“Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman

No. Just… No.

Did not finish, at 23%

If I’m being generous, then this book is casually uncaring. If I submit to my discomfort reading this, then I’m going to say it’s cruel and heartless.

Eleanor Oliphant is obviously not completely fine - that’s no surprise as the title is intended to be ironic. However, she’s clearly had some horrific trauma early in her life. I have no training that qualifies me to say this, but it seems like she has PTSD. She may well have other disorders that could be identified and addressed with appropriate therapies. However, despite the fact that she has social workers visit regularly who are clearly familiar with her awful background, there is no evidence that Eleanor has had any issues diagnosed or is getting any meaningful support or treatment.

As a result of her damaged upbringing, she has difficulty relating to people and normal social situations. And she drinks heavily - something that also seems to be treated in a casual throw-away manner. And through all this, we’re invited to laugh at her as she makes various ‘humorous’ mistakes as she misjudges various situations. These same situations mightbe funny if the reason for Eleanor’s detachment and lack of social understanding weren’t so tragic (even so, I found the ‘humour’ quite heavy handed), but in the context of the what we’re supposed to believe about Eleanor’s background and upbringing, it feels like I’m being encouraged to point and laugh at the amusing freak. The freak who is a deeply damaged individual.

OK, so I stopped at only 23% of the way through the book, and maybe the author turns it around later on in a way that can mitigate this first quarter. But I searched out some other reviews from readers who feel the same way but had the tenacity to see it through to the end, and I don’t believe that’s the case.

So, no. Just… No.

My rating: ★☆☆☆☆

"Takeout Sushi" by Christopher Green

I’m afraid that this collection of short stories really wasn’t for me, and I left it unfinished 60% of the way through (11 of the 17 stories).

These stories are small slices of life, mostly from the perspective of a foreigner living in Japan.  Each little vignette nicely captures a mood, but, while there was a charm in many of them, the mood that was mostly captured seemed to be that of a mundane daily life.  The world being painted felt quite grey.  Unfortunately, I simply wasn’t engaged by any of the stories, and I found the outcome of most of them to be unremarkable.  There were a few times when the author teased me with a what seemed to be a tantalising moment of insight - for example, the subjective nature of “under budget, and on time” in ‘Spinning Wheels’, or ignoring the roots while being captivated by the leaves in ‘The Tree’ - but these were unsatisfyingly underdeveloped.

Maybe I’m missing the point.  Maybe the point is to immerse oneself in the grey mundanity of daily life, and enjoy these gentle fables of regret, hubris, and growth.

I did laugh out loud in ‘Burned’, though.  And the illustrations are nice.

Thank you #NetGalley and Neem Tree Press for the free review copy of #TakeoutSushi in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★☆☆☆

NetGalley review

“Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach

A fascinating, if slightly outdated, exploration of all the things that can happen to human cadavers: from anatomy classes for students studying medicine, to investigating the efficacy of vehicle safety systems, to the various ways people ingest human remains, to their ultimate disposal.

“Mary Roach is an American author specialising in popular science and humour”, according to her Wikipedia page, and that’s exactly what you get here - a well research look at what could potentially be quite a dark subject, but treated with just the right amount of humour and occasional well-pitched irreverence.

There’s some fascinating insight here into both current and historical uses of cadavers. It’s only a shame that the book is slightly dated now, having been originally published in 2003, so some of the descriptions of “upcoming” advances in areas covered by the book are now over 20 years out of date (although I’d be fascinated to know how things have progressed).

My rating: ★★★★☆

"The Other Valley" by Scott Alexander Howard

Some stand-out moments in this unique but flawed story of time travel that deals with themes of loss, obedience, conformity, consequences and missed opportunities.

3.5 stars rounded down.  I don’t usually award half stars, but I’m so conflicted about how to rate this book that I don’t feel like I have any other option.

A brief summary from the blurb:

"West is twenty years in the past.

East is twenty years in the future.

Would you travel through time to save the one you love?

Sixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne finds herself drawn into a devastating lifelong dilemma – to preserve the town’s carefully protected timeline, or to risk everything and try to rescue her one chance at happiness."

The time travel set-up interesting, and unique in my experience: the story is set in a valley bounded by mountains to the east and west.  Beyond the mountains lie the same valley, but 20 years in the past the the west, and 20 years in the future to the east.  This is an imaginative set-up for time travel.  For me, though, it left significant questions unanswered that I found an ongoing distraction (more on that later).

A feeling of disconnection

First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room: there are no quotation marks.  Direct speech is indicated by a paragraph break (although not always) along with the reader’s intuition that someone is now speaking due to the change in flow and tone.  The story is told in the first person and there were quite a few times when I was genuinely confused about whether a sentence like “I didn’t know” was part of the first person narrative, or was being spoken by the narrator, or was being spoken by one of the other characters.  I think I mostly got it right from context, but why is the author making me work so hard?

I have no problem with an author playing with convention and form for stylistic reasons or to provide a particular feel - but I simply didn’t see the point of the lack of quotation marks.  Worse than that, not only did it get in the way of the reading experience, but it also got in the way of my engagement with the story and the characters.  For me, the lack of quotation marks added distance - as if all of the speech was either badly remembered, or was being reported third-hand.  It had the disconnected feel of a badly dubbed foreign film.

This brings me to characterisation.  I’m not sure whether the main character, Odile, was supposed to be somewhat neurodivergent - with sentences like “startled, I forgot to smile back” seeming to indicate the processing of emotions being a deliberate activity - or perhaps she was just supposed to be shy.  Either way, she is written with an emotional detachment, and seems to be on the sidelines for many of her experiences and relationships with other people.  Unfortunately for me, this also meant that I had no sense of the depth of her emotion for her best friend, Edme, whose fate is pivotal for much of the plot.  I did wonder whether this was just my own disconnection with the author - that perhaps the author wasn’t going to be able to make me feel anything for any of the characters - but this wasn’t the case: I found one of the scenes where Odile escorts an old man into an adjacent valley very moving.

The Time Travel Mechanism

I had so many problems with the time travel mechanism, where valleys to the east and west are 20 years removed…

Firstly, the entire world in which the story unfolds is only a few kilometres wide, but the society is advanced enough to have buses and cars.  This means that there needs to be a certain amount of heavy industry: mining, steel works, petrochemicals, manufacturing, etc.  This is briefly alluded to at one point (“The pavement ended and the streetlights tapered off at the gloomy remains of the brickyard and some factories. There was no more need for them to operate, the Conseil said“), but a few factories isn’t enough.  Worse than this, the valley is also bounded to the north and south - the valley is the entire world.  It’s not like there is an “industrial zone” elsewhere that would explain this.  Of course, none of this is important to the plot, but I found it very distracting.

Secondly, the “single timeline” rules of time travel in this book would result in an incredibly delicate hold on a stable reality.  Changes in the past (the west) will impact the future (the east).  In fact, this is poetically described at one point: “A person goes west, he interferes, and then new time rolls over him like a wave, leaving nothing behind. It’s as simple and ruthless as that.”  This set of timeline rules is fine in principle, and is well established in speculative fiction in general.  However, when this is combined with the “walk west and you end up 20 years in the past” mechanism in this book, then the entire world becomes very fragile.  The purpose of the “Conseil” in the book is to police movement between valleys, due to the consequences to the timeline of uncontrolled attempts to interfere with the past.  However, we’re supposed to believe that the valleys go east and west without end - that they are effectively infinite.  This means that the Conseil has to have a perfect record in every one of the infinite valleys to the west in order to prevent waves of updated time continuously crashing eastwards through the valleys.  This seems unlikely.  And what about a bird (because there are birds) flying west and, for example, causing a car accident?  This delicacy of the timeline is essential to the plot, and yet is inherently infeasible.

The Good Stuff: Plot and Character

One final negative word before the good stuff: the pace is incredibly slow, and the balance of story establishment vs payoff is too skewed towards story establishment for my liking.  For me, the payoff of all of the world building and character development kicked in at 80-90% of the way through, which represents quite a lot of slogging through world building up to that point.

However, the payoff was very satisfying.  For all that I’ve criticised the distracting elements of style and world building, I found the progression of the plot (who ends up where, and for what reasons) to be surprising and enjoyable - there were points where the plot took a sharp turn in a way that I wasn’t expecting, and I really appreciated that.

The blurb would have us believe that the book is about lost love and redemption - the chance to bring back something that’s been lost.  And while it is about that, the “something that’s been lost” runs so much deeper than a relationship with a childhood friend.  Compliance to authority for the greater good in the face of personal loss is a theme that runs throughout the story.  Coming to terms with regret and lost opportunity is also a persistent thread - and a thread that is made poignant by the tantalising prospect of being able to travel back in time and interfere, in an attempt to change outcomes.  And it’s in the main character’s self-absorbed, introspective contemplation on the direction that her life has taken in the face of all of this that the author’s characterisation really shines.  Odile’s combination of regret, resignation, and conflict later in the story ultimately gave her the sense of depth and reality that I was hoping for - and that’s what will stay with me from this book.

Thank you #NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the free review copy of #TheOtherValley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

NetGalley review

NetGalley Genre Misfire

NetGalley is a great way to get an early look at books that might turn into the "next big thing".  For those of us who read a lot, it's also a handy way to get free access to books you might enjoy.  My initial enthusiasm for NetGalley came from the latter (free books!), but it's now overlaid with a smidge of wisdom that came from some early experiences with NetGalley that didn't go entirely to plan:

Soon after I'd joined NetGalley I got an email from them promoting requests for Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. I was still dizzy with the prospect of free books from NetGalley, and this was my first email from them. I blindly assumed they'd filter their emails according to my preferred Categories on their web site (which they clearly don't). Armed with my giddy naivety, I skimmed the book description, thought it sounded like an interesting near-future speculative fiction book, hit 'Request', and thought no more about it.

Epic genre misfire.

If you read the blurb with your eyes half closed and an expectation that it falls into NetGalley's "Sci Fi & Fantasy" category, and you may be able to kind-of see how I misinterpreted it. My excitement at being Approved was short-lived, but, being new with NetGalley, I didn't want to torpedo my own Feedback Ratio, so I dutifully read and reviewed it.

You may laugh now.

Although, in a quirk of irony, it's now my most popular Goodreads review by quite a margin.

"Dictionary of Fine Distinctions" by Eli Burnstein

This is a fun and quick read, but unfortunately I found it patchy and unsatisfying.  Perhaps my expectations had been set too high by similarly styled books that offer a more rigorous treatment of their subject.  This is difficult to review, because I’m not sure that the book even knows what it is.  On the cover it is a dictionary, and inside it describes itself as a “synonymy” and an encyclopedia.  The words “dictionary” and “encyclopedia” imply a level of rigor, completeness and organisation that the book isn’t really pretending to have (and as far as my limited research goes, “synonymy” refers to the state of being synonymous, so can’t even be used to describe a book in that way).  If anything, I guess it’s a collection, a ragbag, a miscellany, an assortment… if only I had some kind of dictionary where I could distinguish between those words and choose the right one.

The book bounces between different levels of detail: straight out of the gate there is a very terse comparison of “emoji” vs. “emoticon” followed by a surprisingly complex discussion of the foam in various types of coffee.  For some of the brief explanations of words that I was already familiar with, I sometimes found myself thinking “I’m sure it’s more nuanced than that”, and then found that there were extra details in the endnotes that added more clarity - and it’s not clear why those weren’t integrated with the main text.  And there is a mixture of concepts (envy vs. jealousy, ethics vs. morality, shame vs. guilt) and things (leggings, tights, pantyhose and stockings) with no apparent ordering or organisation.

There are certainly plenty of “Aha!” moments, and it did have that quality of drawing me in by offering me “just one more…” before I put the book down.  And the illustrations are whimsical and nicely drawn.  This would be a great book to occupy yourself with while you’re on the toilet - but I feel that that’s not much of a recommendation for a book.

Thank you Edelweiss, Union Square & Co., and the author for the free review copy of Dictionary of Fine Distinctions in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

"Alien Clay" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is a gripping and fast-paced adventure set on a very alien world.  The world buiding is excellent, and the “alienness” is so well depicted that it I had a creepy sense of foreboding throughout a lot of the book.

A plot summary from the blurb:

On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go?

Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.

For me it was a page-turner from the very beginning - it was engaging and well paced, and I enjoyed the slightly flippant first-person narrative.  This is my first Adrian Tchaikovsky book, but if this is his writing style, then I’ll definitely be reading more.  One odd stylistic quirk: the author broke the fourth wall a few times - talking directly to the reader.  It wasn’t clear what the purpose of this was, and I was expecting it to become relevant at some point - which it didn’t.  This didn’t detract, but I did wonder what the point was.

The world building is so well integrated with the plot that it felt effortless.  And it had a lot of ground to cover - from the Mandate, an ideological quasi-scientific/relgious organisation with totalitarian control over Earth’s society, to the flora and fauna of an oh-so-alien planet, “Kiln”, that Daghdev gets exiled to.  And it’s that alienness that I really enjoyed about the book - it was somehow simultaneously seductive and replusive.

The plot has jeopardy from start to finish, but this really ramps up about two-thirds of the way through the book.  Events unfold that emerge beautifully from the world building - the potentially extreme risks of the situation the characters find themselves in have been so well established that the consequences are obvious without having to be described.

So why not 5 stars?  Only because it’s not a book that will stay with me.  The plot and characters were enjoyable and engaging in the moment, but I’m not sure I’ll remember them a few months from now.  I enjoyed the alienness, but it won’t stay with me in the same way as the unknowable alienness in "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem, for example.  None of that stopped it from being a cracking adventure, though, and I’d happily recommend it to anyone looking for that.

Thank you #NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Tor for the free review copy of #AlienClay in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley review