Fiendfully Reading

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Blog moving - fiendfullyreading.com

For reasons including a better domain name and post formatting, this blog is moving to fiendfullyreading.com

There will no longer be new posts here, but there will be new posts over there, and I’ll keep tweeting the links to new posts over on my Twitter so you can follow me over there if you prefer

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Death in Paris by Emilia Bernhard

Death in Paris is a charming murder mystery novel set in Paris, in which two best friends turn  amateur sleuths when a former boyfriend of one of them drowns in a bowl of soup. When Rachel hears that Edgar Bowen is dead, she is reminded of their time together many years ago and how he helped her grow as a person. The details she hears about his death don't add up: surely Edgar, who previously hated rosé, wasn't drinking it with his soup? With her best friend Magda, Rachel starts to delve into the case, as the police won't listen to her suspicions, but amateur sleuthing isn't as easy as TV makes it appear.

This is a classic kind of mystery novel that is suffused with references to fictional detectives and literature. Rachel and Magda are trying to think like the protagonists of mystery stories, but also finding out how difficult it can be to get information out of people and lie where necessary to get them to talk. Their friendship is a key element of the book: it is their partnership that allows them to think over the facts and fictions of Edgar's death. They're clearly depicted as friends who, as two Americans who've made their lives in Paris, have been supporting each other for a long time and are genuinely there no matter what. Another major part of the book and related to them being Americans is its depiction of Paris: this is a novel that invites you to take a trip down the streets of Paris, trying to give the reader a sense of living there too.

Ideal for murder mystery fans and especially anyone looking for female led fiction that prizes friendship highly, Death in Paris is a fun read that would go well with a glass of red wine (or, in my case, homemade French onion soup).

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The Gunners by Rebecca Kauffman

The Gunners is a meditative novel that looks at friendship, life difficulties, and difference. Mikey, Sam, Lynn, Alice, Jimmy and Sally were childhood friends, united by their relative freedom as latchkey kids and the abandoned house they made their den. When they were sixteen, Sally disappeared from their lives, no longer their friend seemingly without reason. Years later, they reunite for the first time for her funeral, and it turns out there were plenty of unspoken secrets about the time when Sally left.

The premise of The Gunners doesn’t sound particularly original, but the novel itself is quirky and thoughtful. It goes down routes that might not be expected, showing the differences in friendships and the ways in which people’s lives diverge and come together. It has a real focus on friendship that isn't undercut as it can be in other novels and it really engages with the weirdness of drifting away from a group you were very close with and then coming back together. The ensemble cast is handled well, with the narrative looking into the childhood of each character alongside the present day.

A novel about friendship and hardship that keeps the focus on the friends, The Gunners was an enjoyable read, if at times as elusive with the past narrative as the characters were.

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F, M or Other: Quarrels with the Gender Binary Volume 1 by Knight Errant Press

F, M or Other is an anthology of pieces that address variance in gender and identity, across poetry, prose, essays, and graphic storytelling. This variation in form and in genre and style means that as well as a range of personal and fiction experiences, it allows for a range of taste in written material too. Readers will likely have personal connections to various pieces in different ways, and not feel connected to others. This feels important in a book that is trying to question thinking about gender and present a multiplicity of answers to questions about gender.

Personal highlights were much of the poetry—especially those that made literary references, including Greek mythology and Hemingway (the latter surprisingly effective), and the opening short poem about the gender box on forms—a prose piece about drag transformation with a difference, and some gripping personal essays and letters that explore defining yourself and expanding definitions of larger concepts such as 'womanhood' or 'masculinity'. Other people might prefer some of the speculative fiction or in depth essays, or find personal connections with other pieces. F, M or Other seems to be saying that it is okay to think about gender in different ways and relate to the anthology in different ways.

Angry, heartwarming, and funny, this is an anthology which can both help people begin to grapple with questions of how gender is lived and discussed and also provide relatable content and different viewpoints to people who've already started thinking about gender in theirs and others' lives. It is worth picking up and giving a go, however complicated or uncomplicated your current relationship to gender is. As this is only volume 1, it will be interesting to see the range of pieces in the second volume and what experiences they depict and styles used within them.

[get it from https://knighterrantpress.com/]

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Rewriting the wanderer: Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Melmoth is Sarah Perry's reimagining of Charles Maturin's 1820 gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer. Helen Franklin lives in Prague and spends every day haunted by something she did twenty years ago. When one of her only friends hands her a strange manuscript that talks about a mysterious woman in black who walks the earth witnessing the guilty, Helen is drawn into confronting her past whilst uncovering the stories of those who have met this woman. However, Helen can't help have the feeling that someone is watching her too.

Perry transforms most of Maturin's book into something different, but keeps the sense of many stories about Melmoth, using inset narratives like Maturin. It must be said, however, that Perry's are far more engaging and less digressive, with a strong framing narrative alongside the character of Melmoth (something which Melmoth the Wanderer doesn't have to the same extent). Helen's mysterious past is a classic gothic plot device brought into the modern day and the lives of the other characters she meets (and those in the inset narratives she reads about) show how everyone carries kinds of guilt with them.

The Prague setting again gives it a classic gothic feel, with descriptions of atmospheric architecture and also of tourists and tourist traps that give an updated sense of foreignness and being out of place, something which often features in gothic literature. The narrative voice is distinctive and strange, fitting perfectly with what it turns out it is doing. Melmoth is less about scariness than about the darkness of moral complexity and escaping the consequences of guilt.

Characters in Melmoth refer to Maturin's earlier novel as a book nobody reads, and as someone who has read Melmoth the Wanderer, Sarah Perry's version is a far more enjoyable read. It grapples with moral questions and ideas of redemption whilst using gothic tropes—particularly stories within stories—to create an atmospheric novel that does away with the devil aspect of Maturin's story to focus on the darkness within humanity.

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HWFG by Chris McQueer

There's ways of showing your follow-up book is going harder than the first, and then there's calling it Here We Fucking Go. HWFG is the darker sibling to Hings, McQueer's first collection of short stories, in which some big personalities from the first book have new adventures and the 'drink, drugs, and knees on backward' (my own summary) of Hings become the meaning of Brexit, the horrible truth about moths, and fighting Kim Jong-Un.

Hings was hilarious and uncanny; HWFG takes the black comedy up a few notches, with serial killer haircuts and the threat of a giant squid looming over two warring friends. Mostly the stories are very short with great payoffs, making them easy to dip into, and there are a few longer ones that may be my favourites. 'The Biggest Riddy' feels like those That Mitchell and Webb Look sketches about The Event with a dash of Black Mirror and is expertly pitched to be dystopian and weird. 'Leathered' combines the horror of the modern political world with the idea of the ramifications of social media, all wrapped up in a ridiculous narrative.

HWFG may be better than Hings, with gleeful black comedy and a sense throughout the book that the real world is terrible and unbelievable, so short stories might as well be too. Buy it for everyone you know who likes weird dark comedy or leave it in your bathroom for guests to pick up on the toilet and be freaked out by.

[cheers to 404 Ink for the proof copy, and you can preorder HWFG here]

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Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss

The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction

Paperback Crush is a fascinating and funny look at American teen fiction from the gap between Judy Blume and Harry Potter. Moss divides up the books by themes, and looks at how areas such as romance, friends, school, and fear sparked off a whole range of books aimed at the young adult and middle grade market. There's plenty of focus on how well the books actually dealt with big (and small issues), but Moss writes with a witty, light-hearted tone too, combining nostalgia, light mocking with hindsight, and some actual analysis of how the trends worked and fitted into the framework of young adult fiction that came before and afterwards.

As someone who is both British and too young for these books' heyday, the real selling point was the 'Terror' chapter, as I was a great lover of first Goosebumps and then, even more intensely, Point Horror (Moss' point that the students at Salem University from Diane Hoh's Nightmare Hall series should've just dropped out felt like a 'oh, right, they should have' moment, because I did not think that at the time of reading them). However, the whole book was an enjoyable read, a quick look through a kind of book that shaped a lot of people's lives and have had an impact on the young adult fiction of today. Moss' tone makes it funny and engaging, but Paperback Crush is also an interesting look at how these often flawed books did deal with topics that some may assume only modern YA does. Plus, it has a lot of pictures of hilariously bad paperback teen novel covers with witty commentary.

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What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

What If It's Us is a YA novel by two well-known authors that combines classic romcom tropes with a realistic sense of teenagers navigating life. Arthur is in NYC for the summer and it's living up to his dreams. Ben has lived in New York all his life and has recently broken up with his boyfriend, who he's also stuck in summer school with. When Arthur and Ben meet by chance in a post office, it isn't clear whether the universe is trying to get them together or ruin things between them.

What really sets What If It's Us apart is the way that it both embraces romantic tropes—such as someone only being in the city for a limited time—but also gives them a realistic spin, showing how life can seem like a musical or a comedy when really it is just life, full of ups and downs. There is a sense of uncertainty throughout the book as to what will happen with Arthur and Ben which powers the narrative and shows how it is difficult to expect good or bad with confidence. The supporting characters are endearing, particularly Ben's best friend Dylan, and the book is a great light read that gives complexity to its teenage characters.

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Broken Things by Lauren Oliver

Broken Things is a gripping YA thriller about friendship and how things are more complicated than they seem. Anyone on the internet can read about how Mia and Brynn murdered their best friend Summer in the woods, in a way similar to the fan fiction the three of them wrote as a sequel to the fantasy novel The Way into Lovelorn that the author left unfinished. The thing is, Mia and Brynn didn't do it. Five years later, they're no longer friends and they're not doing well. A chance discovery leads them back into the mystery and soon they must confront the past whilst looking for the truth not only of what happened to Summer, but about their friendship with her.

It is a clever, moving young adult novel that combines the tension of the truth about Summer's murder with exploration of the characters of Mia, Brynn, and Summer. Their obsession with Lovelorn - particularly Summer's - is shown as a way of coping with their lives; the world of fandom is not demonised, but rather shown in different lights, and the focus is really on the real world, rather than the fictional one. Particularly fascinating is Brynn, who fakes a drink and drug problem because rehab is the only place she feels safe, away from the people accusing her of murder and away from the truth of her feelings for Summer. Broken Things has a classic wrongly-accused-and-must-find-the-real-killer narrative, combined with engaging characters dealing with real problems.

In some ways, Broken Things is about looking beyond what you can read on the internet. The initial story of the murder sounds a lot like something you might read on Buzzfeed or Tumblr as an unexplained mystery, and then the novel goes on to expose the impact of that happening to innocent people. It is the kind of novel that you can't put down because you need to know what actually happened, but also need to know if the characters can move on.

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Astroturf by Matthew Sperling

Astroturf is a wicked, modern novel about sock puppet accounts, steroids, and using identities. Ned is a web developer who broke up with his girlfriend a few months ago and lives in a tiny bedsit in London. Naturally skinny, his world is changed by his trainer's suggestion that he try using steroids to bulk up a bit. Suddenly, Ned feels more energised and like he's found a secret to revitalising his life. He becomes obsessed with an online forum for steroid users, hashing out a plan that may bring him immense success, but that requires him to delve into the world of online accounts, pharmaceutical suppliers, and fake identities.

Sperling does a clever job of making a funny novel about sock puppet accounts, something that in the modern world can do a lot of damage to real people online in very serious ways, but in the novel they are defanged by using only the steroid forum world rather than a larger political and social online sphere. It is clear that many of the characters are meant to have questionable views, but the novel looks at how Ned uses and becomes involved in these fake identities in an immoral way that doesn't need to feature offensive views for shock value. Indeed, it is a book that doesn't rely on shock tactics, though it clearly could have, but instead creates a kind of concise mundanity to Ned's progression. Ideas of masculinity are unsurprisingly explored and it is interesting to see how much of Ned's accounts' personas are built with comedy masculine traits.

This short novel is a book to read in one sitting if possible, telling a complete tale without a huge number of twists and turns that satirises internet culture and how men interact with it. You could imagine it as a dark comedy sitcom, with a slacker-type main character who finds a cheat code for getting somewhere, but it turns out that cheat code isn't the steroids themselves but the online community.

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The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

The follow up to The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue—a romp across eighteenth-century Europe as Henry Montague's Grand Tour goes awry and he finds himself getting into scapes and adventures alongside his sister and the guy he's secretly in love with—finds Felicity Montague, Monty's sister, on a quest to get a formal education in medicine. However, chances for women to study medicine in the eighteenth-century aren't forthcoming, and Felicity ends up on a scheme to meet and work with one of her heroes who is about to marry Felicity's estranged childhood friend. To pull this off, she must work with a mysterious woman with an agenda of her own who wants to travel to the wedding as Felicity's maid, but as with the previous book in the series, this is only the start of a journey that crosses countries and the sea.

Again, Mackenzi Lee shows how historical YA fiction should be done. Felicity is a powerful main character, deeply flawed like her brother, desperate to achieve her dreams. She even is forced to confront her own internalised misogyny and to realise that there are things outside her experience that she needs to learn about and consider. Johanna and Sim are both varied and interesting characters who contribute towards Felicity's personal reflection as well as the exciting narrative, and in general Lee endeavours to show female characters finding different ways to fight back.

The playful approach to history found in Gentleman's Guide is continued here, with some details changed for plot reasons as highlighted in an author's note after the text, but this one feels more cuttingly historical in some ways, possibly due to greater reflection on oppression and continuing themes picked up in the earlier book. Have no fear though, there's plenty of pirates and schemes and sea dragons to keep the adventure going too.

Fans of the first book will probably love this one For anyone else, this is a book for people who love female figures in history and would like a fun, exciting novel about fictional ones, particularly women involved in science, nature, and piracy. Aimed at young adult readers but great for anyone looking for a light, exhilarating read, it is charming but also manages to provide reflection on the situation and treatment of different people, then and now. Felicity will be a hero for many people.

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For Every One by Jason Reynolds

For Every One is a blast of positivity that is ideal to read and share. It is a letter in poem form to everyone who has ever had a dream, addressing the difficulty of adapting your dream, getting older, and keeping the fire alive. Short and punchy, it reminds everyone to keep going and keep believing in having something you want to do or achieve, and it accepts all dreams.

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Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Bridge of Clay is the story of five brothers and five animals, told non-chronologically as one of them, Clay, must build a bridge. The Dunbar brothers live, fight, and grieve together, living without parents but with a selection of animals including a mule called Achilles. When their estranged father who disappeared walks back into their house and asks who will help him build a bridge, only Clay accepts. Tied up in Clay's mind is love and sadness, and a burning sense of what happened to his mother. Matthew Dunbar, the responsible one, narrates the story of the brothers and their parents from past to present.

The novel is written in Zusak's memorable style, weaving in ideas of storytelling and repeated motifs and wordplay as well as a lot of Homer references. It is long and perhaps a little confusing at first, but once you've got used to the timeline and characters, it becomes a lot more rewarding. Many of the characters are intriguing and unusual, particularly the boys' mother Penelope and Clay himself, though some of the brothers feel less sketched out than others. The relationships in the book are equally compelling, with a lot left to inference rather than stated. It is a novel to think about, both whilst reading and afterwards (which is unsurprising to anyone who has read Zusak's earlier The Book Thief).

Bridge of Clay is an unusual novel that plays with storytelling and unreliability, but at its heart is about a dysfunctional family and the impact of how they all cope with tragedy. It frequently makes the reader think and keeps ambiguity even through its detail; it's less of a light read and more something to get stuck into.

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The Corset by Laura Purcell

The Corset is a gothic historical novel that unfolds a strange narrative of a girl who seems to be able to kill with a needle and thread, and the woman who visits her in prison and hears her story. Dorothea is a young, fairly well-off Victorian woman whose now-dead mother instilled a belief in charitable work in her. During her visits to Oakgate Prison she meets Ruth Butterham, a sixteen-year-old girl accused of murder. Dorothea wants to test her theory about the shape of a person's skull determining their life and morality, and Ruth seems perfect. Instead, Ruth starts telling her story and Dorothea finds her belief stretched and a chilling connection with her own life.

Purcell's The Silent Companions was a creepy tale of a young widow, but The Corset goes even further to create a classic gothic story that highlights injustice and being a victim through the use of menace and possible unexplainable phenomena. Moving between the perspectives of Dorothea as she visits Ruth and considers marriage to escape her father, and Ruth's story of the strange power of her sewing allows for Purcell to highlight the similarities and differences between the two women. Madness, revenge, and different kinds of imprisonment run throughout the narrative and it also plays with perspective, leading to a satisfying ending again in a classic gothic style.

The Corset feels like a natural successor to late eighteenth and early nineteenth gothic novels in its combination of a strange unfolding narrative of death and revenge and its use of this narrative to expose oppression, imprisonment, and kinds of oppression. It is likely to be another popular gothic read from Purcell, with hints of Sarah Waters' Affinity in subject matter and a main character whose name makes it impossible not to think of Middlemarch.

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Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

Ghost Wall is a subtle and unnerving novel about a girl forced into a summer of experimental archeology by her abusive father. Sylvie is seventeen and is spending her summer at a recreated Iron Age camp in Northumbria, as her father—who is obsessed with recreating the hardship of Iron Age life—works with an archeology professor and some students to live like people might have in the past. Sylvie and her mother live in the shadow of her father and his anger and rules, but in the heat of the summer and the bare landscape near Hadrian's Wall, his beliefs might be turned into something else, something inspired by the bog girls who were forced into sacrifice many years ago.

This is a short novel that creates a strange and tense atmosphere through description and detail. Sylvie's life is depicted through her perspective of the events at the camp and how she knows about foraging and survival, in contrast to the three students who are on the trip. Moss weaves in tensions around misogyny and class to the narrative, which is centred around abuse by those closest to you. At the same time, it is about Sylvie being aware that there is more to life that what her father is trying to force her to be, hints of coming of age with the backdrop of an unusual and difficult childhood.

Ghost Wall is a compact novel that tells a small story featuring a small cast of characters staying in a camp in the wilderness. It also spans many hundreds of years, telling a story of force and coercion that hasn't changed much. Its structure—short and descriptive with a sudden conclusion—might not appeal to everyone, but this is one for people who are interested in trying to know the past, but also depict a more modern day experience in fiction.

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

Normal People is a novel about complicated connections, feelings, class, and modern millennial life. Marianne and Connell grew up in the same small town in Ireland, seemingly very different people. But they start to connect, and then when they end up going to the same university in Dublin, their complicated relationship continues to weave its way around their lives and their own personal issues.

The third person narrative moves between Connell and Marianne's point of view, sometimes to devastating effect as it displays tiny misunderstandings in their relationship and how people, even those who feel deeply connected, can talk and act at cross purposes. The chapters jump forward in time, giving the length of time between each part in a way that feels strangely conversational and real. As with Rooney's earlier Conversations with Friends, the narrative is mostly focused on interpersonal relationships, arguments, and detail about human emotion and messed up people. Underneath is a strong current of class, money, and politics, as well as mental health.

Again, like Rooney's debut novel, Normal People is a book about millennials that will appeal to millennials, or at least a book about being flawed and moving from your late teens to early twenties without direction. It is a melancholy book, but also one that makes you hope for better communication, for the world to be better.

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The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon

The Incendiaries is a complex, compulsive novel about faith, love, and extremism in a prestigious university. Will Kendall—awkward scholarship student who has transferred from Bible college—meets Phoebe Lin, a glamorous Korean American girl who is secretly racked with guilt about her mother's death. Will falls in love with Phoebe, but Phoebe is being drawn into the orbit of John Leal, a former student with a complex past involving North Korea. Leal has started a Christian group and Phoebe is looking for something to belief in. Will starts to see that the group is a cult with fundamentalist concerns, but his attempts to save Phoebe expose his own flaws and issues with his own Christian past.

At its heart, The Incendiaries is a love story about extremism told by an unreliable narrator. Will and Phoebe's relationship is depicted in a careful, engrossing way, showing the unhealthiness and the way that Will purposefully ignores this. The unreliable narration is key, showing how Will puts his faith in Phoebe and how he blinds himself to his own actions. Though the novel is quite short, the fundamentalist cult is a slow burner, giving it extra ominousness. Alongside this, R. O. Kwon focuses on sexual assault on university campuses, abortion protests, and North Korean prisoners, making the book a complex one that shows how these issues do not exist in a vacuum.

At the start, The Incendiaries feels very similar to The Secret History, with a lying narrator dealing with bigger things at a prestigious university. However, what it turns into is something else, a powerful novel that shows flawed people and dangerous issues set mostly within the bounds of the campus.