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.

Elliot Perlman is an Australian writer and barrister who has won the Miles Franklin Award, so that's a strong start. 'Maybe the Horse Will Talk' is fabulous; very clever, witty, dry and wry and moving. Stephen Maserov is a teacher turned reluctant lawyer at heartless mega-firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche (and that's the genius of this book in a nutshell). Stephen is a very kind man "absolutely terrified of losing a job he absolutely hates". The company is a nest of vipers; a stronghold of toxic, entitled masculinity and casual discrimination and sexual assault, brilliantly wrought by Perlman. Can Stephen save his marriage and pay the mortgage without selling his soul?  'Pulphead' by John Jeremiah Sullivan came via the Street Library; thank you, Library Gods. Sullivan is an essayist and journalist who's written for all the big magazines (NYT Magazine, Harpers, Paris Review). 'Pulphead' is a collection of his longer essays about popular cult...

Be warned, this is not my brightest hour. You've heard of the Bridgertons? Netflix's most successful series, ever? I'd quietly read the first book in Julia Quinn's series last year, so—prompted by the outrageous success of the series—moved onto the second book, 'The Viscount Who Loved Me'. Oh my, it's just as silly as it sounds, but the silliness conceals a dark theme of power and submission played out in an escalating series of sexual assaults. That's not what Quinn calls it, of course. They get married in the end (spoiler, sorry), so all's well that ends well, but I was weirded out by it.  So then to Josh Malerman's 'Bird Box', another book later adapted for screen. I love an apocalypse story, and this one is solid. The world is overrun with creatures that turn you violently suicidal if you look at them. Four years on, Malory is raising twins behind shuttered windows, with blindfolds on, trained as babies to wake up without opening thei...

I did skip through a couple of chapters in this one; but in my defense, it was dull. Which was surprising, because journalist Nicolle LaPorte's account of the recent Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, 'Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors and Phonies Behind the College Cheating Scandal', should have been fascinating. A story about uber-rich Californians paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get their privileged kids into tier one colleges should have been an entertaining train wreck, or at least a nuanced reflection on entitlement. But it fell flat; there was no drama to the nonchalance with which parents paid up and later pretended not to know their 'donations' were illegal bribes, or that presenting their unexceptional kids as sporting superstars to gain 'side door' entry into Yale was a bit dodgy. I was struck by one parent who said she had no idea the payments were bribes because she'd been signing whalloping great big donation...

"The best Barclay so far..." said Stephen King on the cover. Starting from a very low base, I gather, having now read Linwood Barclay's 'Trust Your Eyes'. "Barclay is such an old pro you feel he can write these terrific thrillers standing on his head," said the [snarky] Daily Mail. In 'Trust Your Eyes', autistic Thomas spots a murder on Whirl360 (a Google Street View equivalent) and his nice brother humours him with a half-hearted investigation, and so on until the inevitable kidnapping and car chases. The Street Library delivers as many regrettable distractions as it does wonders.

"If you read only one American novel this year make sure that it is this one", says Sunday Express . I call foul on that one. Harlan Coben's 'The Final Detail' is a competent paperback about a vigilante sports agent, his sociopathic, deadly gorgeous best mate and the death of a New York Yankees pitcher; the tone is 21st century hard boiled detective bromance. To the point: "Sometimes the good guys break the rules because they know better". Lordy.