Tag: books

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

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The Book of Elsewhere is a novel about a man who cannot die whose quest for a mortal life turns into something far more complex. B has been known by many names and guises, and as a warrior who cannot die, but now he’s looking for a mortal conclusion. An American black-ops group wants his help and in return, they’ll help him, even though the devastation he can cause sows discord. When one of the soldiers suddenly comes back to life, it seems that the previous logic of B’s existence is more complicated, and there might be another force after something.

Just the very fact of the two authors will draw people into this novel, as it did me (mostly asking “what on earth must that be like?”). As reviews have already pointed out, this is not an easy book: it immediately pushes you into the world without mercy or explanation, there’s a range of interludes that even afterwards you can’t always be sure about, and the writing style is definitely on the literary end of sci-fi. However, being braced for this difficulty going in, I actually found The Book of Elsewhere far more readable than I was expecting. Sure, there were sections where I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but I don’t read that much sci-fi anyway because I don’t like confusing world-building, so I wasn’t going in expecting to get every moment and plot point.

Given Keanu Reeves’ involvement, it was impossible not to picture B as the actor, but for me that made it easier to engage with the character’s story quickly, without needing to build up a picture of him. I’m aware that the character comes from Reeves’ comic books, but I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed more knowledge of the character, particularly as the novel is meditative and not really about action (there are a few action sequences, but not many). The other characters were at times forgettable, but by the end I felt like I understood everyone’s place in the narrative.

This is a book that has the existentialism of immortality sci-fi, the timeline-playfulness of literary historical fiction, and the memorable main character of John Wick, combined into something that is sometimes confusing, pretty gripping, and generally much more of an enjoyable read that I was expecting.

Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson

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Anyone’s Ghost is a love story about destruction and the people who change your life. Theron David Alden is fifteen and spending the summer with his dad in New Hampshire when he meets Jake, who is older but likes the same things—bands, drugs—as him. They return to their separate lives, but over the next two decades, Theron is haunted by his love for Jake and how much he’s always hoped for Jake to want him too.

This is a novel about character and relationships rather than plot, a fact that’s made clear by the opening basically giving you the key turning points in the narrative at the start: three car crashes. That out of the way, there’s space to focus on Theron, and Jake, and a few others around them, and the impact of love and depression and a desire for oblivion, but also a hope of something. The first part of the book centres around Theron’s coming of age story, trying to avoid his own queerness and rationalise how he feels about Jake whilst they spend all of their time drinking and doing drugs, and then the second part moves to a twentysomething Theron, not long out of college and in New York looking for something, when that something becomes Jake suddenly visiting. This becomes a bittersweet story of growing up and still hoping to get what you’ve dreamed of.

The other main relationship for Theron in the book, with Lou, isn’t mentioned in the blurb, but is also central to the book, as they explore open relationships and what feelings you might burden a partner with, seeming in contrast in some ways to Jake’s relationship throughout the book with Jess, who as readers from Theron’s perspective, we know little about. There is a richness of queer relationships and ways of navigating the world, even when they are, as they are often in the book, melancholy ones and messy ones.

The third part brings the book to nearly the present day, and the tragedy already set up in the opening, by way of a speed through Theron’s life for a while. This part does feel a lot more rushed than the rest of the book, but does have a nice ending scene between two characters that feels like it rounds off the story well, whilst continuing the sense of ‘haunting’ pervading the whole thing.

Anyone’s Ghost is a bittersweet queer love story and an exploration of oblivion. I found the middle part in particular hard to put down, with its memorable image of New York City in a storm and two characters trying to find who they might be together, even briefly.

Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The Future and History of Transness in Cinema by Willow Maclay and Caden Gardner

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Corpses, Fools and Monsters is a journey through the history of ‘trans images’ in cinema, looking at how representations of trans people on screen have come about, changed, and evolved over time. The book is structured through time but also theme, taking into account wider changes in trans liberation and representation over the decades as well as cinematic depictions, and it is organised in a way that allows for a comprehensive overview as well as in depth exploration of individual films and performances.

The book is fairly academic but very accessible, not just for people studying film, and it is ideal for anyone interested in how trans people have been represented on film, covering some of the often more infamous examples as well as less well-known ones. It focuses on history and readings of films, not dense theory, and explore some of the debate and issues around films like The Silence of the Lambs or Boys Don’t Cry, whilst also looking at the work of trans filmmakers and where trans film might be going, ending with films like We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. By nature of the book as a history of trans cinema, it doesn’t go into particular analytical depth about films or creators, but it offers a journey through film that is likely to be enlightening for many people, trans and cis alike.

I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

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I Was A Teenage Slasher is a horror novel set in Texas in 1989, as a seventeen-year-old finds himself part of a genre he never expected. Tolly Driver spends all his time with his best friend Amber, isn’t cool, and isn’t really notable other than having a recently deceased dad, but when Tolly and Amber go to an ill-fated party, suddenly Tolly finds himself the centre of a narrative he never expected. What happens when you’re the slasher and you never had an option not to be?

Having read several of Stephen Graham Jones’ previous books, I wanted to read this one without really paying attention to the blurb, so I didn’t have any particular expectations going in, but I love how Jones takes the concept—what if the protagonist (and narrator) becomes a slasher and the world bends supernaturally to facilitate all the tropes of the genre—and makes it both full of slasher gore and quite emotional. Tolly is telling the story by looking back from some kind of present day, giving the narration a sense of knowing what will happen without revealing too many details (though the twist near the end I felt was set up as I expected it). The narrative follows a particular pattern—it is a slasher, even as Tolly and Amber try to stop it being one—and it’s decently paced even with Jones’ distinctively detail-packed style (I definitely took a couple of his books to get used to his style, as you can get lost in all the offhand mentions of things).

There’s a fair bit of meta-commentary on slashers in horror fiction these days, with writers like Jones and Grady Hendrix exploring how the inconsistencies of slasher films could actually be utilised for interesting storytelling. In this book, the supernatural nature and inevitability of slasher tropes becomes the centre for a fun story of unexpected consequences. If you like meta-horror and know some of the expectations of the slasher genre, you’ll probably have a good time with this one.

How We Named The Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica

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How We Named The Stars is the debut novel by Ordorica, about a Mexican American boy who goes to college and falls in love, and then has deal with heartbreak and loss. Daniel de La Luna moves from California to Ithaca, New York to start college, where he, feeling out of place, meets his new roommate, athletic Sam. Despite seeming like the opposite of Daniel, they quickly become close, and then in love, as the first year of college speeds away from them, but by the end of the year, they are separated. Daniel’s summer in Mexico unearths his family’s past, and then tragedy forces Daniel to reckon with the dead.

Having read Ordorica’s poetry, I was excited for this novel, and it surpassed my expectations, as a tender coming of age novel that explores how to move forward with heartbreak and grief, drawing strength from family and friends and a sense of queer community that spans time. It is told as Daniel’s recollections, narrating to Sam, with each chapter started by a diary snippet from Daniel’s uncle, who died before he was born. Through this perspective, you find out early on what happens at the tragic climax of the book, so the narrative is built around getting there, and then moving past it. Unlike some coming of age books featuring death and grief, this one felt complex and careful, asking what it means to keep going on living, especially when someone dies young.

There’s also a fantastic sense of queer community throughout the novel, from Daniel immediately finding gay friends when he starts college to ideas of cross-generational community even when you cannot ever meet someone. Even though it is romantic love at the centre of the book, it is also very much about queer friendship and about different kinds of friendship and love between people, and about learning about those as you grow up. At the same time, it is also about finding people like you, as Daniel is constantly realising how vital it is for him to find both people and writing that go beyond the straight, White experience.

Both the college and Mexico settings are vividly realised and this is a bittersweet book that doesn’t wallow in tragedy, but instead depicts sadness, love, and healing in a multifaceted way. How We Named The Stars is a gripping novel powered by character that feels like the next part of the lineage of queer coming of age literary fiction.

Plaything by Bea Setton

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Plaything is a novel about obsession, image and cruelty, as a Cambridge PhD student becomes entangled with a closed-off man with an ever-present ex-girlfriend. Anna moves to Cambridge to start her PhD, and soon finds herself top in her lab and with new close friends, even though she’s haunted by a chance car accident when she arrived. She meets Caden, a physiotherapist, and is enthralled, but she also feels the echoes of his ex-girlfriend, who he will barely talk about, and Anna starts to become obsessed, as the Covid lockdown removes other distractions from her life.

Told from Anna’s first person perspective, the narrative unfolds with a languid menace, an undercurrent of violence and a strange sense of unknowing because Anna doesn’t really know much about Caden, even when you think she should. The actual plot is pretty straightforward, with a twist or two at the end that leave unanswered questions about guilt and blame that do seem to tie together some of the themes of the book in their unanswered nature. The book is full of unlikeable characters and that makes it compelling in wondering what they will do (and why, as there’s a few random plot/character details that come out of nowhere and don’t really go anywhere).

The narrative explicitly states it is not a Cambridge novel nor a Covid novel at various points, but what is quite interesting is how it is those things. Though the book is at its heart about a relationship between two people who weren’t really connected to each other and about a clever twentysomething woman who should have it all but falls into a hazy world of obsession, it is also—despite Anna’s protestations—a look at Cambridge and Covid. The Cambridge element, not just the setting but in Anna’s position as a PhD scientist and elements like the cruelty of lab animals, catalyses the obsession, making her someone who needs to know, and it is interesting to think how much this is crucial to the narrative. At the same time, the book depicts the onset of Covid and the first lockdown, and that too feels crucial to the obsession and threat, and the choices people made during that time.

The central plot with Anna, Caden, and Caden’s ex-girlfriend is perhaps less interesting to me than a lot of the other elements of the book, but I enjoyed the atmosphere of it and its occasional forays into questions about what violence people inflict on others. I find it funny how much it was explicitly not dark academia, when for me, it’s the sort of thing dark academia should be, exploring how particular academic environments might cause violence and harm, and it’s interesting to see this kind of narrative focused on a scientist.

Them! by Harry Josephine Giles

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I first listened to the audiobook of Them! and then I read the physical book, so my review is split into two parts:

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Them! is a new collection of poetry by Harry Josephine Giles, and the audiobook is read by Giles herself, making full use of audio editing to get across poetic repetition and layering. I usually read poetry on the page or hear it performed, and this was the first poetry audiobook I’ve listened to, and wow, was it one to begin with. The collection is packed full of wit and hard-hitting moments, moving between register and style to explore the modern world of work, technology, and nature, and life as a trans person in that world.

I’m already a big fan of Giles’ work, but Them! is so packed full of things that get to me, from references to vaporwave, the Pokemon Mew, and the game Hades, to powerful commentary about existing. Many of the earlier poems take their titles from words relating to transness and queerness and I really like how these all formed different conversations with each other. A stand-out poem for me is ‘The Reasonable People’, which plays with public discourse around trans people’s existence.

I often form opinions on poetry collections based on whether they inspire me to write poems myself, and Them! was bursting with inspiration for me, and felt like a breath of fresh air, both in style and subject matter. I can’t wait to get my hands on a print copy to read alongside the audio performance and to return to over and over whenever I need it.

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And now to return having read the physical copy. It is fascinating to see how the two versions of the text work together and sometimes against each other, with some parts easier/harder to get from the audiobook and some from the print book. I loved that the print version of ‘The Reasonable People’ was much more glitched and messy than the audio version, and that some poems that I didn’t quite get from listening I could get a lot more from when I could see their layout on the page.

Some favourites: ‘Some Definitions’, ‘Them!’ , ‘May a Transsexual Hear a Bird?’, ‘The Reasonable People’, ‘No Such Thing As Belonging’, ‘Elegy’.

I don’t think there will be a more vital poetry collection for me personally this year. I’d highly recommend either formats or, really, both if possible.

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán

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Clean is a tense novel narrated by a maid in a locked room, telling her side of the sequence of events that left her there after the death of the daughter of the house. Estela moved to Santiago and found a job working for a well-off middle class family, a doctor and his lawyer wife and then their newborn daughter. She describes how over the seven years, things began to go wrong, always alluding and building up to the death of the girl.

This is a book that unfolds with dread, like a nightmare, as Estela narrates what it is like to work as if invisible, unless she does something wrong. As her life is contrasted with that of the family she works for, she argues that this didn’t cause resentment, but as death starts to impact them, it becomes hazy as to exactly what is happening. The book leaves as many questions as it answers, trapping Estela and her narrative in a limbo in which the reader can interpret, but not know for sure. One notable thing is how isolated Estela is, even with the backdrop of political change, and how much her story is about her isolation, not just the ‘present’ of the narrative in which she is locked in a room. In a way, you are locked in with her, forced to see the disgusting side of the family and the work Estela does, and it seems to give her some kind of purpose to be narrating, even though without any kind of response, there’s no real sense anyone is actually listening to her.

Clean is ideal for fans of literary thrillers, weaving together class and domestic work in Chile with a memorable character who is an invisible woman, a forty-something maid. It is especially enjoyable to get this kind of narrative instead of the many thrillers centred around the perspective middle class characters and families, and in that way it reminds me of fiction like the film Parasite, using class and wealth disparity as part of the tension in a thriller.

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

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Horror Movie is a novel about a cursed film production, as the only remaining major cast or crew member gets involved with a big budget reboot. In 1993, a group of filmmakers made Horror Movie, but what happened on set meant that the film was never completed, and only three scenes (and the screenplay) were leaked online. In the present day, the only surviving cast member, the guy playing the infamous masked ‘Thin Kid’, is now a famous figure, as fans try and work out what really happened, and he’s involved in the reboot of the film, whilst also now narrating this story he’s telling about the present and the past of making both versions of the film.

Lots of horror these days plays with ideas of internet obsession and fandom, and in this case, Paul Tremblay takes the lost media and cursed production ideas to create a novel that is part screenplay, part unreliable narrator tells all. Despite being about a film that is pitched as a slasher, this isn’t a novel about jump scares and desperate running from the bad guy. Instead, you get the script, with its weird horror movie moments, and the narration, which is more about setting up ideas of what horror actually happened, and leaving you question it all even after the book ends. People looking for horror that is scary might be disappointed, as this one is quite a slow burn, with some vague body horror elements, but really exploring the horror of what you do and don’t see, and do and don’t believe.

I liked the whole mask thing, which reminded me of the Goosebumps book The Haunted Mask which I found very scary as a child, and the messy way that the unreliable narration left you unsure what the characters actually did or were even like. The purposeful distance through this, with the narrator having been purposefully distanced during original filming, means that you don’t really get much of any character, not even the narrator really, and the most coherent narrative is the script you’re reading, and even that narrative is questioned in the novel in various ways, through different shooting ideas or queries about if that version of the script is the original one. The book forces you to be the kind of voyeur that the narrator hates, the internet fan trying to piece together what happened, and also the voyeur that the script creates through the three other teens who aren’t the Thin Kid.

I don’t know how much Horror Movie will stand out from other examples of cursed film production fiction, but its focus on what we get to see and what perspective the viewer/reader gets makes it a very interesting book, if not a scary one. I found it fun to read and easy to get through in a single sitting, and I like the mythology around it, with the mask and the crocodile poem. I think the endings of both timelines leave a lot of interesting ambiguities, but I also think there’s other things that could’ve been delved into further (for example, one thread of the book is the unsafe set practices and ways in which the narrator became the character, and the dynamic of having two female characters in charge of this whilst the narrator is male and asked to diet, wear just underwear, etc is something that isn’t really explored, despite being a flip of a lot of traditional Hollywood dangerous/bad set myths).

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

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Private Rites is a novel about three sisters as the world slowly floods, coming to terms with their father’s death and their relationship to each other. The rain has been ongoing for so long now, and sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes live separate lives, until their rich architect father’s death forces them back together. There’s his distinctive house, there’s the mystery of their mothers and what happened to them, and there’s the sense that this bleak, claustrophobia world expects something from them.

Vaguely ‘King Lear if all of the daughters were queer’, this apocalyptic novel feels very much a follow up to Armfield’s Our Wives Under The Sea, a damp-infused book in which not very much happens, but there’s a lingering sense of dread. The narrative moves between focusing on each of the three sisters, plus a kind of chorus of the ‘city’ that seems to be non-specifically London, and for a long time, the book seems to mostly be a family drama with the backdrop of this flooded world. I really wasn’t sure where it was headed, but the climax of the novel gives it a bit of a twist, bringing together some of the threads in a maybe unexpected way that changes the genre.

The ‘all three sisters are queer’ angle is interestingly explored, with each of them in a different place in their romantic lives and particularly Irene and Agnes’ relationships are important throughout the book. Agnes’ character development throughout the novel was one of my favourite elements, and I also liked Irene and Jude’s relationship. Iris is pleasingly flawed as a character, trying to control what she cannot, and once you get into the book enough to understand who these characters are and what’s going on with them, it is very character-driven.

I found it hard to get into the book at first, as it doesn’t feel like it is going anywhere, and I don’t think this was helped by the fact that I’d not read anything about it beforehand so wasn’t aware it is vaguely King Lear (which is one of my least favourite Shakespeare plays). However, as the slow tension rose (and so did the floodwaters), it became more gripping, and by the end, it felt like it did have a good payoff, though it does leave quite a lot of ambiguous. Armfield is great at the literary unsettling novel, and Private Rites is a fascinating take on a climate crisis future and sisters with pent up resentments once it gets into it.