December Books
I was working on two huge edits this month for publishers, one a non-fiction book on Japanese fiction, the other a speculative fiction novel set in Africa, so that pretty much monopolised my reading time. I did manage to fit in a few great books though. The Deception by Maureen Myant is so good I bought it twice. I had it in my backpack to read on the train. I also had a bottle of very nice sake bought at a farmers’ market. The latter smashed all over the former (and a backup phone battery, two guitar pedals and a t-shirt I can never wear again) while I was halfway through and needed to know what happened. While Myant’s last, The Confession, is the kind of stuff you expect from crime fiction (I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, just that there are a lot of cops and murders), this is more of a psychological mystery involving mistaken identity, kidnapped children and loads of family secrets. It ties in to The Confession in that it shares a couple of characters but isn’t really a sequel: same universe, as they’re saying these days. I understand there’s a third in the series on the way. I’ll happily buy two again though I’d rather not have to chuck one of them in a train station bin.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Oh. My. God. Why did no one tell me about Emily St. John Mandel? Of course they did. Soooo many people did and while I believed each one who raved about her and put her on my list, it wasn’t with a huge amount of urgency. I picked up Sea of Tranquility in the same Hawaii bookshop where I bought Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars and that is absolutely two for two in terms of the best science fiction I’ve read in ages. Hooked. Going to order the rest. I’ve joined the ranks of “You have GOT to read Emily St. John Mandel.” Do we have badges?
I love Leila Aboulela’s writing, and I love historical fiction, so this was a no brainer. No spoilers but a couple of chapters in I was worried that this was going to be too depressing to cope with. I’ve had an exhausting few months of work and needed to unplug and—again, no spoilers—something happens near the start that made me think “I can’t cope with this level of intense emotion right now.” Of course I shouldn’t have worried. Aboulela knows exactly what she’s doing and in true Shakespearian style takes you as far as you can with one set of emotions before shifting the focus and giving you time to rethink and reset. On a more technical note, for all writers who want to cover huge periods of time and don’t want to lose the micro in the macro, this THIS is how you do it.
I’m on record as a fan of Osamu Dazai and through work I had the chance to buy a few of the books my collection lacked including this one. It’s an odd collection of odd stories—Dazai does odd stories but these are odd stories—where he plays with the supernatural, myths and, in a couple of cases, just outright rips off Chinese folk tales. His cynical sense of humour had me laughing out loud more than once. Not the best Dazai but that still makes it pretty damn good.