Hello St Marks

I've been following Matthew Shardlake around Tudor England for years—a couple of years for me since Casey recommended the series, and a dozen years for Sergeant Shardlake, lawyer, who we first met in 1537 in 'Dissolution', the first in this seven book series. 'Tombland' is set in the Summer of 1549; Henry VIII is dead and 11 year old Edward VI holds the throne but lightly. Shardlake, greying now, hunched and without faith, remains the voice of reason and compassion in a vicious, criminally unfair world. As always, Sansom places Shardlake at the centre of a moment of political or religious and social tumult—firstly in service to Cromwell, then Archbishop Cranmer, Queen Catherine and now Princess Elizabeth—and with a twisty crime to solve. Tudor England is painted in vivid colours, stinking and visceral, with layer on layer of intimate, immersive detail. Brilliant. 

In 1967, four clever English women invent time travel. One goes a little bit mad, but nevertheless time traveling develops into a elite profession managed by the secretive, eccentric Conclave. I can't make it sound any less silly in a short summation, but 'The Psychology of Time Travel' is not a silly book. Kate Mascarenhas is a psychologist and a writer, and this book is witty, insightful and full of clever details about the culture, community and mental health of time travelers. We meet multiple versions of each character from different time periods spanning 1967 to 2075; their 'green' and 'silver' selves interact freely across time periods, casually and cruelly trading foreknowledge. There's a classic locked room murder. A love story. A villain. And—an odd detail—all the protagonists and secondary characters are women; I can't recall a single male character of any importance. I didn't love this book, but others will, so it's back to the St...

This is a lovely, hardcover, Granta original. A slim volume. Slipcover in subtly textured specialty stock. Hand-lettered typography. So we know it's literary fiction by a well-educated white woman, written for same. And lo, introducing Jenny Offill. 'Weather'—about a librarian, worried, married, kids—is right up my alley, of course. Witty, observant, episodic, succinct to a fault (it's often unclear what's happening, but very little does). "And then it is another day and another and another, but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time."

Sank deeply into this one: clever, well-crafted, literary sci-fi by Richard Paul Russo. 'Ship of Fools' takes familiar sci-fi tropes — self-sufficient multi-generational starship, first contact, insurrection — and adds religion and a cracking plot. Interzone called it "a fine metaphysical thriller... best construed as 'Alien' with  an intellect", which does the job nicely. 'Ship of Fools' won the Phillip K Dick Award when it was published in 2001 and I can see why. Sadly, the copy that arrived at Hello St Marks was well-loved and fell to bits so this one won't be boomeranging back to the Library.

Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the Booker Prize, and was knighted for services to literature. 'Never Let Me Go' was a beautiful book; the kind you remember forever. OK then. So I bought 'Klara and the Sun' in hardcopy, new, as soon as it was released. The narrator, Klara, is a robot—an Artificial Friend—brought home from the store as a companion to Josie. Josie has been 'lifted'—some kind of enhancement available to the rich—but she's ill. Klara is variously furniture, an appliance, security, a person. She's self-aware, curious, acutely observational, and a believer; solar powered, she believes in the Sun. Ishiguro's robot-voiced mysticism is creepy and cloying and I did not like this book. But, damn it, I'll remember it.