Library Limelights 219

Thus begins the shut-in CORONAVIRUS TIMES reading. Here be my last TPL paper book and then random grabs from PAL library, eventually e-books (thank you, TPL!).

Robert Harris. The Second Sleep. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2019.

A parable for the times, Harris employs his considerable talent once again on a dystopian scenario (remember Fatherland?). Christopher Fairfax is a novice priest in the year 1468, sent by his bishop to a remote village for temporary measures after the accidental death of Father Lacy, the local priest. It’s mainly a place of rough peasant life apart from mill owner Captain Hancock and the rather enchanting Sarah, Lady Durston. In spite of himself and his vows, Fairfax becomes fascinated by Father Lacy’s collection of banned books and lore about the nearby Devil’s Chair, a geographic feature. These are superstitious times. But astute readers will soon pick up on hints that the mediaeval scenes and activities are not the actual Middle Ages.

This is post-Apocalyptic England, where all knowledge of a previous civilization has vanished, where libraries and books were ruined, where the church is ascendant. And where people sometimes find odd, inexplicable artifacts, for example a thin, shiny, black rectangle bearing an image of an apple with a bite missing. Father Lacy’s forbidden book hoard reveals some pre-Apocalyptic writings from the final year of 2025, including a letter written by Peter Morgenstern, a Nobel Prize scientist. Fairfax, Hancock, and Durston ally themselves with the frail heretic Nicholas Shadwell to fully excavate the Devil’s Chair, hoping to learn why and how those “ancients” disappeared. The novel’s underlying premise is somehow more frightening than what happens to these curious four. One might say: read, weep, and beware.

Fairfax: He wished he could unsee what he had read, but knowledge alters everything, and he knew that was impossible. (62)

Lady Durston: “Family tradition held that objects of great value had been hidden on the estate.”

Hancock: “Suppose a man saw an appalling calamity looming ‒ what would he do? What would any of us do?” (176)

Shadwell: “Now that I have almost no life left ‒ and, it seems, no friend left in the world, either – I do not mind a risk or two.” (304)

Ancient words of doom:

We regard our society as having reached a level of sophistication that renders it uniquely vulnerable to collapse. (58)

One-liners:

▪ All civilisations consider themselves invulnerable; history warns us that none is. (59)

▪ “My brothers has all been took by the army, sir, to fight the Northern Caliphate.” (70)

▪ There were in truth two Englands: the everyday one, and this other, ancient hidden England, almost obliterated, through which most people moved without thinking. (136)

▪ The blow ‒ whatever it was and whatever form it took ‒ was at once overwhelming, instantaneous and universal. (157)

▪ “Rather, the purpose of my life has been to discover what errors brought the ancient world to ruin, with the sole aim of ensuring that we never repeat them.” (157)

▪ To have lied to the bishop was grievous enough; to have gone against the teachings of the Church worse still. (187)

Multi-liners:

▪ Keefer gave a panicky glance over his shoulder. All his former cockiness had disappeared. “The register’s gone.” (46)

▪ The margins were covered in tiny scribbled notations, made in pencil, hard to decipher. The drawings themselves were precisely rendered. (136)

▪ There was a touch of insanity about him, in the wildness of his eyes, and in the curious grin he wore. “Well, Parson, will ye help me?” (302)

Into the forbidden:

And yet he found something about Morgenstern’s letter profoundly moving, even if much of it lay beyond him. What was “cyberspace,” or an “ATM,” or “antibiotics”? He picked up the book again, went back to the beginning of the passage and read it with close attention for a second time, snagging his mind on the difficult words, struggling like a captured Ephraimite to pronounce the tongue-twisting shibboleth, then began turning the succeeding pages in search of any further reference to Morgenstern. (61)

Becoming of like minds:

“So the Church has been both your mother and your father?” 

“Yes, and all my other relations combined, since my uncle also died soon after he sent me away.” He felt a flicker of guilt. His behaviour this day had hardly been that of the Church’s loyal son. “Since childhood my vocation has been to serve God, and it is my honour to do so.” For the first time the familiar formula sounded vaguely hollow. 

“There are too many priests,” pronounced Hancock, pouring himself another drink. “That is my opinion. No offence, Fairfax, but they interfere too much in the running of things that do not concern them. ...” (121)

Shadwell figured out:

And we also know that almost every person, including children, was issued with a device that enabled them to see and hear one another, however far apart in the world they might be; that these devices were small enough to be carried in the palm of one’s hand; that they gave instant access to all the knowledge and music and opinions and writings in the world; and that in due course they displaced human memory and reasoning and even normal social intercourse ‒ an enfeebling and narcotic power that some say drove their possessors mad, to the extent that their introduction marked the beginning of the end of advanced civilisation.” (158)

Nathan Dylan Goodwin. The Sterling Affair. 2019. Available through nathandylangoodwin.com or Amazon.

This latest novel in the Morton Farrier, Forensic Genealogist series, is a humdinger. Clarissa Duggan hires Morton to discover why a recently deceased (suicide by defenestration) old stranger was masquerading as her brother Maurice; her true brother had died at the age of sixteen. Clarissa wants her inheritance as this man’s “sister” to go to the rightful heirs. No one could have predicted Morton’s subsequent wild path ‒ into Cold War espionage. Was “Maurice Duggan” really Egyptian-born journalist Alexander Emmett? The investigation takes on another dark twist with Emmett’s wife Ellen Ingram. Morton leads us into a potpourri of detailed archival research as he puzzles out identities ‒ the genealogist’s bedrock – while we also follow the separate stories of Alexander and Ellen.

On the home front, Morton’s little family is delightful: wife Juliette and daughter Grace. They provide necessary breaks from the tension that builds according to the best thriller plotting. But Morton’s own family history is a labyrinth and now his DNA results are producing urgent messages from mysterious matches. In all ways, this is Goodwin’s weightiest novel; it tracks back and forth between London and Middle East cities. Ellen is searching for the spy code-named Jericho; Alexander does covert work to undermine President Nasser, developing a lifelong taste for pink gin. Wild card Flora Sterling appears now and then to add spice. [I have to say, having been to Port Said just after the Arab Spring crises and their loss of tourism, we could not have been more warmly welcomed back to the Suez; we laughed and cried and danced together.] Goodwin is better than ever at handling complex plot elements; he deserves his adoring fan base.

Teasers (The Present):

▪ Yet Morton could not reconcile the fact that this imposter had returned to a small village where his namesake had died just thirty years before. (73)

▪ Juliette stood up and paced her hand on his shoulder. “This is strictly from a non-police perspective now, but do you need to do anything more? He is dead, after all, so no conviction can be brought against him.” (120)

▪ What was he going to say to Grace or Baby Farrier when they asked him about his grandparents? (246)

▪ Or was Morton trying too hard to connect two unrelated things? (249)

Teasers (The Past):

▪ “I woke up in the morning, came downstairs and there she was, stone cold with her wrists slit, in my old grandmother’s chair.” (43)

▪ “This is the city’s trading post, where information—quid pro quo―flows as fast as the Lebanese wine, between diplomats, ambassadors, journalists and politicians.” (144)

▪ In the open case was a file, containing several documents marked SUEZ on the front. (180)

▪ “What do you mean manpower and resources ...?” Alexander questioned. “You want me to sabotage the plane?” (235)

▪ “We wouldn’t be where we are, with Jericho facing a lengthy prison sentence were it not for Miss Ingram.” He turned in her direction, smiled and nodded his head. “Well done.” (269)

At the suicide location:

“Coming to lay flowers at the spot. That’s a thing nowadays, isn’t it?” the man said. 

“Was this something you’d expected?” Morton asked, with a nodded gesture to the window above. 

The man shrugged. “Didn’t know him well enough to know. Besides, mentalness is all the rage now, isn’t it?” 

“Erm ...” Morton said. “Well, it is talked about more, now, yes.” 

“Yes,” the man agreed. “Quite the fashion.” 

“Was anybody living here close to him, would you say?” Morton asked, keen to change the line of conversation.

Another shrug. “Kept hisself to hisself did old Maurice. He spent most of his time at his typewriter.” (68)

Consulting Aunty Margaret:

“Do you recall which parts of America he went to?” Morton probed, a burning nervousness churning his stomach. 

“Golly, you’re being very specific,” she laughed. “Erm ... 

San Francisco, one year. What’s that place with all the gambling?” 

Here it was. 

But Morton didn’t want to put words into her mouth. “Las Vegas?” he suggested. 

“No. No. Somewhere in that area, though,” she said. 

“Atlantic City?” he offered, emptily suggesting somewhere almost three thousand miles away on the complete opposite side of the country. 

“No ...” she said, dragging out the word, as though she had given it considerable though and was already moving on in her mind. 

The line went quiet. Should he say it? He wondered, pen poised above the notepad, ready to write down the word. 

But he didn’t have to say it. 

She did. 

“Reno!” she declared with gusto. (156-7)

Chaos in Port Said:

“Over to you,” Alfie said, when Alexander had reached him. “Get us out of this hell-hole.” ... 

... “How did you know where to find me?” Alexander asked pointedly, in the hope that Alfie might finally open up about his involvement in British intelligence. 

Alfie smiled. “Well, as Rudyard Kipling once said, ‘If you truly wish to find someone you have known and who travels, there are two main points on the globe but to sit and wait and sooner or later your man will come there: the docks of London and Port Said.’” 

Another cryptic answer which failed to answer the question. Alexander repaid Alfie’s smile with a look which he hoped expressed the uncertainty that he felt in his role out here. (172)

Margaret Atwood. The Heart Goes Last. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2015.

Dare I ask if this is Handmaid’s Tale lite? Shaming myself: because I shied away from that dystopian drama. But here I am, happily transfixed once again by Atwood’s boundless imagination and sly humour. Charmaine and Stan are bankrupt, homeless victims of a great recession throughout their region. Sucked in by a seductive TV ad, they sign up for the Positron Project in the model (but well-gated) community of Consilience. Each inhabitant works one month on, one month off, in valuable production or services in the Positron prison. Month off means living in a comfortable home. Ed and his female assistant are the face of corporate leadership; other hard-hit areas are looking to adopt this successful town model. Gradually some inhabitants become aware of how closely they are monitored; no one can leave the place.

After time, Stan is besotted with fantasies of the unknown, unseen female “Alternate” who occupies their home during their prison month. Little does he know that Charmaine has already succumbed to an illicit affair with Max. I can’t say more about that. Their prison jobs: Stan’s in charge of chickens; Charmaine is in the hospital’s medications administration; they don’t discuss their jobs with each other. My head was spinning with the twists and turns affecting the hapless couple, their hope to escape somehow, and their hair-raising encounters. There’s a lot going on here. Perfect pacing and some laughs out loud ‒ we expect no less from our intellectual icon. Short quotes here will do nicely. [Lovely to see her friend sci-fi author Judy Merril in the dedication ‒ Judy, our friend too, who lived amongst us in the early years at PAL].

One-liners:

▪ Already she was treating him like some brain-damaged spaniel, with a mixture of amusement and contempt. (110)

▪ He doesn’t want to get up, because he doesn’t want to plod through the hours ahead, expecting to be ambushed at any minute by whatever foul or embarrassing surprise Jocelyn’s planning to spring on him. (123)

▪ She can’t see Sandi murdering anyone, or doing any of those things that get you strapped down five ways on a gurney. (140-1)

▪ Then she washes her hands, and after that she brushes her teeth: it’s like a cleansing ritual, because she likes to feel pure in heart when going into a Procedure. (144)

▪ “So they offered me a full-face transplant,” says Aurora. (255)

▪ “We don’t want her to act, they’d see through it: they have facial-expression analyzers.” (131)

▪ If you do bad things for reasons you’ve been told are good, does it make you a bad person? (304)

Multi-liners:

▪ “We offer not only full employment but also protection from the dangerous elements that afflict so many at this time. Work with like-minded others!” (26)

▪ He doesn’t realize she’s returning from a stolen hour with Max. She loves that expression – stolen hour. It’s so fifties. (90)

▪ So how much of a dickwit have I been? Stan wonders. What exactly did I sign away? (81-2)

▪ “I do feel your pain. It must be so, well, so painful. The pain that you feel.” (163)

▪ This is thin ice. Powerful men don’t take well to rejection. Rage could result. (199)

▪ “Anyway, accidents do happen and data gets mixed up. But I can take care of that rumour for you.” (223)

▪ Here comes his hand, planing slowly across the white tablecloth like a manta ray in one of those deep-sea documentaries. It’s descending onto her own hand, which she shouldn’t have left so carelessly lying around on the table. (224)

▪ “By the way, we do coaching in how to act gay,” said Ted. “For our new Elvises. Ten tips, that sort of thing.” (248)