Not just a siren’s call.

Publisher: Salt
Pages: 130
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-784-63071-3
First Published: 15th May 2016
Date Reviewed: 3rd May 2016
Rating: 4/5

Following a sad breakup, Kirsten moves into an apartment building situated beside the Thames, which used to be a wing of a Victorian hospital. Drawn by the location, she starts to unpack but is relieved to find she’s not the sole resident of the renovated block. Then there’s Evelyn, rescuer of fallen women in the late 1800s, who has been sent by her father to a hospital for the Water Cure. She’s haunted by the loss in her life of her former lover, a woman she rescued, and hopeful that her stay can help her.

Bodies Of Water is a paranormal, gothic, novella that looks at the way water has had an effect on lives through the decades. It’s a dual plotline work that doesn’t go the way of many others, making it more unique (there are no revelations of connections between the characters).

Leslie has compiled a few concepts and it works very well. The book studies the treatment of women in the Victorian times, contrasting it slightly with the present day. The author works from the diagnosis of hysteria, that Victorian concept of a particularly feminine illness often associated with what we’d now consider the repressed sexuality of women. Leslie never says what caused Evelyn’s hysteria directly – in a way it’s up to the reader to decide – but this works in the book’s favour, allowing for more thought as much as it ushers you to concentrate on the bigger picture. Because whilst Evelyn seems fine, her stay at the hospital speaks of the wider issue.

It’s the basis behind Evelyn’s calling that Leslie wants you to focus on; Evelyn works for the Rescue Society, going out into the streets to aid prostitutes, hoping to save them from the abuse many suffer, from sexually transmitted infections. She likes the idea of bringing the women to a better, higher life, though through the chapters we see her realising that this cannot always happen – in the case of Evelyn’s lover, Milly, for example, Evelyn can’t get away from the fact she’s got Milly a set of rooms but no society to mix in, and that their relationship may be about love on her own side, but Milly may see it as just more of the same.

It’s Milly’s death that gives the study its backbone; Milly is one of many women who have taken their lives, fallen into the Thames, so that whilst Kirsten, who comes to see the paranormal in her leaky ceiling and in the drenched woman on the river bank, is more a bystander, learning about what happened at the scene abstractly, Evelyn’s direct relationship with the river allows a more poignant mode of thought. And as the Victorian character comes to understand the finer details of the hospital and suffers a setback, so her thoughts take quite a shape:

As for lust, it seemed to be the curse of every man. The Rescue Society would have no fallen women to rescue if men could only control what was between their legs. Evelyn had read in her father’s medical journals that hysterectomies and clitoridectomies were often performed to cure women of the very condition Dr Porter had diagnosed Evelyn with. They were so ready with the scalpel, these medical men, to cut and slice, yet no one had thought that castration was the logical solution to venereal disease.

A running point through the book is this plight of women to be heard and to gain freedom; Virginia Woolf’s thought of a room of one’s own is given space, her demise compared to that of the many fallen women ending their lives in the river. There are echoes of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, too. Kirsten’s introduction to the relative reality of what’s going on is in the form of drawings of bodies being pulled out, doctor’s knives at the ready. Because how else were women to be understood?

Leslie’s study is a good one, just a little short. There is some confusion in the story that would not be there if the plot had been teased out more, given more time between revelations. Everything happens a bit too quickly and questions are left unanswered. In terms of the text there are patches of proofreading errors that are noticeable and add to the confusion on occasion.

But all in all Bodies Of Water is a solid article. It’s well-researched and it puts a different spin on a well-used format. It’s got enough of the history that intrigues many people without treading the same path. Recommended.

I received this book for review from the publisher.

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You may be ‘seeing things’ but that’s not always a bad thing.

Publisher: Salt
Pages: 121
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-784-63036-2
First Published: 15th September 2015
Date Reviewed: 3rd November 2015
Rating: 4.5/5

Used To Be is an anthology of short stories Baines has had published over the years. The general theme is choices – the impact of important decisions and the maybes that abound in what ifs.

Baines has a distinctive way of writing. The writing itself is mostly literary; the author has no qualms over colloquial language. It’s a nice mash-up of tradition and the present day, making the book very accessible. Various tenses and persons are involved; it’s a stylistically diverse experience. The stories themselves are subtle in their meaning. These are average, everyday situations, tales that anyone can draw comparisons to in their own lives. On the surface nothing is remarkable – it could be said that the collection is just okay and nothing more. But this is key to the point – the stories are often about things that we might like to discuss further but worry about mentioning because we’re taught it should be no big deal or we think it’s nothing or we think we worry too much about it – and Baines shows how we should be thinking twice in these situations, questioning this concept of keeping the seemingly silly hidden away.

This is the case, to some extent, in Falling, in which a woman falls and hurts herself, quite badly, and once healed goes about her life in much the same way but with a different mindset. When she falls again she questions whether she should have changed her mindset, whether she was wrong. The underlying issue is never questioned. Only, then, is it really happening or is she dreaming? And/or is the person who asks her if she’s alright also dreaming? – how, exactly is the woman falling, in which way is she ‘falling’?

One of the stand-outs is Possibility in which Baines looks at choices not from one person’s perspective but from three. It’s people who are the ‘choices’ here. A lecturer, a businessman, and a newly-arrived immigrant travel on a train chosen for a suicide. You see three reactions to the incident, the different effects a cause can have, and whilst you may ‘prefer’ one to another, reading between the lines shows the validity, if you will, of each reaction. It shows the continuing effects.

Other stand-outs include the titular story, in which a woman listens to her friend’s continual tale of how happy she is whilst the reader sees something else and That Turbulent Stillness wherein a girl gives up her middle-class life to live with a factory worker, seeing her future through rose-tinted, passion-tinted, glasses.

Sometimes the stories can feel repetitive – this is where it’s worth remembering they were written separately for various outlets. There are a couple of occasions you could speculate a more pressing relationship between the stories than the overarching theme, for example the two stories that look at the Brontë sisters.

Inevitably, as a book about choices and what ifs, you’ll end up questioning your own life. Baines doesn’t offer answers so much as a study, making you realise how important even trivial-looking decisions can be. (And in study comes ambiguity and hints rather than detailed endings.)

Used To Be shows the ordinary for what it is. It reminds you that everyone is in the same boat if not on the same deck, and it’s written with a meticulous eye to detail. It’ll blow you away when you least expect it.

I received this book for review from the author.

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J K Rowling would like the moving pictures.

Publisher: N/A (I read Project Gutenberg’s edition)
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: N/A
First Published: 1764
Date Reviewed: 1st September 2015
Rating: 3/5

In the Medieval period Manfred, Prince of Otranto, arranges a marriage between his sickly son, Conrad, and the lady Isabella. On the day, Conrad is killed by a giant helmet, leaving Manfred with no heir, and an heir he must have if his line is to continue ruling and the prophecy that Otranto be returned to its rightful owner overruled. But Manfred’s new plan of marrying Isabella himself is to be upset by the arrival of a peasant and a ghost or two.

The Castle Of Otranto is a novella in the style of Shakespeare. It’s prose but high in drama; its value lies mostly in its Shakespearian context.

This is because there’s really not much to The Castle Of Otranto and albeit that this was the first gothic book ever written, it pales in comparison to most others. There are paranormal elements, not scary enough likely even for readers of the time, and these elements are never explained, they just happen and Walpole finishes his tale without explaining the whys and hows. The book is incredibly dramatic, there are info-dumps, and the story is minor. Not all that much happens, at least in the context of what we’d call action today, or even what Austen would call action, and a lot of the dialogue is composed of rambling.

What does work, then, is the imitation of Shakespeare. The Castle Of Otranto is to all intents and purposes a prose version of a Shakespeare play if Shakespeare had written about a man called Manfred who wants to keep his castle. The style is very Elizabethan – the first edition had Walpole pretending he was simply the translator of an old text – and the drama far more akin to Shakespeare than any fainting ladies of the Georgian period. The dialogue is full of thys and forsooths… actually it may not include a forsooth, but that word is a good one to use because I think everyone can imagine the period commonly associated with it.

The value of Walpole’s work lies in theatre – this book would make a great performance on the stage of the Globe. Otherwise, however, there is not much to be taken from it; I’d recommend it only to those with a prior interest who want to study drama and/or 1700s literature. There are veiled references to Henry VIII, there’s silliness, and there are many convenient relationships that have most certainly been planned. This book is contrived; it’s meant to be.

The Castle Of Otranto is fun but wearing. Read it if you love The Bard, pass on it otherwise.

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Battling the enemy, magicking them away.

Publisher: (self-published)
Pages: 120
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-0-985-66583-8
First Published: 13th June 2013
Date Reviewed: 6th May 2015
Rating: 3.5/5

Hitomi is an outsider in Karolene, which hasn’t stopped her joining those looking to bring peace to the island but does make her stand out to those she least wants to see. The League need to get a council member’s family to safety and whilst Hitomi is told to stay away from danger she wants to help as much as she can, even if it means getting caught.

Sunbolt is a non-quasi-European fantasy that heralds Khanani’s new fictional venture. Short and packed with subplots, it’s a little crowded but at the same time it’s a work of art.

Khanani has a way with words. Her prose is so simple it’s effortless. And it’s absolutely stunning. The text by itself has the ability to lure you into reading the book; it’s a feast for the literary senses and goes a long way to dull the effects of the less successful elements.

The novella is extremely diverse and bucks the usual trend. The story is set in a quasi-Middle Eastern land in an undefined time; there is enough detail for you to come to a decision as to the look, period-wise, that fits what you’re reading. The characters run the gambit from East Asian to Middle Eastern to Western to African – or at least those are the terms we would use (Khanani’s characters describe themselves by physical characteristics) – and magic and the supernatural is randomised. No one type of person is good or bad; the world of Sunbolt is very ‘anything goes’. This is not to say that the world itself is peaceful.

As for the story, it straddles the line between good and not so, and this is all down to the length. Action follows action and the story moves from one subplot to the next without returning to the previous as a book generally would. Because of all the running Hitomi does it can get a little wearing, especially as the story requires failed escapes to help it get to where it wants to be. Whilst, for example, the likelihood of Khanani returning in other books to the League is very high, for this particular book to feel finished one particular plot was needed. Had Sunbolt been a novel rather than a novella there is every reason to believe the story would have been excellent.

On the whole the characters are developed enough to sustain a novella, however Hitomi is lacking. It’s a difficult one. Khanani throws you straight into the action without any info-dumping, which is very welcome. She doesn’t mull over extraneous detailing – she gives you enough to form an image and then moves on. However this does mean that Hitomi’s reasoning isn’t particularly compelling. It’s believeable and understandable on a literal level, but you don’t get to see enough to care as much as you probably should. You will care somewhat because of Khanani’s attention to what’s important – it’s just this length issue again. On the subject of Hitomi, she’s easy-going which is generally brilliant but can make the text a little hard to read on occasion. There is a scene which is particularly violent and nasty for what it does – Hitomi’s mood change back to sunny indifference and slight humour is understandable when you consider that she needs to push past what’s happened, but hard to read from the reader’s point of view.

Khanani favours showing. You get a good picture of what’s around and who people are just from the dialogues and incidental sentences. There are no long rambling paragraphs. But the world building is strictly limited to Hitomi’s immediate surroundings. There are references to the Eleven Kingdoms and a political situation you only see from the chases and imprisoning. It’s third-hand info without the experience and, again, the length of the book is the likely issue. You will care about what’s going on in the scene but not the wider world.

Sunbolt extracts various elements from different eras, places, cultures, and myths, and binds them together in a not unsuccessful way. It really should have been longer but it’s a nice escape as it is. The prose is great enough that you can acknowledge the flaws whilst enjoying the ride – it’s all too easy to get lost, enveloped, in this book. The whole is very promising – it may not be a winner but it’s good enough and Khanani is one to watch.

I received this book for review from the author (Netgalley).

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A ‘ghost’ story perhaps, but not in the usual sense.

Publisher: Orion
Pages: 307
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-409-12801-4
First Published: 10th October 2013
Date Reviewed: 23rd November 2014
Rating: 4/5

At ten years of age, William Bellman strikes a rook with a stone and a catapult. He’s a little chilled by the experience; as the stone flies forward he wants to warn the rook but can’t. And life goes on. William isn’t to know that the experience will never truly leave him, but he may not see what is happening.

Bellman & Black is a literary novel of a certain, rather unique kind, in that the story isn’t obvious and the writing style differs to many others. Setterfield speaks in the third person from an almost personal point of view yet the writing itself is almost scarce – almost bullet-pointed in style. The book is an echo of Dickens – his voice, the uncanny, spooky, way he seems to be speaking just over your shoulder at times, and a similar darkness when things become creepy (yes, darkness and creepy even when they can be one and the same). The basic themes are of time and working rather than living – missing out. There is a worthy link to be made with Scarlet O’Hara’s rescheduling of everything for tomorrow morning.

Something that needs to be said straight away is that Setterfield is never quite clear about what is happening, or, rather, why such a thing is happening. There’s a meaning, a message, in this book, but you’ll possibly have to dig very deep to find it and it’s beyond the normal thought of interpretation. Part of this is, sadly yet understandably, due to the subtitle of ‘a ghost story’. Bellman & Black is not a ghost story or, if it is, then again it’s not at all clear.

There are sections throughout that deal with rooks, that speak of rooks in a particularly familiar way as the author speaks directly to the reader, but this is yet again vague. It’s as though Setterfield has provided pieces of the puzzle for the reader to put together and work out, which isn’t unusual in literature and can result in some amazing revelations, but unlike other authors, Setterfield has forgotten to give you the last few pieces. Maybe the individual interpretation is the whole point, but even if it is, there needed to be more to use.

The book is far more about character than plot, indeed unless you’ve an interest in retail history or business you may find the repetitions of workaholic Bellman a bit dull, however you will no doubt see the reasoning for it. Setterfield repeats herself to the extreme so you want to be prepared for that. If you are interested in retail history – the television show Mr Selfridge comes to mind – you’ll likely want to keep reading beyond the end. There is also a fair amount about the workings of a mill – whether it’s earlier than the industrial revolution is something that’s in itself fun to work out.

As for the character development, Setterfield has settled for something in between realism and fantasy, as is of course obvious from the first few pages. It’s both fast and slow – Bellman becomes who he will be very quickly yet the result of this only begins to be revealed later on. The secondary characters are not fleshed out as much as you might hope because, put simply, the book isn’t about them. They are there to show you what Bellman is missing. They are stereotypes and cardboard cut outs to give you a quick idea of what Bellman leaves behind when he’s at the office, so that you’ve a good understanding of what he could have and also a good understanding of how his friends and family are likely to feel.

As said, the placement is vague. The book is obviously historical but there are no dates given, no countries (at least for Bellman). It does become clear as the book carries on as elements of a certain period are brought into play. The vagueness allows for a certain quality – left to your own devices you are able to concentrate on Bellman rather than the history and Setterfield can get on with her narration without too much detailing. There is enough detailing to set the scene and that is it. The superfluous is down solely to the repetition and as that is up for contention that’s no bad thing. The lack of dates also allow Setterfield to illustrate how her themes are eternal. (Themes are one thing and clear enough, it is the message that is less clear.)

Bellman & Black makes for a fair read. It’s enjoyable, the writing is intriguing, beautiful, almost, and there is just suspense enough that you’ll want to continue. Just don’t hope for too much – enjoy the ride as it is without expectation but realise that due to the lack of information you may not actually feel like spending time mulling over the content afterwards. Your reading will be, much like it’s theme, very much in the present with no thought of the future.

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