A Jungle of Tales

              This was a chance find in my favorite used bookshop. I picked it up because the back promised a story about a group of female silk workers in 1920s China striking for better working conditions. It does contain that plot thread, but there is so much more besides, including: - The impacts of national and global events (eg. conflict between Communists and the Kuomintang, the Japanese invasion) trickling down to a small rural community - Insights into the complicated relationship between the main character’s parents where there could have just been stereotypes - The idea of a sisterhood of silk workers who deliberately choose that found family over marriage - Surprise Sapphic relationship(s)…though maybe not so surprising in retrospect, given the previous point!             Pei, our main focal character, is born into a poor family that...

              I’d long heard Junji Ito described as “the master of horror manga”, so I’d been eager to sample his work. This is a selection of nine stories selected by the author, with commentary about the history of each. While it lived up to its title – I did literally shiver at many of these – I also felt vaguely unsatisfied with many of the tales. I’m still trying to   figure out why.             My best guess is that many of the concepts, while horrifying, are a little too off-the-wall. For instance, in the title story people’s bodies get riddled with holes through which they feel a cold wind, and they fear insects, and this is in some way connected to possessing a jade figure, and they are haunted by a sinister doctor…but why? The holes don’t seem to literally be being bored by insects (which would be super gross and horrifying) so where are ...

              I discovered Solomon’s writing through ‘An unkindness of ghosts’ ; this little novella has many of the same elements I loved – the rich characterization, the evocative language, the explorations of race, gender, sexuality, and trauma - but in a very different context. Here, we enter the world of mermaids who call themselves wajinru (the chorus of the deep) who are the descendants of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard in the middle passage. The first wajinru were nursed by whales and founded their own society in the deeps of the sea. They live lives that are free and unworried – all but one, a historian who carries all the knowledge of their past history and trauma, sharing it with the rest briefly now and again because “forgetting is not the same as healing” . In this generation, that historian is called Yetu. Yetu is probably autistic, like Aster in ‘Ghosts’, though she manifests it a b...

  I picked up this book because it focuses on a young Latina single mom who wants to be a chef and who maybe has the opportunity to do an immersion class in Spain. I love Spain and Spanish food, and when it opened on a recipe, my first thought was: “Ooh, is this going to be like ‘Like Water for Chocolate’, where we get a recipe for every month? Nice!” Unfortunately, no (there are three recipes), and the Spain component seems a bit under-researched 1 . But it was a cute YA story that did speak to me in some other ways.     1. We get paella with saffron and chorizo, jamon iberico, and…a bunch of other dishes that do not seem very Spanish. Where is the seafood, for instance? What about bitter oranges (which would fit well with Cuban and Puerto Rican traditions)? And there’s a mention of sausage made from suckling pig, which is definitely not a traditional thing and kind of a waste of a delicate meat. Also, they see cobblestones as soon as they pass t...

  This is based on the end of the year survey from perpetual page turner .   1. Best of the year/ 4. Books I “pushed” the most Fantasy: ‘The Once and Future Witches’ Sci-Fi: ‘Children of Time’ Historical Fiction: ‘Conjure Women’ Non-fiction: ‘Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China’ I’ve also ranted quite a lot about ‘Seraph of the End’ and ’The Merro Tree’ , as I think far too few people know about them. 2. Expected to love more than I did ‘The Windup Bird Chronicles’ . I expected to like this due to the magical-realism aspects, but don’t read this when you’re feeling isolated (eg. in the middle of pandemic lockdown), that’s my advice! The runner up is ‘Parable of the Sower’ . This was a groundbreaking work in climate-change-themed sci-fi…but actually a lot of what was known about climate change at the time (by the author, as far as I can tell) didn’t make it into the story, and I had a number of other gripes with the writing. 3. Most (posi...

              This wonderfully atmospheric book follows Margaret Prior, a young Victorian lady who is recovering from a bout of depression and anxiety. Because she’s been advised to find some activity to take her mind off things, she begins visiting the inmates of a women’s prison. She soon becomes magnetically drawn to an ethereal-looking girl named Selena Dawes, who was locked up after a séance went wrong. Selena tells her story both to Miss Prior and in diary entries from before she was imprisoned, noting: “Other girls seemed dull…of course, they thought me queer. I might meet someone, sometimes, and I would know they were like me. But that was no good, of course, if the person did not know it too – or worse, if she guessed at it and was afraid…” (Ha! I see what you did there, Ms. Waters). She eventually tells Miss Prior that they have an affinity that links them together on a spiritual level.  ...

              Contrary to what you might expect from the title, this book involves neither paleontologists nor any ancient creatures. Instead, it follows anthropologist Margherite Taishan, who has been sent by a powerful company to a planet it owns that is infected with a strange virus that kills all male off-world humans and about 1 in 5 women. The native (or, rather, naturalized) human population is 100% female, but has somehow been reproducing just fine for several centuries. Marghe’s job is supposed to be to A) test a new vaccine 1 against the virus and B) find out more about how the locals are surviving. But her impatience leads her mission off-script remarkably quickly. Meanwhile, Danner, the leader of the local military installation, is having doubts about whether the Company ever plans to let them go home. This 1992 book paints a vivid picture of the women-only societies of the planet and is a good ...