Category Archives: Reading List
The end times newsletter
I’ve just sent out my December newsletter, which collects a bit of publishing news (a new Azrael the angel gunslinger tale coming in the new year!), some recommended reads and views, and a bit of personal miscellany.
One note: The newsletter service that I use, Tiny Letter, is shutting down in February. I’ll likely migrate the newsletter to Substack as that seems to be working well for other authors and readers alike, but I’m open to suggestions.
On the Bookshelf: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
During one of my lonelier periods as a young man I used to spend a lot of time wandering the city where I lived. Loneliness drives us to be around others or maybe to escape ourselves. Such moments tend to amplify the condition, though, as there’s nothing like feeling isolated in a crowd of strangers to really highlight your loneliness.
I’m tempted to say my wandering was aimless, but it wasn’t. It was undirected perhaps, but intentional. I wanted to experience some connection to others or perhaps even to the city itself. So it was I found myself in settings that inevitably attract the lonely — cemeteries, churches, hiking clubs, cafes, writing groups and the like. Who knows how many people like me were also in those places, searching for some connection? Entire communities, perhaps.
It’s this sense of communities of the lonely that pervades Olivia Laing’s book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. Equal parts autobiography, biography, art history, art theory and philosophical musing, the book chronicles Laing’s physical and emotional journeys after a breakup and connects them with biographies of famous and little known artists who all searched for or depicted dis/connection themselves in some form or another — Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper, Billie Holiday, Jean-Michel Basquiat and more. We learn about Warhol’s obsession with chronicling everything in his life to surround himself with an ever-present if virtual community, we consider the barriers to connection in Hopper’s famous painting of a cafe at night — the canvas and then windows separating the viewer from the subjects of the painting, who are themselves mostly isolated from one another, in a city cafe that seems to have no entrance or exit — and we experience Laing’s longings that will be so familiar to so many of us.
It’s a meandering yet purposeful book that somewhat alleviates the emotional crisis of loneliness by drawing the reader into Laing’s life and connecting author and reader both to a broader community of yearning souls. The entire book becomes an act of communion of sorts, where we can transcend our isolation by understanding the isolation of others who, despite their fame, were often more alone than we can ever imagine and who were able to convert their disconnection into a form of transcendence through their art. After all, what is a painting or a book or a song or even this review if not an attempt to communicate with others, to connect with others?
“Loneliness might be taking you towards an otherwise unreachable experience of reality,” Laing writes at one point. Isn’t that what all our wandering is about in the end?
On the Bookshelf: The Devil’s Detective
The Devil’s Detective by Simon Kurt Unsworth is one of the creepiest and disturbing visions of Hell ever created. Not because it’s all horrible monsters and terrible torments, but because it’s so close to our own world.
The book follows an Information Man aka detective in Hell named Fool. He is tasked by Hell’s incomprehensible bureaucracy to investigate murders in the infernal realm, which resembles a 1940s/50s town on the edge of a dying rural area (in my reading of it anyway). The setting synchs nicely with the noirish voice of the book, but Fool isn’t exactly your typical noir detective. For one, he never actually solves any murders. Every investigation gets closed with paperwork that says “Did Not Investigate,” and he works for the demons instead of being some sort of lone knight. The dead never get justice when they are killed by demons. Instead, they are tossed back into the seas of limbo, where they will be plucked out again at some future point to begin their torment again.
And torment it is, for those trapped in Hell are forced to endure never-ending labour for the demons with no source of light or happiness in their lives. Instead, there is only the constant existential anxiety of when not if those same demons will decide to turn on them and devour their souls. There’s no escape, not even for the demons, who were here long before the humans came and don’t seem that happy about Hell themselves. It feels like a manifesto against capitalism at points — the entire world seems dedicated to the torture of humans by the machinery of work, with overseers/managers being actual demons that want to feed on their workers’ souls — but it’s a familiar enough world that most readers will see their own personal Hell reflected in it.
Everything changes when the angels arrive, though. Fool is ordered to escort a group of them through Hell at the beginning of the book, when they are on a mission to seek out souls for ascension to Heaven. And this is where the truly chilling aspect of Hell becomes manifest. For the angels reveal there is just the tiniest shred of hope for escape from Hell — but it seems almost random. And it’s that hope that highlights all the other suffering. If there was no chance whatsoever of escape, perhaps the damned would eventually grow accustomed to their suffering or maybe even try to do something about it. But instead they are always captured by hope of escape to Heaven, even though they stand nearly no chance of ever seeing that hope realized. Hell is truly to be found in hope.
When the angels visit, Fool is drawn into a very curious string of murders in which the victims seem to be released from Hell. The question is who’s behind the murders and what they want, as the killings kick off a rebellion of sorts in Hell, where the damned rise up against their demon masters and Fool is caught in the middle. By the time he solves the mystery, all of Hell has been transformed. And even the demons don’t know what comes next.
The Devil’s Detective is a truly fabulous read that combines a number of genres into a chilling, terrifying and yet truly beautiful story. You’ll never think of Hell the same way again.
- Related reading: Nathan Ballingrud’s Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell. It takes the opposite approach from The Devil’s Detective and presents Hell as something incredibly alien and ultimately unknowable. Very creepy and very beautiful. It’ll worm its way right into your soul.
On the Bookshelf: The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich
I thought I’d resume discussing my current reads here on my journal, as I try to resist the irresistible trend of social media becoming the default platform for all conversations. (See my reasoning here.)
First up On the Bookshelf: The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich.
I fell in love with Chris Willrich’s tales at first read, after coming across them in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I was so excited about them I messaged BCS editor Scott Andrews to let him know, and he pointed me to Willrich’s novels.
I recently finished The Scroll of Years, and I still don’t know how to talk about it. Perhaps because it’s one of those books that defies categorization. A risky move for a genre book, sure, but one that’s paid off in this case.
It’s as if it were a fantasy novel co-written by the ghosts of Italo Calvino and Fritz Leiber and transcribed by a dragon monk who sees only in ethereal. This is a tale that revels not only in unconventional characters and unexpected twists but also in storytelling itself. In fact, this is very much a novel about storytelling at every level — the characters’ greatest powers are their abilities to tell tales, the narrative ventures into one different genre after another, and the idea of being able to escape into a good story is actually key to the plot here.
The book mostly follows the thieves Bone and Gaunt, lovers that are trying to escape their pasts and find a safe spot to raise their coming child. But the narrative often shifts away from them to explore other characters’ tales that intersect with the story of Bone and Gaunt. And it’s a wildly imaginative cast of characters — weird magical assassins, a band of mysterious thieves, and even an unconventional dragon. To say any more would be to reveal too much!
The Scroll of Years isn’t traditional fantasy — it’s certainly not high fantasy or grimdark. Nor is it an easy read, as it demands your attention at all times. But it is a unique read and unlike anything else being published at the moment. The literary magic and originality of it alone are enough to earn five out of five scrolls from me.
Related Links:
Website – http://www.chriswillrich.com
X: https://twitter.com/librariangoblin
BCS Stories by Chris Willrich:
- “Hausferatu” — Issue #384, June 15, 2023
- “On Magog’s Pond” — Issue #367, October 20, 2022
- “A Manslaughter of Crows” — Issue #341, October 21, 2021
- “Eyetooth” — Issue #314, October 8, 2020
- “Shadowdrop” — Issue #261, Tenth Anniversary Month Double-Issue I, September 27, 2018
- “How the Wicker Knight Would Not Move” — Issue #99, July 11, 2012
A Tiny Newsletter – The Heretics Edition
I’ve sent out the August edition of my newsletter, in which I discuss my latest writing news, a bit of life stuff, highlights from my D&D campaign, what I’m reading, why I’m taking spiritual advice from Dwight Schrute of The Office and other miscellany. You can read it online at tinyletter.com/peterdarbyshire or subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox so you can read it on company time. No judgement.
On the Bookshelf: The Death and Life of Strother Purcell by Ian Weir
If Shakespeare and Faulkner had a knife fight in a back alley, the blood they spilled would be the ink Ian Weir used to record The Death and Life of Strother Purcell. The tale of a legendary gunman and his outlaw brother is as mythic as it is down and dirty, crossing years, borders and near every moral and ethical boundary imaginable as the estranged brothers head for a reckoning that is sure to be as apocalyptic as it is inevitable. It’s fit for those who like the westerns of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx in equal measures: as literary as it is lurid, as epic as it is eerie. Picture John Wayne riding into a Greek tragedy and you’ll have a notion of the peculiar brilliance that is The Death and Life of Strother Purcell.
Jacket copy:
In 1876, the fabled lawman Strother Purcell disappears into a winter storm in the mountains of British Columbia, while hunting down his outlawed half-brother. Sixteen years later, the wreck of Purcell resurfaces – derelict and homeless – in a San Francisco jail cell. And a failed journalist named Barrington Weaver conceives a grand redemptive plan. He will write Purcell’s true-life story. All it requires is a final act…
What unfolds is an archetypal saga of obsession, lost love, treachery, and revenge. A deadpan revisionist Western, refracted through a Southern Gothic revenge tragedy, The Death and Life of Strother Purcell is a novel about two cursed brothers, a pair of eldritch orphans, the vexed nature of truth, and the yearnings of that treacherous sonofabitch the human heart.
On the bookshelf: Certain Dark Things
What is there to say about Certain Dark Things, the vampire novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia set in Mexico City that mixes up the entire cinematic, literary and mythic history of vampires with the narco conflicts of the Mexican drug wars, run through a noir filter with the thriller levels cranked up, to create her own dangerous species of vampire novel?
What is there to say other than read it?
On the Bookshelf: Happinesswise by Jonathan Bennett
Happinesswise by Jonathan Bennett could just as easily have been called Intimatewise or Intimacywise or some such thing. While the poems are all over the map when it comes to style and subject matter, at their core they are glimpses into the secret lives we all carry within us.
The book opens with a series of poems called Palliative Care Reflective Portfolio, which yes, are about death, but in that are also about entire lives lived. The poems feature notes about end-of-life care and the mundane minutia of death, or at least of putting off death for a few more ragged heartbeats: “the machine drone, the urine sting, the sour C. diff smell, the pump throb, the infection control, latex-free signage.” But the clinical language of the palliative care experience are countered in the same poems with the beautiful, transcendent moments of life, the memories that actually make us what we are: “tinkling wind chimes, your still-beautiful clavicle” and “My son’s first steps – across the lichen at the lake.” In an interview, Bennett states these poems are inspired by his own experiences working in a hospital and reading doctors’ portfolios: “Somewhere in the fog of pain meds and held hands, of DNR’s and oncoming grief, people retell stories that have bound them to one another over the course of a lifetime. Or else they sit in silence and just know, together. Is this happiness? Is it the end of happiness? These are the things the poem pursues.”
While the Palliative Care Reflective Portfolio is not specifically about Bennett, other poems do provide more intimate glimpses into his life. The poems found in Neurotypical Sketches offer insights into Bennett’s relationship with his autistic son – and insights perhaps into his relationship with autism, or at least autism as he has experienced it. There’s a map drawn by his son, Thomas, and moment after moment of a life transformed by something ultimately unknowable:
“He asks: Do cyclops blink or wink?
We laugh and and I ask him to tell me
the riddle of Theseus’s ship again
because I can’t get enough of him
charting his way through a paradox.
And to hear him argue the case
for Bigfoot is to doubt everything
you thought was true in the universe.”
There are other examples of this intimacy throughout the book – the series Concession Line Signs uses signs in Bennett’s region for inspiration, and as a vegetarian I certainly found a connection with his poem “Vegetarians Use the Back Door.” But really, it’s one of those collections best read and not talked about too much, because its true power is in how you will find yourself in the poems. How are you doing, happinesswise?
On the bookshelf: Hysteria
It’s almost impossible to describe Hysteria by Elisabeth de Mariaffi, for it moves not only through a wide range of genres but also beyond their limits, into strange and uncharted literary terrain. Domestic thrillers, psychological thrillers, fairy tales, ghost stories, historical fiction, detective stories – they’re all present in Hysteria in one form or another. But they’re also transformed into something else, a narrative of resistance for a world gone mad, for a world that has perhaps always been mad. The book’s title is a clue to the eerie nature of its story: it’s a state of mind, not a fixed and stable plot with the clear and unambiguous ending of a conventional thriller. In other words, Hysteria is a book better experienced than described.
That said, here’s the book description if you want to learn more:
Heike Lerner’s life looks perfect from the outside: she’s settled into an easy routine of caring for her young son, Daniel, and spends her days wandering the woods near their summer house, while her nights are filled with clinking glasses and charming conversation. It all helps to keep her mind at ease—or at least that’s what her husband, Eric, tells her. But lately, Heike’s noticed there are some things out of place: a mysterious cabin set back in the trees and a strange little girl who surfaces alone at the pond one day, then disappears—while at home Eric is becoming increasingly more controlling. Something sinister that Heike cannot quite put her finger on is lingering just beneath the surface of this idyllic life.
It’s possible Heike’s worries are all in her head, but when the unthinkable happens—Daniel vanishes while she and Eric are at a party one night—she can no longer deny that something is very wrong.
Desperate to find her son, Heike will try anything, but Eric insists on a calm that feels so cold she wonders if she can trust him at all.
Could Eric be involved in Daniel’s disappearance? Or has some darker thing taken him?I Remember You sales cover The closer Heike gets to the truth, the faster it slips away. But she will not rest until she finds her son.
And there’s also a Walrus piece on the book for more thoughts. Excerpt:
Hysteria is a novel about many things—a mother’s love, the institution of psychiatry. But at heart, it is a novel about the ordinary corruptibility of plot: how certain men wield narrative to manipulate women, to convince them that they are crazy and the world that denies them their happiness is sane. De Mariaffi purges this corruption, turning one genre against another, fighting plot with plot.
What would you give up for magic?
Followers of this blog likely know by now that I’m a fan of Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats series, about a ragtag band of wandering magistrates trying to save a fallen land. And I’m not just a fan because of that one time de Castell bought me beach French fries! These are damned fine books – solid fantasy novels written by a literary master who’s concerned about real-life issues of honour, ethics and what makes a person good rather than just law-abiding.
Now de Castell has a new series out – the Spellslinger books. They follow the misadventures of Kellen, a young man in a society where almost everyone is a mage – except Kellen. Sounds like high school, doesn’t it? It has certainly has that YA vibe about it, but like the Greatcoats series there’s plenty of politics, interrogations of history, ethics, philosophy and Issues with a capital I here. De Castell is that rare kind of writer who tells a good tale while also exploring the things that matter in real life to all of us. I don’t want to talk about the first book in the series too much because the plot is all about the twists and surprises. I’ll just say if you like your fantasy worlds complex and your characters flawed and fallen, then you’ll want to read Spellslinger. Plus, there’s a talking, homicidal squirrel cat! (I’m personally convinced it’s a stand-in for de Castell himself, but that’s a subject for another blog post….)
peter darbyshire 