One evening in Gran Canaria, I noticed a book lying abandoned on a deck chair, next to a pretty pink scarf. It was still there the evening after. The third evening someone had moved both items from the deck chair (probably they wanted to use it!) onto a ledge. The scarf looked nice but not my colour. The book I picked up because it had a smiling baby on the front cover. If no one had claimed it during three evenings, I figured I could adopt it.

From the back cover of Why Love Matters – How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain:

Why Love Matters explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life, and how early interactions between babies and their parents have lasting and serious consequences.

Sue Gerhart goes through all the various ways in which human contact and human relationships affect brain development, and how experiences during the first months and years of life can leave marks for life.

The main thesis is that a baby cannot regulate its own needs, physical or emotional. It needs the help of a caring adult. If that relationship is dysfunctional, if the adult is unable or unwilling to fulfil the baby’s needs, the baby suffers not just immediate discomfort but also longer-term effects. Brain chemistry becomes subtly imbalanced, some parts of the brain do not develop properly, inappropriate emotional habits are founded. In the long run, all kinds of mental and emotional troubles can arise, and Sue Gerhart shows how the former can lead to the latter. Babies of depressed mothers get used to a lack of positive emotions; babies of angry, resentful mothers learn to suppress their feelings. Babies who get no help with soothing negative emotions do not learn how to keep on an even keel.

While some other author on the back cover says “I would recommend it to all new parents” it really isn’t written so as to be accessible by most parents. I would guess it really wasn’t written for the general public but for politicians, social workers, those in charge of childcare facilities, psychologists etc. In particular the book is unlikely to be read by those who need its message the most: those depressed mothers, or the parents who meet their babies’ demands with anger.

A reviewer in The Guardian expresses resounding support and provides a thorough summary.

If there is one thing to take with you from this book, it’s this excerpt (p. 91):

Good timing is a critical aspect of parenting, as well as in comedy. The ability to judge when a baby or child has the capacity to manage a little more self-control, thoughtfulness or independence is not something that books on child development can provide: the timing of moves in a living relationship is an art, not a science. Parents’ sensitivity to the child’s unfolding capacities can often be hampered by an intolerance of dependency. This is partly cultural and partly the result of one’s own early experience. Dependency can evoke powerful reactions. It is often regarded with disgust and repulsion, not as a delightful but fleeting part of experience. It may even be that dependence has a magnetic pull and adults themselves fear getting seduced by it; or that it is just intolerable to give to someone else what you are furious you didn’t gt yourself. [...] Often, parents are in such a hurry to make their child independent that they expose their babies to long periods of waiting for food or comfort, or long absences from the mother, in order to achieve this aim. Grandparents only too often reinforce the message that you mustn’t “spoil” the baby by giving in to him.

Unfortunately, leaving a baby to cry or to cope by himself for more than a very short period usually has the reverse effect: it undermines the baby’s confidence in the parent and in the world, leaving him more dependent not less. In the absence of the regulatory partner, a baby can do very little to regulate himself or herself other than to cry louder or to withdraw mentally. But the pain of being dependent like this and being powerless to help yourself leads to primitive psychological defences based on these two options.

[...] The dual nature of the defensive system seems to be built into our genetic programme: it’s either fight or flight. Cry loudly or withdraw. Exaggerate feelings or minimise feelings. Be hyper-aroused or suppress arousal. [...] Whichever way the individual turns to find a solution (and these strategies may be used consistently or inconsistently), he or she will not have mastered the basic process of self-regulation and will remain prone to being overdemanding of others or underdemanding.

Adlibris, Amazon US, Amazon UK.

A man (a vain, selfish, cocaine-addicted porn star) is severely burned in a car crash. While in hospital, his new life in his new body seems meaningless to him, so he spends most of his time planning his suicide, once he is released. He is befriended by a woman who tells him stories – among others, the story of how he and she were lovers back in the 14th century. While he thinks she’s obviously deranged, he also enjoys her company. Romantic love ensues.

The story and the short stories inside it are perhaps not thrilling but more than enough to keep reading. The main story line doesn’t have much point to it – nothing particularly interesting happens – other than to trying to prove that a woman can change a man as long as she loves him strongly and deeply enough. The idea would sit well in a romance book but for a book with literary ambitions it is pretty silly.

The 14th century story is much more interesting, as are the short stories – at least stuff happens – even though they also suffer from an overly romantic world view. Salvation through suffering is a recurring theme – dying for your love somehow makes that love worth more.

The whole thing leaves a poor impression. The main character’s emotional development seems quite unrealistic to me, as does the description of the relationship between him and the maybe-crazy woman. They don’t do anything much together; she does her stuff, he reads books, and she helps bathe and exercise his damaged body. And finally a sappy ending.

A mediocre book – OK to read on a long flight and leave at the airport when you get there; not worth keeping in your bookshelf.

Amazon US, Amazon UK, Adlibris

“Ljust och fräscht” or “light and airy” (literally “light and fresh”) is an eternally recurring theme in ’00s Swedish interior decorating. White is by far the most common colour for walls, and even floors and all furniture. Minimalism is all the rage.

Fredrik Lindström and Henrik Schyffert are two Swedish comedians and media personalities. This book is a print version of a show of theirs, about what is behind the current trend, and was accompanied by a matching comedy show. It’s about chasing perfection, about rootlessness and anxious attempts to not be bourgeois. About making your home reflect your personality, to be unique and individual – but not too unique.

I like to believe that I am immune to the trendiest trends. I am baffled and slightly repulsed by wall letters and wise quotes to paste on your walls, and “distressed” furniture that you paint and then sandpaper to make it look old and worn. I will not have white-on-white rooms, and I want carpets and curtains.

But I, too, want my home to be light and airy. A scary thought: in the seventies everyone wanted their homes colourfully cosy, with pine panelling and orange wallpaper. And now I would not let a ’70s wallpaper into my house. Will our open plan kitchen feel as dated as ’70s basement dens do today?

An interesting book that hits some nails squarely on the head.

Inte sedan funkisen slog igenom på Stockholmsutställningen 1930 har svenskarna haft så enhetlig inredningssmak. Det kan aldrig bli för ljust och fräscht. En bostad kan marknadsföras med en beskrivning som “extremt ljus”, och det är bara positivt. Det kan aldrig bli för ljust! Är det inte tillräckligt ljust så river man ut hela skiten och öppnar upp lite. Det här är så gott som alla överens om.

Translation:

Not since functionalism had its breakthrough at the Stockholm expo in 1930 have Swedes had such uniform taste in interior decorating. There is no such thing as too light and airy. A home can be marketed with a description of “extremely light” and that is only positive. There is no such thing as too light! If it isn’t light enough you just rip out the whole shebang and open it up a bit. Almost everybody agrees on this.

About IKEA, and constantly buying the most current furniture:

Men varför uppfanns det här tänkandet just i Sverige och ingen annanstans? Varför kom ingen annan på “riv ut ditt gamla och daterade hem och satsa på något nytt och fräscht minst vart tionde år-principen”? Ja, kanske för att inget annat land i hela sin samhällsstruktur gjort sig av med det gamla på samma sätt som Sverige gjort. Det svenska samhället omvandlades “blixtsnabbt” från ett fattigt torpar- och utvandrarsamhälle till ett av världens rikaste, det gick på ett par generationer. Då blev det viktigt att hela tiden visa att man tillhörde det nya Sverige, inte minst genom att ha moderna möbler. [...] Till slut hade man förnyat Sverige så många vändor att det inte längre fanns någon neutral, tidlös stil att inreda i (om någon nu skulle vara intresserad av att bara ha ett praktiskt och fungerande hem utan attityd). Sverige blev det första landet i världen där man inte längre kunde välja att inreda modernt och daterat, utan var tvungen att göra det.

Translation:

But why did this way of thinking develop in Sweden and nowhere else? Why didn’t anyone else come up with the “tear out your old, dated home and invest in something new and fresh at least once every ten years” principle? Well, perhaps it was because no other country has gotten rid of everything old in the structure of its society the way Sweden has. The Swedish society was transformed at “lightning speed” from a poor society of crofters and emigrants into one of the world’s richest, it happened in a few generations. It became important to show at all times that you belonged to the new Sweden, not least by having modern furniture. [...] By the end Sweden had been renewed so many times that there was no neutral, timeless style of decorating any more (if anyone would be interested in just having a practical, functional home without attitude). Sweden became the first country in the world where you could no longer just choose to decorate in a modern and dated style, but you were forced to do so.

Adlibris

Typical wallpapers, by decade, from the 1920s to the 2000s

Ghostwritten is David Mitchell’s debut novel. I’ve previously read and loved Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and Black Swan Green wasn’t bad either. I’m pretty impressed by this one, too.

As in both Cloud Atlas and TTAoJdZ, the structure of the story plays an important role. It’s a mosaic of a book: a novel, and at the same time a collection of 9 short stories (plus an epilogue). Each story stands on its own, but they are also all linked to each other by some minor event or character, and together they make up a larger story. At the very end we are confronted with major events that would never have occurred if the preceding chain of chance meetings had been broken at some point. It’s a kind of “butterfly flaps its wings in Siberia, causes hurricane in Gulf of Mexico” idea: everything is interconnected and small events can have a large effect.

And just like in those two books, this one employs wildly differing people, genres and voices for the different parts: from an old lady tending to a tea-shop on a holy mountain in China, to a courtesan-turned-art thief in St. Petersburg. That last one, the story in St. Petersburg, kept jarring me with names and behaviour that were not quite right for a Russian, and a US reviewer had a similar issue with the New York story. Perhaps Mitchell was a bit too ambitious when trying to cover everything from Irish islands to Mongolia. But luckily I am far less familiar than he is with all the other places, except London, so I had no such problems with the rest of the book.

The ending itself was a bit clichéd, and the next to last chapter (on a small island off the Irish coast) too full of pseudoscientific talk about quantum uncertainty and amateur philosophy.

It is nevertheless a very good book, though slightly weaker than Cloud Atlas, which it most closely resembles. One advantage of this mosaic setup is that I can remember the best stories for their own merits, without contamination from the shortcomings of the weaker ones.

I suppose Mitchell had this idea of small stories making up a larger one and is now trying to perfect it in subsequent books, approaching it from various angles. This is his first attempt, and he only gets better with practice.

Amazon US, Amazon UK, Adlibris.

This book is part two in a series – I previously reviewed part one (The Gardens of the Moon).

In fact I barely need to write a review about this book. Everything I said about the first book, except my attempt at a plot summary, could be copied and pasted here and it would still be valid. Erikson is consistent in his style, to say the least. So read that linked post before you continue with this one.

Just like the previous book, this one has a whole bunch of plot threads that work around and between and across and into each other. There is an army protecting some tens of thousands of civilian refugees while they march across a hostile continent to a safe city. There is a group of people who flee from a slave camp, and end up in weird places on the way. There is another group trying to journey to the capital city to kill the empress. There are more wanderers (no one in this world seems to stay in one place!) trying to find some sort of important place for some sort of important reason, but this thread I didn’t manage to keep hold of, sorry. And then some more.

This time I found the book too much.

Too much complexity – I kept getting lost, this time. How did this bunch of people end up where they are, again? And remind me, what did these guys have to do with that thing?

Too much intensity. It’s like the book starts at fortissimo and then goes crescendo from there. When everything is at maximum volume, your ears start to hurt after a while, so what should be the real peaks pass almost unnoticed in the general noise.

Too much monotonous travelling. At times it feels like everybody is on their way somewhere, most of them across a desert landscape, and all Erikson can do is throw more complications in their way just so they don’t arrive too early and too easily. I found myself skipping pages because there was more dusty travelling along with ominous comments about upcoming troubles.

Too much death and darkness. An awful lot of people die in this book. And, as an Amazon reviewer points out, Erikson “rarely lets an opportunity to stop and fetishize a horror go past”. There’s torture and rape and murder left, right and center. It is a book about war, admittedly, but when people get slaughtered in the tens of thousands, you’ve passed some sort of limit. Was that really necessary? Well, perhaps it will turn out to be, in a later book. Right now it just felt awful. It doesn’t exactly entice me to pick up the next book in the series. However several reviewers say that book 3 is more like the first one so I think at some point I will, anyway.

Amazon US, Amazon UK, Adlibris.

A good review, if you want more.

David Mitchell writes impressively varied books. The first one I read, Cloud Atlas, was a story-within-story concoction of speculative fiction. The second one, Black Swan Green, was about a teenager in 1980s Britain. And The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a thriller set in the Dutch trading post at Nagasaki around the year 1800.

It is a carefully constructed book, and just as in Cloud Atlas, there are really several stories here, told in different registers. The stories are all “in line” and in chronological order, rather than embedded in each other, but each has a distinct focus and a characteristic tone. In a single book, Mitchell manages to combine a Shogun-style story of discovering Japan with an adventure story, with a delicate romance, with a tiny bit of military thriller thrown in as well, and some Dracula-like gothic horror, too, for good measure.

There is life at the trading post, viewed through the eyes of Jacob de Zoet, a junior clerk of the Dutch East India Company, has just arrived at Dejima, a small artificial island outside Nagasaki, which is the only place the Dutch are allowed to stay. He is tasked with untangling the records of previous years’ trading, since it appears that the company has lost a lot to corruption and private trading. Here the tiny colony is the world, and Japan proper is alien and outside.

There is life in Japan, still feudal but increasingly run by merchants and moneylenders rather than samurai warriors. We see this life through the eyes of Ogawa Uzaemon, an interpreter. Here Japan is the world, and the Dutch are weird outsiders – and the shift is complete, and the point of view as fully realized as the previous one.

Linking the two men and providing the motive power for the thriller aspect of the story, and indeed setting all the pieces in motion, is Orito Aibagawa. Daughter of a samurai, she is learning Western-style medicine and midwifery from a doctor stationed at the trading post. It will come as no surprise that both men are in love with her.

Mitchell is a masterful user of the English language. There is excellent colourful dialogue – creating a sense of 18th century colloquial Dutch, and of broken Dutch as spoken by more or less Japanese interpreters, with modern English as your only tool, is an impressive feat. There is humour as well as lyrical beauty. Every sentence is exquisitely crafted, but (with the exception of one two-page section) without feeling pretentious.

It is a rich and complex story, sub-plots all feeding into a main one, minor encounters that later turn out to be crucial to making events unfold just so. The colour of a man’s hair makes a naval battle turn one way rather than the other.

I could hardly put this book down once I’d started. It is a wonderful book, engaging, thrilling, rich and beautiful. Dazzling. Brilliant. A delight. (I am running out of suitable praise here.) Read it and enjoy.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.

Mieville has written some totally awesome books (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council), some decent ones (Un Lun Dun) and some not so great ones (Looking for Jake And Other Stories).

Kraken, unfortunately, belongs somewhere towards the bottom of the second group. It isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near great, either.

A giant squid mysteriously disappears from a museum. Mysteriously, because it disappears together with its equally giant exhibition tank, larger than any door or window or other opening in the room. This disappearance somehow seems to precipitate the end of the world, according to the prophets of various cults, who are in unusual agreement with each other. Billy Harrow, the curator in charge of the squid exhibit, gets tangled up in various efforts to affect this outcome (either to prevent or to hasten it on its way).

This is not the London of the Tube, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus etc. This is a London where weird magic is normal; where the action takes place in abandoned factories, rooftops, church basements and dirty alleyways. As one reviewer at SF Site puts it, “it’s Neverwhere on a bad acid trip”.

There is a lot of energy, ambition and imagination in this book. It would be hard to top the sheer weirdness of Mieville. There are strange cults, weird magic, seriously disturbing villains, including one bad guy who is a tattoo on someone else’s back. Also, somewhat unexpectedly, this book is really funny, though it’s as dark as his other books.

But frankly, after a while, I found the book tedious. For a very long time, Billy and/or his friends are threatened/chased/attacked by various people; they then come up with an idea about who might be behind all this, locate this person, and conclude that no, that wasn’t it, s/he is just seizing an opportunity caused by someone else; loop back to the beginning again. And unfortunately the ending was a damp squib, as I’ve already come to expect of Mieville’s books.

There were too many pages to say not very much. I found myself skimming parts of it. Had it not been written by Mieville, I might have given up halfway through. And when everything and everybody is weird (including, it turns out, poor Billy Harrow himself – he’s not just a bystander caught up in the mess) then after a while I become numb to the weirdness and let it wash over me. Weirdness number 86 no longer feels particularly exciting.

I guess Kraken would be easier to enjoy if you just approached it as a demented geeky/magicky comedy and ignored the weakish storytelling. Because the dialogue is funny, the weirdness is endless, and the level of grotesque detail incredible.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.

William Heaney is a middle-aged civil servant doing a job he doesn’t find particularly meaningful. In his spare time he deals in forged books, currently a fake first edition of something by Jane Austen. (Despite the title he’s not the forger, but he’s the one that organizes the forgery). He also writes poems that are published under the name of a friend of his (who’s young, good-looking, and likes publicity much better than William does).

(At this point it’s probably worth mentioning that the book is written under a pseudonym; the real author is Graham Joyce.)

The thing about William is that he sees demons around people, almost everyone he meets. It never becomes quite clear whether they exist or whether it’s just him, but that doesn’t really matter. The demons attach themselves to people as manifestations of their weaknesses, suffering, or failings, and one has recently become attached to him, too.

He’s divorced, his relationships with his kids are not exactly the best, and he has a bit of an alcohol problem. We also get flashbacks to his university time, which is when he first encountered demons, in an incident that he thinks left him doomed to suffering.

Sound depressing? It isn’t. He may be cynical but he’s also got a warm heart. He uses much of the proceeds from his frauds to support a charity for the homeless, as an atonement for what happened 20 years ago. And his current demon is one of love.

This is not exactly a recipe for fuzzy feel-good book but yet somehow it becomes a story of love and redemption. There is even a happy ending. William’s character is described with both depth and sympathy.

The book is a bit odd, doesn’t fit any category, but quite often that’s the kind of book I like best. This wasn’t a greatest-ever but it was a really good book.

Amazon US, Amazon UK.

River of Gods is set on the Indian sub-continent in the near future (around 2050). This future is an extrapolation of current trends in climate change, globalization, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.

The plot is complex, with numerous seemingly unrelated strands that nevertheless turn out to be essential in the end. There is everything from TV soaps with AI actors, to wars over water, seemingly alien artefacts in space, a technological breakthrough that appears to generate free energy, etc. Plus it all takes place in India, which adds another layer of complexity and chaos for me at least. I’d try to summarize it but to be honest I read this book several months ago and I’ve already lost my grip on the plot.

The delivery is fast and dense. Even now I can open the book at any random page and immediately be sucked in, for “just another page”. The flip side is that the book can feel pretty overwhelming at times. You have to hold on carefully and pay attention or you’ll be thrown off your raft. This is not a book you can read leisurely, a few pages at a time – you’ll forget what was going on and who was who.

There are fascinating characters, fast-paced action, and intriguing SF concepts. It’s a great book that I’m already looking forward to re-reading. It’s hard to do this book justice in a review this short. But if you like ambitious, sprawling, dense SF, don’t miss this one.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.

This is a fabulous book. (I just want to have that clear up front, in case someone can’t be bothered to read the whole review.)

I read The Road a few years back and loved it. Knowing that, Eric gave me this one as a Christmas present.

The back cover blurb didn’t sound too interesting. A drug deal gone wrong, a psychopathic killer, lots of people dead, “a Western thriller with a racy plot.” Weeeellll OK, I’ll give it a try.

And after a dozen pages I was hooked. The back cover blurb is factually correct but really the plot is the least important part of this book. It’s all about the tone, the mood, the way of telling the story.

To very briefly summarize the story, Llewellyn Moss stumbles upon the remains of that drug deal gone wrong, including lots of guns, dead bodies, and cash. He takes the cash. But the owners of the money won’t let it go so easily. Soon he’s chased by a bunch of Mexicans as well as a psychopathic hit man, Anton Chigurh. He’s no pushover (having served in Vietnam as a sniper) but Chigurh is in a class of his own. After the county sheriff finds out what’s going on, he also starts looking for Moss, hoping to somehow save his life.

But the theme of the book, if I were to summarize it in a single sentence, is the erosion of America’s morals. “People don’t say Sir and Ma’am any more,” as one of the characters puts it. And that (and the killings) is what sets the tone for the book.

Aside: I know some people cannot read and enjoy books they don’t agree with – books about homosexuals, or about people with bad manners, or about men with unfashionable views on women, or whatever their gripe. I have no problem with disagreeing with a book’s message. Unlike the sheriff, I don’t mind “kids with green hair and bones through their noses”, but I like the book nevertheless.

The mood is bleak and bloody, grim. Not even halfway through the book it becomes obvious that there isn’t going to be any happy ending here. The readers should count themselves lucky to see some of the good guys survive.

McCarthy has a very pared-down writing style, with very little punctuation. There is little to separate dialogue from exposition, so they can be hard to keep apart. It’s all very sparse: “show, don’t tell” all the way, and even the showing is brief, condensed, concentrated.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the sparseness, the book is very driven and intense, and vivid, almost as if it was written as a movie script. Every scene is so clear that I can see it in front of me. I only had some difficulty with the initial scenes, because I really don’t know what a West Texan floodplain looks like, what sort of plants candelilla and catclaw might be, or what a talus is. And I wasn’t going to interrupt my reading for a visit to Wikipedia.

It all just flows perfectly. There is nothing in this book that could be done better.

Eric and I watched the movie shortly after I’d finished the book, and it complemented the book very well. (So that’s what West Texas looks like.) It’s a very faithful rendition, and an excellent movie in its own right.

Adlibris, Amazon US, Amazon UK.

PS: Actually there is one thing about the book that really could have been done better, but it’s on the outside of the book, not inside. It has a very nice typographic book cover, sepia-toned letters on black background, stylish, matches the tone of the book very well. And then… they slap a marketing quote on it. Gaah! (Read about the book cover from the guys who made it.)