Most people are high on A Gentlemen in Moscow, a book I thought was fine, but hard to relate to and care about—I now understand the hype around this author a bit more. Everything about this was compelling to me. At a couple key moments our narrator speaks about Autumn in New York, and why it feels so inviting.

This book feels like it could well be some strange alchemical process that analyzed that song and it’s fundamental components were put into plot beats and voice and character. Katey’s voice is steeped in nostalgia but her lens is untainted by rose coloured glasses. Somehow, whether in love of slighted, or both, it remains removed and non-judgmental. Having sorted the sordid affairs long ago and now, understanding them well enough, can move about the exhibit in a linear fashion, forming a narrative, but still have the remoteness of a tour guide.

It’s funny how many stories use a conceit like this: the old person with long ages lived naturally throw one particular year in sharp relief. If one confused fiction with life, or read too much perhaps, you might expect to hit a specific age and close your eyes one day and remember some teenage year with eidetic precision. At the cost, presumably, of so many other functions of memory. I probably find stories like this so compelling because my own memory doesn’t function at all like this.

Whatever the drug that is this book is, I’m certainly happy to have taken the trip. I don’t think there was a single dragging moment and Katey could talk about anything at all and I’d be happy. That’s a monumental feat of craftwork as it. But the notion most people have of New York City is both invoked and peeled back to reveal a bit of a wolffish underbelly, when you expected, somehow, an altogether different animal. Sure I knew it was hard to make it there. But it feels like instead, to these characters, all the city does is contrived circumstances in which all their secrets, of which everyone turns on, are exposed for what they are. Rich and poor alike. To the city they’re nothing but a turnstile.

In the way that all the best fiction seems to be, this book is about everything all at once; certainly the city and the times and The War. It’d be easy to say it’s focus is on classism, with Katey transgressing early on into the NYC socialite scene, the act itself being the thing to expose everyone and everything to come. But there is far more about the human condition to be found that this simple cause and effect.

I don’t know much about Shakespeare and I am not very interested in historical fiction, but the voice, often of a breathless quality, was so well crafted I was hooked from the start and found it hard to stop listening. It could be too melodramatic if it wasn’t so compelling in its diction. This tone and delivery was so perfect (via the audiobook), that I can’t imagine having as an enjoyable experience with the physical copy. It’s so predisposed to the spoken word and begs a good performance.

The structure was pretty interesting, and I think maybe this skews either way? After all, if you’re hyper aware of Hamnet references in works, maybe you’ll be critical of the interpretation and dislike the characterization or extrapolation of events. Knowing nothing makes this a non issue and made it all the more interesting to me.

Characterization felt quite good, especially with Agnes, who felt absolutely fascinating and captivating to me. While other characters did take to the back stage for me, there was more than enough going on with the prose when it was not centering on her that I was absolutely fine allowing for the narrative to go wherever and do whatever it pleased. Almost certainly I’ll be buying the audiobook despite having listened to it already via Libby.

I imagine most people are going to pick this up to see the accounting of the SNC Lavalin affair, and on that front Raybould is very thorough. She also goes into the granular aspects of how she transitioned into government from Indigenous government. Some of the day-to-day ministrations as serving as the Minister of Justice and and Attorney General.

I think this book is actually too granular in some respects and the voice struggles because you can tell she’s very good and used to technical writing and not so much crafting an active and compelling storytelling voice. The result made this a bit of a slog, especially coupled with a generally mediocre narration on the audiobook.

However. I think this is very substantive and great. She is one of the few politicians with integrity and backs up her thinking and her ethics with action. She is blunt and honest about absolutely everything and is unafraid of holding people to account, rather than putting the party first above everything. Unfortunately it’s a confirmation of our liberal government pretty much functioning exactly as expected. Their priority is to hold power and obfuscate accountability despite their overt performative gestures at the start of their reign saying and doing the right things for change, but keeping none of the most important goals and commitments people who voted for the party took to heart.

Raybould is one of the few leaders who we actually need in power.

Getting what you want fucks you up. It’s a problem most of humanity has, and a disconcerting one at that. Most of us has one of two problems: We don’t feel we deserve the things that nourish us; or else, we have no idea what is actually good for us. So, it’s an enticing idea to slip into another skin. Ostensibly the same; different in the imagined right ways.

This book follows Maddox’s disastrous previous case in the first book, with our boy Rob at the helm. This time it’s Cassie, pulled from the rubble, so to speak, offered an opportunity to go undercover as Lexie—an undercover identity she cooked up with her then superior, Frank—who has just been murdered. Only no one knows this. There’s a chance she can enter this person’s fake life, living off of the very borrowed ID Cassie created. They look much alike and she could, potentially, expose and catch the killer. It’s also an opportunity to find a way back to herself, or so she thinks. As she’s been a ghost of herself traversing the fallout of the last book.

What follows is a story I can’t help but compare to The Secret History. Sure, we don’t know the killer. But it’s actually not hard to guess. It really is a why done it. And what’s more is the house mates, closer than any normal friend group - living in a defunct, stately manor house that needs restoring, all too often make me think of the same group dynamics in TSH. As Lexie—I mean Cassie—becomes her character once again. She pines for the now infiltrated life. Full of mostly easy love and moments, beautiful and otherwise, that will no doubt haunt her life forever. Especially as she’s conning them into a future where this group is shattered completely and irrevocably.

She is the glue holding them together, and she hasn’t got much choice but to aim and take fire both throughout. On both physical and the emotional front. Once again French proves she is methodical and cares little for traditional genre conventions and pacing, and can completely deliver the reader into a satisfying and immensely thought provoking experience (at least, for my part). Quite smartly, she also has a little carrot dangling for those who have read the previous book. The phone conversation between Cassie and Rob near the end has itched me since reading. Is there an answer to what Rob thought?

While the prose here aren’t as lyrical and gripping, it does fit Cassie far more so. Another noir subversion probably wouldn’t have fit. Cassie’s voice, at first was a bit disappointing but it came into its own very well. And the ending was everything I had hoped for. I think French is very astute in her perception of people, without being judgemental while holding them to account. Same with the way her fiction functions at a fundamental level. And her similar respect of trauma is also fresh and propulsive in of itself. The experience of this was a joy, even when it kicks you in the gut.

More than once I thought that it felt like sad, Irish tune mainstays, such as Leave Her, Johnny, Leave her. Suppose it’s no coincidence, then, that a particular character is whistling it when the narrative wrap up is about to arrive.

This has a strong start. And, from what I can tell, a pretty interesting overall concept, despite the fact that some stories don’t seem to quite gel with my reading of it, most seem to.

In a small town the natural form of a spiral appears and we are being told the story by Kyrie initially. Looking back on these events and reflecting on what all happened. Each issue is a different event, basically, of the spiral asserting itself onto an individual that goes mad or dies; either way they are subsumed by the spiral.

This is really interesting for about 2/3 of it because it works as a really effective social commentary. Often showcasing social power dynamics being inverted and highlighted as unnatural and a kind of inevitable domination of people who tried to initially assert their dominance over the marginalized.

There is a fairly consistent emphasis on showing the terror of not really understanding nature, and how powerful a force it is over humanity, even though we like to think we have power over it. The cyclical structure over time nature asserts is, in retrospect, on a completely different scale than even humanity can assert. And so these sort of literalization of natural effects that are misunderstood or not completely, empirically codified keep occurring, much to the determent of the various characters affected each issue.

I really enjoyed that meta aspect of it. It’s also really well drawn. The art is impressive. The whole thing looks and feels fresh and not at all derivative, though I’m reading this stuff specifically because I don’t know much about horror or manga. This is out of my comfort zone and understanding.

What I had difficulties with, and this may be because I’m such a laymen with this format and genre, is the inconsistencies and strange structural choices at the individual level as well as the larger arc. Things are introduced and completely disregarded later (eg. the Lighthouse, searching for the parents). The main characters, boyfriend and girlfriend—even though we have no idea why or how this relationship formed and they don’t seem particularly enamoured with each other at all—sometimes won’t appear in each other’s issues at all, and feel shoe-horned in at other times. Endings to the issues are abrupt and extremely awkward, often giving way to an issue that is obviously canonically connected but refusing to acknowledge certain events at a character level that took place.

It’s overall quite odd and didn’t work for me. Maybe that choice was to heighten the uncanny tension that builds, but it felt like it deflated it, if anything. What is permanent? Why does it move from these separately contained things, loosely connected, to the multi part structure of one specific story. The tone shifts and it becomes gonzo and bombastic and less concerned with the previous themes. The plot feels razor thin and the dialogue throughout, to be kind about it, is uneven. Much like Remina, it’s a really cool and fresh idea that doesn’t feel like it’s well executed and kind of tarnishes the ground work at the start.

Meandering and circuitous, spurring only boredom. The narration is all from a macro stand point. It’s far more ample at showing the Kafkaesque “virtues” of state values and operations than say, present anything of interest to compel a reader on—especially not a character. This goes granular in the most excruciating moments that could have, and should have, been truncated.

The prose just aren’t good enough to keep something this tedious propulsive and the formatting is arranged to only make it feel even more ponderous. Completely arbitrary quotes for dialogue, wether exact or abridged. Walls and walls of text. Exchanges bitten down on like sickly medicine with no purpose. Horrible pacing. Worst of all, possibly: a no shit, Sherlock message point to continually drive home over any other aspect the author might have gestured at.

The concept is really interesting in this, but I didn’t find the voice very compelling, nor the lack of a plot, really. I’m not sure the themes best fit into the form of a novel, really. It could be an interesting article. The complicity of the narrator with propaganda in-line with the patriotism of the day seems a foregone conclusion.

The only interesting aspects were the reactions of various people with the narrator, who has coloured their memory heavily, if other characters are to be believed. And the ultimate accountability of people complicit in propaganda and patriotism, etc. when focused on that, was the only time I found this engaging. All the interesting questions this prompts, again, I think, could benefit heavily from a shorter form format.

Hulda is an interesting detective in this Scandinavian noir staple. She’s older, doesn’t have a partner, and is being more-or-less forced out, by way of mandatory retirement. As a means of appeasing her, she’s allowed to take on whatever case she wants from the cold cases. When she picks one that seems lazily investigated and subsequently closed, she begins to tug on a thread connected to a lot more than she bargained for.

While it is quite short, the pacing was sometimes a bit rough. There’s a B plot with a would-be partner that provides a nice counterpoint to her investigation and organically unearths her past, but it also feels a bit like spinning wheels, overall. The case also inserts itself in the narrative in the form of small chapters that is from the victims perspective, which mostly worked for me.

There’s quite a bit to like. Unconventional protagonist and setup, a decent twist, decent themes. I think it unintentionally undermines some of the granular things it introduces with the twist, good as it is, though. Still would, absolutely, recommend it to people looking for a something in the genre.

The story of Kate Morrison is told in two alternating parts. As she recounts her past, it becomes about an orphaned group of siblings that are forced to grow up in different ways, reacting to trauma and taking on different roles that are vacated. As the oldest brother becomes the parental figure, and the siblings slide into different roles, we also get Kate’s present day circumstances where she is having issues with her significant other, who feels disconnected from her and has never met her family, despite it being a year into the relationship and wanting to know her better.

We get the story of each sibling and see how Kate becomes the way she is. Her job, her relating to other people. But we also see how the people we eventually meet (with the tension of will Kate bring her SO with her home or not) become who they are. How Kate views them and how they are coloured by her past, and this clicks into place all the nuances of her personhood and life.

There is a haunting line in it, where Kate says that her two brothers were defined and cemented by a single action. One pulled away. The other did not. And the context around that and the consequences of it, is probably the single best writing I’ve consumed with coming-of-age stories showing how a single moment can define a life. Not just for those individuals, as mentioned, Kate also is inadvertently giving away her own position on these events. It is quintessential small town life.

The only issue I had with this book, and why it’s not 5 stars, is the pacing, though it alternates quite well, could have been better. It has middle book syndrome and the present day circumstances only become pertinent later on, and don’t feel like that stand alone for quite some time.