Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Something I'm thinking about a lot this year is an occasion when, in hindsight, I was actually sexually harrassed at work. I didn't notice at the time, because I was newly aware of myself as queer, and I registered it as *homophobic* hostility, albeit of a generalist masculine display sort rather than directed at me.

( Read more... )

These days, I am researching intersections between disgust and humour: why is disgust fun? Why is it funny to disgust others? It turns out that still shot I was shown is part of the Internet Hall of Fame: it's known as 'Lemon Party', and like Goatse and Two Girls One Cup, it is one of the pornographic counterparts of the humble RickRoll and the NumaNuma song. One tricked one's internet peers (and sometimes ones real life peers) into viewing undesirable content: Lemon Party and Goatse because they are explicitly or implicitly homoerotic; Two Girls (and to an extent Goatse) because of the scatological humour / kink intersection. RickRoll is genuinely harmless, its joke resting on the overly earnest and unfashionable popsong, while the NumaNuma video's prank appeal rests on combined fatphobia and mockery of the chap in question's earnest enjoyment of the song. Somehow, as an odd badge of pride, I can tell you I've never been internet-pranked into any of these: I somehow became skilled at spotting and dodging them, and Lemon Party simply never crossed my radar. Consequently, it wasn't until I read mentions of it in academic literature that I realised it was a specific meme-based prank and not a random act of homophobia that I had encountered in late 2008 or early 2009.

Now, when I think about that exchange in the restaurant, it seems glaringly obvious to me that I, and the other female staff, were subject to heterosexual sexual harrassment: pushing pornography into our working relationship was obviously an act of sexualised intimidation. Even the intent to disgust is wrapped up in ye olde hetero power dynamics: eliciting an affective response over us, in the domain of sexuality, without touching us or even implying sexual interest in us. But I do think there's something different here to, say, showing het porn that the aggressor might presumably enjoy - perhaps that's what lifts it into the realm of humour? There isn't a sense of unwanted intimacy, such as even something relatively tame like pin-up calendars elicits (now you know exactly what kind of big tits your colleagues like). I'm fairly sure my straight women colleagues would have reacted differently to straight porn, or lesbian porn (either true dyke porn or girl-on-girl-for-male-viewers); and the kitchen blokes would not have found conventionally attractive gay porn a site of riotous amusement.

This past week I read NSFW: Sex, Humour and Risk in Social Media (well, read the intro and skimmed the rest for content specifically addressing gross-out pranks). What that book *doesn't* address sort of confirms that my first read on the situation might not have been so wrong: I think, at the time, the disgust > humour link was so strong, and the homophobic element so obvious, that many victims embraced the joke (and then passed it on). The authors of NSFW address Goatse and Lemon Party in the same context as 'Nimping' (of which I had never heard!), a prank that installed an app that played inescapable gay porn and shouted "hey everyone I'm watching gay porn!" across your workplace. They talk about how there's humour in disgust, in reasserting heteronorms via disgust-pranks; and about the humour of incongruity, as in the presence of porn in the workplace.

They DON'T talk about the specific dynamics involved in victimising certain people for these pranks - perhaps because Goatse, like Rickroll, seemed so all-pervasive at one point. But something like Nimping? Don't tell me that wasn't deliberately sent to men who were somehow failing to win at workplace masculinity. Part of the TEST is that the victim had to both perform disgust *and* treat it as a successfully executed amusing prank - by failing to perform disgust I violated the Rules of the exchange, and if I were read as a man or possibly even as a dyke at the time I would have opened myself to further homophobic harassment in so doing; but if I treated it as sexual harassment directed at me as a woman, I have absolutely no idea what would have happened, the violation of the prank rules of engagement was so inconceivable at the time.

I do think that even if it is the case that most people in the sphere of these pranks thought of them as pranks rather than harassment, an academic study ought to probe further. It is striking that the authors of NSFW quote studies which interviewed people about workplace humour, or about work/life boundaries and smutty jokes on social media (some one who was photographed holding some 'cock soup' - tinned soup with a cockerel on it - while on mental health leave, and the photo made it to facebook), they don't interview or cite any interviews with anyone who *disseminated* goatse, lemon party, two girls, or nimping; nor anyone on the receiving end. Even in the section entitled 'Harassment, Sex, and the Workplace', they focus on the fact that things which are harassment in one context may not be in another - without ever addressing the fact that these pranks *could be used to harass*, and who might be the most likely victims. Even when mentioning the homophobic nature of the joke, they don't address the probability that queer people would therefore be targeted. It's... disappointing, honestly.

And yet, while failing to treat gross-out pranks as harassment, they *also* don't address consensual gross-out practices! I am aware of people who trawl the A03 for the grossest or most pathetic or worst written or preferably all three porn they can find; I assume this happens with video porn, too (how else did Lemon Party end up screencapped?). Some people think its fun to seek out gross content: they then either spring it on unconsenting people, or, I've been told, engage in group competitive gross-outs with similarly minded friends. I am fairly sure that some of *that* underlay the viral success of goatse, lemon party, two girls, etc.

All up, useful but disappointing. I did get some interesting anthropological cites on disgust, however, and will keep forging ahead. I've been reading up on intentionally disgusting literature, too, but most of what I've found is writing about disgust as deliberately challenging / edgy, not deliberately FUNNY. But there are many genres of disgusting literature that are not that: Paul Jennings is no William S. Burroughs, and 18th-cent Mock-Epic has more in common with Captain Underpants than with Samuel L. Delaney.

---

Currently Reading:
Fiction For Fun: Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other - not much progress here.
Poetry: Still plodding onward with Paradise Lost
Non-Fiction for Personal Interest: Made some headway with Feminist Theory from Margin To Center, am enjoying it. Foucault and Bond Stockton remain on hiatus.
Lit Mag: Some minor progress with the winter Meanjin, but not enough. Also, as if I didn't have enough of a backlog with Meanjin, i leveled up in bougieness and took out a TLS subscription. I keep picking up links to articles by medievalists and not being able to read them... so, I have three months electronic and hard copy, we'll see if I use it and if it's worth keeping up the hard copy.
For Work: Mary Devlin's Murder on the Canterbury Pilgrimage, aka 'Esmerelda from Hunchback goes on pilgrimage with Chaucer, and also with a woman who has been married five times but is less mouthy than the Wife of Bath so makes a less threatening POV character'. Hines' The Fabliau in English. Annotating Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works, still.

Recently Finished: Quite a lot, actually.

The Canterbury Trail by Angie Abdou

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This was going to get a 3 or even round up to a 4, but the ending was a complete cop-out AND not even plausibly excused as a 'retraction' à la Chaucer.

The Canterbury Tales by Seymour Chwast

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


It's hard to feel like Chwast actually LIKES the CT's, except maybe the Knight's Tale? And totally baffling dedication to doing The Whole Thing, including the cook and Melibee. Interesting to have a Prioress' Tale from a Jewish adaptor, but he ... doesn't... actually do anything interesting with it.


Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works: Critical Essays by Sharon Friedman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Extremely useful and relevant to my interests.


100 Demon Dialogues by Lucy Bellwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Absolutely adorable: 100 slice of life comics featuring discussions between the artist and her own inner demons.

Plus Karen Boyle, Media and Violence: Gendering the Debates, which is pretty good if out of date now. Neat format choices - it's a monograph but it's got textbook-like chapter blurbs and summaries, and discussion prompts. Also the intro to Alexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic, which gave me some good cites, but is bafflingly ONLY about inter-religious polemic (Xns on Jews and Muslims, Jews on Xns and Muslims, Muslims on both), and doesn't address any of the three's depictions of heretics and or schismatics, or the sort of polemic that demands reform within a religion.

NSFW: Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media by Susanna Paasonen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Both really interesting, and oddly gappy - f'r ex, despite sections entitled 'sex, harassment and the workplace', and despite addressing gross-out pranks, fails to actually grapple with gross-out pranks as either heterosexual harassment or homophobic harassment in the workplace. Weird.

And finally, I revisited the entire 'Circle of Magic' series by Tamora Pierce. Unlike the Song of the Lioness books, which I adored as a kid and still love, but which I see more and more holes in every time I read them, my respect for these ones only grows. Although this time I did have some side-eying about the depiction of the Traders (a mix of traits associated with Judaism and with the Roma, the latter mostly stereotypes; early on I thought Tammy Pierce took good and careful care to distinguish between antisemitic/racialised tropes believed about the Traders and what is actually truth of them, BUT. Their attitudes to outgroups were very heavy-handedly done: they seemed to genuinely believe non-traders were 'not real people', a belief which, afaik, is really only found to be *seriously* held in imperialist societies toward subordinate groups; if professed by a minority moving through a larger community it has a completely different valence). Nevertheless, as expected I was particularly struck by the epidemic in the fourth book: Briar resenting masks. Logistics people unprepared! Quarantine-dodging! Yeowch. The third book with its setting of a bad wildfire season was also tough to read after 2019 in Aus: I could feel the smoke scratch every time the text described Tris coughing.

Online fiction

Keerthik Sadisdharan (Mint Lounge), Krishna Speaks to Jara on his last night on earth. I did not understand this as well as I would like, but am filing it to return to later.

Maria Dhavana Headly (Tor.com), The Girlfriend's Guide To Gods. Not as impressed with this as I might have been a decade ago. It is, however, interesting in that I think it belongs in that genre of 'Heterosexual Disappointment Literature' I posited last week, but because it's so much less realistic than Cat Person it won't get put together like that.

Up Next:

Despite the long list of things finished, I have acquired EVEN MORE THINGS. A guide to mock-epic as a genre is probably next up.

---

Some links:

Laura Dzubay (Electric Lit), Everyone else is in love and I'm just listening to Taylor Swift. There is a lot of good stuff here, but I particularly liked its perspective on the function of songs as giving shape to what love and desire ought to feel like. I remember being fascinated by certain songs because they grasped something that no amount of reading - not fantasy lit, not my Guide to Puberty book, not Margaret Clark's 'Secret Girls Stuff' and not the teen novels that were YA-before-YA in Australia - articulated for me.

Captain Awkward (Own Blog), I put my emotions in the fridge and went away for a few years and now I'm afraid of what's growing in there. The Captain is on a good streak lately - the one about the Gasp! Bisexual! Friend was good, too.

Greg Mania, interview with Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends is Scripture for Gay Dysfunction. Another for my growing list of not-saccharinely-wholesome-rep queer lit.

Liz Janssen (LARB, 2015), Uses of Displeasure: Literary Value and Affective Disgust. Reviewing Delaney's 'Hogg' (Content warning: everything), considers the way that disgust scrambles our normal habits of evaluating literature. I hated it but it's good. It's terrible but impressive. Brilliant but one star.

Macquarie Dictionary Blog (2015), Do you skull a beer?. I read something referencing the scandinavian toast 'skol', and hoped it might be linked to the Australian ritual of 'skull, skull, skull', because I have never been satisfied with the explanation that you skull a beer in one long sweep like you row a boat (why skull, and not just 'row' then?). That sounded like a backformation based on the popularity of 'boat race' drinking games.

R.O. Kwon (The Cut), The willful misunderstanding of kink. I wasn't happy with this: very simplistic 'kink is not abuse; if it's abuse it's not kink' stuff. I hoped for better from the Kwon & Greenwell collaboration. Alas, I then found this scathing negative review by Daemonium X of their anthology Kink, which was enough to convince me not to bother reading it at all.

Mya Byrne (Country Queer), Trans country artists you need to know, and Rachel Choist (Country Queer), Your guide to the butches of queer country.

Liat Kaplan (NYT), I was your fave is problematic. The person behind YFIP, then a teenager, regrets her life choices. Although as the person I got the link from (Waverly SM on twitter) pointed out, there are some ways in which this piece doesn't seem to accept accountability for what she actually did (as opposed to the role she may have played in Cancel Culture At Large, which I think she overstates): there's a glancing reference to 'a feud with a YA author over his inclusion', which probably refers to the part where the blog turned accusations of pedophilia and/or general sexual harassment against John Green into a fact Everyone Knew, on the basis not even of a first-hand submission but someone reporting that their friend said that he hugged her without permission. I... don't know what's the correct point at which to move stories like that from whisper network to exposé, but YFIP's interests were never with the victims, or even with warning people *for their safety*, but with hurting the named people and shaming those who like them (thus the 'your fave' framing). In this article she talks about wanting to make people hurt, but not so much about the shaming of her peers aspect, which I always thought was stronger.

Robin Dembroff (pre-print of an article for TSQ), Cisgender Commonsense & Philosophy’s Transgender Trouble. This is a really good read on the topic of 'why are so many philosophers transphobic as fuck'. I would like to get further confirmation about certain basic methods of analytic philosophy - Dembroff cites a professor who, when he was a student, responded to his promise to 'read more on the topic of X' with 'don't read, THINK', and links that with the broader unwillingess of mainstream philosophers to read trans philosophy, feminist philosophy, or philosophers of colour. The assumption is, apparently, that one should start from commonly agreed facts and build up; the idea that one might need to research, or that commonly agreed facts might be wrong, is, per Dembroff, anathema. This is... certainly an explanation for Philosophy Bros in lit classes, but so wildly different from how philosophy is approached by lit scholars (Dembroff does note he's talking about analytic philosophy; and lit scholars love continental philosophy, perhaps that's the difference) that, I, er, want to read more on the topic.

Brief Synopsis: we begin with Fatima, a slave and concubine in the court of Grenada in late 1491 or early 1492. Both sheltered and trapped in the harem, she is coming to realise that the Emirate of Granada is about to fall. So far, so historical-realist. Then there’s her friend Hassan, with whom she meets in secret, who has the power to draw magically accurate maps. Plot happens, and the two opt to go on the run, fleeing the powers of Catholic Spain through a narrative which traces a looping path between straight up historical fiction, alt-history-with-magic, and straight up portal fantasy. It’s going on my list of ‘books to read when you’re bitter about Narnia’, which may or may not be a list you also keep. If it is, this should be on it. There’s a lot that’s great about this book! I found it a little slow to get into, although I enjoyed the early scene-setting chapters; once the plot began rolling for real I was hooked. Fatima is a fascinating, complex character: she begins as a ‘relatable’, rebellious-against-her-lot young woman, and as the plot unfolds the traits which marked her out early on as a Rebellious Strong Female Character become problematised, prove to be strengths in some circumstances and weaknesses in others, and are ultimately given nuance and sympathy. Likewise Hassan, bookish, sheltered and a little effete, develops complexity as he goes, including showing strengths which Fatima does not have. I loved, sincerely and wholeheartedly, the relationship between the two of them - a deep, possessive, passionate friendship which has the potential to overshadow romantic-sexual relationships but is not in itself one of those. That, too, is problematised, toyed with, shown to be both a strength and weakness, as the novel progresses.

Wilson’s grasp of the religious-cultural environment of 15th century Spain is, to my eye (and bearing in mind I’m not a hispanicist or an islamicist in speciality, although it is my period), pretty damn good. The range of characters and the range of belief types which she gives flesh to here is notable - the figures of the Inquisition are chilling, but not monolithic, and balanced by the brilliant heartwarming character of Gwennec, a Breton monk who has become caught up in events bigger than his background. Luz, a lay sister acting on behalf of the Inquisition, is the villain of the piece and very well characterised. Fatima is not herself particularly devout, but Hassan is, and the differences between their experience of religion and belief is nicely woven into the complexities of their relationship.

My one major qualm, historically speaking, is with the intersection between Hassan’s sexuality and religion - he keeps speaking of men ‘like me’, in a way that maps onto a contemporary idea of homosexuality as a discrete identity, but to the best of my understanding isn’t a good match for late medieval Islamic society. For a start, I would have expected a /lot/ more emphasis on active-passive role (unless that is in fact what is meant by ‘like me’, that Hassan’s attraction to men, which he has not grown out of, has put him in a peculiar gender category - in which case it’s massively underexplored). While medieval Islam did condemn sodomy, an awful lot of medieval Islamic philosophy, medical writing, and cultural media did not, and I wasn’t satisfied with glancing references to the palace community turning a blind eye for the sake of Hassan’s dignity. But, as I said, my expertise isn’t Islamic Spain, and particularly not 15th century Islamic Spain - I /know/ this wouldn’t be right for the twelfth or even thirteenth century, but perhaps something changed.

My bigger issue is that despite all that is good about this book, I’m just not super happy with the way it manages the genre-blending tightrope. I can’t even put my finger on why, but I don’t come away going ‘WOW what a masterful combination’, I come away going ‘er, was that alt-history or portal fantasy? Huh?’. Granted, I have this problem with several books widely recognised as Very Good - most recently Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant - so perhaps that’s a personal taste thing. I have some minor pacing issues with the very final part of the book (a key aspect of the Fatima-Hassan relationship was not given enough time to expand after a final revelation), but my main problem is just… not quite being in board with the book’s genre choices. I also suspect it may have started life as YA and been uncoupled for some reason (although it’s not like modern YA has a problem with attempted rape scenes, soo…), and I wonder if I would have liked it better had it sat more firmly as a YA novel. (This is essentially the reverse of the problem I have with Leigh Bardugo, which I didn't realise when I first drafted this review. Huh.)

In conclusion: if you want something different, something less christian-europe / northern-european-pagan focused, in your medieval alt-history fantasy, this may be relevant to your interests, but I don't think it's the pinnacle of what could be achieved in that vein. I am verz pleased to have received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

I must preface this by saying that I’m a bit burned out on romance novels right now - I came to the genre because I wanted character-focused narratives about queer people and queer relationships, and romance seemed to be where it’s at. But I’ve read enough now that I’m looking for novels to offer me something more: something beyond ‘girl meets girl’. Which is, fundamentally, not what the romance genre is here to offer me.

With that in mind, this is a perfectly functional romance novel. It features Tess, a marine biologist and commitment-phobe, forced by circumstance to move to her small town home for a short period. Enter Britt, a chemical engineer who, until the day this book opens, worked for a major oil corporation. Britt has an environmental awareness crisis, flees her job, and parks herself in rural upstate Washington to figure out her next steps.

I’ve said before that I really appreciate romance and crime novels that are set somewhere very specific and offer very specific windows into that place or a particular industry or social scene. It is true that I learned more about the fauna of the Olympic Strait from this book, but I already know a fair amount about applying for scientific funding, and I’m afraid *that* plotline was not only unenlightening but actively stretching my suspension of disbelief.

Tess has a complex backstory and several interesting sub-plots: her family are supporting cast, and her resolving tensions with her sister provides a satisfying side plot. Tess has friends from her outside life and they appear (late in the book) as rounded characters. The same can’t be said for Britt: her entire non-romantic plotline is to do with Having A Crisis Of Career and Enviromental Ethics, and I was not satisfied with the vague nods toward a new plan that came in at the end. Within the romantic plot, her defining feature is supposed to be that she is *not* a commitmentphobe (and thus incompatible with Tess), but what is actually shown of her relationship history completely failed to convince me of that. Add to that that she seems to have no friends, nor *want* friends, I found her side of the romantic plot difficult to accept.

Finally, I really thought this novel was going for HFN, which I *like*, or at least the creative ‘HEA but in different cities for now’, but there was a pointless coda assuring us they signed a joint lease *even though one of them is only going to be in that town to visit her partner*. Possibly this is a necessary component of a happy ending for many people, but I find it actively off-putting.

I recieved an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was glad to receive this ARC via netgalley, but regret to report that I’m dissatisfied with the book. It’s hard to put a finger on why, but it neither pulled me in with its plot nor impressed me as a work of historical fiction craft.

The good:

This is a book about a successful single businesswoman, with a complex and fulfilling life, including family and friends, who starts the book single and ends it single. She has complicated feelings about her family, and her relationship to parenthood (she herself is a foundling, reunited with her family later in life), but not only is it not solved through marriage, she never even considers that.

It’s rare to find a book that is *about family and intergenerational complexity*, which follows a single female protagonist, but is not about that protagonist’s marriage or lack thereof. If that’s something you’re looking for, this might be the book for you.

The bad:

Firstly, I was unimpressed with this as a work of historical fiction. It engages pretty closely with certain elements - I don’t know all that much about 18th c fashion, but it seemed to be doing a good job there. Court politics, likewise. Unfortunately, I fell incredibly awry of the whole thing over religious sentiment. A fairly major character is a brimstone protestant vicar, who *sends his sister-in-law to a nunnery to give birth out of wedlock*, and no one, not the vicar, not the woman in question, *no one* comments on the religious difference between them and the nuns. I’m not actually sure what form ‘sending her away’ would have taken for 18th century protestants (no shotgun wedding was considered - I suspect a more logical course of action would have been to magic up a clerical favor-ower to marry the sister-in-law), but even if it involved nuns they ought to have *had opinions about the religious difference*.

Secondly, it sounds petty to say that that ruined the entire book for me, but. Nothing else about the book captivated me, I suppose. I don’t know much about the 18th century clothing trade, I should be easy to captivate with detail - but it all felt mechanical. The prose was flat. By and large I didn’t really care about anyone except the protagonist, and the extent to which I cared about her was thinking she should leave well enough alone and stop pursuing her mad mystery.

In conclusion, this is probably someone’s perfect book, but that person is probably already an 18th c fashion nerd, or even more in need of a marriage-free historical fiction narrative than I am.

I recieved an e-ARC of this, after having heard some buzz about the series on Twitter. I'm grateful for the opportunity to read outside of my normal trope/genre preferences, but I'm afraid I'm not a convert.

This was… a book for someone who is more of a fan of ‘regency romance’ as a genre, and who is less invested in historical fiction actually being historical, than I am. I began by expecting to be annoyed with it for having Too Many Dukes, but in fact, despite the title, the hero is not a duke. Instead I found it impossible to accept that Our Hero, a man so pedantic his meet cute with Our Heroine involves him upbraiding her for incorrect astronomical facts, could possibly believe this alpine village with a pond ‘frozen nearly all year round’ and deep snow all winter is in England. It’s… Geography doesn’t work like that.

Things that were notable and good about it: Our Heroine has a pretty significant specific phobia, which she does address throughout the novel, but she isn’t defined by it and she works on it rather than magically overcoming it. I think it’s fair to say Our Hero is not neurotypical either, but nor is he a stereotype. I wish Our Heroine had had some motivation to make her personal life changes other than in order to maintain a relationship with Our Hero, but at the same time, it didn't seem like the most unrealistic trajectory.

I was /extremely/ unhappy with the resolution to the ‘we are deeply incompatible because he loves to travel and she hates to go places’ problem. Like. A lot. But not because it was not a happy ending! Or even necessarily an unhealthy one: I just found it deeply unappealing from a personal standpoint. My sense is that Ridley has Her Thing She Writes, and if you like that thing you'll like this, but that I should probably not read any more of Her Thing.

This was the first ARC I received through NetGalley, and I'm delighted that Poisoned Pen Press sent me the e-galley of their new American edition of this British Library Crime Classics novel, in return for a fair review. Out 4 Dec, Americans!

Things I like in a mystery novel: historically specific setting; plot informed by the detail of the setting, written by someone who knows what they’re writing about; engaging narrative voice, bonus points for wry asides; distinct characters; tight structure: deft management of POV and omission to maintain tension without giving the game away.

This book has four of the six, plus a few of the things I like in a curated and republished edition. Ellen Wilkinson served as one of the first women MPs in the Labour Party (UK), and after losing her seat turned her hand to mystery writing, informed by her detailed knowledge of the House of Representatives. The narrative follows a young, not particularly ideologically focused Tory MP as he stumbles first on a murder scene and then on a series of complications which threaten to implicate senior politicians and potentially destabilise the government. The parliamentary and historical (or, for Wilkinson, recent social) details are exquisite, and I particularly enjoyed the wry commentary on the Civil Service and the dangers of politicians straying from the benevolent guidance of their permanent secretaries. The cast of side characters was interesting and well-drawn, and Wilkinson’s attention to the working-class underpinnings of the House (the kitchen, police, and custodial staff, who the POV character regards as a sort of mobile furniture, but who are depicted with authorial warmth) is nice.

The structure, however, could be a lot tighter. There’s a recurring character, Robert’s friend Shaw, who serves no function whatsoever. I don’t think he’s even /supposed/ to be a red herring, but his purpose in being in the story at all was so obscure I was rather disappointed he wasn’t the culprit. And in terms of POV, this book pulled the same trick that ‘Death on the Cherwell’ did in an effort to not have the game given away through the POV character’s eyes: it shifted chief investigator halfway (or more like two-thirds of the way) though, so that the denouement came as a surprise to Robert as much as the reader. I’ve seen this strategy before - most recently in Death on the Cherwell, which is roughly contemporary with The Division Bell Mystery - but I just don’t like it. The Conan Doyle solution (POV character is not the detective) or Kerry Greenwood’s strategy of working with a close POV character but withholding her suspicions from the reader until she drops them on everyone else - both of these seem more effective to me.

As with Death on the Cherwell, the quality of the edition itself deserves a mention. The series carries gorgeous cover illustration, and a pleasingly simple standard design. Each book comes with an introduction contextualising the author and genre, and a foreword by someone with particular insight into the setting or some other aspect - in this case, by a current female MP. I recommend the book if political wonk humour appeals to you, and the series overall to anyone with an interest in the broad genre history of popular detective fiction.

Despite the title, the only person who dies in this is a married woman (and although a catalyst she's not a Refridgerator Wife). Nor is it a mystery story. Nor is anyone even employing death metaphors. Weird title. Nevertheless, I recieved a Netgalley ARC of this in exchange for a review, and (dun dun dun)...:

I loved this book! It filled a warm fuzzy spot in my heart, for a while. In brief, Our Heroes are Damon, a recent widower with teenage son, a passion for cooking, and no idea how to function without his wife. And Cathal, said late wife’s best friend, who is anti-social by nature and an asshole as a defense mechanism, but committed to helping Damon in his grief. Cathal’s motivations are partly a promise he made to his best friend, and partly investment in Felix, the teenage son, whose theatrical endeavours and hopeless crushes serve as a sweetener in the gloomy grief and angst plot. Damon bakes his way back to life, Felix ends up with a happy ending (if not the one he expected), Cathal dispenses wisdom and avoids his feelings. All my favourite things, essentially.

I very nearly DNF’d this book in the first chapter, though - it features a particularly assholeish display of biphobic aggression, similar enough to kinds I have encountered myself that I was repelled. I ploughed on, because I /had/ signed up for ‘asshole to lover’ romance after all. I was pleasantly surprised to find Cathal apologising easily and the plot not revolving around ‘can he accept that bisexuals exist’. Not even an issue. I still have a grudge against that first scene, because Cathal’s assumption that he could ‘tell’ a bisexual by looking is never really challenged. But it’s a small issue in the overall scheme of things, especially given how rare bi protagonists are in m/m or f/f romance.

Other great points: interesting side characters, both among adults Damon encounters and Felix’s friends. As well as an Actual Bisexual, we get discussion of other identity categories, and Felix is charmingly straightforward and confident about approaching his sexuaity as a pick-and-mix personal blend rather than choosing one of several package deals. And Damon’s new hobby, elaborate baking and patisserie, is pretty well characterised, forms a solid sub-plot on its own, and provided me with an acceptable serving of Niche Information (most of which i knew, tbh, I was raised by a cake decorator, but it passes muster).

I wanted to love this book. It has a lot going for it: two interesting, adult characters, with lives and families and careers. Matt, a lobsterman (female lobstermen apparently declining to be known as lobsterwomen) working in her family’s business, balancing her large conservative family and her gay casual dating life by keeping the two separate. Graham, a naturalist on a whalewatching boat, who has decided after a limited serial monogamist experience to try playing the field. Cue sparks flying, etc etc. And the dynamic between the two of them works, and is a key part of what kept me reading. The erotic scenes were sparking, not over-done, and interestingly varied. IMHO that’s a major plus - many f/f books out there are either painfully bland, clunky, or strangely improbable given that the majority of authors are women and you’d think that would lead to physically plausible scenarios.

I am grateful to Bold Strokes Books for sending me the ARC of this, and have high hopes for some others from their range, but beyond the sex scenes I have mixed feelings on this one.

The two factors I loved most were, one, the side characters - especially Matt’s cousin Dom, a trans guy with a traditionalist heart, and his lady-love Renata. There were interesting characters on Graham’s side of things, but they got less time, I think because they were covered earlier in the series. Second great factor was the level of detail on the lobster-fishing industry. Does anyone else read romance novels to learn new socio-economic facts? Because I think I do. It might be the key reason why romance novels and crime are so easily interchangeable in my reading schedule: good ones of both are a tourist trip through a well-researched present or historical social or economic niche of some sort.

Things I didn’t love: now the first one is a Your Trope Is Not My Trope problem, some people might love it. But basically you’ve got your two leads deciding to embark on casual sex, and the narrative is so heavy-handed about being clear that both of them are fooling themselves. Not just about this one hookup, but about the sustainability of casual hookups at all. (I also… look, either I know very different people to your average romance writer, or it’s actually perfectly normal to hang out with your casual partners outside of the bedroom, and the Friends part of friends with benefits is actually pretty important. I can produce academic citations for this, in fact! But anyway. Heavy leaning on the ‘oh no we did something together the morning after’ trope.)

Done right, ‘commitment phobe discovers actually there is a place in his/her/their life for love with THIS person’ is catnip to me. The latest KJ Charles does it really well, for instance. And then some takes on the trope rub me all the wrong way, and this one did. Your mileage may vary.

Technical problems: beyond my issues with the trope, the pacing seemed off. Too much heavy-handed repeat telling of ‘she was definitely okay with casual sex, yes, never mind that she was daydreaming about their grandchildren’ early on; toward the end the character work got rapidly more complex, only for a whole bunch of new issues re: family to just be left… hanging. Apparently it’s supposed to be HEA that our two leads hooked up, but I for one really want to know how they solved the family problems. No, one happy family mass party scene doesn’t suffice, IMHO.

As you can see, I read this on the journey from Geneva to Lancashire (actually, I'd started it in Grenoble - and the book itself had been carted around all summer, including to Australia and back, before that!). It was something of an impulse purchase: I fell in love with the British Library Crime Classics display at Waterstones in Oxford, and found I couldn't get them in the AU Kobo store, so I ended up buying this one in hard copy in Leeds. It's the kind of book I would generally prefer to read in e-book, but the covers of this series are so delightful, I had to have one.*

In the opening chapters we meet four undergraduates of a girls' college in Oxford, who are gathering to form a secret society. Their shenanigans are disrupted by the discovery of a canoe, complete with the dead body of the college bursar. The headmistress, who loathes impropriety and publicity, attempts to keep a lid on the situation, but with the police involved and mysterious rumours flying, the four undergrads set out to investigate matters. Was the bursar murdered, and who put her body in the canoe? At what time did the canoe come down the river past the neighbouring mens' college, and was the bursar alive at the time? Why does one of their fellow undergraduates seem to be hiding something? And what is the connection between the bursar's hitherto unknown niece, and a reclusive oxford don?

This book won a great deal of leniency from me on the first page with its wry description of undergraduates as 'not quite sane, and indeed not quite human'. The setting, and the cosy feel of the whole thing, is vivid and warming. There were two significant drawbacks throughout: one, that the four girls at the centre of the book hardly had distinct characters; and two, some predictable for the period but generally distasteful ethnic stereotyping of an eastern european character. The denouement seemed to fizzle a little - the inquest being an entirely separate thing from the detective (and by this point the girls have faded into the background in favour of the chief inspector) figuring out what happened and why. It allows for a tasteful sort of ending- no disgrace brought on any august institutions - but I suspect that the narrative tension would have been better sustained if the two denoument threads could have unravelled simultaneously (I'm thinking of the inquest scenes in DuMaurier's Rebecca - there, too, there are whole chunks of the resolution which are separate from the court proceeding, but the court proceeding serves to increase rather than dissipate tension).

The edition is strengthened by a historical introduction, framing Hay in the context of golden age crime, and noting reasons why her work has remained obscure in comparison to, say, Dorothy L Sayers. I definitely recommend it, not as a work of outstanding genius, but as a charming read and an interesting recovery from mid-century obscurity.

---

*As it happens, the US publisher (Poisoned Pen Press) has generously sent me an ARC of the forthcoming 'The Division Bell Mystery' in epub, and I'm every bit as delighted by it as by Death on the Cherwell. Review anon! Apparently my stock-in-trade for long reviews is shaping up to be mystery novels. Who'd have guessed it?

This is the second in a trilogy, and I noted that the previous book was my favourite Cat Sebastian yet. 'A Gentleman Never Keeps Score' absolutely keeps up with its predecessor. There was a lot I liked about both of them, in terms of engaging characters, wit, and interesting premises - this they share with her earlier work. I do feel like this series is a more mature stage in her writing. Where I found the Turner Series a engaging in character but flat in world-building, and oddly shallow in its plotting / engagement with historical issues given the attention to class differentials and mental/physical health issues, I don't have that complaint about the Sedgwicks books at all. There's both light-hearted wit here, and real if gentle engagement with social issues.

In this book, Hartley Sedgwick, who inherited his property and social standing from his godfather as a sort of pay-off for Hartley's participation in a power-abusive affair as a young man, begins the narrative as a social recluse. The nature of his relations with his patron has been outed, and he has lost his footing in society, but lacks a purpose or direction. Sam Fox, a retired boxer turned publican, provides that when he turns up in Hartley's house, seeking information. What he provides to Hartley is a path to revenge - and terribly distracting source of sexual attraction. What Hartley provides to Sam is less clear, and the crux of the romantic plot rests on finding ways to negotiate the social imbalances of their disparate wealth and racial status.

One of Sebastian's strengths has always been her handling of mental illness and anxiety, and here she turns that strength to characterising Hartley's trauma and its impact on his sexuality. I can't describe it without giving away key plot points, but I'm very impressed with the execution, the ways forward for the characters, and Sebastian's skillful working of Issues (TM) into effective erotica that doesn't feel exploitative of the Issues (TM) in question. It draws on some of the appeal and dynamics of bdsm, without going into accessories or serious consent play - which is kind of especially my jam.

The racial differentials are, I think, well handled, although I believe this is Cat Sebastian's first foray into writing a racially diverse cast. The black MC is not the /only/ non-white character, and his community and history are fleshed out as much as Phillip Dacre's were in the previous book.

I am particularly pleased - because I have Vested Interests - with this book for its investment in opposite-sex friendship (the same could be said of Two to Tumble). Sam Fox begins the narrative with a close female friend, and Hartley soon acquires one, and the two women's sub-plots intersect. I was extremely touched by Hartley's foray into surrogate fatherhood, and delighted by the found-family style ending.