Books read in January
What is reality?
One of my (very tentative) resolutions for the New Year is to go back to keeping better track of what I read. So here's the list for January:
Gretelise Holm - Paranoia
Scarlett Thomas - The End of Mr Y
Charlaine Harris - Real Murders
Eileen Favorite - The Heroines
Marie Brennan - Midnight Never Come
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Exile's Song [re-read]
By coincidence, four of these books were dealing with questions of what is real - Paranoia, The End of Mr Y, The Heroines and Midnight Never Come.
Paranoia is a crime story by Danish writer Gretelise Holm. The main character Karin begins to look into what appears to be a case where a man kills his family and then himself. After a while she begins to think that someone is after her - sneaking inside her house at night, etc. - but the police don't believe her. The question becomes, did the things "really" happen, or is she having a mental breakdown?
I've mentioned The End of Mr Y before; the idea that there exists an infinite number of universes that are parallel but not similar to ours is just one of the ways in which this book discusses the questions of what our lives are, in what way time runs and so on all the way up to the ending. I didn't much like the ending I think. And if I sound obtuse now, it's deliberate, because that's one ending I really don't want to spoil for anyone.
I posted the blurb of The Heroines here. It wasn't as stunningly brilliant as I had hoped, but I did like it. One of the problems I had with it was that I haven't read all the books that the heroines that visit Penny and her mother are coming from, so there were some references to various books and plots that I knew were there but didn't really get. Also, this whole plot about fictious characters coming out of books to visit the main characters of the book - it felt at times a little like it was tacked on to a coming-of-age story that describes Penny's relationship with her mother as she nears adulthood. What I particularly liked, was the ending - predictable but wonderful.
Midnight Never Come takes place in London during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. What is so very cool about this book, is that it is based on a White Wolf roleplaying game that the author ran! I loved the setting and the story here: one of Elizabeth's courtiers discovers that there is a true Faerie Queen reigning underneath London, a "dark mirror" of the Queen of England and her court. Not only must the main character contend with the "reality" of the Fairy realm, but the fairies themselves will find out that their world isn't what they thought it were.