behind on reading Rosie Andrews Puzzle Wood - again, a very promising start, it is currently my bag book, the one that leaves the house with me.

In my sitting room there is the chair book that I didn't mean to start the other day but which was so compelling that a quick glance was all it took to find myself 30 pages in. 

There's the floor book for the jumper I'm knitting - it's by the sofa, and got moved because I started reading the sofa book, also very promising. I bought this one based on the comparison to Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood - that's an intriguing combination if accurate.

My desk gives as good an indication as any of the amount of books around read as well as unread at any one time.

I could pretend that the other chair didn't have its own book - The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, the books on the floor here mostly function as a useful place to balance a cup of tea with the added bonus of occasionally throwing out a forgotten gem.

And finally, there's the book I'm truly thinking of myself as reading at the moment - an arc of Jen Hadfield's Storm Pegs which I'm enjoying very much, I only hope I can find the focus to finish it in a timely fashion. 

What are you reading at the moment?

Notes From an Island - Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietilä

It's been an emotional week. Last Monday my father-in-law went into hospital, he was released back to his care home on Tuesday as it was clear he didn't have long left. He passed away on Sunday, he would have been 98 next week, had an adventure and achievement filled life, and was an absolute gentleman. His last days were as peaceful and painless as possible with excellent care, his sons and grandchildren had time to say goodbye. It's as much as an any of us can ask for in the end I think, but it does not diminish the gap he leaves behind him in the world. 

I don't know what he would have made of this book - he might have thought, as I do, that it's a little slight - not much more than a collection of notes and images that celebrate life on a tiny island in a Finnish archipelago, but he would have been in entire sympathy with Tove and Tooti's love of solitude and independence. He might well have recognised the feelings expressed in the last few pages of the books and Tove's final essay which together make this something special.

After decades of happy isolation life on the island becomes untenable, the island itself changes from a refuge to a sort of prison, with the sea and weather a constant threat. Ageing limbs are no longer capable of jumping in and out of boats easily, or stormproofing a cabin. I grew up on a somewhat larger island with a few more obvious comforts (stone walls, running water, a phone line) but not so very many, we left it for good when I was 18 but I absolutely recognise that feeling of disquiet. 

I recognise it further from dad's consternation at running aground on an underwater bar one night, of mum's feelings of isolation after I was born in the middle of winter when it was more or less impossible for her to get off safely with me until I was around 3 months old - there was only dad for company in that time. The people who bought the island from us sold it just over a year ago when age and health issues caught up with them. They would recognise those feelings too. In truth any of us who have ever found our bodies won't quite manage what's required in the moment and are left considering what that might mean will feel the truth of Tove's words and feel her and Tooti's loss.

It's a beautiful book, a first celebratory and then elegiac meditation on a beloved place in the world, combining Tove's writing, their friend Brunström's log book entries - he helped them build their cabin and set up their life there, and Tuulikki Pietilä's (Tooti) aquatints. I found it helpful in a difficult week, you might find comfort here too if you need it. 

Fear Stalks the Village - Ethel Lina White

I picked this book up off the top of the nearest pile a couple of days ago, and absolutely loved it - it's a slightly tongue-in-cheek examination of what is on the surface a picture-perfect village full of entirely admirable and apparently happily married gentry.

The architecture is a pleasing mix of Tudor, Queen Anne, and Georgian, there's no train line to bring day trippers, all of the old families have adequate private incomes. And yet can anything really be so perfect? No, it can not, and a poison pen letter is proof that something is rotten underneath all the surface glitter. There are rumours, and social distance, more letters bring more fear as neighbours start to distrust each other and want to guard their own secrets more closely. 

There are clear hints about the over all culprit early on in the book, along with some splendid red herrings, but the overall point is to examine how a hint of blackmail and the pursuit of social power corrupts good people, and how the appearance of goodness matters more than the real thing for many. It's clever, amusing, and not very murdery and I highly recommend it for a lazy afternoon. 

What really interested me though is that it's the third or fourth book I've picked up recently that is thematically similar - all by chance, there hasn't been a reading plan. Oscar Jensen's Hell and Death (big fan) and Jill Johnson's Devil's Breath play with some of the same ideas, and so did Susan Stokes Chapman's 'The Shadow Key' in a different direction. On a dark and stormy night in January (storm Isha in the Borders to be specific) we were amusing ourselves by plotting a murder mystery along the same lines.

I have a lot of books, and so it's fair to say there will be a book for every mood, but they're not well organised and I wonder how it is that these books are finding me at the moment - it could almost feel like they were following their own algorithm - serendipity is a weird thing. I'm also a very big fan of the current publishing trend (is it a trend yet? I feel like it is) for crime books which go low on crime, big on mystery. If this sounds like your thing Fear Stalks the Village is a fabulous starting point. 

The House of Silence - E Nesbit

I've been a big fan of Handheld books so was sorry to hear they had decided to wind up business and move on to new projects but also thought fair enough, publishing and bookselling are hard work and it's admirable to know when you've had enough. Reading 'The House of Silence' whilst I was away last week has really underlined what made Handheld so special though, and made me a great deal sadder that there won't be more gems like this to come.

E Nesbit is probably best known for her children's stories, unless you like weird/ghost stories in which case she's probably best known for Man Size in Marble which crops up in a lot of anthologies, including this one. it's very good so that's not surprising. I see I read the Greyladies Nesbit Collection on a previous Borders trip, it's a nice selection but only had 7, rather than the 18 tales gathered here. Handheld have always been excellent value.

'The House of Silence' feels like a comprehensive selection and covers a range of moods from the definitely scary to amusing romance. Much of Nesbit's charm comes from her sense of humour and the way she uses it to turn a phrase. The Haunted Inheritance only very loosely qualifies to be in a weird collection, but it's such a delightful thing that it might well be my favourite here, definitely a story to read when I'm feeling a little low. The Shadow by contrast is smartly unsettling, not terrifying, but a clever mix of suggestions that would make me hesitate to cross a dark room immediately after reading it, which I consider the best sort of ghost story.

The Pavillion is another favourite - on the surface it's as frothy as the crinoline gowns its heroines wear, then Nesbit goes deep into what love is or can be in a few elegant words and properly got me on the hook. Altogether there isn't a dud story, it's a book I've wanted for a long time (a decent Nesbit collection) and the reality of it more than lived up to the expectations - again, no duds here and I suppose there could have been. 

Buy this and indeed all or any of Handheld's weird collections whilst they're still available!

Away in Scotland

It was my husbands birthday last week which meant the traditional getaway to Scotland - we did go to Switzerland one year which was amazing, but Scotland in May is lush and a tradition that we're both happy with. There were challenges this time - 2 punctured back tires discovered Saturday night on a bank holiday weekend before a projected early morning departure on the Sunday. Fortunatley we got the tires changed on Monday so only lost a day and a half, still made it to Corbridge in time for an early dinner at The Angel, then on to the Borders in time for a sunset. 

We've had a good run at the Scottish borders so far this year, and both love it a little bit more every time we visit. We went to Abbotsford to enthuse about architecture and Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh for a lecture and a couple of exhibitions, Hawick for gin and Hawick Balls, Melrose for an exceptionally good hot chocolate, the garden of the flat we were staying in for relaxing and an exceptional view of the Northern lights, and generally had a pretty good time of it with plenty of tea, cake, reading, and art. 

One of the things I love so much about the area is how rich in wildlife it is - I didn't see the stat which is meant to have taken up residence in the garden, but I saw a lot of hares, a dipper, tree creepers, bullfinches, goldfinches, wrens, swallows, swifts and martins, heard owls, woodpeckers, and cuckoos, for to appreciate the cherry blossom all over again (it's a week or so behind Leicester) along with all the apple blossom in the hedges. It's a really beautiful part of Britain. 

The aurora was one of the best I've ever seen - taking shaky photos of it on my phone is a mixed blessing. the camera picks up more colours than the eye does - the pinks and purples especially were not as pronounced, but then all the outlines were crisp, and you could see the whole thing so if the pictures aren't an entirely accurate record of what I saw, they do overall catch the spirit of the experience. 

Devil's Breath - Jill Johnson

At least all this waiting for new tires is giving me time to catch up with book posts... I'd been eyeing up Jill Johnson's 'Devil's Breath' for a couple of weeks - it's a lovely cover and I liked the Nish Kumar quote that summarised it as 'Sherlock Holmes meets Gardeners' Question Time.' Then I met Jill Johnson at a book event in Nottingham where she was talking about book number two - 'Hell's Bells', out in July. She was great so next morning I bought Devil's Breath and read it in a couple of sittings.

I have mixed feelings about contemporary crime, a lot of it is too violent for me, I'm not overly keen on the amount of violence committed against women either, there's plenty that I do enjoy, but it's not a given. I loved this book. It's smart, I didn't want to stop reading it, the characters are spikey and occasionally difficult, and the mystery kept on getting deeper. 

Eustacia Rose is a Professor of Botanical Toxicology, she lives alone, she no longer has her job, her life is her poisonous plants, there have clearly been difficulties in her past, and in her self isolation she's taken to spying on the neighbours who she wouldn't dream of talking too.

One neighbour in particular has caught her attention, a beautiful young woman who she's well on her way to being obsessed with - and then she hears a scream. Eustacia's life becomes bound up with Simone's and the 4 men who visit her, one of whom is oddly familiar to her. Then her garden is destroyed with plants stolen, someone dies, possibly killed by toxins from one of her plants and her simple life is very complicated.

Eustacia is a wonderful character, I won't give spoilers because learning about her and her history is really the central mystery to this book. The death is almost peripheral, although it may turn out to be significant in later books, and the ending is pleasingly ambiguous. We know there's a lot more to come. 

Altogether it's a quirky, slightly gothic, crime thriller with unusual characters that feels a little bit different from most of the things around at the moment. I feel Agatha Christie would have loved the poison element, and maybe there's a touch of Poirot in some of Professor Rose's habits, or at least a nod in his direction, even if only just. The Sherlock Holmes comparison is really apt too, as is the Gardener's Question Time comparison. This was a lot of fun, and promises much for the series to come. 

Three Fires - Denise Mina

As I write this we should have been halfway to Scotland, but a misplaced screw in the car tire has changed plans - at least the sun is shining, the company is good, and we're safely at home rather than enjoying the full joys of a blow out somewhere on the M1. Missing the projected lunch at The Angel in Corbridge is a wrench, but a little Tesco picnic is far preferable to sitting for hours on a hard shoulder. New tires tomorrow and hopefully plans will be resumed. 

On to 'Three Fires', I loved Mina's 'Rizzio', the opening book in Polygon's Darklands series, and was excited to see that she's returned to both the novella format and historical fiction with this account of the rise and fall of Savonarola in Renaissance Florence. 'Three Fires' has a lot in common with 'Rizzio', the same narrative style complete with asides, the same punchy attitude and pacing, and the same ability to give complicated personalities the nuance they deserve even in so short a space.

The story opens at Savonarola's trial and conviction in 1498, then skips back to Ferrara in 1470 where the younger Savonarola is about to suffer a disappointment in love. Mina casts him as something of an incel who turns to the church. It's also a turbulent and violent time in Ferrara, and this too leaves it's mark on the young man.

The church doesn't seem to know what to do with its priest, he's charismatic but also confrontational - slowly he hones his skills as a preacher, and then he truly lights a fire of zealotry amongst the people. It's really not what the church wanted. Mina also draws a direct line between Savonarolla and the populists of today, right down to his ploy of blaming the Jews, the homosexuals, the women, for the damned state of society. It's not a subtle point but it's done well.

As the action reaches a climax and Savonarola starts to lose his grip on the populace he becomes a somewhat more sympathetic character, or maybe we just see more of the complexity of the man - after all, nobody had to listen to him or act on his exhortations. Whatever he got wrong, the price paid for it is high - not just death, but weeks of torture first. Things, as we know, can so very quickly spin out of control.

A short and powerful book with a threat of dark humour running alongside an anger that we never seem to learn. I really liked this one. 

The Shadow Key - Susan Stokes-Chapman

I really loved Susan Stokes-Champman's debut, 'Pandora', it felt like a book that couldn't do a thing wrong for me, so I've been looking forward to whatever she wrote next with a great deal of anticipation. I'm not sure that The Shadow Key quite met my very high hopes for it, but I did enjoy it a lot, and I am recommending it to anyone who likes a nice bit of gothic fiction with just a hint of the supernatural.

This one takes place in Wales, it starts with an old man waking on a dark night hearing some odd sounds and then a light in his library where no light should be. From there we follow young Henry Talbot, a disgraced London surgeon on his way to Wales to take a post as a private family physician and village doctor. It's been an uncomfortable journey, the people he meets are unaccountably hostile, and when he reaches his destination the family he's meant to tend to are odder than he expected.

The owner of the estate is a young woman (Linette) who dresses in her long dead fathers clothes, her mother seems to be insane, and the uncle who gave Henry the job is mendacious at best, and there's an odd smell of sulphur that keeps cropping up. The villagers,with the exception of the local minister and a very beautiful young herbalist called Rowena, are more hostile than ever and there's a concerted effort to scare Henry away. 

Meanwhile Henry begins to suspect that the previous Doctor, the elderly man from the prologue, didn't die from natural causes, that there are some very strange features to Lady Gwen's supposed madness and there's a lot Linette isn't telling him. There's stories about hellfire clubs, and a lot of welsh folklore added to the brew as well. It's not the biggest spoiler to say (though skip past this bit if you want) that there's the suggestion of Devil worship and unnatural forces at play.

The last is where Susan Stokes-Chapman is especially good. She's expert at treading the line where one can believe what one wants - that there is a demon somewhere under the mountain, that there's an entirely logical and scientific explanation for everything, or both are true at once. It's a neat trick to be able to pull off and she does it brilliantly. 

Where I feel the book goes awry is in the very tight time scale - everything seems to happen in little more that a week, but it reads as if it's longer and it would make more sense if it was. the author talks about how long she went over deadline with this book and how many revisions she made to it - at times I'd say it feels overworked. Relationships become unfeasibly close after a couple of meetings, getting from Wales to London by boat in the 1780s with time to transact business whilst away takes barely a week, which is surely unlikely. Henry becomes a proficient rider after sitting on a horse once.  A flintlock pistol is described as working like a revolver. 

In Pandora a convincing 18th century London is created with a few broad brushstrokes and no labouring the point. 18th century Wales feels like a more nebulous projection, and maybe because of the speed at which everything happens like it belongs in the 19th century with all the advantages of steam power (and revolvers). That Henry manages to overcome an almost murderous hostility in barely a week seems optimistic too, although Linette's reasoning for why anyone English is hated quite as much as they are feels weak too.

Better is Lady Gwen who turns out to be an interestingly problematic character for her daughter to understand and nicely complicated for the reader - so overall it's an enjoyable and atmospheric book with a lot to offer even if I didn't fall in love with it the way I did Pandora.

A Very Lively Murder - Katy Watson

I enjoyed The Three Dahlias a lot when I read it a couple of years ago - particularly the nods towards various queens of classic crime, so I looked forward to the second in the series, 'A Very Lively Murder' with some enthusiasm. I can't say I was disappointed, but I will say I'm glad I waited for the paperback. 

In the first book 3 women who have played or will play a famous fictional detective - Dahlia Lively - meet at a weekend convention at the golden age authors former country home. Phones are confiscated, murder is done, and the the three Dahlias solve the crime, evade blackmail, and secure the future of the newest film, and with it the career of former child star and tabloid victim, Posy Starling, the youngest Dahlia.

In book 2 filming has started complete with Posy in the lead role and original Dahlia, Rosalind King (a national treasure with a slightly tarnished reputation after the events of book one) playing an elderly aunt. Something is amiss on set though, the atmosphere is strained, someone has disappeared, and unpleasant notes have been found. The final Dahlia, Caro Hooper, is called in to help investigate by her friends. The band is back together to make sure that any threats to Rosalind are nipped in the bud.

A second book might be an even trickier proposition than a second album - I loved the playful homage to golden age crime in book one, missed it a bit in book two. Watson focuses more on a post Me Too world and the difficulties her actor/detectives face. It's not a bad choice - this approach avoids the dangers of slipping into pastiche, and roots the series firmly in the contemporary world whilst still nodding towards the Golden Age. I would have liked more character development, and maybe it will come in book three - there were hints towards the end that the dynamic between the characters was set to change which is good. 

Otherwise, the three central characters are well drawn, human, and compelling flaws and all. The plot is fun, and the setup for the next book intriguing. This is easy reading and fairly cosy crime done well, and which solidly sets up the next books to come. All good, there just want the extra something that made me race through the first book despite being full of covid at the time and barely able to stay awake. 

Greekish - Georgina Hayden

I meant to both knit and read today and so far haven't really done either, but it has otherwise been the perfect day off despite being unseasonably cold. I got up early to get to Leicester's The Tiny Bakery to pick up breakfast. It's a 4 mile walk there and back (buses are available) which definitely justifies the epic size of the pastries. I'm very new to the Tiny Bakery (it is indeed tiny) but it's something of a Leicester institution judging by the right down-the-street queue I had to join - apparently a feature of Saturday mornings. Anyway, if you're ever in Leicester and it's open get there early and check it out. 

The bits of the day not spent eating a lemon and poppy seed Danish the size of my face were spent on browsing Georgina Hayden's Greekish, choosing recipes, buying ingredients, and cooking. Lovely, unhurried, weekend, cooking. My Monmouth Street coffee order also arrived so altogether it's been a day of treats.

I loved Hayden's last book, Nistisima - it's mostly vegan recipes based on orthodox Christian festival food, I used it a lot for wedding catering ideas. Greekish is already shaping up to be another favourite. So far I've made the Baklava Buns - a really delicious take on a cinnamon bun with lightly candied walnuts, a more subtle approach to cinnamon, and options for either an orange syrup glaze (preferred) or tahini and cream cheese icing if that's your thing. They are very good and it is my absolute preference for a birthday cake to have something like this. Cake is great, but very little beats a freshly made, still warm, cinnamon bun made just the way you like, so any opportunity with enough people to justify making them should be enthusiastically seized.

I have a lot of other things bookmarked, but tonight's dinner of baked cod with tomatoes and olives was excellent, and a chicken, potato, and pepper dish is in hand for Sunday lunch. The tag line for the book is everyday recipes with Greek roots, hence Greekish but Hayden is taking inspiration from her Greek-Cypriot heritage rather than writing a specifically authentic recipe book.

The whole concept of authenticity around food is one I find troubling anyway. Everyday cooking doesn't work like that - we adapt, borrow, innovate, and appropriate all the time based on what's available to us and what we like. Hayden has a whole collection of Baklava-inspired recipes here - buns, semifreddo, a cake, cheesecake, and French toast, and authenticity be damned, they all sound amazing.

There are other things to like about this book too - the way the recipes are set out feels nice and logical, following what you might want them for - breakfast things, small dishes which work well for lunch, everyday heroes, things on sticks, feasts, and finishing up with some sweet bits. The suggested menus at the back - there are only half a dozen of them, themed around a few likely occasions - it's not prescriptive, but it is helpful.

Altogether it's a treat of a book full of practical recipes that are likely to become integral parts of my repertoire. 

They Found Him Dead - Georgette Heyer for the 1937 Book Club

I'm sneaking in under the wire for the 1937 book club with a book that I've read a few times before in the distant past, but apparently don't really remember at all - it's familiar in the same way a town you visited for an afternoon years before might be; occasionally you recognise a landmark and there's a sense of having had a pleasant time there before but that's about it. This is excellent news for all the other crime fiction I have, it seems I've reached an age where I really don't need to buy anymore books. Naturally I will continue to buy new books at a faster rate than I can possibly read them.

Fantastic Fiction confirms that Heyer had two novels published in 1937, 'An Infamous Army' is probably nobody's favourite, deals with a set of characters it's hard to like, and goes into a great deal of information about the battle of Waterloo - there's a Jenny Colgan quote on the cover of the current edition that says "Heyer will not let you down" - unfortunate as it's one of the very few books she wrote where you might feel exactly that. It would probably have been the more interesting choice in terms of 1937 though, with interesting parallels for a pre-war Europe and its new fascist dictator.

They Found Him Dead is more fun (and an admission, I'm currently only half way through with a quick reminder of how it finishes). It's fair to say that Heyer's romances are better than her detective fiction, and fair to say that there are better golden age crime writers - but that's a very high bar to set. On the whole, I don't think her detective fiction gets enough credit or appreciation.

The plotting is good enough - plots were allegedly provided at least in part by her husband, I'm not entirely sure I believe this unless it was a sort of game to come up with ingenious solutions for crimes between them. His career as a barrister is cited, but he wasn't called to the bar until 1939, and there's little evidence of his earlier careers in any of the plotting. Not that it matters much, the pleasure of a Heyer novel is in the characterisation and the dialogue. 

Reading They Found Him Dead I'm struck by how modern it feels - the mother who insists on what we'd think of as gentle parenting now, the woman who reads for all the world like an insta influencer, a host of amusing characters - including the lady explorer who has hot-footed it back from Africa to stand as the conservative candidate in her constituency because she won't have a socialist in the role - and found herself a possible suspect in a murder investigation. I'm also struck by how well this would adapt for television, better I think than the romances. 

Altogether it's a lot of fun, which I'm now off to finish before it becomes impossibly late. It doesn't tell me much about 1937, except that in this version at least it's unexpectedly modern. The only thing missing is smartphones.

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros

It's a perk of my job that I get to read things I'd never normally bother with even if the quality of that reading is uneven. Forth Wing was a massive break out hit for Rebecca Yarros last year, pre-orders for the first of it's planned sequels (Iron Flame) broke records. Yarros wasn't a debut author, but before Fourth Wing if she had any profile in the UK I was unaware of it. Fantastic fiction shows a decade's worth of publications to her name. 

I won't be reading any of them, and probably won't read the rest of the Empyrean series either (we're 2 books into a planned 5). Fourth Wing was fun but as I'm neither a young, nor a new, adult I'm not really the target audience for hundreds of pages of dragons, war and rebellions, characters who are barely more than children, or tortured love affairs with implausibly hot men. There isn't necessarily an age limit on enjoying any of those things - there's no judgement on anyone's reading tastes for loving this, and if you're a Sarah J Maas fan, as millions are it's a great place to go. 

I'm also really enjoying seeing this host of women making really huge money out of writing fantasy romance. No trend stays at the top forever, but I don't see this one going very far away either because again, it's a fun combination which has provided endless inspiration for book tok creativity and fan theories - I do not think these books would do as phenomenally well in a pre-internet world. 

What works about Fourth Wing is the breakneck pacing of it, the quippy dragons, and the way Yarros, who is a military wife, builds a world in an elite military training school. There's a touch of Top Gun with dragons about it that's surprisingly effective, and if I don;t know a mass about army life, any war film I've ever watched fits with what I see here. I don't know that either Xaden or Violet are particularly appealing or original characters, but they certainly fit the tropes well enough, and at least Yarros doesn't make them unfeasibly wise beyond their years - and there isn't a  cringy sort of age gap between them either (I'm looking right at you Sarah J Maas).

The reasons I'm not hugely enthusiastic even if I was entertained? Once you stop reading and start thinking a ton of stuff doesn't make sense, The constant insistence that Violet is not only frail but the weakest link in the team (wing) despite having the survival abilities of a cockroach got tired long before the end of the book, the whole thing feels derivative (Naomi Novik's Scholomance series, Sarah J Maas everything, Discovery of Witches, and endless other iterations along the same lines) or maybe it's just extremely well trodden ground. 

It'll be interesting to see if the series can sustain its momentum, or if it fizzles out before the end - read if you can suspend your disbelief, like a bit of romantacy and don't want to be over taxed. 

The Runaway Heiress - Emma Orchard

Apologies for the lengthy silence, and a far bigger apology to my poor manager - I've spent much of the last week preparing for a work review, including writing an 18 page mini epic about how flipping fabulous I am at my job. Possibly even more tedious to read than it is to write, although I absolutely am fabulous at my job. That's now done, an article I'm writing is well in hand (for now, I'm waiting on responses from many different people so it might get a bit tense as the next week if more answers don't come in), and I've been doing a bit of reading. 

The Runaway Heiress is Emma Orchard's second book, we are fellow members of what started as a Georgette Heyer readalong on Twitter during lockdown, and so I've had a little behind the scenes look at the production of these books. A third in the series instalment comes out next week with a new publisher, so I'm currently feeling both very pleased to have finished this in time for the next one to arrive, and looking forward to reading that too. 

Emma's books are perfect for Heyer fans who don't mind, or positively welcome, a little bit more spice whilst demanding the same quality research and sense of humour. I will always contend that first and foremost Heyer writes adventure stories with the romance taking second place to that, these books are definitely romance first, and they're very good at it. 

The characters are likable, the side characters are properly drawn, people behave in a believable way, consent is a feature, bodily practicalities are acknowledged (a pet bother is that nobody ever seems to need to go to the toilet in a lot of romances) there are lots of references to favourite Heyer moments for fellow fans and altogether this is a lot of fun. I really liked 'The Second Lady Silverwood' (first book) with the minor reservation that there was more sex than I'd normally look for.

In this book I feel the balance between the saucy bits and the plot is better managed, and that overall the feel of it is more confident and assured. In short the series has found it's feet which is why I'm looking forward so much to book three and whatever happens next. 

The Prisoner's Throne - Holly Black

It's been a while - mostly due to how exhausting it is dealing with the feral kids we get during School holidays. It's very easy to believe teachers when they say behaviour is the worst they've ever known it to be. The worst offenders for us are the gangs of teen boys who run through the shop shouting p***s as loud as they can in people's faces, often whilst filming. They're too young to report through the usual channels and are fully aware that there are no real consequences to their actions. 

It's left me ready to go more or less straight to sleep as soon as I've got home, the endless rain hasn't been much of a mood lifter either, ut at least the clocks going forward hasn't had the negative effect it normally does on me, and hopefully a bit more daylight will lift my energy levels. 

I read The Prisoner's Throne just before I went away a couple of weeks ago. I liked it, but not as much as I've liked the rest of the series. I don't know if that's because this is the first Holly Black I've read that had a male protagonist, or if Oak's story was never going to be quite as interesting as Wren's, or maybe just that his story doesn't get quite enough room here given how far back it stretches into her world-building. Or maybe it's because he's the least human character she's centred on, or perhaps that the the reappearance of Jude and Cardan didn't hit quite right for me. Regardless I still enjoyed it and am encouraged that there seems to be more to come set in the same world. 

I followed up reading this by going back and listening to The Cruel Prince and skipping through key parts of the the rest of the series. I wondered if I'd still like them as much - I did. Holly Black absolutely remains as my favourite young adult writer, her take on fairy tale and folklore is a joy and I keep on recommending her to everybody who I think might enjoy these books.

The Prisoner's Throne is the second part of a duology based on minor character from the earlier Folk of the Air series. Wren, the snow child queen takes a back seat in this half, whilst Oak - the literal fairy tale prince takes centre stage as he tries to sort out the various messes he's made. I think there easily could have been three books in this series as well, especially with the reintroduction of older characters which I felt left more unresolved than otherwise. Though if there are more books to come perhaps some of those looser ends will be tied up.

I don't want to give spoilers, but there are Black's hallmark dysfunctional family relationships here, found family, young people coming to terms with who they are and want to be, a really well-built world based on centuries of folklore and myth, and a writer who never dumbs it down for her younger audience. Black isn;t just my favourite Young Adult author, she's almost my favourite fantasy author too - along with Sylvia Townsend Warner with her fairy tales. 

Columba's Bones - David Greig

Packing shorter books was a sound plan, I'm on a roll with them - Columba's Bones is 183 pages, both myself and husband read it yesterday with plenty of time to discuss how much we enjoyed it. It's book 4 in Polygon's Dark Lands series which has different authors take a moment in Scotland's history and re-imagine it. It's an excellent series to date with the promise of more good things to come.

I've been sitting on this book for a few months - it came out in October last year - of all the books in the series so far it was the least immediately appealing to me and my expectations for it were relatively low. As it happens I loved it, it also turned out to be a good companion read with Carys Davies 'Clear', touching on some similar themes. 

It opens with a short description of Iona, I as it was known in early times, as the Viking Grimur sees it sometime around 825 as he lands in a raiding party. From the Viking's point of view the raid is of mixed success - they do not find the reliquary they seek, but they get plenty of other silver and slaves. From the monk's point of view it's disastrous, almost all of them are brutally slaughtered, their monastery all but destroyed. Grimur gets dead drunk and is buried alive - but emerges more or less unscathed so his day is more mixed. 

Grimur emerges from the ground to find a single remaining monk, and Una the mead wife responsible for seeing him into his premature grave are all that's left of Iona's population. everyone else has shifted to Mull or beyond where they'll be better protected from future raids. The three form bonds of friendship and affection despite their differences, and then as Autumn comes the raiders return threatening everything all over again.

It's a funny, often brutal, insightful book. Greig uses fairly contemporary idiom to good effect, succinctly capturing the emotions of his characters when faced with either the necessity to slaughter or the impact that violence has on those who witness it. The humour emerges in the relationship between Grimur and Una who make each other laugh.

Greig's obvious knowledge and love for the Viking saga's is something else I loved about this book. He captures the rhythm of them when he talks about his Vikings, along with their jokes and epic nature. Brother Martin's struggles are told in a different voice, closer to the plainsong chanting of the monks perhaps. Iona is used well too - a living island with a pull of its own on the imagination, there's a tantalizing hint that it's a place of magic - although the nature of that magic is ambiguous - it could mean saintly miracles, or the promise of a home.

More than anything though, I think I might be charmed by moments like this: 

"In August, the puffins had left I. A Thousand tiny bird ships with muti-coloured head-prows bob on the wild green sea."

It's a perfectly evocative description, and one of many that will make this a book to turn back to. 

Clear - Carys Davies

Good intentions got away with me and it's been a while. I'm currently on holiday in the Scottish borders - idyllic, so idyllic and full of nice things to do that despite packing a lot of books I only had time to start reading yesterday (we got here on Saturday). Before that I read Holly Black's new YA title (The Prisoner's Throne) and then started re-reading through some of her previous titles just for the fun of it. More about that when I get home.

My holiday book packing was mostly shorter books that I want to clear from my TBR pile, one I had low expectations of and a couple I'm excited by. 'Clear' by Carys Davies was the low-expectation book, it's getting glowing reviews but I'm distinctly ambivalent about it. It's set in 1843 against a background of the Scottish clearances and the great disruption of the Scottish church. John Ferguson is one of the ministers who has joined the Free Church, putting himself and his wife in a perilous financial situation in the process. 

To ease this he has accepted a job found through his brother in law to visit a remote (imaginary) island somewhere between Shetland and Norway. He is to serve the last remaining inhabitant with an eviction notice and survey it for the suitability of putting sheep on it. Unfortunately, he meets with a near fatal accident almost immediately and ends up being pulled naked, and unconscious from the beach by the man he has come to displace. 

Over the next few weeks they slowly build a relationship, despite Ivar having lived entirely alone for 20 years and John Ferguson not speaking his language, based on the Norn that would once have been spoken in Orkney and Shetland. The reason for John being there, and Ivar's withholding of the photograph of John's wife that he found before he rescued the man sit as uneasy secrets between them.

Carys Davies writes well, but there's a lot of story to fit into 146 pages and I think she's trying to do too much. She was partly inspired by Jacob Jacobsen's dictionary of the Norn language - a Faroese researcher who came to Shetland in 1893. The last known Norn speaker had died in 1850, although plenty of words survived. It's worth reading up on Jacob Jacobsen's work and the influence it had. 

My issue with this book is that I feel the setting and the plot are at odds. I can go with Ivar being the last man standing on his small island after everybody else chooses to leave, I can't quite imagine the size of it - maybe something like a thousand acres based on the number of sheep expected to live on it. I can imagine the climate, though I'm not convinced that Davies has, but the bigger issue is that the island has essentially already been cleared. I'm not even sure why the factor assumes that Ivar is still alive, but the small amount of land he uses to feed himself would have no discernable impact on the number of sheep that could live there and he'd be the ideal shepherd. The airy dismissal that such a role is required doesn't really make sense.

I spent far too long considering the logistics of getting a lot of sheep to the Island, the chances of losing a lot of sheep over the edge of the island, the chances of losing sheep to passing sailors, and if it would make economic sense to go so far to remove the wool and the quantities of unwanted rams each year. There's also the probability that a man who has spent so much of his adult life alone isn't remembering a language once spoken, but has developed his own language to describe the world around himself.

There's also the relationship between Ivar and John Ferguson, which initially seems to be framed in terms of a parent and child dynamic, first Ivar takes care of the completely helpless Ferguson, and then as Ferguson regains his strength and memories he seems to take a paternal interest in his companion, the pivot to a more romantic relationship between them again felt like trying to force too much into the small space of the book. 

You cannot always have it all even when you're the author, so for all the beautiful writing, this lived down to the expectations I came at it with. 

Game Without Rules - Michael Gilbert

That's another week that's gotten away from me - we've been both short-staffed and very busy at work - it's been all I can do to stay awake long enough to eat and shower when I get home. Hopes of finishing a jumper I'm working on by next week have gone by the wayside.

I have managed to reclaim 'Game Without Rules' from my husband for long enough to write about it though. Michael Gilbert is one of my favourite discoveries from the British Library Crime Classics series, the three novels they've republished are all excellent (Death has Deep Roots, Smallbone Deceased and Death has Deep Notes). Gilbert wrote a lot, Mr. Behrans and Mr. Calder are recurring characters in a series of short stories - this collection spans the 1960s and for the most part I love them, but they're harder to recommend than the novels.

Mr Clader and Mr Behrans are Second World War veterans of the utmost outward respectability. They're also spies and assassins for British intelligence. Gilbert's style here verges on the clipped noir of a Raymond Chandler but with more humour and distinctly British. Written at the height of the Cold War for a generation whose morality had been shaped by a hot war there are things here that seem startlingly callous. It's a very effective way of creating an atmosphere and beats Ian Flemming's Bond novels hands down for me.

In the case of this particular edition, there are a couple of annoying typos which are a distraction. They don't bother me too much, but I know for some people it's enough to ruin a book. There are also some old-fashioned attitudes toward race which read oddly now. I wouldn't call it racism as such, it certainly doesn't seem to me that that was ever Gilbert's intention or way of thinking (though I'm not well qualified to judge) but it's definitely a colonial way of thinking, and 60 years or more after these stories were first written some of them have aged better than others. I don't find Gilbert offensive, but it seems worth saying that readers with more finely tuned sensitivities might.

There may be the death of some pets which I found extremely upsetting - as I was meant too, and again I feel like a fair warning is due. Otherwise if you like a bit of cold war espionage you're hitting gold with this book and you should buy it immediately.