I have not read a huge number of books this month but, hey, it’s an improvement on May!
The Fairy GunMother - Daniel Pennac
This book has been on my shelf for a very long time. I acquired it as part of a Reading Spa at Mr B’s Emporium in Bath. Honestly, the Reading Spa is such a delightful concept — you go to the bookshop, they sit you down in a comfy chair and give you tea and cake, and then talk to you about books for an hour before recommending books you might like.
“—And Julie Corrençon had been drugged before she was depontated.
—Depontated?
—A word I’ve coined, Sir, with reference to the verb ‘defenestrate’.”
Unfortunately, it seems my tastes didn’t quite mesh with my Mr B’s-provided book advisor, and overall I didn’t love the books he prescribed for me. I was a little put off, and still haven’t quite finished all of them. The Fairy Gunmother is one such.
I was, therefore, not entirely surprised when I started on the book and didn’t like it all that much. I can’t quite define why: it’s got a lot of things in it that I would expect to like:
it’s a whodunnit
it is whimsical to the point of absurdity
it contains a lot of wordplay and snappy dialogue
I can totally see why it was recommended to me. But. But.
The opening page of the book drops you straight into the middle of the action with no explanation (again, a device I wholeheartedly approve of); the reader watches an assassination, told through the thought processes of the victim by an omniscient narrator. Re-reading it now, the language is quirky, the conceit is interesting, the details hilarious… at the time, I just found it bewildering and annoying.
We then follow the progress of the investigation into this murder (and various other crimes — are they linked? are they irrelevant?) — in a style which I am going to choose to describe as extremely colourful noir, zooming in on various different characters, and often straying into reams of elaborate detail.
As I write this, I’m wondering if I ought to read it again — I suspect the plotting may actually be much cleverer that it seemed. Maybe, now I have a secure idea of the destination, I could enjoy the journey more. And, as I said, I really ought to have loved it.
Broken Light - Joanne Harris
This genuinely was a re-read. It was last year’s (or the previous year’s? what is time anyway?) birthday gift from a friend with whom I have been swapping birthday books for (horrifyingly) approximately three decades. He’s a very reliable book-recommender. I had found myself remembering part of the plot, and — once I’d figured out which book I was thinking of* — decided to take it for another spin.
“Hormones are at the same time something that changes everything, and something of a joke, just as hormonal women are a joke; over-dramatic; untrustworthy.”
This book sets out its stall very quickly. Within the first few pages the reader encounters the idea that we’re dealing with magic, male violence, and a woman struggling with both dreadful menopausal symptoms and an unsupportive, distant husband. All of these things are exactly what you’re going to get for the rest of the book.
The story unfurls through written documents. The attributions allow us to work out that these are all “from the past”, and that “something has happened”. Some of the documents are written by someone who barely appears in the story until much later. Even now, looking up my quote for the box over there, I’ve just noticed a tiny extra surprise — some of the “extracts” are from a book published by a company the owner spends the whole book denying is a vanity press. The fact that that character published that book after the “incident” is interesting all in its own right.
And that is just the sort of thing I enjoyed about this book. There is lots of detail, there, to pick up if you care. If you have time to notice, because it’s a real page-turner — even with the ongoing depressing themes of how men treat women, how men think about women, and how little agency the central character appears to have over her life.
Despite her weird magical powers.
Which are quite simple. But also hugely complex — I think this is what made me want to re-read this, the fact the narrative is so intensely layered with different messages, and different aspects of the human existence.
Broken Light is, also, rather delightfully arranged like a playlist, with a song associated to each section. I wish more writers would do that, I love it. Strong recommend on this one.
*and if anyone can figure out that book about some sisters, which has a lot of references to the plant honesty, and where someone eventually drowns themselves after taking hemlock, I’d love to read that one again, too. The way my brain retains books does not facilitate easy Googling.