This Year's Reading
#63 Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piñol (translated by Cheryl Leah Morgan)
Our narrator arrives on a tiny Antarctic island to act as a weather monitor only to discover it is besieged by an unknown amphibious creature. A nice little novel about the stripping away of civilisation and humanity. My only complaint is that it was perhaps slightly too glibly circular in its loop back to the beginning.
Despite being an international hit this seems to have sunk without a trace in the UK. I couldn't see any newspaper reviews except this one from Tim Williams in the Observer: "The account of his decline into madness is elegantly written and, above all, it renders an absurd plot unexpectedly plausible." Such narrow horizons...
#64 Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Read for review for Strange Horizons.
#65 The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
A much colder, darker, more seductive work than his sprawling Kaverlier & Clay. A very good novel and one which I am please to see won the Hugo.
I think some people people were concerned about its Hugo win because its primary mode is dectective story, its secondary mode is political thriller and only lastly is it science fiction. Its alt history setting though, is immensely rich and alien, much more so than most alt history. It is also - and I haven't seen this mentioned much - a work of magical realism.
Abigail Nussbaum has some very interesting comments on the plausibilty of the setting and other possible flaws in the novel here.
Our narrator arrives on a tiny Antarctic island to act as a weather monitor only to discover it is besieged by an unknown amphibious creature. A nice little novel about the stripping away of civilisation and humanity. My only complaint is that it was perhaps slightly too glibly circular in its loop back to the beginning.
Despite being an international hit this seems to have sunk without a trace in the UK. I couldn't see any newspaper reviews except this one from Tim Williams in the Observer: "The account of his decline into madness is elegantly written and, above all, it renders an absurd plot unexpectedly plausible." Such narrow horizons...
#64 Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Read for review for Strange Horizons.
#65 The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
A much colder, darker, more seductive work than his sprawling Kaverlier & Clay. A very good novel and one which I am please to see won the Hugo.
I think some people people were concerned about its Hugo win because its primary mode is dectective story, its secondary mode is political thriller and only lastly is it science fiction. Its alt history setting though, is immensely rich and alien, much more so than most alt history. It is also - and I haven't seen this mentioned much - a work of magical realism.
Abigail Nussbaum has some very interesting comments on the plausibilty of the setting and other possible flaws in the novel here.