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Dec. 13th, 2019 12:25 pm
Some Books I Liked This Year
Big Sky, Kate Atkinson — Atkinson’s books about private detective Jackson Brodie are terrific. Brodie, like many fictional detectives before him, has become cynical over the course of a long career, but somewhere within him is a person who still cares. He’s also slightly befuddled by the modern world, and his observations about it are mordantly funny. But the best parts of these books are the people around him: a Russian former trapeze artist and dominatrix (“Clowns in Russia were not funny, she said. They aren’t here either, Jackson thought.”); two young female cops named Ronnie and Reggie, called of course the Kray twins (“‘Are you Mrs. Bragg?’ Reggie asked. ‘Maybe,’ the woman said. Well, you either are or you aren’t, Reggie thought. You’re not Schrödinger’s cat.”); Jackson’s spacey actress ex-girlfriend and the mother of their child; Bunny, a drag queen; and some truly horrible criminals (“It made him think of Wendy Ives, her head bashed in with a golf club. What kind of club? he pondered idly…. A wood, perhaps, but then you wouldn’t be looking to drive Wendy’s head any distance onto the fairway, would you?”). As with most of these books, the characters somehow come together at the end, and major and minor puzzles are solved.
Atkinson has a tendency toward sad stories about sad families, usually with one or several murdered members. The first book in the series, Case Histories, was almost too depressing, but the second, One Good Turn, is one of the best. I’d suggest starting with that, but characters from one book show up in others, so completists might just as well read them straight through. I liked Big Sky as much as any of them, which is saying a lot.
Radicalized, by Cory Doctorow — Four inventive stories about people who are marginalized and what they are forced to do just to survive. In “Unauthorized Bread,” an immigrant finds out that her appliances restrict the kinds of products she’s allowed to use; then, when they start to fail, she has to learn how to hack her own toaster and dishwasher. Meanwhile others in the apartment building are mobilizing in equally clever ways. “Model Minority” is about a Superman-like character who rescues a black man from the police and discovers that his popularity suffers. From spot-on satire Doctorow moves to a story that’s almost too painful to read, “Radicalized,” where a woman with breast cancer is told that the experimental procedure that could cure her isn’t covered by her health-care provider. Finally, in “The Masque of the Red Death” a man builds a shelter to protect him and some others when civilization collapses. It’s engrossing in the way end-of-the-world stories are engrossing, but it’s also a meditation about who’s “in” and who’s “out” in a society that puts hedge-fund managers at the top of the heap. (Longer review here.)
Miranda in Milan, by Katharine Duckett — What really happened after the tempest, when Prospero and Miranda returned to Italy? Ferdinand is only the second person Miranda has ever seen — is that really a good basis for a romance? More importantly, maybe, is Prospero — a man who puts Miranda to sleep whenever she becomes inconvenient, who wants to be in control of everyone and everything around him — really the good guy? Did Prospero tell Miranda the truth about his usurper-brother Antonio?
I love stories like this, that take a well-known tale and turn it inside-out while remaining true to the source. In The Tempest Ferdinand tells Miranda that Antonio’s son has been shipwrecked with the rest of them, but the son isn’t mentioned at all at the end of the play. Why? Because Shakespeare forgot about him, of course, but in Duckett’s version he’s been killed — and not only that, but he’s been erased from everyone’s memory.
If Miranda in Milan just dealt with minor puzzles like this one, it would be merely clever. But it’s also absorbing and beautifully told, and like The Tempest it has some things to say about power, what it is and how it’s gotten.
Geez, just three books for this year. I know I read more good books than that. Next year I’m going to record them as I read them.
