British Library, 2024, 203 p, plus i p Contents, ii p The 1920s, ii p about Catherine Carswell, ii p Preface by Helen Vincent, i p Publisher’s Note and vii p Afterword by Simon Thomas. First published 1922.

This is structured mainly as the journal entries of Ellen Carstairs, along with some letters – all addressed to her friend Ruby in Germany where Ellen spent some years studying music. Ellen lives with her brother and fiercely religious Aunt Harry in Glasgow. For income Ellen has taken pupils for piano lessons but she really wants to be a writer. Indeed, one of her schoolteachers is so disappointed that she has not so far pursued her true vocation that she refers to Ellen (publicly) as a prostitute for neglecting her talents. Not a description to be welcomed in the 1920s – or I suppose anytime.

In a prefiguring of Virginia Woolf’s famous essay Ellen is much delighted by renting a room where she can receive pupils and write. “I have a Room!” she tells Ruby. “A room all to myself and away from home.” Not that it is in any way salubrious. But she has the right to refuse any one entry. And it is an escape from Aunt Harry.

Ellen’s imagination is fired by meeting in the Mitchell Library an older man whom she calls Don John. His knowledge of literature and London publishers will provide her with a potential route into writing professionally.

It is he who recites to her the quote from Shakespeare that gives the book its title, “The camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows.” He is referring to Ellen’s writing but the sentence could also apply to Ellen herself.

Despite his learning and apparent gentility Don John turns out to be poor and prone to lapses into drink.

Ellen reflects on writing novels that, “It is hardly ever from likely touches, nearly always from unlikely ones, that the reader gets that sudden piercing sense of life in a good book. Yet at the same time it must never be an unlikeliness that is contrary to nature.”

The book is peppered with Ellen’s thoughts on women’s place in life and their likely prospects. She wonders about marriage and children but defers that expectation to the future. However, she betrays attitudes of the time – or perhaps in a preemptive strike against possible dismissal of her worth – with the thought, “when I’m reading anything serious, to know that the author is a woman who sat in her petticoats and her hairpins, leaving life aside to put words on paper, puts me off like anything.”

After returning from a trip to London, she tells Ruby (and us) she is engaged to a man named Duncan, home on a break from his civil service position in India. She toys with the idea of consummation but shies away from it despite thinking relations between the sexes ought to be freer. Duncan professes to admire her frame of mind but gradually it becomes clear that the conformities of life in India are uppermost in his thoughts, giving Ellen pause.

Though it starts falteringly, this reads like an accurate portrait of middle-class life in Scotland in the early part of the twentieth century.

Pedant’s corner:- “the Miss Clarks” (the Misses Clark,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “the Miss McFies” (the Misses McFie,) “the Trosachs” (Trossachs.)

Harvill Press, 2000, 268 p. Translated by Derek Coltman from the French Le Générale de l’armée mort, itself translated from the Albanian, Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur, first published in Albania in 1963.

Twenty years after the Second World War an Italian general is sent to Albania to retrieve for repatriation the bodies of soldiers who had been killed in the conflict there. He is accompanied by a priest. They are working with lists of the dead containing their particulars – height, dentition and so on, plus the probable location of the grave – provided by the Italian Government. The actual exhumations are largely carried out by local Albanians of course.

Prior to the expedition the general had been visited by various relatives of the deceased with specific requests and information about the individuals concerned. Foremost in his mind though, is finding the remains of Colonel Z of the infamous “Blue Battalion,” whose wife the general finds still attractive but suspects may have some sort of relationship with the priest.

The whole situation is awkward for the general; though their tradition is one of hospitality, the locals are in many ways suspicious, the expedition’s presence triggering unpleasant memories and resentments – and the task is arduous. The difficulties of working in such an environment, the sensibilities to be navigated are beyond him. The discovery of the particulars of Colonel Z’s fate (and of his bones) arise from this disparity.

This is the sort of novel – and subject matter – which I suspect no Anglophone writer would contemplate. I know the circumstances surrounding the undertakings would be less problematic but can you, for example, imagine an extended fictional narrative – or even a short story – about the work of the Commonweath War Graves Commission? A non-fiction book, yes; but never a novel.

That Kadare was working under the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha makes the fact that he could examine any aspect of Albanian society remarkable. It was subtle of him to choose such an oblique angle to do so.

There were occasional points at which the language of the text seemed a bit strained – possibly due to the fact that the book has undergone successive translations – but this did not impact on its readability.

Pedant’s corner:- “withlittle” (with little,) “the generalasked” (the general asked,) “even asemblance” (even a semblance,) “bothvery” (both very,) a missing full stop at the end of a piece of dialogue, a misplaced line break, “anylonger” (any longer.) “Those are the sort of things” (Those are the sorts of things,) “dark,gentle eyes” (dark, gentle eyes,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech where the sentence it was embedded in continued, a missing comma in a list, “would all departin various directions” (would all depart in,) span (spun.) “Then,fighting free” (Then, fighting free.) “Six or seven oundsat the most” (Six or seven pounds at the most.) “There were a number of” (There was a number of.)  “‘You wantto be able’” (want to.)

47 North, 2013, 199 p, plus ii p Acknowledgements and i p about the Author.

Jayna has an affinity with numbers and is employed as a researcher into trends for a firm called Mayhew McCline. But she is also a simulant, a type of clone developed to carry out high grade tasks for the corporations who dominate this future society.

Most humans, known as organics, are immunised against violence, addiction and over-indulgence and – except for a few allowed to do more menial tasks – spend their time in enclaves. So-called bionics (humans deemed suitable) have been given implants to enhance their capabilities, are relatively freer and better employed.

Simulants spend their out of work hours in rest stations, where their food and even sleeping times are controlled. As a result, Jayna’s life tends to be repetitive. Normal human interactions, such as sexual liaisons and it seems empathy, have been edited out of their make-up. However, Jayna keeps stick insects as pets of a sort. Simulants who show themselves to be unsatisfactory in some way are subject to recall and reinitiation – taken back to the Constructor.

Jayna begins to doubt herself when some of her predictions turn out to be off the mark and begins to wonder if she needs more contact with organics. Earlier simulants have been withdrawn from use but Jayna’s cohort has been endowed with better olfactory senses which she believes are tied up with emotions and ability to empathise.

The novel is a slow unfolding of Jayna’s development and – as she mixes more with bionics and organics – of her questioning her role and treatment.

The prose in A Calculated Life is stilted at times but this is a reflection of Jayna’s thought processes as a simulant. In all, the novel is an understated examination of a dystopia. Let’s hope it’s treated as a warning and not a blueprint.

Pedant’s corner:- Published in USian. “‘Pigeons are not animals. They’re birds.’” (Birds are animals; like humans, they belong to the class of vertebrates,) “rinsed it and lay in gently on the wooden board” (and laid it gently.) “‘That’s funny we were chatting the other night’” (needs a comma after ‘funny’,) “asked a women” (woman,) luck-luster (lack-luster; or in British English ‘lack-lustre’.)

Flamingo, 1995, 219 p.

This is a chronicle of life in the Orcadian island of Norday in the years between the World Wars till just after the Second. But it is also a collection of short stories.

Thorfinn Ragnarson is a dreamer. His teacher, Mr Simon, says he can’t seem to teach the boy anything and his father says he’s not good at farm work either. At one point he seems to be channelling Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring when he refers to Thorfinn as, “You stupid boy.”

Not much gets past the islanders. Many of their conversations take place in the island’s shop and post office.

Thorfin has an imagination, though, letting it run wild through history, which is where the short story aspect of the novel comes in. We read his reminiscences of Vikings on the road to Byzantium, a dilapidated knight and his squire travelling to the battle of Bannockburn, the experience of the inhabitants of one of the then new-fangled brochs, an ancestor taking Mara, a selkie woman, as a wife.

Meanwhile, Mr Drummond, the new Minister, surprises the community by being unmarried and letting the Manse fall into grubbiness, scandalises some by, once, treating the men in the pub to a round before inviting them to church and having a young female arrive to stay with him at the Manse. She is taken to by the local ‘person of quality,’ Mr Harcourt-Smithers, riding his horse all over the island. It is not until she is leaving that her relationship to Drummond is revealed. She has nevertheless fired Thorfinn’s imagination again.

The outside world (and impending war) intrudes when government men arrive to survey the land for an aerodrome, whose impact will change the island forever.

The last chapter, Fisherman and Croftwoman, sees the return of Thorfin to the island after being in a POW camp for most of the war (where he began writing, using his earlier daydreams as source material) and of Sophie, a childhood acquaintance, to take the inheritance of a nearby croft.

Like most Scottish literature Beside the Ocean of Time is about loss and change; but it is also about what endures, what makes a community, and acceptance.

Pedant’s corner:- “less worries” (‘fewer worries’ but it was in reported speech so probably true to the speaker,) “Johnny Walker” (the whisky: it’s ‘Johnnie Walker’.)

In Virago Omnibus II, Virago, 1987, 279 p, plus xi p Introduction by Polly Devlin. First published in 1941.

Last night I dreamt I went to Aragon again.

Oops. Sorry. Wrong book.

Yet, despite being not like it at all (well, apart from the fire,) there was something about this which kept reminding me of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Maybe it was the looming presence of the house itself – the author is lavish in her descriptions of it and its grounds – or the emotional investment in it the characters have, especially its housekeeper Nan O’Neill, who feels herself its custodian all the more strongly since her intimate connection to it came from her sire (on the wrong side of the blanket) being from the present owner’s previous generation but one.

Aragon is what in Scotland used to called a big house, that is where the local landowner lived and lorded it over the general populace. The novel is an illustration of how the Anglo-Irish gentry (who thought of themselves as Irish) considered their Catholic servants and employees as being somehow empathetic with them. It is 1920, though, and events, dear boy, events, will be inevitable, though the gear change when this manifests itself is a little jarring since the story starts off as looking to be one of unsuitable love across the class divide.

Aragon has belonged to the Foxes for centuries. Like many such houses it has its secrets – not least a long neglected, indeed all but forgotten, room full of S&M paraphernalia.

Its head is Mrs Viola Fox, whose husband is long dead, but it is Nan O’Neill who runs things. Of Viola’s two daughters, Sylvia, the eldest, is level-headed but Grania, barely sixteen, is a deluded naïve, imagining herself to be in love with Nan O’Neill’s son, Foley, the local horse master – and sometimes dodgy horse trader. Foley is, of course, not even toying with Grania’s affections but, instead, exploiting her inexperience.

Symptom of Nan’s control is her treatment of Miss Pigeon, an elderly Fox aunt, whom she all but starves and occasionally locks in her room. Yet Nan is in many ways the heroine of the book when, in order to exonerate Foley, who stands accused of complicity in the abduction, she steps in to confront the IRA men who have kidnapped two British officers, one of whom is the object of Sylvia’s affections.

Sensitivity notes; “a black plaster nigger,” “that cup of tea in moments of crisis, whether disastrous or happy, is to the peasant Irish what his opium is to the Chinaman.”

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction “rhymster” (rhymester.) “Startled though she was, to discover” (ought not to have that comma,) “and is therefore a cousin” (not a cousin; an aunt,) devotion (devotion.) In the text: “the Fox’s” (many times employed here as a plural for Fox. This should, of course be ‘Foxes’, which was used once,) “six Miss Foxs” (Foxes, but the phrase ought to be ‘six Misses Fox’, ‘two Misses Fox’ appeared later,) “slipped off her rings and settle down” (settled down,) “unbrindled confidence” (unbridled,) goulish (ghoulish,) “octopus like quality” (octopus-like.) “Everyone on the place” (in the place,) “how would it effect and disgrace her?) (how would it affect and…,) “‘what happened Doatie?’” (what happened to Doatie?) “‘your Sunday afternoon’s off’” (afternoons.) “‘How could you be, poor child.’” (Is a question, so needs a question mark,) “into it’s socket” (its socket,) “some silly christian demur” (Christian,) “‘Captain Purvis’ name on it’” (Purvis’s.) “‘If anything happens them’” (happens to them,) “‘what happens Mr Foley’” (what happens to Mr Foley,) “more awful stalactites reached up” (if they’re reaching up then they’re not stalactites; they’re stalagmites,) “a quite insolence” (quiet insolence,) “meeting each the others branches” (the other’s branches.)

Another title to be reviewed for ParSec has duly arrived.

This time it’s the latest from Adrian Tchaikovsky.

It’s called Green City Wars. I’ll get on to it soon.

Head of Zeus, 2023, 397 p.

This is the second in Tidhar’s Maror sequence, in which he examines the history of Israel. I reviewed the first here. In Adama (the name is Hebrew for earth, and here is used as a synonym for homeland) the focus is on the setting up and evolution of the Israeli state as seen through the experiences of the members of one family. The book is episodic in nature, ranging in time from Haifa in 1946 and a displaced persons, DP, camp in Germany in 1947 via the war to establish Israel (what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba,) the aftermaths of the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars, events in Kibbutz Trashim in intervening years, to Florida in 2009; not necessarily in date order.

Told in fifteen parts starting with one titled The End and with the last called The Beginning, our viewpoint characters are matriarch Ruth, her sister Shosh, their children Yoram, Ophek and Yael, grandchildren Lior and Esther, fourth generation Hanna and Shosh’s husband Dov.

As a staunch believer in a Jewish homeland, Ruth made her way to Palestine early, leaving behind in Europe her family who were apparently betrayed to the Nazis by Shosh’s then boyfriend Nathan Deutsch – upon whom Ruth later wreaks an extended revenge. Only Shosh survived. Unlike her sister, Shosh was not invested in the dream of Israel, only ever wanting to make her way to the US. Their descendants navigate the vicissitudes of the Israeli experience, the souring of the kibbutz ideal of socialism, its failure (and by extension Israel’s) to live up to its promise, the compromises and accommodations necessary to keep things going.

Ruth does what she has to as a member of the Jewish underground during the British mandate; as does Shosh in her efforts to be away from the DP camp. Only Ruth has some success. Dov’s tale relates to the 1948 war and shows its unforgiving nature. Kibbutz life is illuminated in passing as the book’s incidents unfold.

In 1989 Lior returns to the kibbutz from Tel Aviv for the funeral of his friend Danny, not believing the story he is told about Danny’s apparent suicide, and finds something rotten in its state. “Lior knew what hash smelled like, it smelled like Lebanon, there was so fucking much of it.” In this section Chief Inspector Cohen from Maror makes a brief appearance, reminding the reader (if any such were needed) of the murky underbelly of Israeli society which Tidhar is exploring.

A prominent recurring reference in the novel is a fictional film called The Vultures, starring actor Bill Goodrich, a film shot partly in the kibbutz, perhaps here intended to show the founding of Israel as Israelis would like to see it: but extortion, drug running and violence are never far away from any of the characters in this book.

Tidhar’s writing is immediate; sharp, abrasive and to the point. Despite its tight focus, Adama contains multitudes.

Pedant’s corner:- “Ruth was sat in front of the television” (‘was sitting in front of the television.) “They were sat in the Casino” (They were sitting,) “where there were nothing but camels” (where there was nothing but….,) “the metaplot” (elsewhere spelled metapelet.) “‘Did he, fuck,’ he said.” (no need for that comma after ‘he’; plus it actually changes the meaning.)

Polygon, 2018, 206 p, including 9 p Introduction by Kapka Kassabova and 4 p Foreword (general to these Polygon retrospective editions.)

Art historian Robert Leaver is staying in the Pensione Sofia in Venice. His girlfriend, Lina Pancev, is Bulgarian, a defector from the communist regime there who is searching for the grave of her father, Victor. (It turns out he was murdered in the grounds of the Pensione but she never discovers this.)

One day two guests arrive at the Pensione; Robert’s father Arnold, in tow with Mary Tiller, a teacher at the school where Arnold is headmaster. Anthea, Mrs Leaver, remains at home, for now oblivious. To escape his embarrassment Arnold hies himself and Mary off to another – and better – hotel.

Suspicious she engages GESS (Global-Equip Security Services) to investigate. Their local agent is one Violet de Winter.

Grace Gregory, matron at Arnold’s school and who, to prevent his wanderings, had serviced him herself in the infirmary when there were no boys sick, warns Anthea off using the agency and travels to Venice to see what’s going on.

Robert’s friend Curran, (he answers only to his surname,) is also part of the proceedings as is a supposed kidnapping.

The above provides a flavour of the book, which in some quarters has been described as a farce. To me it is too heavy-handed for that.

I continue to find Spark an unacquired taste.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 3,) candelabras (candelabra is already plural,) “whether she longed to say and talk it over” (‘longed to stay and talk it over’ makes more sense.)

Faber and Faber, 2023, p. Translated from the Turkish, Veba Geceleri, by Rekin Oklap.

This is not a typical Pamuk novel. For a start it’s not set in Istanbul which has been pretty much a major character in most of his books. Instead, it deals with the fictional Mediterranean island of Mingheria during a 1901 outbreak of bubonic plague which provided the opportunity for its revolt against Ottoman rule. Also, unlike most Pamuk novels. it’s largely told rather than shown. Part of this is that the narration is couched partly as a historical record of the revolution.

Mingheria is supposedly located somewhere northeast of Crete. Its main city, Arkaz, is dominated by a castle on a hill at one side of the harbour entrance but there isn’t adequate anchorage for large modern ships and landfall has to be made by rowing boat.

The present Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid, who was installed as Sultan by a palace coup in which he replaced his brother Murad V, has sent Bonkowski Pasha to combat the outbreak. On the same ship but en route to China as envoys are Murad’s daughter (and therefore Abdul Hamid’s niece) Princess Pakize, until recently kept in seclusion in Istanbul until she married the husband Abdul Hamid procured for her, Doctor Nuri. Hence Nuri is often referred to in the text as “the Doctor and Prince Consort.”

A few days later, after Bonkowski Pasha is murdered having inadvisedly gone walkabout, Princess Pakize and Doctor Nuri are ordered back to Mingheria to investigate his death using the methods of Sherlock Holmes. (Abdul Hamid is an avid consumer of detective fiction.)

Many locals, especially devout Muslims, resist the attempts by the authorities to enforce quarantine. The ensuing confusion allows a Major Kâmil to institute a revolution which overthrows Ottoman rule. The Major (soon Commander) becomes the first leader of independent Mingheria.

Much of the supposed history here is said to be taken from the letters of Princess Pakize to her sister Princess Hatice back in Istanbul, letters which she wrote daily even when the postal service had been suspended. An emphasis on the relationships between Princess Hatice and Nuri and Major Kâmil and his wife Zeynep (nostalgic legends in Mingheria) are a corollary to this.

Several narratorial interpolations reveal that this retrospective history of the founding of the Mingherian state has been written by a descendant of Princess Hatice and Nuri. The final chapter is an envoi from that point of view.

The means by which a new state establishes itself and the myths it comes to believe are subtly portrayed (as are the parallels with the decline of the Ottoman state,) but like most revolutions the Mingherian one soon begins to eat itself. In short order Kâmil and Zeynep are dead due to plague; his successor, the Muslim sect leader and quarantine opposer Sheik Hamdullah, also succumbs to the disease; Princess Hatice is made Mingheria’s Queen but pushed into the background by Nimetullah Effendi with the felt hat; and so on. Relations with the Great Powers, who blockade the island to prevent the plague reaching Europe, are critical to Mingheria’s future.

Pamuk is consummate and always in control but to my mind in Nights of Plague, though there is plenty of story (you could almost say too much) some of the rewards of reading fiction are missing. There is not much here to allow the exploration of character, most of whom are sketched rather than fleshed out, or indeed character development. It is certainly unusually structured for a novel. It is however an exemplary way of writing a critique of Turkish society without going at it head-on; an approach arguably necessary for a writer from a state sensitive to any hint of criticism.

Since he started writing this book in 2016 it is also unlikely to be a reflection on the Covid pandemic, though of course that does now hang over any reading.

Mention of football (albeit only in one sentence) and of the author Orhan Pamuk as being an acquaintance of the narrator – both are museum enthusiasts – are typical Pamuk touches.

It is of course essential reading for Pamuk completists but has enough to recommend it to the merely curious.

Pedant’s corner:- Translated into USian. “the hoi polloi” (hoi means ‘the’; it’s just ‘hoi polloi’, then, no ‘the’,) enormity (employed here to mean ‘hugeness’. It doesn’t; it means ‘monstrousness’,) “off of” (no ‘of’, just ‘off’,) “a particularly tough contingent who was known to mistrust” (a particularly tough contingent which was known to mistrust,) “that he was going be punished” (going to be punished,) a chapter beginning with a sentence of dialogue with no starting quotation mark (I know this is a publisher’s convention but it annoys me,) “the Halifiye sect were being goaded” (the Halifiye sect was being goaded,) “landscapes …. that Sami Pasha had hanged on the walls” (I doubt this meant they were executed: ‘had hung on the walls’,) “arrival to the island” (arrival on the island,) Cretian (Cretan,) “moored to the docks” (moored at the docks,) “was I was finally” (the second ‘was’ is superfluous.)

Gollancz, 2018, 324 p, plus ii p Acknowledgements.

That I have read Newman’s Planetfall sequence in the wrong order (3,4,2,1 to be precise) doesn’t really matter that much as they can all be read as stand alone titles. Here, we are in the years after an expedition to another planet under the guidance of a woman called The Pathfinder in search of God. On landing the expedition’s members found what is now called God’s city. This is an “organic citadel” like a “huge forest of baobab trees tangled round one another,” and, when hot, grows tendrils to manage the heat.

The story is narrated by expedition member Renata Ghali (Ren,) the settlement’s 3D printer engineer, whose later revelation to be a hoarder whose home pod is piled with rubbish stolen from the settlement’s recycling machine, the Masher, is an indication of possible unreliability. She is troubled by fellow expedition member Cillian Mackenzie (Mack,) whose resolve held the community together after the Pathfinder did not return from a foray inside God’s City, saying she was “communing with the creator,” and telling them all to await her return. What has evolved in the colony in the years since is in effect a cult.

Some time after The Pathfinder’s disappearance, other members of the original expedition were lost elsewhere on the planet. Plot kicks in when a lone outsider called Lee Sung-Soo, a survivor of those lost colonists, who is also The Pathfinder’s grandson, turns up at the city.

Ren’s obligations to Mack take her inside God’s city, a strange unsettling place where perspectives shift and passageways can suddenly change orientation. Her explorations lead her to wonder whether the colonists are the first or if there have been previous visitors to the planet; visitors who could only have been alien.

As things unfold we discover what actually happened to The Pathfinder inside God’s city, the revelation of which to the colony has ramifications for Ren, Mack and the settlement as whole.

Newman’s writing is not in question. She is particularly good on Ren’s mental disintegration.

The integration of religious elements with an SF setting is a little awkward though.

Pedant’s corner:- Printed in USian, bacteria (the word is treated as if it’s singular – but that would be bacterium,) outside of (x 2: just ‘outside’; no ‘of’,) “none of them satisfy me” (none of them satisfies me,) “in the opposite direction of God’s city” (it’s ‘opposite direction to’ not ‘opposite direction of’.) “None of them were looking at me” (None of them was looking at me.) “None of them are good” (None of them is good.) “None of them are paying attention” (None of them is paying attention,) “neither of them say anything” (neither of them says anything.) “None of them are listening” (None of them is listening,) “our species’ capacity” (species here is singular; so ‘the capacity of our species would be better.) “None of them are familiar” (None of them is familiar.)