Fiday Five: Books Read in October

1. Medusa by Jessie Burton (Bloomsbury) - Supposedly a feminist retelling of the Greek myth from Medusa's perspective, this is fairly simplistic and reads as young adult fiction. Medusa meets Perseus on an island; they talk from either side of a rock, tell each other their stories and fall in love. They hold hands but never see each other, indicating that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Medusa wonders, “I thought of what it might mean to have a boy admire you, not for how you looked, but for who you were. For your thoughts and your deeds, your fears and your dreams. Was such a miracle to be my inheritance?” It’s what every young adult wants to hear, but it is not achievable. She also claims, “When beauty’s assigned you as a girl, it somehow becomes the essence of your being. It takes over everything else you might be. When you’re a boy, it never dominates who you can be.” This is true, in a world of binaries, and the pair assert agency over their own ‘myth’. Both Medusa and Perseus have been manipulated by the Fates and gods, questioning how much control does one have over one’s destiny? Medusa claims her name is Mirena, which means both duality and strength (and is also the name of the Queen of the Amazons and a contraceptive device). The novella is an introduction to telling one's own story, creating an identity, and learning that an individual can be more than one thing. Medusa revels in the new-found knowledge, “I was growing accustomed to this new sensation of uncomfortable compromises, of living in the grey areas of life, rather than the starker strips of black and white I’d believed in as a child.” It's an entertaining read of self-discovery more akin to the Percy Jackson novels than Natalie Haynes' works.
2. Frogkisser! by Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin) - This is a fantasy/ fairytale mash-up in which young Princess Anya has to go on a quest to restore the kingdom and save her sister, Morven. There is a lot of hokum about collecting ingredients such as a pint of witches' tears and three-day-old hail stones to make a Reversal Lip Balm. With this balm she can kiss the frogs that have been transformed by her evil stepstepfather (her stepmother remarried after her father died) back into their original shape, including the hapless Prince Denholm, with whom Morven has fallen in love. She sets out accompanied by a loyal dog, Ardent, who is easily distracted by food, and falls in with an apprentice thief, Shrub, who has been transformed into an orange newt, and Bert, short for Roberta, leader of the Association of Responsible Robbers who steal from the rich and give to the poor. Bert tells Anya that their ethos is about "making sure that those who have too much do some sharing with those who have too little, and it isn't always just about valuable things like money or even basic things like food. It is also about sharing power and opportunities." Anya doesn't understand this as she is a princess and has always had unrecognised privilege. This is clearly a Life Lesson, and is handled in a rather clunky fashion. As Anya completes her quest, meeting several characters and learning self-awareness, there are nods to Narnia and the Discworld novels but without the complexity of the former or the satirical light touch of the latter. It's fine, but largely forgettable. 
3. Hagitude by Sharon Blackie (September Publishing) -From the author of If Women Rose Rooted, which examined women’s connection to the natural world, comes Hagitude, a reimagining of the second half of life; menopause and how it affects women along with society’s expectations. As with the previous book, Blackie uses the archetypes of Jungian philosophy, and mythical tales to explain her theories. She begins by explaining the negative portrayal of ageing in Western culture. “Older women, when they’re not rendered completely invisible, are still trivialised and marginalised, and often actively ridiculed.” Unlike some of the legends from cultures which revere and respect elders with their gifts of wisdom, our tales of old women suggest they are something to be shunned, and the ageing process must be avoided at all costs. Much of this fear of the old woman can be ascribed to the ‘witch wound’ as many  women fear not conforming to the narrow expectations of society. Due to the witch trials and their associations, many women were culturally oppressed and modified their behaviours to escape unwanted and dangerous attention, and “to avoid being overly visible. Young women are enamoured with sparkly witches and spooky glam, but that is not the connection to nature and the earth that appeals to menopausal women. Blackie makes an interesting case for menopause being like a crucible in which the fire burns through to the heart and essence of the human, just as she quotes Michaelangelo talking of his sculpture, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” By considering the body as a thing that carries us, rather than the totality of who we are, she raises some thoughtful propositions and encourages a refreshing outlook.
4. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Faber) - A very short work (a mere 47 pages) in which Cathal, at the end of his working day, reflects on his relationship with his ex-fiancée, Sabine, a French gallery worker. The economy and efficiency of language is remarkable as it paints pictures that lodge in the brain far more than wordier works of fiction. From the opening sentence - “On Friday, July 29^th, Dublin got the weather that was forecast.” - with its hints of mundanity and brilliance, we know what to expect. Like Joyce, Proust or Woolf, the commonplace is juxtaposed with the specific in a slightly unsettling way. The construction of sentences and the use of verbs to shorten actions - “He took up the coffee, leaving before he sugared it" - gives it a lyrical lilt and an immediacy I also noticed recently in Paul Lynch’s work – it is an Irish thing? Keegan introduces feelings and emotions in the description of events. We learn that the narrator is mean and petty as he remembers an evening with Sabine in terms of value. “She took a long shower then and changed and drank a full litre of Evian over a Chinese which he’d had to order, over the phone. The restaurant charged four euros for delivery." He expects some reward for being kind – “Did I not order your dinner tonight and pay for it? Did I not buy all those cherries for your fancy tart? And haven’t I helped you here all day, moving all your stuff?” It is powerful to make the narrator so unsympathetic halfway through the novella, noting that the story was originally published in French under the title Misogynie. This is a tense tale without hyperbole or dramatic effects, but it resonates in a disturbing way as it questions what men really want from women and whether we have made any significant progress in gender equality.
5. Dark Queen Rising by Paul Doherty (Crème de la Crime) -Dark Queen Rising is billed as a murder mystery with a meticulously researched political and historical setting. In the later fifteenth century, while the House of Lancaster is in disarray (King Henry VI is locked in the Tower of London; his wife Margaret of Anjou and their son, Prince Edward are captured and imprisoned), the House of York is rampant and the three brothers Edward (later King Edward IV), George (Duke of Clarence), and Richard (Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III) are at war amongst themselves. The novel is full of set pieces and action; double crossing and espionage; smuggling and disguises; secret passages and hidden doorways. The immediate mystery is that people are found dead in room locked and bolted from the inside with the key turned. This leads to the search for a document - the Titus Regulus - containing secret ciphers, that could change attitudes to the right of succession. The problem is that “No one really knows what the ‘Titulus Regius’ truly is, where it’s hidden, or what form it takes.” It falls to Christopher Urswick, the personal clerk of Margaret of Beaufort (married to Edmund Tudor, half-brother to Henry VI of England – due to having the same mother, Katherine of Valois) to solve the mystery. Doherty writes in his notes that, “Some people even regard Urswick as the founder of the British Secret Service", and there is plenty of chaos and suspicion as people are constantly swapping loyalties, and death is everywhere.

Friday Five: Books Read in August

1. Roseblood by Paul Doherty (Headline) - In 1455 as war approaches, the House of York and Lancaster battle things out with a sick Henry VI on the throne. There is a lot of assumed knowledge about who is on which side before we even get to the multiple turncoats. The plot revolves around a secret diary containing incendiary claims - “A chronicle of scandalous secrets affecting the royal family as well as that of the good duke [York]. It is the work of a former royal physician.” Many people are searching for it, to claim legitimacy or otherwise to the throne. The villain of the piece is LeCorbeil (French for crow, which is depicted on the standard), “LeCorbeil is many things: a town in Normandy, the place of a hideous massacre; the name of a Frenchman who hates the English Crown, and Beaufort in particular; as well as a group of mercenaries skilled in the crossbow.” Besides the death and slaughter, there are many historical descriptions and set pieces, but they are no substitute for strong characterisation, leaving this a difficult novel with which to engage.
2. Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi (Picador) - For this magical realism in a dark-fairytale-that-could-easily-cross-to-horror sort of way rather than the twee and sparkly kind, the comparisons with Angela Carter are well deserved. Perdita Lee, a girl who is depressed and may take her own life (and whose name literally means 'lost'), lives with her mother, Harriet, in West London. She has a strange quartet of dolls in her bedroom, who are partly plants (elms, palm trees, crimson petals and living hair), and other furnishings also seem alive. Harriet bakes gingerbread with magical and potentially healing properties, as she tries to ingratiate herself with the PTA. Perdita is in a deep coma: has she taken an overdose, eaten too much gingerbread, or visited Druhástrania? This is a fantasy land where Harriet's best friend, Gretel, lived. Perdita goes to find Gretel and experiences adventures with wells, magic beans and a world of characters that may or may not come from Harriet's past. Gingerbread is an orginal, compelling and disturbing work from a bright British talent.
3. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin (Picador) - Bruce Chatwin was a journalist for the Sunday Times. He wrote Songlines in 1987 as part of his fascination with travel and nomadic lifestyles. Songlines connect the land and its stories for Indigenous Australians and each tribe has their own way of singing the land to understand its past, present, future and the way it connects us all. The book blends fiction and non-fiction and is part memoir; part travelogue and part anthropology, as a fictional character named Bruce travels to Alice Springs and joins a land surveyor mapping a proposed rail route to Darwin. Although beautifully written with marvellous descriptions, the tone is very much of the time and feels inappropriate now as an 'otherisation' of Indigenous Australian culture and a certain white superiority in trying to describe it: while trying to ascertain the sacred sites which should not be touched by the railway, he climbs Uluru, which he calls Ayers Rock, without apparent irony. It is a bold attempt to explain a culture, but it is an impossible task and problematic at best.
4. The Wife's Secret by Barbara Hannay (Penguin) - While travelling in Townsville, this was recommended to me by a bookseller, due to the fact that Hannay is a local author. I would not have read it otherwise. It's what's known as a 'second-chance romance' as Lisa and Rolf have divorced; he has moved north to be an author, and she has remained in the coastal town to do something-or-other wholesome. When Dave sets up a restaurant, Lisa may find love again, but when Rolf returns with a glamorous actress and young publicist, she may not. This is played out against the background of a cyclone and a community coming together. It's supposed to be feel-good and heartwarming, and according to many reviews on Goodreads, it is.  
5. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (Tinder Press) - With over 400 pages, this novel takes a long time to say not very much, but it does so with clear images and descriptive prose. Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este was married to Alfonso II in 1558, aged 13. She died three years later of pulmonary tuberculosis, but almost immediately after her death there were rumours that she had been poisoned on the orders of her husband. Maggie O’Farrell has taken this concept and expounded upon it, with imagined emotions and a twist or two. She makes much of the fact that women had no autonomy and were the chattels of their male relatives, forcing a feminist revisionism into an anachronistic historical period. The portrait, which is a major plot point (and didn’t actually exist) is painted by several different people who specialise in different aspects – one does cloth; one does hands; another the landscape. The supposed twist is obvious, and the ending is unsatisfactory.