Thoughts on reading: Wolf Hall

I've been putting this one off since the end of September. It felt a bit like hard work. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel was the Book Club book for September but this time I can't blame the Book Club for making me read something I wouldn't have touched otherwise because there was already a copy on book mountain when it was suggested.

It was winner of the 2009 Man Booker prize and I don't often read those, but sometimes they pique my interest. Reading this was a strange experience and I think the reason is that there are a lot of things that I like about this book but in the whole, I didn't enjoy it.

I loved the character of Cromwell. Mantel made him really sympathetic without compromising the hardness of his character. The description was lush and vivid, full of sound, smell, touch and movement, and using metaphor to work every ounce of worldbuilding out of it. It was loaded with symbolism - and I did like that because I felt I understood what was being conveyed. Sometimes I read books that are heavily symbolical and I feel like I speak a different language to the author because, although I recognise that an object is a symbol, I'm clueless as to what it's a symbol of. Not in this case and I found it quite instructive in how symbolism can be used in a way that supports description and setting. Rather than being wanky.

The viewpoint in Wolf Hall is quite experimental. It is in limited third person and is so tightly held to Cromwell that it is almost first person. It's also in the present tense which is hard to sustain over 160,000 words. That was impressive but I wondered if this was the reason I found this book very hard to read. It was so slow. It took me a good couple of weeks and I spend at least two hours a day reading and I'm a fast reader. But I recently read another book in the present tense, of about 140,000 words, and that was a very quick read. Both would also be considered literary fiction, so it's not the genre. The length of it was off-putting to some members of the book club, but what's 160,000 words in epic fantasy? Nothing! Anyhow,  it was hard work. So much so that I had to stop in the middle and read a Charlaine Harris. I think what Mantel did with the viewpoint and tense was really interesting but it spoilt the enjoyment of the story for me.

I liked the title, but in the end I felt that that was misleading. We don't get to Wolf Hall until the end of the book and although in the author interview at the back of the book, Mantel says that Wolf Hall is a metaphor for Henry's court, I didn't get that. And given that her use of metaphor was so effective throughout I don't believe that she meant that. I think she just liked it as a title and used it even though it wasn't quite right for the book.

There was a lot I liked about this book and I wanted to enjoy it. Because it was so slow and such hard work to get anywhere with, I didn't enjoy it. In spite of all the things I liked about it. In spite of a great character, brilliant dialogue and gorgeous writing. I was frustrated and disappointed.

Thoughts on reading: A House for Mr Biswas

You know there are some books that you're really supposed to like, or at least pretend to like. A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul is one of those. All the world appears to think it's great.

This was the December read for my book club and I don't think I would have ever read it otherwise. I'm going to start with the good. The prose was gorgeous; it was incredibly well-written. I've never given much thought to life in Trinidad between the two world wars and the setting is vividly drawn. The social relations and culture described were new to me and I liked that. The characters were equally well realised. In technical terms it was clearly brilliant.

And I just didn't like it. Which I suppose answers the question of what matters more, the writing or the story, because all that beautiful writing couldn't make this story interesting to me. It is a fictional biography of a horrible man who has horrible relationships with other horrible people. It's supposed to be a comedy but I didn't get it. It was a struggle to finish it and I only did because I have a rule about finishing books I start. Unless you're already a fan, give this one a miss.

Thoughts on reading: Matter

This is not one of 2011's 100 books. I read this last year and I'm a little behind in my thoughts on reading posts.

I'm a huge fan of Iain M. Banks. I think his science fiction is way better than his mainstream stuff (which I do still enjoy). Matter simply confirmed that for me. I loved it. It is a Culture novel that starts of in a world in another civilization's sphere of influence that has not developed space technology of it's own. This part of the story is more of a mediaeval fantasy. One of the main characters has left this world to join the Culture and decides to return on hearing of her father's assasination, where she discovers interference by other civilizations and her trip turns into a Special Circumstances mission.

The scope and detail of the novel are vast and intricate. I don't know how I would be able to keep hold of all that information while writing. Banks is pretty much good at all the elements of writing. The characters are great with fantastic names. The dialogue is excellent. Story structure is good. The mystery at the centre of the novel was handled really well; it was clear that things were not as they seemed, would not work out the way the characters believed they would, but it was not obvious what would happen. Happily, I didn't get the surprise but when it was revealed I was 'oh yes, of course', which is how I like it.

The ending was amazing. It was Shakespearean in it's death-toll and I was gripped. It was completely absorbing. This is one of my favourite books of 2010 and you must read it!

Thoughts on reading: Selling Out

I have a huge stack of books I've read waiting for blog posts. Some seem like much harder work than others. Selling Out by Justina Robson is one of the easy ones.

This is book two in the Quantum Gravity series, and this time I've actually read the first one. What I love about this is the blend of science fiction and fantasy. It's set in the near-future after a world-changing event, the nature of which is not clear at this point. The protagonist is an experimental cyborg spy who is sent on missions to the new worlds (elf, fairy, demon, etc) that were revealed by the event. I'm all for a bit of genre-bending and Robson is a great writer so it all comes together seamlessly.

When I read the first book I thought it was fun and well-written but lacking the depth and complexity of Living Next Door to the God of Love, which was the first of Robson's novels that I read. After reading Selling Out I think I might be wrong. It's still great fun, and still has a light feel to it, but the character development and foreshadowing in this book make me suspect that by the time I get to the end of the series a grand vision will have been realised.

In this book, I noticed how the dialogue stood out. It worked hard to move the plot along and reveal character. It's snappy, witty and highly engaging.

Justina Robson is one of my favourite authors and I can't wait to read the rest of the series. And everything else she's written.

Thoughts on reading: Boudica, Dreaming the Eagle

There are some books that have been on Book Mountain for a very long time and Boudica, Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott is one of them.

I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this, other than the fact that the copy I have is in hardback. Dreaming the Eagle has got Celts, Ancient Britons, Romans and Druids, its got sword fights, pitched battles and shamanic journeys, all stuff I love. On top of that, it's got strong female characters, sensitive male characters, lots of variation in sexual and intimate relationships and rites of passage.

It's competently told. The characterisation is good for both main and supporting characters. The relationships between them are strong and I could really connect to them. The world of the Druids and the early Roman empire is convincingly brought to life. Dialogue is good, pacing is good. And the story is good. Scott's use of foreshadowing is excellent. Through shamanic journeying and visions a couple of pivotal events are foreshadowed early on and it is not at all obvious how they will play out. I found myself thinking I knew how it would go and finding myself wrong. Yet the final reveal felt natural and unforced. Great stuff.

This is the first in a series of five and I will certainly be reading the rest. I liked this a lot.

Thoughts on reading: Corum

I'm working my way through Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion series and recently I read Corum. Elric is one of my favourite characters in literature and I enjoy the self-conscious/aware nature of the multiple worlds cycle that is the Eternal Champion. Although one might argue that Moorcock is simply telling the same story over and over again. Of course, there is an art in that. Multiple interpretations of the same story layer up into a deeper understanding of the themes that are explored.

Corum comprises The Knight of the Swords, The Queen of the Swords and The King of the Swords. The language is amazing; the descriptions are lush and full of depth. Characterisation is not so deep, because the characters are ciphers. They perform the function of metaphor. What is happening here is myth not story.

Moorcock is the literary end of science fiction and I think you either like it or you don't. Or at least, that's true for me. I usually don't have much time for literary fiction because it turns out I'm all about the story. However, Moorcock's worlds are so fantastic and the description so beautiful that I am completely engaged. I find Moorcock much easier to read than most literary fiction.

I also enjoy the links with the other works and in the last volume of Corum, Elric makes an appearance, so that's good. I enjoy the layer where the story is inviting the reader to compare it with its other versions in the Eternal Champion multiverse.

I enjoyed it. Corum's not as good as Elric though.

Thoughts on reading: Royal Flash

Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser is the second in a series of books following Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays (which I never read). Naturally, I haven't read the first in the series.

Well, this is a pretty entertaining romp that doesn't take itself seriously at any point. Actual history is tweaked to give Flashman a role in world changing events. The characterisation of Flashman is excellent and it's told in first person from his viewpoint. Characterisation of supporting characters is quite shallow, but this rather suits Flashman's character so it works.

It's competently written, dialogue is good, pacing is great, and the story is just fun. It was written in the 1970s and the language does reflect that, but that was the only thing that niggled.

Thoughts on reading: Slights

Slights is the debut novel of Kaaron Warren, published by Angry Robot, that came as part of my welcome pack from joining the British Fantasy Society.

The protagonist is a serial killer and the blurb implies that the story will be a gruesome serial killer horror. Instead it's somewhat of a hybrid. It's part psychological horror, part ghost story and part mystery. I enjoy some genre-bending and I was pleasantly surprised that the novel was more complex than the blurb gave it credit for.

It is written in a really engaging voice and over the course of the story the truth about the protagonist's father is revealed. One of the stand-out features of the book is the way the protag comes to awareness about herself and her relationships. At the end, nothing is what it seemed to be at the beginning and the changes are handled very skillfully.

It's worth reading, especially if you're on the lookout for something a bit unusual, and I shall look out for more of Warren's work.

Thoughts on reading: some non-fiction books

I'm a bit behind on my book posts. I have a tallish pile of books sitting on the desk waiting for me to say something interesting about them. We can only hope...

Several of the books are non-fiction so I thought I'd bundle them all together.

Bad Samaritans: The guilty secrets of rich nations and the threat to global prosperity by Ha-Joon Chang. A good discussion of the real strategies the rich nations used to grow rich and dissection of the myth that free trade encourages econominc development.

The New Rulers of the World by John Pilger. This is a bit old now, having been written in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, but it's interesting to see how many of Pilger's analyses still hold true.

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten: And 99 other thought experiments by Julian Baggini. This was a freebie with a magazine ages ago. It's very short essays on philosophical questions applied to everyday life. Very thought-provoking - and potentially full of ideas for speculative fiction stories.

Pilgrims by Paul McDermott. Another freebie, given away by the author on the South Bank. This is the 'true' story of a young man who volunteers to spend time with a terminally ill elderly woman. It's quite moving, but perhaps not as transformational as the author would have us believe.

Thoughts on reading: Twelve

This came to my attention at alt.fiction 2010. During a panel it was held up as an example of a perfectly good novel that couldn't sell due to the market. With the upswing of the horror market, it found a publisher after having been with an agent for something like four years. I was keen to see what Twelve by Jasper Kent was like.

This is an historical horror; a vampire story set in Russia during the Napoleonic wars. I found the setting quite convincing, in terms of both time and place. Not that I know much about Russian history, so I'm probably quite easy to convince in that regard. The dialogue felt appropriate although I noticed a few conspicuously modern terms slipping into the narration.

The vampires were the opposite of sparkly. They are returned to subhuman killing machines with superior strength and speed, yet seem quite easily dispatched by the hero once he's convinced of what they are. There are some nice moments of suspicion and betrayal among the hero and his friends.

Unfortunately, I found that the choice of viewpoint flattened the story someone. It is a first person narrator told by the hero, who is a man traumatised by torture in his past and by the choices he has to make in the present. His response is to become shut off from emotion. Which is a realistic response but as he's the narrator it leads to an emotionally flat story. The reader doesn't feel the horror because the narrator can't. It nags at the edge of the consciousness and the narrator acknowledges that he should have more emotional sensation than he does (although this was a bit 'tell' for me) but he can't feel what he should feel because it will overwhelm him. For me, as a reader, this felt distancing. I think it would have benefitted from first person narration by a sidekick or from third person narration.

Having said that, there was an excellent twist at the end, I did enjoy it and I will read the sequel.

Thoughts on reading: For a Few Demons More

Before Charlaine Harris and Stephanie Meyer there was Kim Harrison and the Hallows series. The premise is that a virus wiped out about three-quarters of the human race, thus revealing the supernatural population. For a Few Demons More is the fifth (and so far final) in the series.

All the books in the series have had titles that are plays on Clint Eastwood movies, which I quite like, largely because I liked the movies. But it does set the mood of the books; that is action-orientated, maverick cop (sort of) and not to be taken too seriously. These books are fun and I enjoyed For a Few Demons More.

I don't have much to say about the writing. Harrison is big on details which makes her world very convincing. She does sex scenes well, dialogue well and there's absolutely loads of conflict. This was another first person narrator and I find the language did sometimes bother me. There were loads of cliches and naff metaphors which jolted me out of the story.

The plot in this book seemed to take a really long time to get going. I was a good quarter into the book until there was any development on the plot problem that was introduced at the start of the book. Much of it was spent on developments in the relationships between the main characters, which was engaging as these relationships are full of conflict, but leads me on to another thought. It didn't feel like a final book in the series, but that's what the website implies.

Kim Harrison's books are fun, easy to read and I will read more. Even if they annoy me just a little bit. I like them about the same as Charlaine Harris and more than Stephanie Meyer.

Thoughts on reading: Lords of the North

Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell has Vikings in it, so it is automatically brilliant. Also, Cornwell is one of my favourite authors.

One thing that characterizes Cornwell's writing is a tendency to end a scene or chapter with a snappy short sentence. For example 'The gods were not happy.' Sometimes it's a cliffhanger, sometimes it's foreshadowing and sometimes it adds drama. It serves to drive the story forward and makes his books hard to put down!

This is written in first person POV. It seems like I'm reading a lot that's in the first person lately. I don't know if that's coincidence or a trend. In this case, the main character is an old man telling the story of his youth. The voice is very strong. It's confident and self-assured, and well suited to the character. What is different to many first person narrator's is that there isn't that much internal monologue or exposition. The story is largely told through scenes with solid description and great action. What internal monologue there is, is very effectively used to show character.

I really enjoyed this and Cornwell has a style of writing that I particularly enjoy.

Thoughts on reading: Virgin Slave, Barbarian King

Oh goddess, it's so embarrassing. I hate reading these things. But, following a workshop on the challenges of writing for Mills & Boon, there are several of them on book mountain. I'm perfectly prepared to believe that writing formulaic romance requires considerable skill and discipline. The second Mills & Boon I've read since the workshop has provided little evidence.

It's ok. It's way better than the first. There is description as well as inner monologue and there is a pleasing symmetry in the protagonists journey which makes the patriarchy marginally easier to swallow. It has Goths; not quite Vikings but close enough. Other than that, it has little to commend it.

It did make me think about the dynamic of love stories, though. Protagonist 1 meets Protagonist 2 and finds them horrible/infuriating yet attractive. Protag 2 feels the same. Yet, they can't just enjoy each other. No, instead they must be convinced that it would be wrong to love each other and very angry about what they are feeling. Why? What sort of relationships are like that? Not healthy ones, for sure. Mixing love up with shame and anger is not a cocktail I want to drink. But there'd be no story if there were no conflict, would there? If the conflict were external, it would become a different type of story like a quest or an adventure. To keep it a romance the conflict must be internal, fueled by misunderstanding and insecurity. And that's why they follow this pattern. If they don't, it's not a story. So, I learned something from reading Virgin Slave, Barbarian King by Louise Allen.

My non-fiction was more edifying. I read the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus and it was life-changing. The main essay is Camus' thoughts on how one can respond to the absurdity of a godless world. Surprisingly uplifting.

Thoughts on reading: The Turn of the Screw

Last year, there was a television adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and thus there followed much discussion of its horror and psychological twists. Well, what more reason do you need to read a book?

I struggled with the language. This was a surprise. I read the odd classic and although it takes a few pages to get into the rhythm of the writing, usually I find that it is perfectly clear once you get used to it. Perhaps it's because the classics I tend to read are by English authors - Dickens, Hardy, Austen - and James is American. I wondered if the reason I was finding it hard to get to grips with was because it was an American classic and the language was subtly different to English literature of the same era.

What I found really frustrating was that I didn't know what was going on. Things weren't spelt out. There were coded references to socially unacceptable behaviour, which to me could have meant all sorts of horrors. Some people find that leaving things to the imagination makes it more scary. Not me. I can imagine a lot of things and not being able to choose which is the thing being described (because there aren't enough clues to nail it down to one thing) is frustrating. It certainly underlines my belief that detail is what convinces in fiction. For me, the horror was reduced by the vagueness and ambiguity, not increased.

My non-fiction book was Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan. It was excellent, full of good advice, good examples and lots of things to try out in my work-in-progress.

Thoughts on reading: Whit

Whit by Iain Banks has been on book mountain for a while. Years in fact. I was put off Iain Banks' mainstream fiction by not being able to get through A Song of Stone.

It's a slow start and I only stuck with it because this is my work. If I was reading for entertainment, I probably would have put it down well before I got halfway through. Not that there's anything wrong with it - Banks is a fine writer. It's just that the story wasn't compelling. I know what I like; vikings, vampires, adventure and sex. There was none of that. It was a story of a insular community and their relation with the outside world and it wasn't that interesting to me. Until about halfway through. Then it becomes clear that certain people are up to no good and there is a bit of a mystery at the centre of the story.

So, the second half of the book is better, but I don't think I liked it that much. Which is not really the point as we're here to talk about the writing. The main thing I noticed about this book was the worldbuilding, perhaps because I don't expect it to be so obvious in mainstream fiction. Banks is describing the world of a group of people who live in a way that makes them quite alien to 'normal' people. He carries this off well. It is in the first person and the (sole) POV character, Isis, is completely invested in her way of life. She is special in this world, the very opposite of an outcast, and it takes several large event to make her start questioning the status quo. The worldbuilding takes place via Isis, and as she's not an outsider, Banks has the discipline to convey her total acceptance of her world. It is the outside world, the contemporary world, that is portrayed as strange. Her strangeness, the weirdness of her world is shown to us by her skewed interpretation of the people and events around her. It was a skillful demonstration of worldbuilding that brought the reader into the world, rather than leaving them watching from the edges.

The other element of note is almost the flipside of the first. Choosing a protagonist who is at the centre of her world, with high status, who feels loved and accepted, enabled excellent worldbuilding. But it also meant that shaking that belief in the goodness and rightness of the worldbuilding would take some significant events and that had to be done convincingly. I feel that contributed to the slow pace of the unfolding of the plot. Banks spent the first half of the book building Isis and her world up and then the second half tearing it down. I think I would have prefered more foreshadowing than Banks gave us.

In non-fiction, I read The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. I thought it would be about how humans are biologically wired for faith, but is actually more about how beliefs affect the science of biology. Some interesting ideas, if not a totally convincing theory.

Learning from reading

A lot of the posts on this blog are about the books I've read and what I'm learning from them. But it would be true to say that I don't do this in any systematic way, other than thinking about it and making some vague notes on this blog.

Then I read a post on the Querytracker.net blog on learning from the masters. The idea is that you fold up the pages where a passage strikes you as being particularly effective. Simple, no? Except I've always believed that writing on books is sacrilege, and while I'll fold down a little corner to mark my place and break a spine to read it more easily, the idea of folding over half a page seems less like turning a small corner and more like scibbling notes. Of course, when I write it out like this it sounds like the nonsense it is. So, folding up the pages is on.

The next steps are to transfer the passages that you marked into a dedicated notebook, then analyse them and look for patterns. So that's what I'll be doing. I've got a couple of books marked up already and just waiting for transfer into a notebook. What do you think?

Thoughts on reading: Non-Stop

Number 33 of the SF Masterworks is Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss, which deals with the generation-ship vision of spaceflight. As I'm doing with the Fantasy Masterworks, I'm sort of making my way through the SF Masterworks as well. So far, I've read 2, 4, 43, 46, 52, 53, 60, 61, and 67.

I enjoyed this. The worldbuilding is good and there is a mystery that builds up to an excellent reveal. What I noted particularly about the writing was the use of language. Aldiss uses words that indicate one thing to the reader and manages to convey that the characters of the story understand something else by them, for example, ponics (the crop the characters harvest) and ship-related words. There's a lovely point at the end where the main character, Roy, sees the sun for the first time and says he imagined it square because the lights on the ship were all square. Having said that, sometimes, often enough for it to be noticeable, Aldiss uses cliches and adages that are too contemporary and it jolts the reader out of his world. So, I found use of language both good and bad in this book.

Ways of Seeing by John Berger is a book based on a 1970s TV series of the same name, examining the role of the observer in studying art and the myth and meaning of oil painting in Western culture. Fascinating, thought-provoking and challenging. The ideas in this book really excited me. Recommended!

Thoughts on reading: Black Man

I read a lot and as I've got better at writing (and more confident in my writing), most of what I read either makes me feel 'I can do this too' or 'That's a good way of doing it'. Occasionally, I read something that makes me feel talentless and stupid, that makes me realise how big the gap is between where I am and where I want to be. Richard Morgan's Black Man is one of those books. It was amazing.

Something about this book made it seem better than everything I've read in a long time. All the basics are there and are done well. It's a great plot, with twists and turns but no cheats. There are two key moments where I wasn't sure what was going to happen next (in a good way) and in the end everything came together to create a full understanding of what had happened. The plot was really strong and well paced.

Worldbuilding is something I particularly noted. Morgan throws the reader into his world immediately and just leaves them to catch up. It's slick and realistic. I don't know if it's just that I haven't read much new science fiction lately, but it seemed really modern. It seemed like Morgan is really up on current affairs, cutting edge science and social/psychological theory and his vision of the future jumps off from now. He has lots of little details that really ground the book and make it real, such as having the characters reference celebrities, music, intellectuals and gurus. My over-riding impression was that this was a really intelligent, thorough book.

The characters were well-drawn, believable, with deep inner worlds and congruent outer actions. It was all done through inner monologue, for the POV characters, dialogue and action. The action scenes were exciting, convincing and pacy.

It's not perfect. I noticed one or two clunky adjectives and awkward turns of phrase but that was all in a 600+ page book. I think that what makes this work so well is that all the elements are done to a high standard. There are many enjoyable books that have good plots with ok characters, or great writing and weak plots, or fascinating characters with nothing to do. Few books get everything right, and this is one of them. And on top of that, the themes are intelligently thought through in a fascinating way. Read it. It's amazing.

In non-fiction news, I read The Courtesans by Joanna Richardson, which is a book of short biographies of 19th century French courtesans. Interesting, and full of tidbits for the work-in-progress!

Thoughts on reading: Twilight

People have had lots to say about Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I probably wouldn't have picked this up if I hadn't read so much criticism of it and it got to the point where I really wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

While I do subscribe to the view that all published fiction has something good about it, I recognise there are levels and types of goodness within that. So, in comparison to other published fiction that I have read, is Twilight any good? Surprisingly, it is. I wasn't expecting that.

Plot-wise, there's not much to it. Aside from Edward and Bella the characters are pretty lifeless. Bella's friends and family are ciphers and she doesn't seem to like them much. Edward's family are more vivid, in the sense that I know what they're supposed to look like, but by the end only Alice has a distinct personality. Edward and Bella are more fleshed out, especially Bella as the book is in first person from her POV. I can't say I found either Edward or Bella particularly likeable. It's an easy read; it's 434 pages and I got through it in less than four hours.

The description of setting is variable; natural settings are brought out well with good writing but the town and buildings are vague and somewhat sketchy. Weather is also done well. The dialogue is ok, although Meyer is overly found of expressive dialogue tags, of which I think I found 'snickered' the most irritating. In fact, both Bella and Edward do quite a lot of snickering and chuckling and it is part of what contributes to making them unlikeable.

Yet, Twilight has something. By page forty, I was so engrossed I nearly missed my stop on the train and that doesn't happen often. The relationship between Bella and Edward starts off in a standard Mills & Boon format. Edward starts off as angry boner man directing a violent and unpredictable temper at Bella. Then, about half way through, he 'fesses up. Edward opens up and reveals that his anger stems from his insecurities. He still is a bit of a dick, but not so much as he was shaping up to be.

The romance between them is the intensely emotional yet virginal kind that you only experience as a teenage. This isn't a young girl seduced by an older man, it is two teenagers experiencing first love. Edward may be a 100-year old vampire but in this respect he is a seventeen year old boy. There is a bit of touching, face, neck and arms only, four kisses with no tongue, and that's it. Yet, it is so sexy. The passion between them is overwhelming and in the end that's what pulls you in.

The writing is ok (it generally gets better towards the end), neither plot or character are compelling, but the relationship is absorbing. Twilight is good; it's not great, but it's not awful either.

Thoughts on reading: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

July's bookclub book was We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. This is a weird little book about two women who live in seclusion in the family home after one of them has killed the rest of the family.

I liked the style of the book. The language was quite poetic and magical. There was a sense of unreality as we were viewing the world through the point of view of a narrator with, probably, mental illness. The setting was given richness and depth by the lushness of the language. Merricat's mental and emotional life is vividly realised; the scenes where the villagers express their fear and hate are moving and her desire to be safe is understandable.

What was frustrating was the amount of the story that was kept from the reader. I wanted to know what had happened, why the villagers hated them, why the girl had killed her family. But I'm the sort of person that likes to understand things, to know why, and I think that probably says more about me as a reader. Thinking as a writer, I can see that it is tempting to include everything you know about a story, and what power Jackson gives her novella by witholding so much information.

I'm not sure I enjoyed reading this - it is literary fiction after all - but it was very well written and there's lots to learn from it.