Wulf, by Hamish Clayton

This a good book. A really good book. It’s one of those books I’m sure some readers won‘t enjoy, but surely even then people will have to recognise the skill and ambition with which this book is written. Hamish Clayton recently won the NZ Best First Book Award for it. That’s right. This fabulous book is his debut novel.

Ostensibly Wulf is a piece of historical fiction; it tells the story of a group of white traders aboard the Elizabeth in 1830s New Zealand, and the story of Te Rauparaha, the legendary Maori rangatira (chief). Their stories came together when Te Rauparaha paid the Elizabeth’s captain, John Stewart, to transport himself and a group of his warriors to Banks Peninsula, where they slaughtered an estimated 1200 people.

The story is told from the point of view of a sailor who (apologies if I’m wrong) remains unnamed throughout the novel. Te Rauparaha’s history is told to him by Cowell, another historical figure, who travelled with the Elizabeth from Sydney as its translator. Our narrator is captivated by New Zealand, and Clayton gives an excellent sense of New Zealand as seen by this British man’s eyes for the first time. The Wulf of the title mostly refers to Te Rauparaha: a foreign animal used by foreign men as a nickname for this native man.

Telling Te Rauparaha’s story by remove by white men could seem a cop out - a modern author afraid to put himself into a pre-colonial Maori mind. But, actually, this is Clayton’s most ambitious theme in his novel; how can these two white men be a reliable source for Te Rauparaha’s story? Where does fact and the man himself end, where does myth and legend begin? How can these foreigners interpret his actions without an understanding of the culture it came from? Are the scenes of cannibalism fact, or are they an exaggeration - the acts of savages as believed by the white man? How accurate is their account of history when every sailor has a different name for what we now know as Kapiti Island (Kopitee, Cobarty)? This is not so much history as told by the victors, but as told by the passers-by .

Their sunsets were part of our story, just as the arrival of our ships had already become a part of theirs. We were, us and them, part of the same story, different verses woven into the same song.

This is also a tale of when two disparate cultures came together, when modern New Zealand was born. It is a story of the irrevocability of contact; once ships and muskets arrived New Zealand could never be the same. Just as Maori civilisation was changed, so to were the whalers and traders, and eventually the settlers. After all it is not just Maori who have a traditional oral culture.

Had we ever stepped upon those unmarked burial grounds concealing the shafts of ancient war, where fossils of old Angles’ battle lay, and became poetry, slowly petrifying towards a state of lore?

Wulf is also based on an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, first recorded in the eleventh century, Wulf and Eadwacer. It is a short poem, and appears in two different translations at both the beginning and end of the novel. It is a particularly ambitious poem to base a novel on as no-one appears to be sure what the poem is about. It is generally thought to be a lover’s lament, sung by a woman, but no-one is sure if the Wulf and Eadwacer she sings of are the same person or not, so it could be a love triangle. Alternatively it has been read as a mother’s lament for a child. There are clear features of the poem that are recognisable in Wulf. Certainly the ‘whelp’ at the end of the poem features in Clayton’s novel in a memorable, historically accurate, detail.

Clayton’s novel is complex, I could spend pages dissecting what makes this book so clever, yet it works beautifully as nothing more than a great story. It is hard for me to be sure, but I think that this novel would also be a great read if you knew nothing of New Zealand, its culture and history. It is rare to read a book that lives up to its hype. I’m excited to read what he publishes next.

If you are interested Radio NZ have featured it as their book reading - available online here.

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

Eowyn Ivey has burst onto the bestseller lists with her debut book The Snow Child, based on a Russian fairytale. Ivey’s version is set in early twentieth century Alaska, where Jack and Mabel have settled in an attempt to escape their grief for the children they never had. During a bleak winter they build a little girl out of snow. The next morning footprints lead away from the spot where the snow child stood, and a girl is glimpsed in the forest.

Ivey’s depiction of homesteaders in Alaska is engaging, and it comes as no surprise to learn that she is Alaskan herself. Her personal knowledge of how to live off this wild land is put to good use. The land itself is also bought to life; the long bleak winters of frozen rivers and deep blankets of snow, followed by the mud and green of spring, are all beautifully described without leaving the reader feeling as thought they are wading through page after page of nature.

Jack and Mabel are wonderful characters. As they are new to this landscape we can be introduced to Alaska through their inexperienced eyes. Their relationship is beautifully portrayed, and for me that was one of the highlights of this novel. Ivey captures the care and tenderness each feels for the other, and the misunderstandings too. They are both torn apart and bound together by their shared grief. The harsh Alaskan landscape, and the entrance of Faina (the snow child) into their lives, forces them to adapt; their resilience is moving. Mabel’s journey in particular - from a comfortable middle class background, depressed and marooned in the wilderness, to, finally, a strong frontier woman, is especially well portrayed.

As a foil we are also introduced to their neighbours, Esther and George Benson, and their sons. They are salt of the earth homesteaders, and provide Jack and Mabel with much needed support early in the book. They also bring a dose of reality to the novel. When the story could feel quite claustrophobic - a couple alone in the wilderness, apart from an ethereal child - the Bensons are representative of the wider community. While Jack and Mabel are outsiders the Bensons belong in Alaska. Ivey uses them as the insider voice, providing the know-how of how to survive in this extraordinary landscape.

The question asked by this novel is - how real is the snow child Faina? Is it just coincidence that she appeared after Jack and Mabel built the snow girl, or did they really conjure her to life? Ivey plays with this idea throughout the novel, never really making her answer clear. I’m not sure she does this entirely successfully though, but I will get to that in a minute. What she does do well is find a way to tie in the original fairytale - Snegurochka - to the story. Mabel is familiar with the fairytale from her childhood. It becomes an obsession of hers, especially as in all the variants of the fairytale the snow child never stays. This is all done with a lightness of touch; Mabel’s worrying comes across as something akin to normal motherly concern.

Faina herself is very thinly drawn. The book is more about the effect she has others, than her as a person. Ivey does well to make her seem part of the Alaskan landscape: beautiful but with wilderness at her core. I didn’t quite understand why though, if Ivey wanted to preserve the mystery of Faina, she hinted at an explanation for Faina’s presence in the wild, one that was essentially quite grim. This happens reasonably early in the novel, and I initially thought that Ivey had explained her background, but then the more ethereal/fairytale origins continued to be important. I’m not sure it was the right decision. I struggled to ‘buy’ the mystery, partly because Ivey’s explanation of how she came to be alone was so believable and heartbreaking.

It isn’t a perfect novel, but it is an impressive debut. There was a lot to like in Ivey’s characterisation and her depiction of Alaska. I took it on holiday with me, and it was a great holiday read. It isn’t a groundbreaking novel, but I enjoyed it enough that I’d check out books Ivey publishes in the future.

Picturebooks

Thanks to the new addition to the household I’m finally able to indulge in one of my great pleasures - children’s books. At the recent Canberra Lifeline Bookfair I spent hours (not kidding) scouring through the stacks of picture books looking for goodies. I certainly found some old favourites, and even discovered some new ones. It inspired me to share with you some of the books and authors I‘ve been reading recently.

The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree

‘Three little Bears. One with a light. One with a stick. One with a rope’

I loved this book when I was little. Jan and Stan Berenstain wrote what has become an empire of children’s books. Often their Bears series is moralistic, and I’ve seen many that I wouldn’t be interested in. This one though, is a real charmer, as is the similar (but not quite as good) Bears in the Night. The story is simple: as the bears climb through the spooky old tree they gradually lose their belongings and gain the shivers. The language has a lovely rhythm and rhyming scheme, and is repetitive without being annoying. This makes it perfect both to read to young children, and for older children starting to read to themselves.

Judith Kerr

An old favourite who is still publishing - the delightful One Night At The Zoo was released in 2009. Kerr is best known for her first book The Tiger Who Came To Tea; it’s a great book - there is something slightly anarchic about this unexpected guest who proceeds to eat all the family’s food. It’s funny, appealing to a child’s sense of naughtiness. The Mog series are also deserving of a prime spot on the book shelf. Originally from Germany (yes, she also wrote When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit) she thought learning to read in English was very hard so she puts a lot of work into making the book accessible for early readers. It’s easy to focus on entertaining children with a book, but encouraging children’s confidence to read for themselves is so important. It’s lovely to have books that do both.

Emily Gravett

Emily Gravett is more of a newcomer, and if you thought the aforementioned Tiger was wicked, wait until you see what can happen in her books. She is most well known for The Odd Egg, in which a duck is teased by the other birds for not having an egg. When he finds an egg of his own he is delighted but then it hatches with unexpected - and for the other birds unfortunate - results. It’s fantastic. One of her newest offerings is a version of the three little pigs, in which she actually makes you feel sorry for the wolf. Gravett illustrates her own stories, and plot is often conveyed in the pictures. This makes them great for less confident readers as they can still get the punch lines purely from the illustration.

Last but certainly not least

Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski

The Meg books, about a witch, her cat (another Mog) and her friend Owl, were first published in the 70s. The stories are simple and the bright block-colour pictures are real eye catchers. Meg is an unsuccessful witch: none of her spells ever work, and sometimes they have disastrous, but funny, results. The books are short, but exuberant. There are about fifteen in this series, most of which I have never read, but I love the ones I remember. The author Helen Nicoll passed away recently, so we won’t see any new ones, but I think these books will remain popular for years to come.

It is one thing to pick the best new books, or old favourites, to read with your children. But more important is to just read to them, with whatever you choose. Who has ever met a child who doesn’t love a story? I’m sure I’ll get sick of reading the same book over and over, but it is such a precious gift to give your child. I could always do what my father did when he got sick of reading Harry By The Sea - turn it into a (much shorter than the book) song.

Ragnarok, by A.S. Byatt

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt is the latest in the Canongate myths series, which has had myths re-imagined by contemporary authors such as Jeanette Winterson, Philip Pullman and Margaret Atwood (whose retelling of the Odyssey as The Penelopiad is highly recommended). As you can probably tell from the title, Byatt has chosen the Norse myths, from creation through to Ragnarök - the end of the world. It is much more a literal retelling of the myth than the freewheeling interpretations other books in the series make. She does however include a framing device of a young girl, called only the thin child, living in World War Two Britain. We read the myth through her eyes, a device that is only moderately successful.

Much of Ragnarok is Byatt’s version of the Norse myths. Instead of following modern conventions of character, she writes them in a style more akin to their original forms. The gods are archetypal, and their behaviour is symbolic of the world around us, rather than a psychological portrayal. The prose is, as expected, beautifully written. The imagery she conjures up of Ginnungagap (the void before creation), of Jörmungandr (the serpent who circles the world), and the final awful silence after Ragnarök, is vivid and engaging. I’ve read a reasonable amount of classical epic poetry, so I wasn’t unfamiliar with this form of storytelling. I wonder though whether some readers will struggle to engage.

Byatt intends the thin child to be our window into this mythical world, and uses her to make two thematic links between our world and myth, which I’ll get onto in a bit. I don’t think this device really works. Partly this is because the thin child herself is a passive interpreter, and is as characterless as the archetypal gods. Rather than giving us insight to the Norse myths, I found her an interruption to the narrative flow of myth, and felt the explanatory role she played in interpreting the stories she is reading was unnecessary.

Byatt was herself a young girl during World War Two, and the child is a thinly veiled self portrayal; apparently Byatt even read the Norse myths at this age. In this child’s mind the destruction of Midgard and the wartime threat of impending doom become inextricably linked. Humans, like the gods of Asgard, are trapped in never-ending cycles of violence. The people who originally told these myths may have disappeared, but the truths the myths portray are as valid as ever.

The child is also a device to explore our modern natural world; as she walks to school, or plays, we are told of the plants and birds she sees - an ode to the British countryside. Over the course of the novel, as the myths move from creation to the destruction of the world, Byatt slowly draws a parallel to the state of our environment. The countryside Byatt describes is disappearing, and the same thing is happening all over the world. The world as we know it is in peril because of human behaviour. The Norse gods continue their drinking, brawling and general cavorting while they wait for Ragnarök. As do we.

Of the two thematic points I think the second is more effective. It is more subtly handled. I wondered if I was reading too much in it until I neared the end of the novel and decided it was intended. Weirdly the book contains what is clearly an afterword (not that it is labelled as one) in which Byatt explicitly explains her intentions in writing in mythic style, and her themes. The fact that it was felt necessary, I think, shows what is problematic about this book. I enjoyed it, but at times I felt I enjoyed it at an intellectual level, rather than being drawn into the story. Whenever I felt the story was getting underway, the thin child popped up to explain the myth, or a purely thematic passage appeared. It is a small book, but I felt it would have benefited from less being attempted; the combination of her themes, the myths themselves and the secondary story in wartime Britain is just a bit much being crammed in.

Byatt is a compelling writer - both Possession and The Children’s Book are fantastic novels. While Ragnarok has its faults it is an interesting addition to the Myths Series. Her depiction of the mythic world is beautiful. She captures both the joy of life and creation, and the cruelty in the stories, and Ragnarök itself is vivid, yet unsentimental.

The wolves tore the throats out of the horses and turned to the drivers of the chariots, sun-woman, night-mother, moon-boy and the boy in the bright chariot of day. Somewhere in the middle air, as the chariots rolled in their fall, the wolves tore apart sun and moon, day and night, drank their blood and swallowed them.

It isn’t a book for everyone, but I did like it. Just, perhaps not as much as I would have liked.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen is one of the most loved, but also misunderstood, novelists. Her wonderful romances, more widely known to many now through television, have earned her a reputation as a girl meets rich guy, girl marries rich guy writer. This ignores the fact that many of her ideas were quite revolutionary for the time. For those who are interested I highly recommend Claire Tomalin’s biography of Austen; it is a fascinating account of Austen’s family and society, and the difficulties she faced as a female writer. It changed how I viewed her novels; it made me love them that little bit more, especially this, the most revolutionary of all her novels - Persuasion.

Eight years before the beginning of this novel Anne Eliot, middle daughter to a baronet, was persuaded to break off an engagement to young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, largely because her family believed him to be beneath her in social standing. It would also have been an imprudent engagement as he did not have the income to support a wife, and no guarantee of ever doing so. He has now returned to the neighbourhood a Captain in the Royal Navy, and rich. Charming and charismatic, he is seen as quite the catch and the local girls all determine to fall in love with him. Anne is now 27, past the prime age for marrying(!). Overlooked and unappreciated by her own family she deeply regrets her refusal. Due to the social conventions of the time, it is impossible for her to communicate this to Captain Wentworth. She can only watch, and hope.

Of course, there is the inevitable happy ending. But in a way, this is what makes the novel so remarkable. Anne is the daughter of a Baronet (a hereditary knighthood, the closest thing to being noble other than being noble). She marries a man who is not even a member of the gentry. While he is rich, he is a self-made man, having earned his fortune and title through his career in the navy. Austen is so often criticised for being stuck in the class system of her day, but to me this heralds the massive social changes of the 19th century - the beginning of the decline of the aristocracy in the face of ambition. Of course Austen had no way of knowing what was to come, but her reflection of society is quite cutting edge.

In a world where to be mistress of a house was the greatest degree of autonomy most women could achieve, the desire of Austen’s heroines to marry for love, not necessity, is a bold choice. Marriage was generally arranged by parents, and in the absence of a large dowry, being very beautiful was the surest way to marry well. Her heroines do not settle for a mediocre marriage; they aim for the best in life and take the gamble. While it works out for them all, Austen understood well the difficulties in being a spinster. She, her sister, and widowed mother were eventually dependent on their brothers to arrange even basic things for them. Is it so bad that in her novels she is living the dream? Persuasion is the ultimate example - Anne is aging, and her father has squandered his money to the extent her dowry is in doubt. Nonetheless she gets a second chance. Her loyalty and good character are enough to bring about her marriage to the man she loves. Austen, in her early forties, ill and near death, writes a happy ending that she and her sister never got. Every time I read Persuasion I find it beautifully poignant.

One of Austen’s greatest qualities as a writer is her wit. She lays bare the hypocrisy of her society, where merit is too often based on wealth, not quality of character. She can be scathing, yet is also very funny. Persuasion is perhaps less humorous when compared to the sparkling Emma, for example, but it finds a gentle sense of humour in Anne’s family - the hypochondriac Mary, or her snobbish father who is so vain as to have filled the house with mirrors, which was an expensive habit for the time. While it lacks the humour of her more grotesque characters, what this novel does have is a lot of heart. Austen was a ferociously intelligent woman, at a time when female intelligence wasn’t appreciated. Persuasion was written at a time when she had received some recognition for her novels, and a small income had given her some independence. It is a more mature, well rounded work - perhaps some of that anger had abated.

Classic novels seem to be a love or loathe thing, those who loathe them finding them wordy or difficult to relate to. While the style of writing is indeed different, the craft behind it is impeccable. Society has changed in the two hundred years since Jane Austen sat at her little table and wrote this novel, but people haven’t. Pompous Sir Elliots, manipulative Mrs Clays, and faithful Annes, still exist. It isn’t a story about marrying a rich man; it is a story about marrying someone who loves and values you. Austen has inspired women with this dream for centuries; no wonder we love her so much.

Bring Up The Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall won Hilary Mantel the Booker Prize for her account of Thomas Cromwell, and the role he played in the ascension of Anne Boleyn to the throne. I absolutely loved the book. Through Cromwell, Mantel found a fresh take on the Tudor era that we all know so well. The book was huge, but encompassed a very specific period of events, and ended, I thought, perfectly, so I was not without trepidation when I heard that it would now be the first in a trilogy. Would she ruin that ending - leaving us with our own knowledge of history to fill in the gaps - by fleshing it out for us? By the time Bring Up The Bodies arrived in its resplendent crimson and gold cover on bookshelves, my appetite had got the better of me. I couldn’t wait to dive back into Mantel’s version of Tudor England. It didn’t disappoint.

Rising up from his origins as a common London boy, Cromwell is now an established, powerful figure at court. He is the man Henry VIII trusts to get things done, and not without good reason. The only thing Cromwell cannot do is magic up the son Henry is so desperate for. Having rid him of one wife, it falls to Cromwell to rid him of the second. As we all know, this will end with Anne Boleyn on the executioners block, and Jane Seymour on the throne. It is how Cromwell, the Seymours, and the Boleyns get there that is so thrilling.

As familiar as the history is, the novel is about Cromwell. It is told exclusively from his point of view. Unusually, considering this is the case, Mantel does not use first person (I), but rather the third (he). We sit inside Cromwell’s head, and yet we are kept at ever so slight a distance by this choice of voice. It is the same technique used in Wolf Hall, with one slight difference. In the first book some readers found the unrelenting use of ‘he’ difficult to keep track of. For this novel, where Mantel thinks there may be some confusion as to who ‘he’ is, she specifies ‘he, Cromwell’. It does reduce the confusion that, I admit, I found a little distracting at the beginning of Wolf Hall until I got the hang of it. It also adds something to the text. In a sense his name becomes his own epithet. Cromwell becomes this incredibly solid presence, instead of the slippery figure he could be in Wolf Hall. This Cromwell is a powerful figure; his name invokes fear at court. Henry VIII might need his title to invoke his sense of power - Cromwell needs only his name.

Cromwell is a fantastic character: intelligent and cunning. If you are lucky he is a loyal friend; if not, being on Cromwell’s bad side is a dangerous place to be. He is an admirable character, and perhaps just likeable enough, despite his ruthlessness. Mantel does a fabulous job of fleshing him out as a man. His mind wanders throughout his life, flitting to memories of his childhood, his time in Europe, and the wife and two daughters who died young.

The dead hover throughout this novel, haunting Cromwell. Not without reason is the second group in the list of characters at the front of the book ‘The Dead’. It would be impossible to understand without knowledge, not just of his family, but also of the executed Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas More. A particularly beautiful passage at the beginning of the book, regarding Cromwell’s sometime adversary, Thomas More, was for me the moment I sunk completely into the world of this novel

What could he do but splash to the scaffold, on a day in July when the torrents never stopped, except for a brief hour in the evening and that too late for Thomas More; he died with his hose wet, splashed to the knees, and his feet paddling like a duck’s. He doesn’t exactly miss the man. It’s just that sometimes, he forgets he’s dead. It’s as if they’re deep in conversation, and suddenly the conversation stops, he says something and no answer comes back. As if they’d been walking along and More had dropped into a hole in the road, a pit as deep as a man, slopping with rainwater.

Other deaths haunt this novel. Because it is historical fiction, we know how it ends. Two deaths are important to our understanding, the first being the inevitable death of Henry VIII. The precarious position England would find itself in at his death is bought home by a historical occurrence early in the novel: Henry’s jousting accident in 1536. He was badly injured - it is said it was believed to be fatal at the time - and it is known that within days Anne had miscarried a male child. Mantel makes clear, through Cromwell’s frantic mind, that if the King dies, England would be on the brink of civil war. Henry may be verging on the tyrannical at this point, but an England without Henry is unthinkable. Anne’s failure to produce an heir is now unforgivable.

The second death is that of Cromwell himself. I know when his life ends, I can look up the exact date of his death. I know the means, but I don’t really know the how. Nor does Cromwell. He does know that a world without Henry VIII is not one that will be kind to him. His position at court is dependant on Henry’s goodwill. Mind you, this could be said of almost anybody. Cromwell has the advantage - while Henry is alive, if he is clever enough, ruthless enough, he can stay in Henry’s favour. Therefore he does whatever it takes to keep Henry happy. Perhaps the key lines to the novel are these thoughts as the trial of the men accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn approaches

He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.

Mantel assumes a certain level of historical knowledge, and plays with it. She plants seeds of ideas throughout the novel, hinting at what we know for these peoples’ future. She stays within the facts of history, but it is her ideas of how it unfolds that make it so gripping. The biggest criticism that can be made of this book is that it is so clearly a second book in the trilogy; it just isn’t quite satisfying enough - I immediately wanted the third book to read, which is hardly the sign of a bad book. It may be familiar ground to that covered in Wolf Hall, but it is such an interesting period of history that there are plenty of ideas for Mantel to explore. I enjoyed every page; the prose, the characters and the Tudor world are all beautifully rendered.

Railsea, by China Miéville

China Miéville is one of my favourite authors, so I’m pleased to finally be reviewing his latest offering: Railsea. Miéville writes what he calls ‘weird fiction’ - not strictly fantasy or sci-fi, but something that blurs the boundaries. He is attempting, within this, to write a book in every genre; so far he has written novels as diverse as a western (Iron Council), a sci-fi planetary romance (Embassytown), and crime fiction (The City & The City). Railsea is his young adult offering. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it; it is well written for the youth market, but is also clever enough to satisfy his adult readers.

Railsea takes place in a dystopic future of either our world, or one quite like it. Large bodies of water are nonexistent; instead, the lands people live on are divided by treacherous stretches of earth that may or not be poisonous (as is much of the sky). Crisscrossing these are train tracks, providing trade routes and hunting grounds to the train crews who work on them. Sham Yes ap Soorap finds himself apprenticed to a doctor on the moletrain Medes. They hunt the vicious beasts that live in the poison earth: the most profitable of these being the giant moles, or moldywarpes. While they hunt, Captain Naphi is on the lookout for one particular moldywarpe: Mocker Jack, the giant yellow beast that claimed her arm years ago. While she will stop at nothing to catch him, Sham discovers a quest of his own that will lead him down perilous tracks, perhaps as far as the ends of the earth.

What Miéville does best is world building. Apart from his three Bas-lag novels, all of his works take place within a unique universe. He is an absolute master of invention, and crucially in communicating his ideas in his books. Some of his worlds can take a bit of time to get your head around, but once you have done so they have a completeness and believability to them that is so often lacking in lesser writers’ works. Miéville explains his worlds very well, taking his time to lay the pieces before bringing it all together in your head. I remember reading Embassytown and feeling like I wasn’t quite understanding, then with one particular paragraph everything slotted into place. Talking to my husband later, he had the same feeling at the exact same place in the book. It is a real skill to be able to communicate so clearly his, often very weird, settings.

The book obviously contains a loose homage to Moby Dick, but that is only the start. It is jam packed with tributes to literature: Robinson Crusoe is referenced, and the works of R.L. Stevenson - with Treasure Island in particular coming to mind. It is also unashamedly meta-fictional. Miéville first widens the story to include further characters, such as the Shroake children; he then teases us with snippets of their story while always returning to his central character Sham

At last they pushed on, under a huge night, in the deeps of which upsky predators make sounds. The Shroakes-

-but wait. On reflection, now is not the time for Shroakes. There is at this instant too much occurring or about to occur to Sham ap Soorap

Miéville’s early work is not exactly known for its brevity; this narrative technique helps to keep the plot moving without dropping the Shroakes for long tracts at a time. It’s a clever ploy, and entertainingly written - reeling us in only to drop us again moments later.

One of the things I most admire and enjoy in Miéville’s writing is his language play. He has a knack of twisting words and grammar so they say not what they would normally, but exactly what he wants them to say. He imbues words with meanings of his own, that become important to the plot or ideas in his stories, such as ‘philosophy’ becomes in this book. His vocabulary is extraordinary, although perhaps at times beyond the young adult readers this book is aimed at. One of his quirks is that he has favourite words, and these can vary from novel to novel, but often these words will pop up. This has lead to what I affectionately think of as ‘the chitin game’, after a much used word in Perdido Street Station. Knowing which words in his early works he loves, you look out for them as you read new books. Which leads to scenes like my husband and I announcing ‘chitin’ abruptly into a room where we both had been reading in silence. Other words this can be played with include ‘puissant’, etiolate’, and words that start with ‘un’ but don’t usually.

A stylistic feature of this novel is the decision to use ‘&’ instead of ‘and’. Miéville also often starts his sentences with ‘&’. It is very striking - we are so used to the convention that you don’t begin sentences this way. Writers often deliberately flout convention - it is part of the skill of being a good writer. Just as you get used to it Miéville explains this choice in a short chapter directed at the reader. In which chapter, the antiquated spelling of ‘and’ is explained to have been replaced with ‘&’ because of its connection with the railsea.

‘What word better could there be to symbolise the railsea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the railsea take us but this place & that one & that one & that one & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”?

It is a lovely idea, which after all is what you read Miéville for.

He walks at times a fine line between his cleverness getting in the way of his stories or not. For me he manages to stay on the right side of the line. That’s not to say he isn’t without limitations. Characters can be a little underdrawn in his books. They are sometimes merely vehicles for the ideas he wants to explore, not believable people. This is a fair criticism of Railsea. It is obviously just not what he is interested in as a writer, though I don’t think this prevents his novels from having emotional impact. When it is important he manages to make you feel. I have mentioned he has a degree of vocabulary predictability, and this could also be said for his themes. Miéville is an ardent Marxist and these beliefs are often explicitly expressed in his books, something I find amusing rather than troublesome.

I’m something of a Miéville completist. He is also currently publishing a comic series Dial H for Hero that I’m buying, and enjoying. There is so much I love about his books; their inventive worlds being only the start. Miéville is an excellent writer of the dramatic set piece, huge battles and showdowns which are a joy to read. All of this is present in Railsea, so I was pleased to read it. I think it is also well targeted at its young adult audience, whereas I thought his children’s book Un Lun Dun may not have been. It is not my favourite of Miéville’s works, but he is one of my favourite authors writing today. I can’t wait to read whatever comes next. For those of you whose appetite has been whetted by my review, here is Covehithe , a short story published on The Guardian.