- City of Vengeance by D. V. Bishop (Macmillan) - This
is the first in a planned series featuring Cesare Aldo and the city of Florence, and I
would be happy to read more about both. This is the time of the Medicis, when
Alessandro, Duke of Florence, murdered by his cousin, Lorenzino de’ Medici, was
succeeded by Cosimo de’ Medici. There are murders, family feuds, personal grievances, religious disputes and secrets around every corner.With multiple plots, subplots, and frequent
switches between character and locations, the story is almost deliciously
Shakespearean. Cesare Aldo is our unlikely hero, a former
soldier, with a war-injured knee, now a member of the Otto di Guardia (the
eight), the city’s most feared criminal court. While ruthless when required, he has a
(poorly kept) secret of his own. He is homosexual, a ‘crime’ punishable by
death. Ambushes, chase sequences and vivid descriptions of the Renaissance city keep the pages turning rapidly, while digressions about the nature of power and control give the novel a contemporary aspect.
- Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan (Two Roads) - Nice cover; shame about the cloying middle-class morality and condescending judgement. Madame Burova is a tarot reader who takes over from her mother Shunty Mae to run their sea front booth in Brighton and also works at the local holiday park, meeting lots of 'interesting characters'. Meanwhile, Billie, a young woman in London whose entire individuality seems to rely on the fact that she wears a jaunty bowler hat, finds out that she is adopted and travels to Brighton to uncover the truth of her origin story. The author makes her point so often that the characters have no personality of their own, and there are pages of exposition and creaky prose littered with unncessary adjectives. The period setting of 1973 to which we frequently flash back is practicably indistinguishable from the contemporary sections; what world does this author live in? We are firmly in the 'what could ever make a woman give up her precious baby' territory and authorial attitudes I thought had been left behind last century.
- Witches: What Women Do Together by Sam George-Allen (Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group) - I listened to this one as it is read by the author and they kept me company on car rides and bus trips. The premise is the fear that patriarchy has of women, especially when they get together, leads to their need to silence, censure, denigrate and ridicule us. From sport to music, to communication and activism, women's activities are seen as lesser by society. The greatest success of the patriarchy is pitting women against each other - women are easier to control (and sell things to) and compress into one of the very few ways to 'acceptably' be a woman if they are isolated. Conversely, they are often forced into the 'community and caring' roles, which are naturally underappreciated and underpaid, because they are 'women's work'. The allure of a network of connected women is what lies behind the pull of Wonder Woman and the fear of The Handmaid's Tale. This is admittedly a western-centric view of society - because that is the one in which the author and I live - which celebrates the power and pleasure of being among women.
- Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin Random House Australia) - The world setting of this novel makes a mark right from the start. A man and his three children live on a remote island halfway between Australia and Antarctica (it's called Shearwater and clearly based on Macquarie), which is rich in marine wildlife and home to the world's largest seed bank. A woman is washed ashore while looking for her husband who was working there and left increasingly mysterious messages. As the family nurse her back to health, she realises that the island hides secrets and as the sea levels rise, all the inhabitants are threatened. Part mystery; part eco-drama; part psychological treatsie on isolation, preservation and growth, this book is patchy in places but memorable as a whole.
