Tag: books

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

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Frankissstein cover

Frankissstein is a fresh, thoughtful novel that blends a retelling of Frankenstein using AI with the story of Mary Shelley thinking about life and death. In the modern day, Ry—a young trans doctor in love with Victor Stein, professor working on AI—meets Ron Lord, businessman from Wales trying to make his range of sex robots sell. Ry met Victor at a cryonics facility in Arizona, but now Victor is working on something and Manchester and Ry, Victor, Ron, and the religious Claire somehow all become part of it. And in 1816, Mary Shelley starts work on Frankenstein, thinking about vitality and the moment of life. Across both narratives, questions are asked about what makes life, what is the future of humanity, and what control do we have over our own and other bodies?

There have been a lot of retellings of classic novels over the past few years and a lot of attempts to fictionalise the story of Frankenstein‘s creation for its 200 anniversary. What Winterson manages to do with Frankissstein is blend the two in a way that makes sense, allowing modern questions of AI to mix with Shelley’s look at life creation and ethics, but also making a novel that says more than that. The modern storyline is often funny and engages with medical concepts of the body as well as how technology can remove people from traditional ideas of a body in a way easily comparable to the manufactured body of the Creature in Frankenstein. Ry being trans is used to explore his own sense of body and the fact that people often change parts of their bodies even without digital technology or robotics.

Winterson’s version of Mary Shelley’s life—not only Villa Diodati and the creation of Frankenstein, but going beyond that to her experiences of death and to the work of Ada Lovelace—is highly fictional, based around conversation rather than reciting historical fact. This means that it is mostly about debate and about thoughts on artificial life and related areas, including gender roles. The key figures are painted as complex, not simple heroes and villains, which is refreshing in the subgenre of fictionalised versions of the people Mary Shelley knew, and it feels like one of the few that allow Mary Shelley to think and consider the issues she raises in Frankenstein and clearly have an interest in scientific thought, but also be a woman in a strict society who runs away because she falls in love with a poet.

Considering the many afterlives of Frankenstein as a novel and how unfaithful most of them tend to be, Frankissstein shouldn’t be a shock, but it also feels fitting, sewing together parts of Mary Shelley, other stories, quotations, and a new twist on a Frankenstein-inspired narrative that considers the human body, its changeability, and its future. Both witty and informal, and engaging with interesting debate, Frankissstein is unsurprisingly good. It isn’t really about the story as much as what it is saying (which may be what a lot of people think about Frankenstein, too).

The Anarchists’ Club by Alex Reeve

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The Anarchists' Club cover

The follow up to The House on Half Moon Street, The Anarchists’ Club is a historical crime novel that follows Leo Stanhope again as he finds himself caught up in another mystery. His life has been quiet since the events of the previous book, but when the police come to talk to him about a woman found dead in a club for anarchists with his address in her purse, he is drawn into her murder and into what has happened to her two children. And tied up in the case is a man from his past who blackmails him into providing an alibi, making Leo more mixed up in the events than expected.

As with the previous novel, the characters are what really make this series. Leo is a great protagonist, a trans man who plays chess every week and can’t help but get involved when there’s a mystery to get to the bottom of. Leo’s landlord Alfie and Alfie’s daughter Constance are also vivid characters, a kind of family that Leo has found in the heart of London who try to look out for him, despite his foolish tendency to get into trouble. The plot is a gripping one, a tangled web with a rich family in the middle and an anarchists’ club who find themselves as a police scapegoat. It would’ve been interesting to hear more about the anarchists’ club, but as Leo isn’t interested in revolutionary politics, the reader will have to stick with glimpses into that world.

In some ways, The Anarchists’ Club makes for a more thrilling read than its predecessor, as it doesn’t need to set up the characters as much, but can delve further into them as the narrative progresses. The somewhat clumsy emphasis on Leo’s physical discomfort that let the first book down is less prevalent in this one, too. The series isn’t always nuanced, but the depiction of Victorian crime and Leo’s tendency to run headfirst into trying to help people make the books a decent read.

The Binding by Bridget Collins

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The Binding cover

The Binding is a powerful and engrossing novel with a memorable premise. Emmett Farmer works on his family’s farm, fighting a strange illness. When a letter comes summoning him to become a binder’s apprentice and learn how to bind books—something surrounded with superstition and fear—it feels like they’re trying to get rid of him. But what he learns is that book binding isn’t a simple craft: it is allowing people to forget memories, to bind them away in books regardless of what they are. And when he finds a book with his name on, the question is, what has he forgotten? And who is the strange young man who got a binding just after Emmett started at the binding workshop?

This is a genre-defying book that feels at first like a kind of historical fantasy, and turns into a love story and a look at the power of forgetting and the dangers of being able to do so. Split into three sections, the narrative is carefully unfurled in a way that makes it heartbreaking, but with the hope of a happy ending. Collins does well to give enough detail to move the narrative forward, whilst constantly holding back and teasing details. It was difficult to put down due to this and the need for the circumstance-defying love story in its centre to be resolved and to see Emmett and the man he has forgotten properly reunited. Emmett’s relationship with his sister was a highlight too, a well-written version of bickering yet loving siblings who find something come between them.

The Binding didn’t sound like the kind of book I’d usually find this gripping and the opening felt more light historical fantasy than I would normally pick up, but it quickly became a riveting story of love and injustice. The concept of the book binding was well worked out, but there was never a need to explain how it fit into the world; instead, Emmett’s story was the focal point, which made it emotional and character-driven. It is a fascinating look at what would happen if people could chose to forget certain memories, the ways in which it could be exploited, and the lengths to go to get those memories back.

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

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Underland cover

Underland is a look at the world below, an exploration of the Earth’s ‘underworld’ and the effect it has on society, science, and elsewhere. Glaciers, underground rivers, caves, mines, tree roots, catacombs, and nuclear waste sites all feature as Macfarlane combines physical travel with academic reading and a look at human imagination and past.

The book feels poised between the past and the future, looking constantly at time and deep time and what will happen to these underlands next. Human stories are charted next to explanations of history and science, all written in an approachable and interdisciplinary style. Some of the most fascinating parts are those about experiments looking for dark matter deep underground, Macfarlane’s claustrophobic journey under Paris, and descriptions of people’s obsession with caving and underground river charting. There is an eerie sense throughout the book, a haunting of what is beneath our feet and how much of it is unknown in some way, and combined with the lyrical style it creates quite an atmosphere.

Underland is strange and even uncanny, unlike other books you might read, and this is why it is deeply (pun unintended) engaging. Whether or not you usually read books about geography, exploration, or travel, this is one worth picking up, blending many different areas and combining the academic and theoretical ways of looking at landscape with scientific and very human ones. It is a book about nature, but also about the human imagination and our sense of the underland, whatever it may be.

The Unquiet Heart by Kaite Welsh

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The Unquiet Heart cover

The Unquiet Heart is the follow up to The Wages of Sin, and sees protagonist Sarah Gilchrist continue in her battle to become a doctor whilst trying to get to the bottom of murder and blackmail. Sarah is meant to be marrying Miles Greene to save her reputation, but a dead body found at their engagement party sparks off a different course, where Miles is accused of murder and Sarah is in the perfect position to investigate what is really going on. At the same time, she and her fellow female medical students must endeavour to be taken seriously, and Sarah’s complicated relationship with her professor and sometime companion in crime solving, Gregory Merchiston, continues to be unconventional.

Welsh’s series has a real focus on the characters and the lives of a range of women in the historical setting, which makes it ideal both for historical crime fans and for those who aren’t such a fan of the mystery genre. Sarah Gilchrist is once again a compelling protagonist, pleasingly flawed and stubborn and sharply clever. Her wit is a delight and her banter both with Merchiston and with fellow student Julia is a highlight of the book. As with the previous book, there’s a lot of focus on societal attitudes towards women and morality, focusing a lot on freedom, marriage, and what is seen as acceptable even by those with liberal attitudes. This provides an interesting insight into the period, as well as a lot of frustration as to how difficult it is not only for Sarah and her fellow female medical students, but for various women, particularly the servants in the book, with Welsh hinting a lot towards some of the class issues that intersect with gender.

This is a very satisfying sequel to The Wages of Sin, with an engrossing plotline that centres around Sarah and the choices she must make or that are made for her in her life. The mystery narrative is vital, but also feels less important than the key elements of the series: Sarah, the other characters, and the depiction of women’s lives in Victorian Edinburgh. These form a real heart (excuse the pun) to the series and make The Unquiet Heart so difficult to put down. It will be difficult to wait for another instalment to see what Sarah does next (and to hope that her and the other women studying to become doctors find happiness).

Spring by Ali Smith

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Spring cover in front of daffodils

Spring is the third novel in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, and it is the story of migration, place, and grief. Once again, Smith blends contemporary politics, intertwined stories, and cultural references into a novel that feels fresh and imaginative, but also biting and clever. There is a focus on immigration—with a lot of clever punning and also harsh realities of detention centres—and also on the divisions in Britain, as seen across the other novels as well. There’s also quite a theme of afterlives, not quite the rebirth of spring but of the ways people live on and even speak after death.

Possibly the most engrossing of the quartet so far, Spring feels very typically Ali Smith whilst also capturing something about spring and something about contemporary British, migration, and otherness.

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin

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Please Read This Leaflet Carefully cover

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a novel about chronic illness told in reverse, a powerful look at different versions of a self and how illness can be told. Laura has dealt with a catalogue of health issues including severe allergies and was diagnosed with endometriosis in her twenties. The novel opens with her as a young mother in New York City, battling for the energy to keep her life in balance and look after her daughter. The narrative then travels backwards, charting the changes in her health and her life as she grows up and moves abroad, heading towards her growing up in Norway constantly in and out of hospital and doctor’s appointments.

The novel is a moving one, with detailed descriptions of the way pain affects her life when it is happening and also when it isn’t as severe. Laura is plagued by the memories and remembered sensations of her hospital trips and operations throughout her life, and the structure of the novel allows for these hauntings to come before the events themselves. There is a kind of backwards inevitability, knowing that Laura does become someone she might not have thought she ever could but also that she will continue to be ill and continue to face the realities of medical care. Also notable is the way the novel also focuses on other areas of her life—relationships and divorce, sexuality, career and education—but weaves in the ways in which these are all affected and complicated by chronic illness.

Havelin has written a novel with a powerful depiction of chronic illness, using a distinctive structure to tell this story. Memorable and detailed, it will make people regardless of their own medical conditions and history think about their relationship with their body and its limitations.

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

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The Science of Storytelling is a fascinating look at stories, our relationship with them, and how this can be used to tell better stories. Aimed at both storytellers and those interested in how humans tell stories, Storr combines examples from literature and screen stories with psychological research and experiments to make points about the importance of character, change, and other aspects of gripping stories. Myths and archetypes come up, but so do Mr Men and famous lines from Hollywood films. It doesn’t necessarily change the world in what it says, but it tries to compare how people have created famous stories with how humans use stories to justify their actions and to make sense of their own self.

Accessible and interesting, this book can help bring inspiration to those who are trying to tell stories in some format or another, or allow people to think more about how people tell stories about themselves and their lives to make sense of the world.

The Editor by Steven Rowley

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The Editor cover

The Editor is a bittersweet novel about a writer working through his relationship with his mother whilst completing his first book with a very famous editor. James is a struggling writer who lives in NYC with his boyfriend. When he gets a call that an editor wants his novel, he doesn’t expect it to be Jackie Kennedy—Mrs Onassis—or that this will spark off not only a chance to work on his autobiography novel about his family, but face up to his mother and discover a long-kept secret.

Written in a similar charming style to Rowley’s Lily and the Octopus (and with a similarly hapless narrator), this is an engrossing and funny novel that doesn’t feel as self-indulgent as some books about writers can. Instead, it focuses on how sometimes you need an outsider to push you towards familial reconciliation, and how an unexpected connection with someone so famous could affect you on a personal level. James is a likeable yet flawed narrator, sometimes self-obsessed and always unable to take compliments, and Rowley’s fictionalised version of Jackie Kennedy Onassis near the end of her life is an interesting portrait (particularly as someone who knew nothing about her real publishing career).

The Editor is a charming book that shows how famous figures can be inserted into a fictional narrative in a stylish and purposeful way. Fans of Rowley’s first novel will enjoy it, as well as anyone interested in funny yet emotional looks at mother-child relationships.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

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The Old Drift cover

The Old Drift is an epic novel spanning genres and generations that tells the story of three families in Zambia and how their lives interact along with politics, science, and colonialism. It begins in 1904 and moves across the twentieth century and into the future, with a mysterious swarm chorus that floods into the gap between each part.

At first, the novel seems to be the kind of book that entwines the narratives of characters across generations, showing human error, life, and passion. However, it becomes apparent that The Old Drift is more epic than this as it darts through fairy tale, science fiction, and political narrative, all tied by the personal ups and downs of the characters and the Zambian setting. The book is long but keeps changing, revealing connections between characters and hidden gaps as well as these genre shifts. The characters it brings together at the end—Joseph, Jacob, and Naila—are shown to have come from the complicated lives of their parents and grandparents, which gives their technological narrative (which could easily be a novel on its own) a richer history.

The Old Drift is an exciting, epic novel that plays around with genre and character, but keeping a central core of human life and the passing of time. It is one to watch out for.