Farewell to old Ireland. Vintage, 2003, 419 p, plus xiv p Preface.

The Star of the Sea of the title is a clapped-out paddle steamer making a crossing from Cobh (Cove) in Ireland to New York. It is 1847, the Famine is at its height and the steerage compartments of the ship are crammed with hundreds of refugees, mostly starving. These desperate lives and the Famine itself are essentially background, though, as the narrative does not mention most of them except in passing when extracts from the log of the ship’s Master, Josias Lockwood, notes which of them have died in the night and been consigned to the deep, as well as instances of disease and quarantine, or incidents requiring incarceration of the perpetrators.

Is this a general aversion? I am personally not aware of many works of fiction dealing with the Irish Famine (or the Great Hunger as it is also known.) Perhaps the subject is just too overwhelming, too raw, or even too daunting for the novelist to approach, except obliquely as here. Though Irish writers appear prominently in British literary life the subject itself tends to be shied away from in Britain and perhaps British publishers may be wary of it.

In the book Star of the Sea, each chapter (plus the prologue and epilogue) is prefaced by an illustration from the time it is set along with the usual Victorian novel practice of the short chapter precis. Some of these illustrations depict Irish life or scenes of the famine but many show the grotesque stereotypes of so-called Irish characteristics prevalent in the nineteenth century.

The book as a whole is supposedly drawn together in retrospect by passenger G Grantley Dixon, a US journalist, from letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, conversations of his with the characters and his own writings. In the prologue he describes the only clergyman on board, a Methodist minister as conducting, “the adamant hymns of his denomination.”

The story is woven around the well-to-do passengers David Merridith (Lord Kingscourt,) his wife Laura, their children’s nanny, Mary Duane from Carna, and one Pius Mulvey, initially a shadowy presence on the ship – referred to as a ‘Ghost’ – though not entirely inconspicuous as he has one wooden foot. While following the ship’s voyage and the ever-mounting toll of dead passengers the narrative skips back to cover incidents in the principal characters’ pasts.

In her youth Mary Duane lived on Merridith’s estate (then in the hands of his father) and they formed a friendship. He greeted the Duane household with “God Bless” about which her father would say, “‘And as for God-bless, he’s a God-blasted Protestant. He doesn’t even believe in God.’” The relationship was developing into something deeper when Merridith went off to boarding school, where he learned ‘rules’. Neither his nor her father thought that their liaison could or should progress and he broke it off. In the aftermath she was betrayed by another man and only many years later did she and Merridith come across each other again.

Merridith himself displeased his father by his later marriage to Laura and by the time he inherited, the estate was in a poor condition, hence the journey to the US. Merridith and Dixon are at odds since Dixon berates him with the conditions of the Irish poor. Merridith responds with the fact of slavery in the US. That Dixon is having an affair with Laura (the Merridith marriage had long been on shaky ground) is added reason for dislike.

Mulvey has reasons to keep himself to himself on the ship. On pain of death he has been tasked by the ‘Liable’ men of Galway to kill Merridith for his many perceived sins against his tenants or for passing them on to those who treat them even more badly. The Liable men represent one of those many clandestine Irish associations desiring overthrow of English rule and gained their name because they signed off their warning missives with “Els-be-lible.” Mulvey (whose father once said to him that when you were talking about God you couldn’t expect bloody miracles,) has a chequered and violent past, once escaping from Newgate Jail thereby engendering the term Monster of Newgate, and has gone through many pseudonyms. Later Dixon tells us that the Monster led to an evolution in the representation of the Irish. Previously shown as foolish and drunken, now they more frequently shown as murderers. Ape-like, fiendish, bestial, untamed. There are also quotations from various sources exemplifying the prejudices of the ‘superior’ classes against the non-landed Irish.

In his time in London Mulvey had met Charles Dickens and spun that voraciously avid author a tale about a Jew who ran a school for young thieves – adding in details from Connemara ballads. Prompted by Dickens for the name of the Jew, Mulvey remembers that of an unpleasant priest who had hated Jews and also inveigled Mulvey’s brother (albeit temporarily) into the priesthood. The impeccably Irish-named Fagan.

In the Epilogue we find Dixon latterly wrote a book with a short section on the Monster of Newgate, which beguiled the public’s imagination. People attended fancy-dress evenings costumed as the Monster or one of his victims. Plays were performed. Grantley adds, “Soon the monster was to be subjected to the final indignity. That horror among horrors. A musical.”

Dixon has other observations to make, that among those of certain religious persuasions “Dancing was ‘back-legs fornication,’” that “Any assemblage comprising human beings … will bind itself together not by what it shares but ultimately by what it fears, which is so often so much greater.” Most powerfully that “The dead do not die in that tormented country, that heartbroken island of incestuous hatreds; so abused down the centuries by the powerful of the neighbouring island, so much as by the powerful of its native own. And the poor of both islands died in their multitudes. … The flags flutter and the pulpits resound. At Ypres. In Dublin. At Gallipoli. In Belfast…. Yet they walk, the dead, and will always walk: not as ghosts, but as press-ganged soldiers, conscripted into a battle that is not of their making.…They do not even have names. They are simply: The Dead. You can make them mean anything you want them to mean.” As people do to this day.

Though the connections between all the main characters are perhaps a little too close and strain credibility somewhat, Star of the Sea is still a superb piece of work. And it has to be said that a book whose plot turns on a first edition of Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell has to be saluted.

Pedant’s corner:- “staunch the bleeding” (stanch,) termagents (termagants,) “Verazano narrows” (Verazzano narrows,) Engels’ (Engels’s.)

Ace, 1993, 234 p.

On a future Earth where everyone is genetically designed to be perfect Dante McCall is a misfit. Viral treatments to cure his asthma didn’t take but instead warped his perceptions so that he was unfit for Normal interaction. He escapes a fire in the home where he lived and boards a spaceship about to launch. That ship is picked up by a rogue trader, the Mangueira. On board Mangueira, Dante, being Italian and knowing Spanish, can just about make out the language used aboard, Brazilian Portuguese due to the origin of its large crew. Its occupants are known to the rest of humanity as Malandros. Their ship-board life is dominated by samba dancing and singing. ‘Dancing changes body and brain chemistry and makes us more receptive, more reactive.’ Dante is at first as much of a misfit here as he was on Earth.

Lewitt makes no concessions to the reader at this point. Life on board is presented as it is and the reader has to decipher it along with Dante. As he does, so do we.

A feature of Mangueira is the prevalence of birds, especially hyacinth macaws, which can speak and turn out to be the repository of the Malandros’ history. “All together they form the memory and central processing unit of Mangueira.”

Further plot intrudes when Veronica, a spy from another Trader ship, boards. Her father was Malandro but she can’t remember much of what he told her. As time goes by she gradually assimilates to life on Mangueira and goes native.

There is a lot going on here. The idea of a space faring group making a virtue of singing and dancing, continuing the Brazilian tradition of Carnival, that songs are the records and contributions of a ship’s people, is beguiling. However, we also have genetic manipulation. Malandros were manufactured, like the birds. Altered with a virus so that their genetic structure included bioactive interface chips – invented and made illegal before the first emigrés left Earth. It is bred into them, to go down through the generations. A man called Jorge Almovardo had created the living machine and was later burned for it in a Charismatic Revival.

Dante too has been (illegally) manipulated, subject to perception of time-shift, with which he can change his own past, “all the reality he had ever lived.”

Songs of Chaos is a good, solid piece of Science Fiction all the better for its unusual setting and background.

Pedant’s corner:- Dante lay the cutlery across the plate” (laid the cutlery,) Guimaraes’ (Guimaraes’s.) “None of the structures were identifiable” (None … was.) “picked up the samples and lay them” (and laid them,) “to change he design” (change the design,) imposter (impostor.) “Her Night-dark skin” (why the capital ‘N’ on Night?) Plus marks for ‘autos-da-fe’ though.

White Rabbit, 2021, 363 p.   Illustrations by Mark Edward Geyer.

This tale of a hanger-on of a rock-star, general factotum of the (oddly named it has to be said) big house, Kitchenly Mill Race, whose telephone number provides the novel’s title, at times reminded me of the style of Iain Banks. Espedair Street obviously, but also Dead Air, yet is a different beast altogether from those and different, too, from David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, which also hymns the prog rock era.

Each chapter is preceded by an illustration of the house – or part of it – plus a few words, like those you might find in Victorian novels, indicating what said chapter will contain. The novel is markedly lighter in tone than Warner’s previous works. Reading those I could never have imagined myself laughing out loud while enjoying one of his books. But I did here at one particular scene.

Apart from first person narrator Crofton Clark, the house is in many ways the most prominent “character” in the book. It has an extensive set of connected buildings based on the Tudor original – mostly destroyed by a fire – with Elizabethan, Queen Anne, Georgian and Arts and Crafts extensions, different sections of which are connected by two air bridges. Here is where Marko Morrell, member of the band Fear Taker (and greatest guitarist in the world – according to Crofton,) lives with his Scandinavian wife Auralie and daughter Molly. Or at least where Marko stays when he is not touring or away seeing to his business interests. Crofton patrols the place every night, switching lights on or off depending on their location and shutting all the curtains. Through his eyes we are given an extensive depiction of the rambling pile. It is almost as if the house is taking the place of that delineation of landscape which is a feature of the Scottish novel. But that box is ticked by Crofton also extensively describing the house’s surroundings.

This attention to detail, and his obsessiveness about Fear Taker’s œuvre, indicate that Crofton may be in some way autistic. Though he believes himself to be essential to Marko and the house’s smooth running he only got the job after a stint as a roadie as he was a friend from way back. He has illusions of competence but he is not as close to Marko nor as privy to his employer’s intentions as he thinks. Then there is his belief that an intruder makes his or her way onto the property at night.

Minor mishaps begin to spin things out of Crofton’s control but his life really begins to unravel when two fifteen-year-old girls from the local village come to the gate to ask for a Fear Taker album to be signed for the brother of one of them. Crofton cannot resist showing off and invites them in for a tour of the house.

Kitchenly 434 is a portrait of a man who thinks he knows who and what he is and his station in life but who is deluded about almost everything – including Doris Boardman, the good time girl he had been seeing in his home town of Stafford before she found a better option.

(Though Warner clearly intended it as a signifier of different, less informed, times there was an unnecessary and therefore needlessly provocative aside about Jimmy Savile’s effectiveness as a presenter on Top of the Pops.)

Pedant’s corner:- “had strode” (had stridden,) “hide-and-go-seek” (USian, in the UK, Scotland certainly, it’s just ‘hide-and-seek’,) Whacky Races (this TV programme was titled Wacky Races,) Some Mother’s Do ’Ave ’Em (mothers plural, not ‘of mother’, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em,) “which would lay … on … her thighs” (which would lie on,) “prime ministers” (Prime Ministers.) “The Cream” (x 2, that band was called, merely, ‘Cream’, and in the text its chronology seems a bit askew,) Prestos (Presto’s,) “‘was if fact spent’” (was in fact spent,) sunk (x 2, sank.) “Rose looked and me and frowned” (Rose looked at me and… ,) “troop of horses had shit all down the road” (had shat,) “in any good chemists” (any good chemist’s,) imposters (I know it’s an alternative but it just doesn’t look right to me; impostors,) “turned towards to me” (‘turned towards me’ or ‘turned to me’,) “abit like” (a bit like,) “‘ hasn’t had his barbers open since’” (barber’s,) “‘I amn’t’” (nice to see this grammatical Scottish usage but it was said by an English girl so unlikely. They usually say ‘aren’t’,) “in a weave patterns” (in a weave pattern,) Herstmonceaux (that village is spelled Herstmonceux) “Quick as shot” (Quick as a shot.)

In Four Great Cornish Novels, Gollancz, 1984, 185 p.  (First published in 1936.)

In its set-up this could almost be a children’s story. Protagonist Mary Yellan’s mother has died after seventeen years of widowhood stoically looking after both Mary and the family farm at Helford. With no parents Mary might be footloose and fancy free – as the protagonists of children’s stories tend to be – but her mother’s dying wish was for Mary to go to live with her Aunt Patience at Jamaica Inn. Her sojourn there makes for a deep, dark experience.

The foreboding starts with the driver of the coach taking her there warning of the inn’s ill reputation. She immediately finds Patience’s husband Joss Merlyn to be a boorish, overbearing drunkard and the Inn itself an inhospitable place, taking as it does no customers and having no visitors except those occasional ones Jess warns Mary not to pay any attention to, indeed to hide away from. Not so much “Watch the wall my darling” as cover your face. Mary wants to flee back to Helford and only her concern for Aunt Patience persuades her to stay.

Gradually, during which time Mary explores the countryside around, Jess’s true malevolence manifests itself through drunken confessions – not just a smuggler but a wrecker and murderer to boot.

du Maurier obviously had a love and an eye for the Cornish landscape, which is described in generous, admiring terms. These passages reminded me of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, especially when Mary got lost on the moors and was rescued by a clergyman, (here the vicar of Auchtarnun, Mr Davey.) du Maurier’s affection for that work is usually noted in relation to her later novel, Rebecca, a more obvious reworking of Jane Eyre, but the writing in Rebecca does not carry the same visual stimulus.

There is a coyness to Mary’s interactions with Jess’s brother Jem, and a scarcely believable reticence to the way in which she is treated by Jess’s smuggling associates; but the book was first published in the 1930s – which does make it a little surprising that the villain of the piece (who in truth from his first appearance was not difficult to decipher as such) tells Mary that he found “Christianity to be built upon hatred, and jealousy, and greed …. while the old pagan barbarism was naked and clean.”

Notwithstanding my observations on du Maurier’s treatment of landscape above there were times when I found the novel – for a so-called classic – to be a touch overwritten.

Pedant’s corner:- the text repeatedly refers to Jamaica Inn’s tall chimneys. The illustration at the story’s start has small chimneys. Otherwise; “when the first cock crew” (crowed,) waggons (many times. I know it’s an acceptable alternative but since the first time I saw the word it was spelled ‘wagons’ I have always persisted in the belief it should have only one ‘g’,) “‘for my husband sake’” (husband’s sake,) to-morrow (nowadays unhyphenated,) havered (not used in the Scottish sense of talking nonsense but more like ‘tarried’.)

NewCon Press, 2022, 331 p.

Billy Braid has been brought up in the Moulspur backwoods, apprenticed to Handmaster Benoit Kim. Kim is able to fashion from the local wood a type of animated treeperson known as a sylvan. (Other creatures can be made too.) The sylvans can speak to Billy in a sybillant tone. One day they warn him of the approach of a stranger. This is Bullivant Smout, a kind of larger than life, cartoonish braggart like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He carries a message to Kim from Karpentine, the city Kim had fled before coming to the Moulspurs. The message asks for a sample of his work to be sent back to the city. Despite Billy’s objections Kim has no choice. The message has been written in compellant ink. Kim entrusts Billy with the task of conveying the sylvan, named Seldom, with the instructions: go straight there under your own steam; avoid talking to people; don’t accept gifts; come straight back.

Life, not to mention fiction, is of course more complicated than that. Even before reaching the city Billy has encountered the slightly roguish Ralston Maundy, who agrees to look after Billy’s package while he enters the Tower of Hands to make the expected contribution, and then a woman who asks him to help fix her weird contraption before taking him up into the clouds. For she, Paraphernalia Loess, is of the Weathermakers Guild and the rain is not behaving itself, creating drought in parts of the country from which refugees have descended on Karpentine. Billy is startled to find the clouds are also full of voices, which although inarticulate as yet are more malevolent than sylvans. Paraphernalia turns out to be the daughter of Jelena Loess, Queen of Clouds, though by the end of the book deserves that accolade herself.

Karpentine is a hierarchical place run by the Guilds; Artificers; Printmakers; Constructors; Inkmasters etc. The city itself is also stratified by class, from the lower levels to the upper. Billy soon runs foul of the law (machines have been banished from this world and sylvans seem to be just that. Motes left over from the destruction of the machines are what produce the sentience in sylvans and the clouds.) He is imprisoned in the Institute of Improvement, basically a forced labour establishment whose inmates are helpless due to the compellant ink used to ensure their compliance. Billy’s abilities have been noticed by the Guilds though, and he is released to the Loesses after a bidding war. He is not, as the Law of Man commands, ‘Rightly Bound by the Limits of his Humanity.’ Due to his training, he can fashion wood to some extent but, later, his capacity to manipulate paper becomes more important.

Though Paraphernalia takes him under her wing he is still a servant, but she is almost as constrained as he is, frustrated by the looming necessity to make a marriage alliance to aid her family. For the Weathermakers’ stock is falling. Paraphernalia and Billy gradually from a mutually appreciative alliance.

Though there are several strands, the main plot revolves around the Guilds’ desire for carbon black made from the charred wood of sylvans, as it is believed that will have even stronger compellant properties, and Billy’s desire to protect the sylvans from harm.

Apart from the resourceful Paraphernalia and Billy himself, Queen of Clouds is replete with variously memorable characters; the twin enforcers, Innocent and Erudite Bello, Maundy’s nephew and niece Vern and Clymie, the needy Killick Roach, the haughty Stillworth Crane, the spider-like Moraine Otterbree, the slippery sisters Sin and Skin, and, despite being caught up in the fantastical scenario which surrounds them, even the minor characters here are well drawn and totally believeable.

There are also pleasing Scottish grace notes – a publisher called Blackie, the words skelped and skelfs, Billy being addressed as ‘son’.

This is emphatically not the standard mediævally based fantasy world. It is agreeably complex, well thought through, and despite its repugnant aspects (which world does not have those, and fiction would not be compelling without them,) engaging.

In our present world of communication silos it also acts as a warning to question what you read.

Pedant’s corner:-  “What echoed across the moor were brash caws and clacks” (What echoed … was …) “Whatever sense of adventure Billy had evaporated” (Whatever sense of adventure Billy had, had evaporated.) “He made that the wish that would drive him forward” (He made a wish that … ???) “What surprised him, were the crowds” (no comma; and, perhaps, ‘What surprised him was the crowds.’ If the sentence was turned round I think it’s natural to say, ‘It was the crowds that surprised him.’)  “the only family you need us the one” (is the one,) “that led his and Maundy’s rooms” (that led to his and,) ‘“What’s going?”’ (‘What’s going on?’) “‘Never mind, I already know?’” (is not a question,) “The valuable supply of Noteworth, Kim had used” (no comma needed,) “rather patronisingly, named Diligence Way” (no need for the comma,) benefactor (benefactress?) “The hoi polloi” (Common usage I know, but, strictly, hoi means ‘the’ so the ‘the’ before polloi is unnecessary,) Kinglsey (Kingsley,) “that even these Artificers” (even if these Artificers.) “What little he could see of the courtyards below the nest of roof ridges were in late afternoon shadow”  (What little he could see of the courtyards …. was in late afternoon shadow.)  “Who knew another attempt would” (Who knew if/whether another attempt would,) “in which the aerialists and horsemasters performed their shows in at the Canza fair” (only one ‘in’ needed,) “about emotionally attachments” (emotional attachments,) “‘All the way round to the low for’”  (the low for?) “but she had she didn’t let on” (but if she had she didn’t let on,) an unindented new paragraph, “while she guide it up” (guided it up.) “The base of it, all but touching the Weathermakers’ tower” (no comma needed,) “went meet the governor” (went to meet,) a missing quotation mark as a piece of direct speech is resumed, “Billy suddenly had shocking , vivid image” (had a shocking, vivid,)  “both inside and outside of his head” (doesn’t need the ‘of’,) “the destruction of refugee camp” (of the refugee camp,) “Alicia’s sniffed haughtily” (Alicia sniffed,)  “but he they should have been” (no ‘he’,) “many years in from now” (no ‘in’ needed,) focussed (as I recall this appeared on other pages too but usually had ‘focused’.) “Para got up from settee” (from the settee,) “to the anguish of city” (of the city,) “inside of” (inside,) dumfounded (dumbfounded,) “a ramp that down from the central room” (that led down from,) a missing full stop after ‘sums’,) “‘What the Institutionalised?’” (‘What about the Institutionalised?’) crenelated (crenellated.) “Then their threats changed then to” (only one ‘then’ needed,) “but in then he heard” (but then he heard.) “He right of course” (He was right of course,) “and the reeked of booze” (and he reeked of,) “and that the hallway a mess” (and the hallway a mess,) “a turn in the stairs. The hush of the house forcing him to whisper.” (a turn in the stairs, the hush of the house …,)  “birth right” (birthright.) “Roach’s said thickly” (looks a bit odd. ‘Roach said thickly’???)  phlemy (phlegmy,) “not be depended on have scruples” (be depended on to have,) Vern (needs a full stop,) “‘You have allow us’” (You have to allow us’,)  “And that was the ones who” (And those were the ones who”,) “The only signs  that the pair were still alive was their breathing” (The only sign that,)  “staunch the blood” (stanch the blood,) “done something disappear to, something to change her in body” (I can’t decipher something disappear to,)  “‘to compliment your inks’” (complement.) “‘Stick him in there too,’ he can give her a hand.’” (‘Stick him in there too, he can give her a hand’,)  “looked to on the verge of collapse” (looked to be on the verge.)

I also noticed indentureship. I’ve always considered indentiture as the noun for this condition but I can’t find a reference for it. It may just have been indenture.

Yesterday, Lake of Darkness, the latest novel from Adam Roberts, was handed over by our postman.

Another one for review in ParSec.

Judging by the blurb it’s a murder mystery involving a black hole.

The cover you will notice features a spaceship.

That ship seems to be streamlined, more like a jet fighter in fact.

I wonder what atmosphere it would need to pass through to make streamlining necessary.

Cassell, 1966, 513 p.

Being the continuing adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sévigny, following on from The Game of Kings and Queen’s Play. We start here with a small incident in the ongoing border skirmishes with English forces before Lymond sets out for Malta, the seat of the Order of the Knights of St John, currently under the corrupt leadership of Grand Master Juan de Homedès. A Turkish fleet is bearing down on the island and Lymond is accompanying a mission to warn of its approach. It is there he meets the fair and pious Sir Graham Reid Malett (known as Gabriel.)

After witnessing the fall of Gozo they engineer a message giving false information to the Turks so that their fleet sets out for Tripoli instead of attacking Malta. A small group of Knights travels there to help its defence. Lymond’s former lover Oonagh O’Dwyer, whom he previously persuaded away from would-be Irish King Cormac O’Connor, has taken up with Galatian de Césel, Governor of Gozo, but when the island is lost she falls into the hands of the Turks. It turns out she is pregnant with Lymond’s son, eventually named Khaireddin, but for most of the book he is unaware of this.

The attempts to prevent the Turks capturing Tripoli eventually failing Lymond is joined by Malett in his efforts to form and train a private army partly to police the perennial feuds in the Scottish Borders but also to make money as mercenaries.

In the meantime Malett’s young and visually captivating sister, Joleta, has been sent by him to Lymond’s mother for safe keeping. Her attitude to men, who have always it seems deferred to her beauty, is summed up her reaction to Lymond’s articulation of his feelings for her, “‘But you can’t dislike me!’” In this scene Lymond seems to act at odds with the gentlemanly demeanour we might expect of a novel’s hero. But we later find his reasons are sound.

Notably (to me anyway) the pivotal moment in the book takes place in a hostelry in Dumbarton.

Twists and turns, betrayals and unfortunate choices abound and there are several loose ends (presumably to be taken up in the three later instalments of the Lymond Chronicles.)

It all jogs along eventfully enough but there is something about Dunnett’s writing here that jars with me. Too many viewpoint jumps perhaps, too little transparency.

Pedant’s corner:- helments (helmets,) unhung (unhanged,) “nursed rom” (nursed from.) “‘Unless your  fortify’”  (‘Unless you fortify’,) pomegranite (pomegranate,) “which soaked hides at might need protect” (context suggests ‘hides it might need’,) “the knights vulnerability” (the knights’ vulnerability,) disks (discs,) demonaic (demoniac,) hiccoughing (hiccupping,) cameraderie (camaraderie,) “a oecumenical” (‘an oecumenical’, and the latter is usually, now, spelled ‘ecumenical’,) Sandilands’ (Sandilands’s,) “every man, woman and child for which the company were responsible” (for which the company was responsible,) connexion (connection,) “had reached a screaming crescendo” (had crescendoed to a screaming climax,) pollarchy (first known use of this word was in the 1850s, not in mediæval Scotland.)

In The New York Trilogy, faber and faber, 2004. [City of Glass, 1985, 133 p.]

Well this is an odd one. A writer called Daniel Quinn using the pen-name of William Wilson to publish detective novels about an investigator named Max Work (make of that moniker what you will) receives a telephone call asking if he is Paul Auster; of the Auster Detective Agency. At first he demurs saying there is no-one of that name at that address but on a second phone call agrees to meet the caller, who is a man calling himself Peter Stillman (though he says that is not his real name) looked after by his wife, a woman at pains to point out their relationship is not sexual. Stillman moves with a certain stuntedness, like a puppet.

His story is weird; raised by his father without being spoken to to try to discover, when he does speak, what the primordial language was. The elder Stillman is about to be released from prison and the younger is convinced that when he is, he will kill his son, or at least attempt to. Quinn’s task – as Auster – will be to try to prevent this.

Noting the movements down in a red notebook, Quinn follows the older “Stillman” around the city while imagining himself to be the detective Paul Auster in order to fit the part, over paths that, when graphed, seem to trace out the outlines of letters of the alphabet: letters which Quinn eventually realises spell out “Tower of Babel”. This is after a discussion of a book about the Tower written by one Henry Dark. City of Glass displays a fascination with language then. Quinn becomes obsessed with following Stillman while slowly being immersed in the character of “Paul Auster” who is, though, in effect a nullity. “To be Auster meant being a man with no interior, a man with no thoughts.”

Where are we meant to go with all this? A book written by a man called Paul Auster with an imagined Paul Auster who doesn’t actually exist?

But there’s more. Quinn eventually meets the “real” Paul Auster and they engage in a discussion about Henry Dark and what the initials HD might stand for. Which is when we come to Humpty Dumpty; a character whose best known philosophy relates to words as meaning what he wanted them to, as if he could force them into that meaning by will alone.

They then progress into a conversation about the origins of The Adventures of Don Quixote which Cervantes claimed to have translated from Arabic to Spanish but, according to the “real” Paul Auster of the book, was made up by his friends to illuminate his delusions, then translated into Arabic, the manuscript to be found by Cervantes, in order that this reflection would cure him of his madness. But this book’s “Auster” says Cervantes wasn’t mad, only pretended to be.

In his growing obsession with “Stillman” Quinn descends into a degraded state, staying up all night in order not to avoid seeing when “Stillman” will leave his apartment and eventually losing all sense of proportion and personal hygiene.

At the end of all this I’m still not sure whether there is something relevant about City of Glass or if, instead, it’s a pile of self-indulgent tosh.

Pedant’s corner:- “Quinn could not image himself addressing a word to this person” (could not imagine himself?)

Gollancz, 2016, 371 p.

I seem to have progressed into reading Newman’s series of Planetfall novels backwards. Before Mars and Atlas Alone I did read in the correct order (3 before 4) but this is number 2 in the sequence and I have not yet read Planetfall, the first.

Our viewpoint character here, Carlos Moreno, is indentured as a detective with the Ministry of Justice and very good at his job. He has an unfortunate history, though, as his mother famously went off on a one-way trip into space on a ship called Atlas (he has to dodge the occasional journalist wanting to know how he feels about that) and he spent time in Texas with a religious cult known as the Circle before escaping it and enduring various degrading situations until his indentiture, which is a contract from which he is unlikely ever to secure release. He is called in to investigate the death of Alejandro Casales, the leader of the Circle, in a hotel on Dartmoor. It looks like murder but (of course) something about the circumstances does not seem right to Carlos. His endeavours are complicated by the political situation with representatives of the Americans and of the political entity known as Norope as well as the MoJ requiring to be satisfied.

For most of the book this is more or less a police procedural novel albeit with Science Fictional trappings – that spaceship and the Artificial Personal Assistant, APA, chips with access to the internet most people have in their heads being the most obvious of these. Moreno’s APA is called Tia.

During the investigation, one of the hotel guests, Travis Gabor, asks to be interviewed last. His husband Stefan Gabor, an extremely wealthy man, is as nasty a piece of work as you could imagine. This turns out to be unfortunate for Moreno as Stefan is angered by Moreno’s delays and buys out what had seemed his unbreakable contract with the MoJ to force him to go back to the Circle to where Travis has in the meantime debunked.

In the Circle, where such things as APAs are non grata and those entering who are chipped must wear a nullifying bracelet, Moreno has an unwelcome reunion with his father and discovers the link between the dead Casales’s activities and the US gov-corp’s and Stefan Gabor’s plans for an Atlas 2.

It’s all well done and readable enough – Newman can write – but, while at least in this instalment the derivation of Newman’s characters’ expletive of choice, JeeMuh, is explained, it still seems torturously awkward to me.

Pedant’s corner:- Written – or at least published – in USian, lasagna (lasagne,) meters (metres,)  “‘They were just pr0n really’” (‘just porn’ seems to be the sense.) “none of the outer doors were locked” (None … was locked.) “Either side of the drive” (Each side,) “outside of” (just ‘outside’,) “off of” (just ‘off’,) “the brain activity created by keywords relating to the case are also attended to” (the brain activity …. is also attended to,) “‘an end to that pain, you. Held. On.” (‘to that pain. You. Held. On.’) “to the the” (only one ‘the’ needed,) “have me made into someone who” (have made me into someone who,) syllabi (in English the plural of syllabus is syllabuses. Syllabi is a false plural used by people who think the word derives from Latin. It doesn’t.)

Polygon, 2006, 458 p, plus iv p Introduction by David Pratt. First published in 1961.

The novels by Jenkins I have read so far have always been situated in Scotland so this one, set among the British diplomatic community in Kabul in the late 50s, marks a digression. (Jenkins did spend some in Afghanistan himself in the mid to late 50s and on the evidence here had a good insight into the country as he displays some sympathy for Afghans and their customs.)

The meat of the story is in the flurry caused by the intended marriage between local Abdul Wahab and Briton Laura Johnstone who met while he was studying in Manchester and apparently fell in love. The British set in Kabul is disturbed since the precedents for such marriages have not been happy ones. (They do mostly though seem to have been between relatively naïve young Englishwomen and Afghans who have misrepresented themselves as rich before the marriage.) One such, Mrs Mohebzada, is in despair due to her husband’s family’s insistence on her conforming to Afghan customs. She is trapped as she loves her children but they are deemed by Afghan law to be Afghani citizens and so not allowed to exit the country. Laura however is over thirty and a teacher so liable to be more level headed than most. And perhaps more strong-willed.

The universal consensus among the ex-pats is that the marriage must be prevented and steps are taken to dissuade Laura and also to lean on the headteacher of the school where she has applied to teach to turn her down and on the Afghan authorities not to give her a visa. Nevertheless, Laura persists and embarks on her visit (at first intended to be only for six months to see if she takes to the place.)

On the Aghan side Prince Naim sees the marriage as a way to symbolise a union between East and West as a step to modernising Afghanistan. All this has the potential to feed into debate about whether the women’s full body covering, here called a shaddry, enforced for locals but not for Westerners, ought to be abolished. An Islamic cleric, Mojedaji, at one point voices the opinion that, if it is, there will as a consequence be an increase in rape. (Aside. Surely this attitude speaks more about men’s behaviour than of women.) A shadowy but potentially menacing organisation called the Brotherhood attempts to recruit Wahab to its ranks – an opportunity for advancement he grabs eagerly.

Meanwhile in the background, and by no means the novel’s focus, the influence on the country of the Soviet Union is growing. A diplomatic visit by Minister Voroshilov is intermittently referenced through the book.

Racism explicit and implicit runs through the tale. Englishwoman Mrs Massaour is married to a Lebanese man and feels betrayed by the fact that both her children are deeper black than her husband. The loving marriage of journalist and poet Harold Moffatt and Lan, a woman of Chinese origin, is threatened by his reluctance to have children because of the prejudice they will suffer as ‘half-castes’.

Jenkins has Mrs Massaour venture the thought of the characteristic British failing – obtuseness, the centuries-old irremovable unawareness that other people in other countries ordered some things better. (In some British people the obtuseness was aggravated by conceit.) This is an attitude that still prevails in certain quarters.

Moffat says to his wife in relation to racism, “birds and animals join together to mob to death one that’s different from the rest. Human beings are civilized; their killing’s more subtly done, and it takes longer. It may take a lifetime, but, Christ, how much crueller it is”

The complicated relation between the British in Kabul and the local population is illustrated by the extravagant celebration of the anniversary (complete with captured guns) of an Afghan victory over the British. Such entanglements are hard to shake off especially if they keep recurring. The seeds of Afghanistan’s current situation are already present in the book.

Dust on the Paw (the title is a quote which means small people are of no significance to the wielders of power) is a book of its time – for example it employs the words Negroes, Dagos and wog along with the racist attitudes of some of its characters – but still of interest.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction – “wracked by the war” (racked,) Jenkins’ (x 4, Jenkins’s,) “ex-patriot community” (ex-patriate, an ex-patriot would have foresworn their country, not clung to its ways,) iIt (It.) In the text itself: Mossaour (the spelling seems to be interchangeable with Massaour.) “‘Didn’t you use to have contempt for’” (Didn’t you used to have,) repuslive (repulsive,) “the lioness’ instinct” (x 2, lioness instinct, it doesn’t need the apostrophe – which would require an s after it in any case,) woe-begone (woebegone,) sanitorium (sanatorium; sanatoria was on the next page,) a missing quotation mark at the end of a piece of direct speech,) “stanchly borne loneliness” (staunchly borne,) Moffett (elsewhere Moffatt,) insect (it was a scorpion, they are arachnids,) solider (soldier.)