"Birnam Wood" by Eleanor Catton

An audio book.

Mira Bunting, 29, is an environmental activist living in New Zealand. Her group's called "Birnam Wood". The group use spare land to grow crops that they give to the poor. They sometimes steal seeds and tools, or trespass. Some members are ideological, some do the work. Her admiring friend and group-member Shelley (who she shares a flat with) has a divorced mother who was a Green candidate.

Mira has looked up Sir Owen Darvish (his wife is Jill), who's in the business of pest control (rabbits) and hopes to use drones to preserve endangered species. He has land in Thorndike that Mira might use. They don't live there.

Shelley's come to dislike her side-kick role, and would like to leave the group but doesn't want ideological arguments. Tony, an ex-member, suddenly turns up to the flat after 4 years away in Mexico. His siblings are priests and med students. He's still in love with Mira who isn't there. He doesn't remember Shelley, who decides that if she sleeps with him she'd be able to leave the group more easily.

Checking Darvish's land, Mira meets billionaire Robert Lemoine, who breaks into her mobile. He has secretly set up a rare-earth mining project, and plans to create a survivalist bunker. He's a drone expert and flies a plane.

Tony upsets the others at a meeting - polyamory and intersectionalism are discussed [convincingly - way over my head]. Then Mira arrives late, telling them that Robert has already given her $10k and is happy to give them $100k. The ethics of accepting this is discussed. Tony's furious. He does some investigating and writes a blog.

The description of the Darvish's relationship seems too long. They've been happy together - rich with 3 happy kids. They live far from Thorndike. Reading Tony's blog has unsettled him - are strange things going on there? His wife has noticed that he's uncomfortable around Lemoine - sometimes fawning, sometimes competitive. He decides to give his Thorndike residence a visit.

Lemoine doesn't like Darvish. Mira would sleep with Lemoine if he asked. Tony visits the Lemoine site again. The ex-army security guards are less friendly this time.

Lemoine introduces Shelley to LSD while they're in Darvish's Thorndyke residence. They see Darvish's body in the drive. Lemoine works out a way to deal with the body without attracting attention to his activities - he fakes a crash far from the residence.

Lemoine decides to play the 2 woman against each other. Tony escapes from the armed security guards at the expense of a broken wrist etc. He thinks there's a government cover-up - the National Park borders the Darvish land. He meets Mira. He tells her that he saw Darvish at the gate. Lemoine sleeps with Shelley. He decides that the tidiest thing to do is to make it look like Tony returned and killed the Birnam Wood group. Lady Birnam turns up as Lemoine is carrying out his plan. Tony is still alive.

Other reviews

• Kevin Power (elaborately plotted, richly conceived, enormously readable ... But it’s hard not to feel a bit disappointed that such a beautifully built novel just tells us the same old, same old: billionaires bad! Leftwing radicals good, if sometimes misguided and hapless! ... But our culture is already rife with calls for moral simplicity. Isn’t it the duty of the literary novel to go deeper?)
• Alex Preston (For nine-tenths of its 400 pages, Birnam Wood comes across as a Kiwi Jonathan Franzen – a smart, satirical novel about the clash between a gardening collective and a scheming tech billionaire ... Its ending, though, propels it from a merely very good book into a truly great one.)

"To Lahore with love" by Hina Belitz

An audio book.

Prologue - she comes home from shopping and thinks she catches Gabe with his lover.

Before - London. Addy's grandmother had taken her on a trip to Pakistan when she was 6. Addy's Pakistani father left when she was about 7, and died soon after. Her Catholic Irish mother moved in with her grandmother. Her mother often worked in another town or country. She was bought up with 2 religions and 2 types of food. When she was bullied at school by Elsie for being mixed race, Jen protected her and they became friends. Addy was academically inclined, Jen wasn't. Though Addy qualified for university she chose to train on the job as a chef. She discovered that her grandmother couldn't read (though she had memorised the Koran), so she wrote her recipes down. At 18 Gabe proposed to her - he's a post-doc scientist (with a pretty colleague Sophie). It excited her when he talked science. She likes mixing opposites in her recipes (there are recipes in the book, purposed like charms). She couldn't get pregnant. After a year or so he leaves her. She wants to know why.

After the break-up, Jen, gran and Addy go to Lahoree. Gran says she went with Addie last time to wish that Addy's parents stayed together. This time they'll pray for Addy. She's set up with a Huck, a handsome IBM consultant (reluctantly engaged). He has penetrating eyes. She likes him. She learns that Djinns helped teach her gran to cook.

After a week Gran tells her that uncle Moosa is her father. The lie had been Addy's mother's idea, to stop Addy upsetting her with questions.

Jen (hardy mentioned, though she's been in a strange culture for a week) tells her that she slept with Gabe, then she rushes into the street just when there's a national riot. Gabe phones Ally to see if she's ok. He wants her back. He says there's no other woman. That's enough for Ally to reject him forever. She's been transformed, her parts united, like the ingredients in her recipes. She values her two ways of seeing things (Western and Eastern; good luck and bad luck). Before she returns to London, nanna invites Huck and his parents. Huck has ended his engagement.

Harmless romantic fiction.

Other reviews

• rarelyinreality (As soon as Addy reached Lahore, her character development increased exponentially. ... Addy makes a lot of discoveries that I didn’t always find to be quite as believable or developed as other aspects of the book towards the end)

"Idol, Burning" by Rin Usami

An audio novella

The narrator's a fan of a boy in a band. The band-members are colour-coded. Her colour is blue. The more merch she buys the more points she gets towards a handshake with her hero. She buys 50 CDs. She encourages others to votes for him so he'll do the solo. Her happiness depends on his happiness. But in the press they say that he hit a woman. He goes from being top in the voting to the bottom. She wakes up in hospital having neglected her health. He announces that the group is disbanding and he's retiring. It's rumoured that he's engaged to the girl he reputedly hit. She tracks him to his flat.

I don't see much in it.

Other reviews

• Marrisa Moss

"The History of us" by Jonathan Harvey

2 timelines. 3 PoVs - Adam's, Kathleen's and Billy's.

London 2015. Billy gets home, blood on his clothes. Kathleen is wandering, mid-40s. She was childhood friends with Adam and Joselyn. She's come to London for Joselyn's funeral. She fell from a high building. There are several celebs at the event. Kathleen meets Ross, Joselyn's partner. He asks them for help with sorting through Joseline's stuff. She'd become unpopular. Joselyn and Kathleen hadn't been in touch for years, but recently Kathleen had received a phone call from Jocelyn which made Kathleen suspicious of Ross. Adam's there with his husband Jason - they've adopted a child. Kathleen lies about her current situation. She has a therapist. 10 minutes before she died, Jos received a phone-call from a Liverpool phone-box.

Liverpool 1985. Kathleen lives with her dad's mum. He's in and out of prison ("on the rigs") and her mother went to Australia with another man. Kathleen and Adam have been friends since nursery school. Adam's mother runs a sweet shop. She's teased for having a big nose (she's called Conky, short for Concorde). He's teased for being arty/effeminate. Joselyn becomes part of their little gang. She goes to private school on the Wirral. She's black. Her single mother tells her she needs to work twice as hard as others to defeat the prejudice. Her mother has an answerphone. Joselyn doesn't even have a phone. The 2 girls compete for Adam's attention. He's written a nativity musical in 3 weeks. They're in their mid-teens. She likes Mark, a boy a year older who she thought was out of her league. He talks to her. She realises that he comes from a troubled home. His father hits him. Jos is having sex with him. Kathleen is furious. Adam is furious too. He has to explain to Kathleen why - he's gay! Kathleen's dad returns. Joseline's family disappears, returning 9 months later with a baby. Her mother says it's hers. Adam thinks it's Joseline's.

London 2015. Billy (who we now know is Josephine's son) sees Adam and Kathleen arrive at the flat. Ross is going away for a week with new girlfriend Vinty.

London 1995. From Adam's PoV we learn he and Kathleen went London. They met Josephine by chance. She's flunked exams and was doing office work. She keeps to the story that she never got pregnant. He writes a play set during the Irish Troubles based on their experiences. He fears they'll be upset but they're proud. He becomes a drag queen.

Josephine does glamour photography then escort work. She gets a rich boyfriend then catches him having sex with Kathleen. He and Adam work together. Mark has become a politics lecturer appearing on TV. Billy arranges a meeting with Mark and Josephine. Josephine says thay she's his mother but his father's a forgotten boy at a party. Billy's having therapy. He's a church-goer. He fears that he takes out his angst on women. Kathleen goes into an alcoholism clinic. Josephine is the Queen of Mean on chat-shows - Ross often writes her Tweets. Kathleen recovers. She's staffing a helpline when Josephine phones to say a friend's father had raped her at 14. This causes Kathleen to return to drink.

It's been left unclear whether someone pushed Josephine. At the end we learn that Billy, Kathleen and Adam were all at the road outside the flat when she fell.

Adam's sections are too long. The Paris section isn't needed.

"Antiemetic for Homesickness" by Romalyn Ante (Chatto & Windus, 2020)

Poems from Poetry Review, Rialto, Ambit, Oxford Poetry, Magma, etc. Over 2 pages of notes and a 2-page dictionary.

A mother leaves her family in the Philippines to work as a nurse in England. "The Shaman, The Servant" juxtaposes the 2 worlds. Simple and good. "Mastering English", in the form of a multiple-choice quiz, asks about phrases like "I'm just popping out" etc. I like it. I don't think "Checkmate" works though - the chess analogies are too familiar.

I don't wholly like many of the poems, though several have their moments -

• "There, in the unchecked wound of the world, you lie on a bed,/ IV drips hang over your head like a battery-drained cot toy" - p.16
• "sunlight/ snakes across the underwater sand - p.19
• "Gone are the nights he steals/ the moon with a mango picker/ and swaps it for her pocket mirror - p.21
• "she speaks to her patient/ about his petunias but doesn't mention the blooms/ of tumours on his endoscopy scan" (p.28). I don;t like that. blooms?
• "Once, my mother cut through the blurred backs of men/ towards a gasping child, and found/ a blade of grass fluttering in his throat./ The air opened and she was gone" (p.29)
• "Stifled/ by surgical-bright lights/ the miasma of antiseptic and Hibiscrub/ footsteps smack// the swish-snap/ of plastic aprons slap of latex gloves// cardiac monitors/ bleep bleep/ bleep bleepbleep/ bleep__________ " (p.31) (marred by the gaudy layout)
• "But a secret unfolds into a pair of wings -/ my stomach muscles tear apart,/ each tendon snaps, seethes like sulphur.// I am halved in order to be whole -/ I rebuild by leaving/ everything I love" (p.55)
• "relearning" has a haphazard layout. Missing out the unhelpful white space, here's the ending "i will get a glimpse of the mirror ghost on a thunderous night/ and shatter in laughter again/ i will trust and play chess/ against myself again"
• I like much of the title poem - "A vertigo of distant lights will not deceive you. ... But keep the afternoon your father sold his buffalo to rent a jeepney to take you to the airport ... So, here is the karaoke mic - sing your soul out until there's El Nino in your throat, and you can drink all the rain of Wolverhampton"

I don't get p.26.

Other reviews

• Kate Kellaway (Each poem is a go-between: it is through poetry that worlds meet and converse)
• Stella Blackhouse
• Martyn Crucefix

"The Anomaly" by Michael Rutger

An audio book.

Nolan (43, his first-person PoV - his ex, Christie, is a successful writer) presents a YouTube program about Archeological mysteries. They're going to be on a Cable channel. Ken (producer), Molly (28), Pierre (cameraman, mid 20s), Feather (neo-hippy rep of sponsor), Jemma (cynic), and Nolan are trying to find a mystery cavern off the Grand Canyon. It was described in newspaper articles a century ago by Kincaid, later a Smithsonian. Dylan is their guide on a boat. While they're in private dialog with Nolan we sometimes learn about the characters' psychology - Molly had bulemia and fears tunnels.

They find a cavern that matches the description - man-made. Dylan stays behind while the others explore. They know they should turn back and let experts explore, but they advance further, curious. A rolling boulder cuts off the route back for all but Feather. She goes back for Dylan but he's gone. She returns within earshot, and they spend a night there. Next morning Feather has gone. Food and batteries are running out. A pool (their water supply) has gone cloudy. They find ancient wall art/writing. Molly tells Nolan about a childhood episode.

Feather says that she's killed Dylan. Her organisation wants to claim the discovery. Nolan says that Christie was unfaithful. He reacted by sleep with a friend of hers. Jemma, having drunk dirty water, chokes on her own vomit. A pterodactyl rips its way out of her abdomen. Ken kills it. There are other animals around. Ken distracts them while the others escape. The pool become a primordial soup with a sphere for each required element. Recalling Hopi legends, Nolan wonders if it's a sort of Ark programmed to create animals when triggered. They find a map of the world where their site and a few others are marked.

Dylan returns with a gun. He says that the site will start a new cycle of civilisation, humans being killed off. He's killed. A 9 foot humanoid with horns attacks. It's killed by Ken. They escape back to civilisation and meet Feather. Molly kills her.

5 days pass. Nolan meets a representative of the sponsors who has features resembling the humanoid. Nolan's told to forget what happened. Nolan and Chrisie look as if they're getting back together.

Other reviews

• Michael J McCann (As an opening 100 pages, [Part One] is really quite good. Rutger uses humor effectively to develop his characters, and his narrative at this point is clean and uncluttered, moving the reader steadily forward. Part Two, in which their experience takes a sudden turn for the worse, unfortunately fails to maintain the same high standard of storytelling. The action slows to a crawl ... When Part Three finally arrives, for those who are still tuned in, the answers to all our questions are revealed, and they turn out to be rather implausible but definitely strange and fantastic, in the old pulp magazine sense of the words.)

"The Blind Light" by Stuart Evers

2019. At a farm? He + elder sister? Where are the Carters? Nate and sister Anneka. 40 years..

1959. Gwen opens the pub. Her family live upstairs. Nick the poet is a regular. Drummond (nicknamed "drum" then "horse" because of his genitals) is on army training. There are empty houses used for training. He and Gwen become friends. Carter (sent down from Oxford, fiancee Daphne) befriends him.

1962. Gwen and Drum have a daughter, Anneka (Anna). Gwen's moved away from her family and hasn't been back since Anneka's birth. The Cuban crisis is on. They drive 6 hours to visit Carter and Daphne who have a child Johnny. Carter has told Drum that their big house has a nuclear bunker in the cellar.

1971. Gwen is a librarian. Her latest child Nate is 6. She's been having an affair with Ray, a political writer who's been doing research. We later learn that they never kissed. Carter and Drum (who's on strike) meet, Carter as usual slipping him money. Carter offers to let them stay in the neighbouring farm. They move, becoming farmers.

Daphne knows that Carter's unfaithful. Gwen reads Ray’s book, and fantasises about him.

1977. When Anna's 16 she goes to a party. Johnny tells her father Drum about it. He’s angry.

1980. Anna flops 3 A levels though she was Oxbridge material. There’s a war alert. They all go into the bunker for a night or two. Anna has a nightmare (or Johnny tried to rape her). It’s just a drill. She leaves home, not staying in touch.

Nate’s gay. He’s taking over the farm. He thinks nobody knows, but Johnny does. He also knows where Anna is. On TV there’s a drama which shows the drill scenes. Is Anna the actress?

1991 – Anne is with Robin (Nigerian, talks about politics) in London. She’s had 2 miscarriages. She’s a social worker. Johnny goes to Oxford University, marries and has a child.

Gwen (who thinks she might be pregnant but it's the menopause) asks Ray to track down Anna. He does. She might be pregnant. Gwen doesn't ask for her address. They decide to meet up again.

There are IRA bombs and 9/11. The family's safe, but Drum wonders whether they'd been safer in the mutually assured destruction days.

Nate has married and divorced, losing the job that his father-in-law had given him. He has a step-child and a child. Johnny borrowed all Carter's money and lost it all. Carter asks Drum for a loan. Drum agrees, on condition that Carter gives Drum the farm. The two of them visit a library about the Nuclear test drills and discover that there were fatal consequences for some families.

Anna has a child, Femi, who likes Buzz Lightyear. Ray was injured by a motorbike once when he was checking on her (she saw the accident). Carter is living in Spain.

2012. Carter has had a triple heart bypass just in time. He's still having affairs. Drum has been given 6 months to live (not a 4 minute warning). While he's in a hospice for a week (respite care), Gwen drives hours to spy on Anna and family from a distance, Femi playing football. She and Anna talk. Anna's told her family that her parents are dead. She tells Gwen that Drum was a tyrant, that Gwen's come to "lay on the guilt", that she won't go to any funerals. Afterwards, Anna feels guilty. Near his death, Anna visits. They forgive each other. Carter gives Drum a final shave.

2017 - Anna's re-integrating with family. Femi, offered Oxbridge, choses Manchester. Gwen has a stroke. Johnny wants to move into Gwen's farm but discovers that Gwen owns it. He offers to buy it but Anna turns the generous offer down in revenge.

Lots of oral sex, bouts of anaphora and extracts from convenient essays. I'm not sure that the soccer-related sections are needed, and there are other episodes that add little. I prefer his stories.

Other reviews

• Clare Clark (Evers is excellent on the fine grain of friendship. ... He is less certain of his ground when it comes to plot. The different sections of the novel have an immersive granularity that allows them to unfold almost in real time but the structure by which he connects them across six decades is clumsy and, on occasion, melodramatic. ... Evers’s periodically overworked prose is also a distraction. He can and frequently does write with a lovely lucidity, even lyricism, but too often he adopts an irritatingly mannered style.)
• Kirkus reviews (Despite a handful of emotionally affecting scenes and some well-drawn characters, the novel feels overlong given its dearth of narrative momentum.)