Tag: books

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Daisy Jones and The Six cover

Daisy Jones and The Six is the story of the rise and fall of a fictional 70s rock band, told in the style of an oral history music biography. Daisy Jones is a lost girl and a talented singer. The Six are a band fronted by newly sober Billy Dunne, who have found their sound but still need extra spark. When they’re brought together, they blaze bright, first with a track on which Daisy does guest vocals and then, when that song becomes a hit, a full album. During the course of this, however, it becomes apparent that the band are not going to keep it together and their many tensions are going to come to a head.

This is a music novel. From the oral history style to the lyrics in the back, it is clear that 70s music is infused throughout. In some ways, this makes the novel a little strange: at first, it can feel so much like a biography that it’s easy to forget the band are fictional. As the differences in the characters’ accounts of events and emotions become more clear, however, it becomes very obvious that this is a constructed narrative that is purposefully looking at how differently the characters viewed things. In particular, misunderstandings between Daisy and Billy whilst they are writing the album and beyond show how the oral history style really allows characters to clash overtly. As in the fictional band, often the other characters recede into the background in comparison to the two of them, which is also crucial to the way their comparable addictions are shown (indeed, for a book marketed as a fun 70s music romp, there is a lot about addiction in it, as might be expected, handled seriously).

Daisy Jones and The Six makes you wish the songs were real so you could hear the emotions described in the narrative. It is also surprisingly moving by the end, despite spending a lot of time doing quite typically rock biography things like describing details about the band getting together from everyone’s perspective. It is a hard book to categorise, but one for anyone interested in a book with a vivid sense of music and character.

We Were Always Here edited by Ryan Vance & Michael Lee Richardson

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We Were Always Here cover

We Were Always Here is an anthology of fiction and poetry showcasing Scottish LGBT+ writers across a range of genres and styles. Some pieces are historical or speculative, others look at modern life, love, and hints of the magical. As with many anthologies that contain a variety of styles across a common theme, there are certain pieces that will resonate with different people, and others that are less up someone’s street, and it’s a strength of the editing that the collection moves between different pieces so well, bringing different work together side by side. Some personal favourites were some of the contemporary-set stories looking at characters and their relationships (like Christina Neuwirth’s ‘Sequins’) and a poem about a punctuation error around Mary Shelley.

This anthology is a chance to discover new writers, think about different genres and styles, and get a quick hit of varied LGBT writing all at once. It is important that collections like this keep coming out (no pun intended) as they give a chance to read both familiar and unfamiliar authors together in an accessible format. And it’s always good to see another great book from 404 Ink.

Monsters by Sharon Dogar

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Monsters cover

Monsters is a young adult novel about the creation of Frankenstein, fictionalising the life of Mary Shelley around that time. In 1814, Mary Godwin meets Percy Bysshe Shelley at the behest of her father, writer William Godwin. Mary and Percy immediately are struck by one another, and bond over the writing of Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after giving birth to Mary. The young lovers run away, escaping societal and Godwin’s disapproval, but they have Jane, Mary’s stepsister, along with them. The tangle between the three of them is complicated, as they balance radical ideals with the realities of life.

I came to this novel with low expectations: it is difficult to do justice to historical fiction centred around iconic writers’ lives, especially the Romantics. Too many books try to simplify their personalities, but Monsters thankfully keeps them complex, giving perspectives from Mary and Jane (who later changes her name to Claire), as well as more fleeting glimpses into the thoughts of Mary’s sister Fanny, Percy, and Lord Byron. The downside of this is that the perspective can shift within chapters and sections, sometimes in a disorientating fashion, so you will suddenly get the motivations of a character when you thought that part of narrative was from another’s perspective.

By focusing on the time from when Mary and Percy met until her finishing writing Frankenstein, Dogar has a chunk of their lives to focus on, rather than stretching too far. This helps with the fictionalisation too: it is a neater story without their endless travels around Italy, and with keeping the tension between Mary, Percy, and Jane, rather than bringing in later people who complicated their relationships. Dogar tries hard to balance Mary and Jane, particularly in terms of sympathy, whilst also not painting Percy as a villain, as many people try to in order to ‘fix’ the narrative.

A lot of decisions have to be made when writing a novel about these people, particularly in terms of what happened between Percy and Jane, and how Byron interacted with them, and the rumours circulating all of them. This element in particular may make the novel more enjoyable to readers (presumably a lot of teenage readers) who don’t know all the ins and outs of these people and the questions in their lives, as it would be less obvious where these choices have been made. The novel would make a decent introduction to them, as it does take liberties but at least makes them complex characters.

Other than the age of Mary and Jane (around sixteen to eighteen) and obvious focus on first love to begin with, the novel doesn’t feel particularly young adult in terms of characters (being sixteen then isn’t the same as being sixteen now) or narrative (as it follows what they actually did, more or less). It doesn’t water down elements like Percy Shelley’s free love ideals or the loss of children that occurred during this time. This means that it could be enjoyed by anyone interested in a retelling of the real life events that precipitated the writing of Frankenstein, regardless of what kind of books they typically read.

Ultimately, Monsters is a flawed yet enjoyable retelling of Mary Godwin’s life as she eloped with Percy Shelley, found hardship, and was inspired by her reading and experience to write Frankenstein. If you are already very interested in these figures (as I am) then it is easy to spot authorial decisions that affect sympathy and events, but it is certainly better than expected for a fictionalised version of this point in literary history.

Pulp by Robin Talley

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Pulp cover

Pulp is a novel about LGBT history and finding your voice, with a dual narrative that moves between 1955 and 2017. Eighteen-year-old Janet Jones lives in McCarthy era Washington DC and discovering a series of books about women falling in love with other women leads her to try and write a story herself. However, the love she feels for her best friend Marie puts them both in danger and writing a story might not be the best idea. In 2017, Abby Cohen starts a senior project on 1950s lesbian pulp fiction and finds herself obsessed with one book and its author, ‘Marian Love’. She wants to track down the truth, but must also balance her schoolwork, ex-girlfriend, and her parents’ imploding relationship.

The format of the novel means that it is both about and enacting the discovery of LGBT history by people in later decades, using a very personal approach. This makes it a powerful read, with the knowledge that though the pulp authors Talley uses as main characters are fictional, there are many who weren’t. It also addresses how changing perspectives and awareness of issues can complicate this discovery, for example the predominance of white characters in these pulp books. Janet and Abby are engaging main characters, particularly as they are both flawed teenagers who learn more about awareness of themselves and others around them. Abby in particular shuts herself off from people in her life with single minded focus on her project, and has to realise to keep thinking about the future whilst uncovering the past.

Pulp is a book for young adults and adults alike, with an inspiring story that attacks the ‘bury your gays’ trope and shows connections across generations through common experiences and the power of writing. It is a reminder of how the past is vital to forging a future and it has an important message too about how books can both change people’s lives and aren’t the whole story or necessarily true to life.

The Killing of Butterfly Joe by Rhidian Brook

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The Killing of Butterfly Joe cover

The Killing of Butterfly Joe is a quirky novel about butterflies, lies, and a road trip. Llew Jones is a Welshman in America, looking for an American adventure he could write about. A chance encounter with Joe Bosco, charismatic butterfly salesman with an unusual family and morphing past, sets Llew—newly christened Rip Van Jones—across 1980s America in search of butterfly fortune. However, all does not go to plan, and telling the truth becomes vital.

Filmic in its combination of road trip, thriller, and morality tale elements, this is a novel that is bold and charming like its titular character. Considering it is centred around selling dead butterflies, it is surprisingly gripping, using a framing device of Llew telling the story to prove his innocence combined with a story that doesn’t seem like it’s going to end in death. A real focus of the novel is upon truth, lies, and telling your own versions of stories, from sales techniques to finding out people might be exactly as described. This gives it a nice metafictional aspect along with a narrator clearly trying to craft a narrative. 

It is the combination of elements—characters, tension, road trip, telling stories—that really make The Killing of Butterfly Joe come together into an unusual novel, a charming and fun read. It is a book for people who enjoy personal mythology and a character being pulled into the world of an eccentric family, but also a narrative with tension and entertainment.

Virtuoso by Yelena Moskovich

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Virtuoso book cover

Virtuoso is a stylistic piece of literary fiction that circles around the lives of a number of women. Jana’s Czech childhood was interrupted by raven-haired Zorka, a whirlwind who then disappeared. Jana is now an interpreter in Paris for a Czech medical company, where she meets Aimée, who is mourning the death of her wife. And in an internet chatroom, an American girl plots to rescue a Czech housewife from her husband.

Dreamlike in its narrative and in many of its descriptions, the novel moves between the stories and perspectives in a way that, surprisingly, mostly isn’t that confusing. When it is confusing, it feels like part of the style and the way that the fluctuations make the boundaries uncertain. The pace can sometimes be slow and sometimes fast, which again makes it feel like a series of dreams. The characters, particularly Jana and Zorka, are engaging, though at times it feels like you drift away from them and then return.

The artsy quality of Virtuoso, created through its style and interconnected narratives, will mean it isn’t for everyone. However, this is what makes it stand out, and it manages to make the characters’ narratives gripping even when it isn’t clear where anything is going.

Paul takes the form of a mortal girl by Andrea Lawlor

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Paul takes the form of a mortal girl is a sharp and fun novel about 90s identity politics and LGBT culture. Paul Polydoris is a bartender at a gay bar in an Iowa university town, but he has a secret: he can shapeshift. As the narrative moves from Iowa to Michigan to Provincetown to San Francisco, Paul finds music, excitement, struggle, and intimacy, but what is key to keep that freedom to transform.

The novel digs deep into Paul’s emotions and connections with other people, but also stays witty and observational. It doesn’t so much have a narrative as it is a picaresque that follows Paul’s existence and journeying, bartender to bookseller, body transforming and style changing. Short inset stories feel like myths and the book has a slightly mythic feel, but ultimately the shapeshifting feels very real, just a fact of life. Lawlor fills the novel with music and pop culture, so that it almost feels like it has a soundtrack as you read it. There’s a lot that different people could take and interpret from it personally, about histories, identities, love, narrative, and a whole lot more.

Paul takes the form of a mortal girl has a carefully created and specific time setting and really creates a sense of place wherever Paul is. It also is a kind of timeless novel, which embraces transformation in a way that is exciting and riotous.

Inside Black Mirror by Charlie Brooker, Annabel Jones, and Jason Arnopp

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Inside Black Mirror is, unsurprisingly, the story of TV series Black Mirror, told in oral history fashion by its creators, directors and actors amongst others. Due to the anthology format of the series, the book goes through each episode individually, with relevant people’s comments and discussion, and it is all held together by the voices of Charlie Brooker (creator, writer, executive producer etc) and Annabel Jones (co-show runner and executive producer). The writing is combined with stills and design images, which form a useful way of remembering key elements of the wildly differing episodes whilst reading the book.

TV tie-in books can be a bit naff. The sort of thing that make an easy gift. However, this one is less naff. Basically, it is very interesting, an in-depth look at both the process of creating an anthology show and fighting to get further series made, and how the cast and crew managed to actualise the weirdness that is Black Mirror. Brooker’s comments on the ideas and how plot lines evolved are particularly good, showing how much editing, rethinking, collaboration, and being forced by circumstance can make amazing narrative elements. It’s also worthwhile to read about the issues with getting Channel 4 to keep making episodes, for something that so notably moved to Netflix. Naturally, the book can veer towards self-congratulatory (all these famous actors wanting to be in it, oh look at the Emmys we won, etc, etc), but is kept from going too far due to Brooker’s trademark self-deprecation and the banter between him and Jones, who are longtime collaborators.

Seeing as the world has “gone a bit ‘Black Mirror'” (as Brooker says in the book), it’s nice to remember that the series is created as an entertaining art form, playing with genres and characters, rather than a collection of predictions we should all be worrying about.

My 2018 in reading: the awards

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I’ve done my top books that came out in 2018, and my top books I happened to read in 2018, but what about some more specific and dubious honours? I didn’t really have a good enough selection for a simple spite list this year (though if anyone’s interested, I can share my least favourite reads of 2018), but have gone for a few random categories and some anecdotal justification.

The ‘finally read it this year’ – tie between Don Quixote and The Odyssey

Apparently 2018 was the year I sat down with some famous journeys. Homer was the greater omission, having read and studied The Iliad in translation at undergrad, and it was thanks to the Emily Wilson translation that I finally got around to it. Don Quixote was more impulsive, but I do now understand references to Don Quixote (and I managed to spill quite a lot of Vimto on my copy of it). A bonus mention to both Metamorphosis and The Trial, as I finally read some Kafka this year, motivated by going to Prague, though it felt less of an achievement.

The ‘oh hurry up and finish’ – Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

Summed up above, really. I thought Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, which I read not long before this, was slow (it really does take a long time to get to Udolpho), but Maturin does impressively well at making a narrative within a narrative within a narrative that just takes forever. Not an experience I enjoyed (Sarah Perry’s rewrite is worth a read, though).

The ‘thank god the sequel was worth waiting for’ – The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

The first book, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, may be my ideal fun read: a YA historical romp across Europe by a bisexual eighteenth century young aristocrat, taking liberties with the bounds of possibility and throwing in a lot of adventure tropes like pirates and highway robbery. The sequel, focused on his sister intent on becoming a doctor, was worth the wait, a novel which kept the fun, adventure, and travel, but wove in more issues around gender and race in the period. Bonus mention to the novella that was a preorder bonus with the sequel, because it was joyous and proves how wonderful Lee’s characters are that you just want to keep reading more of them, their flaws and their triumphs.

The ‘gamble on the sequel of a book I didn’t enjoy’ – Kill ‘Em All by John Niven

I really don’t like Kill Your Friends. I found it boring, trying to be the British American Psycho or similar without really saying or doing anything interesting. I liked another Niven novel slightly more, so thought I’d gamble on this sequel to Kill Your Friends, set in the modern, post-truth world. I found it clever, darker, and more satirical than the first book, no longer just about excess and murder, but about how you can frame excess and murder in new ways.

The ‘knew it wasn’t for me, was vindicated when I was right’ – Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Despite its prize winning, the plot of Lincoln in the Bardo never appealed, and that was before I knew what the structure was. A colleague leant it to me because she didn’t like it (always a great way to come to a novel) and despite odd flashes when I was engaged with what was going on, I mostly just didn’t care.

The ‘YA that made me wish I actually could read it as a young adult’ – Clean by Juno Dawson

This is quite a tough category because there’s some great YA I read now that would’ve been great to read as a young teenager (at which point I mostly read Point Horror and books about teenage spies). However, Clean wins for 2018 because it is an honestly brilliant balance between suitably hard-hitting and grown up in its topics (kinds of addiction predominantly) and full of teenage drama amongst mostly rich, messed up young people. It would’ve been the kind of book that felt exciting to read, but was also bringing new perspectives.

The ‘how was it so actually bad when it could’ve been trash enjoyable’ – The Vampyre by Tom Holland

I know, it’s shocking that I didn’t enjoy the novel with the premise of Byron’s life, but he was actually a vampire. However, it was just…not fun. Too long, too slow, didn’t actually do much justice to any character except Percy Bysshe Shelley who was suitably busy talking about revolution. Better to just read Fiona MacCarthy’s Byron biography and then use your imagination.

The ‘most called out by its satire’ – Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton

Are the categories getting more facetious? Possibly. Anyway, Burton’s focus on hipster bars and stupidly specific tea blends felt very much an attack on some of my more hipster habits (I drink a lot of a flavoured tea and do enjoy themed cocktails in themed bars). Though thankfully I don’t use Instagram even vaguely as much as her protagonists.

[Side note: If you fancy seeing everything I read this year (not quite sure why you would), take a look at my Goodreads reading challenge for 2018.]

Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

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Part psychological game narrative with lashings of unreliability, part Secret History, and part all novels set at Oxford, Black Chalk is a tense and enjoyable book from my favourite subgenre, ‘group of friends in a closed off/privileged/academic setting Do Bad Things’. Six friends at Oxford University invent a game, a game for only six players that will span longer than just a few hours. Each week they must meet, play, and be given consequences, forfeits they must fulfil so as not to lose the game. As these get more humiliating and personal, it becomes clear it isn’t a game at all. And fourteen years later, the game still isn’t quite over.

Yates combines a plot that shows the underlying nastiness of people with a complex narrative structure, in which the story is being told but maybe not reliably, and maybe not just by who you think. This gives the tension an extra level, though the story isn’t as full of twists as might be assumed. As a literary thriller (and with characters falling into their own stereotypes), it can be possible to predict, but that doesn’t feel like a problem. In some ways, its similarity to The Secret History—in terms of psychological games, guilt, and narrators painting themselves in certain ways—defines it even though it is quite different, far more based around the tension of the game and an unfolding dual narrative than the kind of aesthetics and academia of Tartt’s novel. Its psychological element is probably one of its best traits, with a student game about humiliation slipping into something else.

Yates invents a kind of mirror Oxford, with fake colleges and streets and details changed or stolen, and in some ways the narrative involves a kind of mirror sense, of what happened to the characters and how they changed due to the game, how they might’ve been different without it. Black Chalk doesn’t always quite live up to its promise, but it is a gripping and atmospheric book that manages to combine a narrator with a questionable grip on reality with a tale of student recklessness and human darkness.