July Reviews

by Riley Sager - Mystery Thriller

27/07/2024

Middle of the Night By Riley Sager is the July read for the Literally Dead Book Club, a mystery thriller group run by YouTuber @booksandlala. The book follows Ethan March between the ages of 10 years old and 30 years later when he returns to his parents' neighbourhood, the scene of the unsolved kidnapping and death of his childhood best friend, Billy. The cast of characters flip between the 1994 10-year old boys, teenage siblings and friends and their parents and neighbours, to the same group of people as adults and elderly grandparents. With each chapter revealing all magnitudes of secrets, Middle of the Night follows these children on the day of the disaster and 30 years later as they try to finally solve the mystery of what happened that night.

Sager successfully crafts the atmosphere of the complex relationalities of a small and quaint neighbourhood of 1990’s America: the pristine surface image we are presented with as the external face of each home suddenly crumbles under closer examination of the interior dynamics. Children are understood as much more intricate than they are given credit for, leading their own separate internal lives away from the eyes of their parents, harbouring dreams of moving away or of beating their weaknesses. The parents of these children are also examined under a microscope: they keep their own secrets and do immoral things for the betterment of their families.

The development of characters from children into adults are also very interesting, maintaining those traits that come about in childhood and stick with us through to later life: while they might change shape and manifest in different ways, we are all ultimately motivated by the same internal feelings such as guilt, jealousy, anger and greed.

Middle of the Night presents itself as a ghost story: there are feelings of spirituality and 6th sense detection from across the veil of mortality. Strange things start happening that cannot be described without an element of the paranormal and ghosts play a strong role in the motivations of the children in the 1990’s, leading up to the event which spurs the novel along. However, the novel is not a ghost story, and there are totally reasonable explanations for each of the experiences that Ethan believes to be paranormal in nature.

I cannot decide whether this is a disappointing fact or not. First, consider the interesting way that the world interacts with the anxious and paranoid human brain to conjure up phantoms of the imagination for perfectly reasonable experiences that are the result of - albeit criminal - normal human behaviour. This is interesting for the fact that it investigates human behaviour, secrecy and manipulation. Alternatively, however, the second branch would have led to a more speculative and horror-esk novel that could have had more interesting explanations and imagery. You will also find that the novel itself has not made its mind up as to which it prefers either.

If you are looking for a 1990’s inspired atmosphere with mentions of the occult and paranormal, but ultimately return to the average faults of human behaviour, with tastes of an Agatha Christie red-herring and digging up the dirt otherwise left undisturbed, pick up Middle of the Night by Riley Sager.

Yuval Noah Harari - Non-Fiction

23/07/24

This is a warm blanket of a book I have returned to after five years. I first read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari in highschool, and it ultimately became a pivotal moment in my life. While Harari is not an anthropologist, his books were the reason that I chose to study anthropology at university, setting off the series of events that have led to this moment in time that I currently inhabit.

I was enamoured by the way that Harari described the world and how different viewpoints can be used to explain the same facts of history we have known our whole lives. Take for instance the domestication of wheat during that agricultural revolution: it was humankind, not wheat, that had to alter its patterns of behaviour and existence. The human groups which ended up settling and building infrastructure to cultivate wheat had to fundamentally change their roles, relationships and ways of life in order to nurture and harvest wheat fields. In the end, it was wheat itself which ended up migrating across the globe from its native ecosystems.

Such distinction within a single event of human history sets the perspective of physicality and relationality on its head. I always come away from Harari’s work with a new lens on my own existence, and the coincidence that is experiencing consciousness and embodiment of the senses in this exact sphere and time of tangible existence. Each encounter, private thought and action you take is crafted beyond your personal conception of human history, such as the abstract imagination of your grand parents’ grand parents and the industrial revolution. Instead, your experience of consciousness within the particular societal norms you live in are the result of the trickle-down effect of each scene that played out before you, through the whole expanse of biological, chemical and physical history.

It is difficult to wrap your head around the great expanse of the universe beyond and before your brief experience of time on earth, especially when my own experiences through life have raised me to be a free-thinking and individual person in late-modern capitalist society. In reality, I am a small cog in a very large machine, that just so happens to function in the way that it does to produce the product that we demand it provides. Any other machine, making any other product, would demand a different role from each of its cogs, and thus my experience of existence would be moulded very differently. Alas, the exact analogy I choose to describe the scenario is indicative of my experience within it.

Thus, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is exactly what it presents itself as: the summing up of all physical, chemical and biological events which resulted in the development of societal, psychological and cognitive experiences of humankind in under 500 pages. From an anthropological perspective, you will know that this grand overscheme is not even close to scratching the surface of human experience, but it does lend itself as an invitation to be curious.

If you have the mental capacity to question your insignificance to the breadth and depth of human history and beyond, but also appreciate the beauty that is the human endeavour and the synchronicity of coincidences leading to this exact moment, pick up Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

by Samantha Shannon - Dystopian Fantasy

12/07/2024

I had high expectations for The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, because I absolutely adore her more recent releases The Priory of the Orange Tree and it’s prequel A Day of Fallen Night for their incredibly in depth world building. Both of these are absolute mammoths with 800+ pages to each book, allowing for the time and space to explore all elements of the world. Shannon has a truly impressive ability to build a unique fantasy world from the bottom up, particularly the manipulation of history and literature within the world to set up how we understand the politics and relationships between governments and people. This detail to the story crafting lends to the believability of the fantasy world: it folds in the ugly things that humans sometimes do by accident (or on purpose) that they ultimately want to cover up or forget.

The Bone Season series was Shannon’s first Best Selling Series, published when she was only 21 (talk about insanely impressive). This series has been recently re-released as an ‘Author's Preferred Text’ to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the first publishing, as Shannon has rewritten the series to better suit her present and more matured style of writing. An author's note warns that the narrative is slightly changed, but follows the bulk of the original series of events.

The Bone Season is set in a world where clairvoyance is real and outlawed: the overruling Republic of Scion across 2059 Europe impose an oppressive regime to outlaw Unnaturalness from their denizens. Our main character, Paige Mahoney (The Pale Dreamer), is high up in the criminal underworld of the Unnatural syndicates of London, hiding from the oppressive government and training to better understand her rare clairvoyance. While visiting her father, Paige is uncovered and chased across the rooftops of London, eventually captured and transported to Oxford, where she is taken into the care of an overruling species of giant clairvoyants and made to train and pass trials to survive. The main tension of the narrative climaxes in the unnaturals rebellion against their overlords, led by our main character Paige Mahoney.

If that sounds just a little bit confusing, it’s because I don’t fully understand the world either. In the abstract, I absolutely get it! There is a magical species who want to control humans, and have implemented this puppet regime across Europe to do so, suppressing the gifted and turning them against each other. Could I tell you exactly how this happened or what this species explicitly is? Nope! I also did picture them as anthropomorphised praying mantis, for some reason…

One of my gripes with fantasy originates from the portrayal of female main characters of a certain body-type being able to do superhuman and fantastical feats of strength, presenting unrealistic expectations for readers of their own ability (despite the genre). I don’t think Shannon does this, and I really appreciate that: Paige participates in mental and physical training with her overseer and is explicitly provided with a lot more food than her peers in other houses. With a seemingly realistic amount of time allowed to her training, and the shift from physicality to mental ability, Shannon provides Paige with a reasonable progression through the narrative.

If you like Sarah J. Maas characters, The Hunger Games concepts, and want a much-less explicit Ice Planet Barbarians, pick up The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon.

By Sophia Money-Coutts - Contemporary Romance

12/07/2024

I have grievances to air. The hallmarks of a sensational romance book are formulaic, whereby you know going into it that three things are certain: 1) the Third Act release of tension, 2) character development regarding an attitude towards love 3) a Happy Ending. These three things almost always happen in a contemporary romance book, and it is the emotional hardship with a satisfying remedy to end it that makes a romance book enjoyable (at least from my perspective). Now, what Sophia Money-Coutts did in Looking Out For Love put strain on the formulaic narrative I was expecting and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it.

Looking Out For Love follows Stella, a 32 year old high-society-London-girl who has only recently been dumped by her expected-to-be-husband and written off from her father’s credit cards to boot. It doesn’t help that her BFF for Life / Roommate (who happens to have an incredible live-in-long-term boyfriend) is diagnosed with cervical cancer - talk about mammoth heavy subplot.

We open with Stella waking up in a stranger's bed, one of the many of her debaucherous exploits in an effort to forget about her ex-boyfriend and failed string of love affairs prior to him. The most important element to note here is the ghastly pleather headboard, as it will become a call-back later on in the narrative. This stranger - however - is not our main love interest! Instead, Stella meets another mysterious man - someone who would never in their right mind invest in a pleather headboard - and begins a whirlwind romance with him, so much so he purchases a Chelsea flat and tickets to Paris within two months (perhaps this is a Fantasy Romance).

Unsurprisingly to any reader with two brain cells to rub together, however, (SPOILERS) Mr Whirlwind is an unfaithful good-for-nothing husband and our Stella is the Other Woman. Now, this is not a bad narrative point and I have no problem with it in the abstract. I do, however, think the timing was off: this reveal took place at the 90% mark of the novel, leaving little-to-no room at all to explore the romance with our actual love interest. Mr Pleather Headboard, who turns out to be more involved in Stella’s life than anyone expected from the get go, only comes fully into frame in the LAST CHAPTER, despite having lingered in the background for the entirety of the novel. Albeit with a running-through-the-airport-to-confess-my-undying-love crescendo to a relatively unsurprising development through the novel, the book leaves you wanting. The formula is stretched too far out of shape for my liking.

To not end on a sour note, because I did have fun with Looking Out For Love despite my dissatisfaction, some things I enjoyed were: 1) Stella’s maturation through the book in regards to employment, money, her relationships/friendships and her approach to love, 2) Harold and his dog, Basil: adorable and very sweet, 3) The private detective agency as a unique job that adds some flavour to the plot and opens the door to the eccentric Marjorie character, who was a Pot of Fun.

If you have a few hours worth of Audio credits and love friendships-stronger-than-romance and funny old men with their dogs, pick up Looking Out For Love by Sophia Money-Coutts.

by Adalyn Grace - Paranormal Mystery

07/07/2024

WOW! Belladonna was recommended to me by a friend, whom I can always trust to deliver extraordinary books to me (I took this very copy from their shelves), and this was exactly the good time I expected. Despite my trust in these recommendations, I went into Belladonna blind of the actual plot or premise of the book (as you will find I like to do most of the time). All I knew was the connotations I could glean from the title itself. Belladonna: beautiful lady and deadly poison. What else could I hope for?

I read Belladonna in its entirety today. From 09:00 to 16:00 there was little else I did other than read and have lunch. I always say that I read so much because I usually have the time to with a four hour commute three times a week. Today, however, it was the book itself which ushered me through its pages so swiftly. The Prologue had me exclaiming out loud something along the lines of ‘Oh, boy!’, simply because I recognised the extent to which I would enjoy Belladonna.

Regardless of the rest of the book, the Prologue itself is enough of a setting to place the reader right into the midst of this story. With many questions in need of a satisfying explanation, and the imagery cast into my mind by Grace’s descriptions of the world around Signa and her family, there was no way you could calmly set Belladonna to the side for another time.

Belladonna by Adalyn Grace follows Signa Farrow through her life as a ward at a long-lost uncle's home, living with her cousins and the servants of their manor. Following the untimely death of her aunt, disease lingers in the house and it is up to Signa - who happens to be in communication with Death himself - to solve the mystery that is Thorne Grove Manor. The plot follows the unfolding of this mystery, with strong characters which keep the reader guessing to each characters next move. Signa does not come across as an unreliable narrator, but the series of events from her perspectives limits the extent to which the reader is privy to the Behind The Scenes that make up the body of this mystery.

I really liked the humanisation of Death and how Grace presents his motivations removed from his status as an immortal being. He fit right into the world crafted within Belladonna’s pages as a dark and ancient gothic novel, with surprisingly light characters that do not necessarily suit their setting. The tension Grace is able to create between her characters and the stunning setting that is Throne Grove Manor will leave a reader deeply invested in the outcome of Signa’s exploration. Needless to say, I had my theories, but did not expect the final ending.

If you are a fan of A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson, Bridgerton debutants and ghost stories, pick up Belladonna by Adalyn Grace.

By Harry Parker - Non-Fiction

05/07/2024

I received Hybrid Humans as a free book from the Brighton Book Festival, the Mission of which was to ‘Make the Marginalised Mainstream’. Hybrid Humans definitely offers an insight into the world of disability, prosthetics and self-expressionism that I had never had first-hand exposure to as able-bodied. Parker discusses his own experience as an amputee veteran, his rehabilitation and the advances of technology in the field of physical-aids to people with disabilities of all kinds, as well as the multitude of attitudes taken on by people identifying as disabled in their approaches to life and existing in the non-adapted world.

The cover instantly sparked my interest: the robotic/humanoid figure was a gorgeous illustration and the premise promised some delivery to science-fiction and technological discussions before I fully understood what the book contained. While Parker discusses the present-day realities of people living with a disability and their reliance or integration with machine elements to aid in their passing through the world, there is a lingering sense of disbelief at the extent to which modern technology bridges the gap between the 21st century and the stuff of Science-Fiction: from the technological groundbreaking development of the iPhone in 2007, to increasingly experimental medical treatments combining the human body with mechanical elements.

I really enjoyed Hybrid Humans. Parker has a really lovely way of writing that engages the reader through this nonfiction, to the point that it feels as if he is talking directly to the reader. While the book contains a number of intensely intellectual passages, along with footnotes and bibliography, it was incredibly accessible and very enjoyable. He has a very good sense as to when the reader may have had enough of the intellectual explanations and appropriately switches to a more narrative/anecdotal passage that re-engages the reader in the storytelling.

As an able-bodied person who could never fully understand the recounting of someone else's experience of a sector of life I have not engaged with, Hybrid Humans as a small window into hearing the experience of a very limited number of stories from other-abled bodies. My understanding of other people's experiences of moving through the world has barely scratched the surface of lived-experience, but I definitely have a more intellectual understanding of the processes taking place in technological development industries, medical treatment advancements and the differing of attitudes between individuals and schools of thought across the medical/technological/human cross-section.

If you are looking to diversify the sources of your reading and love anthropological discussions on the real-life possibilities of a cyborg race (and how the people involved actually feel about labeling from others and their own decision-making process in regards to personal medical and cultural care), pick up Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine by Harry Parker.

By Matt Haig

03/07/2024

The Humans by Matt Haig came onto my radar as a philosophical piece that looked in on all the strange and wonderful things humans do without recognising it for themselves. By chance, it was available to buy in the charity shop I volunteer in and with a 50% discount, there was no way I wasn’t getting it for myself. I really enjoyed The Humans: it cast fresh eyes across all of the things we take for granted in our everyday lives. From relationships to technology, looking on the mundane with alien eyes refreshes a sense of whimsy for a seemingly monotone existence.

The Humans by Matt Haig follows an alien on a mission to wipe proof of an advanced mathematical equation from human knowledge, due to its ability to progress human civilization to the ‘Vonnadorians’ standards of living. This ‘Riemann hypothesis’ in the hands of the humans would see them capable of space travel, technological advancements and eradication of all pain and suffering, as it is for the alien species. As such, they have decided that this would be detrimental to the status of the wider universe.

Andrew - as our alien is known - must kill anyone who has the proof of this hypothesis or the knowledge that it is possible to solve. In the process of this mission, however, he becomes fascinated by the unreasonable and confusing behaviours and actions that humans conduct through their short and seemingly irrelevant existence. Through his infiltration into a family, his friendship with a dog and his observations of what it means to be human, he changes his mind about the people he was meant to kill and who he is in relation to his home planet.

My first impression of The Humans was how it read as thoroughly neurodivergent. Andrew’s sudden consciousness in a fully-grown human body and populated community is conveyed as extremely confusing and distressing to the readers, who experience the novel through his POV. The expectations of civil decorum and communication, ‘normal’ behaviour and the strangeness of otherwise universal standards of appearance all seem incredibly reasonable to cast aside when the perspective we see them from has no standard of what it means to pass as human. It becomes easy to question the human obsession with clothing and modesty, to be confused by the exchange of goods for money, or to think spitting is a legitimate form of greeting when everyone you come across is doing it to you. This comes across as from the perspective of a neurodivergent brain because a deeper level of comprehension and active decision making is needed to engage in otherwise ‘normal’ behaviour that everyone around you engages with as if second nature.

Haig’s repositioning of the philosophical perspective of the human world and civilization was really refreshing: sometimes you do need to just sit in a quiet spot and really unravel and unpick all the connections and behaviours that you take for granted in your everyday life to more deeply understand human nature. Our desire to connect to one another, to listen to music and write poetry, to domesticate and care for companion creatures, all speak to seemingly unreasonable practices but contribute to our experience of living. On the other hand, we are a danger to our own survival and cannot make the changes necessary to prevent our eventual demise, despite all knowing it is happening.

The shenanigans, philosophical repositioning and series of events which progressed the novel all contributed to my enjoyment of reading it: the narrative was reminiscent of Jonas Jonasson style of writing, which set The Humans up for success in my eyes.