cattytrona's reviews
245 reviews

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

5.0

Really exciting and engaging to read throughout. However, difficult to talk about beyond that without the big spoiler censorship block, because I felt this was a story so about who the mole is, and the conclusion, despite that obviously only taking up the final few pages.

It's good, isn't it? The way that ending is written. The ideological justification, so consistent with what everyone knows about Hayden (which massively made me feel the lack of ideology in Transcription), which makes it feel more a fatal flaw than a belief. The way Smiley takes it - almost, I suppose one link away from, a scorned lover. It's personal, it's deeply felt, even as it's public domain and politics and therefore supposed to be impersonal. The actual Hayden-Prideaux thing is such an extraordinarily romantic, tragic event, series of events, relationship. I'm fascinated by the fact Hayden only really appears onscreen once before the end, getting up to oddities, yet he's present all the time, both personally and professionally (foreshadowing). He's an enigma, a shadow, an undoubtable weight in the centre of the canvas. It's an extrodinary bit of writing of absence and influence. I've seen the film, but couldn't remember much beyond Colin Firth being the mole, so without being sure, I was making my predictions based on who seemed the most Firth coded. I ended up being right, and had a moment of disappointment, before realising - before being told by the book - that I was supposed to know, that I would have known anyway, that everyone knows. Again, it's something to write that inevitable answer so satisfyingly. Denial and complacency and disappointment.

Good book.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

3.0

very fun and easily read. spies are cool! and what a strange time in history. it’s inherently interesting moving thru this period
but occasionally the writing is poor, it’s obvious in an amateurish way, and i think the ending is very oddly delivered. my friend m

iriam

was saying the other day, just before i started this, that atkinson’s not actually a particularly strong plotter, and i felt that here. it’s not that the plot isn’t here, but it’s oddly revealed.

the reveal juliet’s a spy feels like it comes too late in the game to matter, and there’s not much of a hint of any of it. heck, halfway thru i thought ‘it’s weird that she doesnt seem to believe in anything except snark’ and like i guess that was a conspicuous absence. but the fact we don’t know this stuff about her only really works in a book that is more plot than character (like a christie) whereas this feels so focused on juliet and the plot is so murky for so long that it sort of seems like a character piece. idk maybe i should have been more clued in by the fact we’re doing spying in the 50s. but it felt all a bit out of nowhere.

still, i enjoyed it, which has been a major hesitation with kate atkinson since slogging thru life and life so maybe i will catch up with jackson brodie again one day

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

3.0

glad i, without really meaning to, heeded the forum advice wrt this, which is 1) to not expect much, 2) read player of games first. i had forgotten how much i liked player of games until a moment in the many epilogues of this, where we’re told a drone has retired and gotten into model trains, at which point i remembered how much that player of games robot slays – how good banks clearly is at writing machines when he actually goes for it.
player of games is also, notably, a quick, focused book. consider phlebas is focused, but not quick, spending a lot of words on a handful of things and characters in a way that just feels inefficient and unengaging.
at its worst, and for big chunks, it’s boring. which isn’t to say the writing’s dry or nothing happens. lots happens, but the action is overwritten and tiring, and is all in service of a plot and character i lacked investment in. the plot is notably simple: it’s a novel full of spies which lacks intrigue, and compensates with brute force.
it is also a novel with a ringworld and shapeshifting and do-anything spacesuits and future trains (shuttling about in what i can only imagine as a future glagow subway), and by the end all i wanted was

for the trains to crash already. and i love trains! and the future!

but those worldbuilding bits never feels much more than perfunctory, if convincing, and to the service of thin ideas. banks gestures to themes and ideological conflicts, but they’re inconsistently dealt with, and often at odds with the action of the moment, giving them a tangental feeling, despite also being central to the world.
the whole book is underscored by the kind of nasty, decedent violence and grim view of human nature which is honestly a reason i don’t go back to his iain bankses very often. it’s rough to read! it’s a little scary, in a, what’s this guy gonna force me thru next way! in this novel, some of that violence is alright, makes sense, is very occasionally almost fun, but bits like the island episode are just unpleasant.

i also found the glut of deaths towards the end, and particularly the epilogue one, sort of perplexingly cruel.

i did like the ironic note of the final page, which i thinks comes from this being banks’ way, but i also think it would have hit harder in a sharper book, which was doing less thematically and had characters with more to them.

The Aspern Papers by Henry James

4.0

i’m out here trying to write this stupid thesis on literary commemoration, reflect on extra-literary activity, articulate how people exist in respect to authors both academically and thru my own observations of what it means to enjoy good things rn, using up so many of my hours and words, and then it turns out henry james has already done it!! every damn time.

the best writer for writing about writing and writers from the outside. 

The Caine Prize For African Writing 2019 by Caine Prize, Chris Brazier

4.0

a really consistently strong collection. the standouts are ‘it takes a village some say’ by ngwah-mbo nana nkweti, for its language, and ‘skinned’ by lesley  nneka arimah, which is a really excellent piece of worldbuilding, and is a both fresh and clear feminist dystopia

Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin

4.0

broad thoughts: i love when fantasy is actually science fiction sososo much. i also think this is a really great collection of stories, that do benefit from being put together. not only do they compliment each other, with their sff approach, it’s just so rewarding when the links between the novels start emerging, in a way which wouldn’t hit as well if i read them separately with other books in between … it made me really excited, not just about the stories, but about big shared universes as a way to do scifi storytelling. if i log a culture novel in the next week it will be a direct result of this.

rocannon’s world: was the most interested in this one after reading ‘the necklace’ as a short story in the wind’s twelve quarters, and thinking it was amazing - it becomes the prologue here. i still think it’s an extraordinary short story, a perfect, efficient manifesto for bringing fantasy and science fiction together, for making magic technology. but it almost works better out of context. it’s not that the rest of the book drags it down, but it doesn’t do much else that isn’t embodied in those first pages, except lay out some rudiments of the league/universe — which do come to feel more worthwhile in the later novels here. the story’s good but a little slim, never much expands on the fairytale tone of the prologue, and so could be more convincingly real, and perhaps deserves to be bc the concept’s so excellent. although i did find the angels affectingly gross as an alien concept.

planet of exiles: i had fun with this, although again i wonder if it could have gone further with its work. the characters are more convincing but the pace is quick and the world feels a little brief. but i liked what it did do, the whole, aliens to your own home thing. i think the novel as a whole is a better argument for how giving a scifi backdrop to your fantasy story furthers it, and allows you to justify and easily explain impossible relations and situations, which take what human beings are and do to extremes, which is already the thing what slays about fantasy, where fighting isn’t a metaphor, it’s war. here, alienation is aliens.

city of illusions: one for the hayt fans, although that’s possibly only me. dune messiah made me crazy 70% because i found that one character/move so compelling, and this does the same thing!! i was so excited and interested, even though neither this — nor dune messiah tbf — have fully done what i want them to do with it. what that is, i’m not sure! but more! anyway i still liked this and found it tricky and compelling, even though again, i think it could have done more to inspect and dig into the situation it’s built, and how its non-rational, non-plot movement impact the characters.

i wonder if it’s a part of the time it was written in. i don’t usually expect depth and character work from scifi of this period, i’m more than happy with cool space stations and big cat aliens, and it’s perhaps unfair that i’m expecting more here, especially because le guin doesn’t ever really become a full on character study writer. but i think the situations she sets up for her characters are interesting specifically because they are so psychological, particularly in the latter two texts, but even in the first, when it’s considered as a response to tolkien, and what lotr becomes towards its end, and so it seems a waste to just. be so efficient and conceptual. to only spend time in people’s minds to problem solve,  not to feel. does that make sense? i also don’t love a one guy is special and solves it all narrative, which two of these stories basically are. that approach means there’s basically no lastingly meaningful people beyond the main characters, and i think that lack of relationships, webbed, also makes the world feel significantly slighter. the exception is planet of exiles (because it has a romance) and i think that was my favourite.

there’s still much to like. le guin’s a lovely writer, sharp and beautiful and really well observed. i knew where i was. and, again, i think the concepts powering all of these are really good. the difference between a 3 and 4 star rating for me, on here, is whether i’d go out of my way to reread it in the future, and because of that, even with all my hesitations, this is an easy, instant 4 star. these are just such good ideas! i want to bask in them!

The Time Machine and The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H.G. Wells

3.0

already too of its time after a century and a half to feel convincing, or much more than a novelty: none of the grounding grit (?) of war of the worlds. banging on the book’s metaphorical door like nooo that’s surely not how museums will age!! however, i do always love a victorian framing device and specifically the final paragraph that leads into, which is really good.
skipped the other short story because i read it a couple of months ago in a different anthology

Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones

3.0

in the end, touching. i liked hearing the details about tube trains and the names of various sort-of-familiar north downs locations. i didn’t know the box of box hill was a species of tree! i just always thought, well, it’s a bit rectangular. 

there’s nothing like stories about queer life before, like, 1990 to do a bit of internet romantic morality deprogramming: these tight standards of judgement cannot coexist with necessary empathy!!

sort of an interesting one to have listened to in its entirety in one blast by 11am, but there we are.

Girls Against God by Jenny Hval

3.0

listening to this sort of felt a bit like the verbal equivalent of ambient music. i was lulled into enjoying it, but it didn’t mean much to me and i do think fictional studies/diaries/manifestos deserve more irony and distance from their real life author

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

3.0

a good book to listen to on a long walk: engaging, fast paced, with some bombastic moments to keep me from thinking too much about my feet.
very cinematic, in a way which makes an adaption seem imminent, altho it also makes the book form seem a little more coincidence/convenience, than because it was a story that had to be told verbally.
some gross images and fun horror moments, which is a compliment, but nevertheless quite a friendly scary story because it never gets too visceral.