"Wild Dark Shore" by Charlotte McConaghy

An audio book

Several PoVs (and readers!)

Rowan is found on the shore of Shearwater Island. She's wounded, has hypothermia, and then recovers. The island (close to Antarctica, owned by Tasmania) has an internationally important seed store. The research station has been abandoned. One family is left, living in the lighthouse. There's Dominic, the widowered father who still talks to his wife, with children Raff, Fen (girl, 17) and Orly, about 9. They've been there 8 years. Clare's been dead for 9 years. In 6 weeks, they and the seed store will be collected - the rising sea-level will make the island disappear before long. They're short of power and fresh water. The radio's been broken.

A decade or so before Rowan had bought land and built a house. Hank came into her life. He wanted children, she didn't. Their house burnt down. They'd searched through the ruins. She's gone to live with her sister. He went away for a year to become team leader on the Island. He didn't return to her. She thinks that Dom may have killed him. Dom recognises her. She tries to get the children on her side. They find out who she is. Raff had been in love with Alex, a fellow violinist from the research camp. Fen's not allowed to sleep in the house (because Dom doesn't trust himself?). She loves the sea. Orly knows a lot about botany - his interesting facts punctuate the book.

Rowan has come to the island because she'd got a worrying message from Hank (47). Dom confirms that he was troubled, that they'd tried to help him. Dom digs up a grave - it's Alex's not Hank's. Alex died in a storm-induced accident - did he hang himself? His brother Tom, 8 years older, had been on the island too. Rowan's younger brother River had drowned while she was supposed to be looking after him. Dom and Rowan make love.

The family wonder where they'll go from here. A whale capsizes Raff and Rowan. They recover. Fen burns her father's horde of Claire's stuff, for his sake. The seed store is broken into by the sea. They have to decide which seeds to save. Hank had been the expert. He'd trained Orly. A mother and child whale become beached. Dom must decide whether to save the whales or the seeds. They try to do both. They free the child whale. The mother is more of a problem, but they free her too.

Rowan finds Hank locked in a room in the seed store. We go back in time, Fen's PoV. Fen and Hank had an affair. She'd told him she was pregnant. He'd tried to drown her. He'd tried to drown the seeds. Dom had battered Hank, Raff had dragged Dom away, then Dom imprisoned Hank.

We learn that Rowan had cancer when she was pregnant with Orly. She made a decision to have Orly rather than have an abortion and save herself. Dom could have over-ruled her.

It was Orly who had destroyed the radio equipment to make sure that Dom finished the seed-sorting work. Rowan, thinking Dom mad for imprisoning Hank, learns from Fen that Hank was dangerous. When the sea begins to flood Hank's cell she's unsure whether he should be saved. Orly decides to save him. When he releases Hank, he locks Orly in. Rowan saves him as he's drowning by giving him her last breath of air. Dom is freed of his demons - Claire's accusatory voice. Meanwhile, Hank tracks down Fen. Raff deals with him. So in the end the family leave the island but nobody else does.

In general, the smaller the island, the more symbolic the action. The story begins and ends with the same 4 people. Alex affects Raff. Rowan changes Dom. Hank affects Fen and Orly. There's a pile-up of action at the end. I hadn't expected Hank to appear, and I certainly hadn't expected young Orly to have been the saboteur. The symbolism of the whales (motherhood; choice of who to save) felt a little heavy-handed. I don't like "narrow in shape"

Other reviews

• Jen Shoop (Do we save the ones most likely to thrive and nourish? Do we protect the rarest of the lot, the ones most likely never to come back? Or do we permit our own imperfect hearts to make the call, favoring those whose features move us? ... Do we save the ones most likely to thrive and nourish? Do we protect the rarest of the lot, the ones most likely never to come back? Or do we permit our own imperfect hearts to make the call, favoring those whose features move us?)
• whatisquinnreading (The only (barely) negative thing I can say about Wild Dark Shore is that the literary thriller-mystery includes more moments of melodrama than I would’ve anticipated (that whale scene comes to mind — IYKYK).)
• David Burton (It is clear McConaghy is reaching for literary acclaim here. She will receive it and deserves it, but the prose comes close to indulgent in its constant lyricism. Even though the novel switches between diverse points of view, the narrative voice never alters. Even the youngest child is capable of a stream of beautifully articulated poetic thought, filled with thematic relevant allegory and desolate imagery.)

"Shrink solves murder" by Philippa Perry

Dr Patricia Philips, 62 and needing a hip-replacement, used to be a solicitor married to Martin in London. Then she met Sue, a solicitor, and they became partners for a year before love cooled. Patricia became a psychotherapist and moved to the south coast, living in a cottage. She has a male friend Pritchard. One morning the police visit to say that a patient of hers, Henry Clayton, had been found dead at the foot of a cliff. They'd been Zooming for a month. That day was to be their first face-to-face meeting. He'd had a difficult break-up with Derek and had gone to Sue for legal advice. She'd recommended Pat to him. Pat tells the police there'd been no signs of suicidal tendencies. She discovers that Henry and Derek had booked to spend the night together locally, and that money has disappeared from Henry's account. By taking a policeman out for a bun, and asking about his childhood, Pat gets him to show her Henry's suicide note. She doesn't believe it's genuine. She goes through the recordings of her interviews with Henry, re-assessing them.

Swingers Fiona and Malcolm live next door to Pat - she can see what's going on if she perches on her bath. She's grumpy about litter, careless dog-owners, and the golf course's building plans - Dorna's project. Dorna has an alibi. On another project of hers a team-member died. Henry, on behalf of his company was going to lodge a complaint about the project. Pat sees Martin flirting intimately with Fiona. She talks to Martin and finds that he was with Fiona on the night he should have been with Henry. Henry had been seen with another man. Pat has a daughter Sophia, an influencer who stays the weekend to tell Pat that she's pregnant but fears she might be as bad a mother as Pat had been. Henry's files are stolen from Pat's office. Marcus, who's recently moved in, breaks into Pat's house while she's there, in tending to kill her. First he tells her that he and Derek have been working together. Prichard overpowers him, having recorded the conversation.

The most interesting passages are when Pat discusses with clergymen etc how to detect and help potential suiciders.

Other reviews

• jenmedsbookreviews (A lot of the real humour in this book comes from Pat’s attempts to assimilate into the community, something she has largely actively avoided before. Book clubs, neighbourly parties – all the kinds of things that turn Pat cold but that may hold the clues vital to her, and our, understanding of what is going on.)
• the-gingerbread-house (The book embraces the pleasures of cosy crime: gossip, small communities, hidden resentments, and a puzzle that feels fair to the reader. ... The reflective, therapeutic lens is refreshing, but can sometimes soften the tension. That’s a feature rather than a flaw, but it will depend on taste)

"Conclave" by Robert Harris

An audio book.

The pope has died. Lomeli (it's his close 3rd person PoV) is organising the vote. Tremblay, a Canadian, is one of the favourites, but Lomeli is told that the pope was about to sack him for misconduct. Bellini, an intellectual, is the liberals' favourite, and Lomeli's. Adeyemi is 10 years younger than the others, Nigerian and black - a reactionary. Factions develop. Female ordination? Proportional representation (will the dead pope be the last Italian one)? There are protesters outside. Benites arrives late - born in the Philipines with experience in Iraq and Istanbul, but little is known about him - he wasn't even in the list of cardinals. The pope had secretly included him. Lomeli gives a speech, trying to remain neutral, saying that variety within the church provides robustness against change. Voting begins - mobiles are banned and windows covered. Over a quarter of the cardinals get at least one vote in their favour. Tedesco is top. Lomeli supports Bellini. After the 2nd round, Adeyemi leads. But a Nigerian waitress seems angry with him. Lomeli finds out that 30 years before, when she was under-age and Adeyemi was 30, he made her pregnant. Lomeli finds out that Tremblay had arranged for her to be there. Lomeli challeges him. He says he summoned her because the pope asked him to.

Lomeli sneaks into the pope's room and finds hidden evidence that Tremblay (who has 500k euros in the bank) has been giving bribes in cash to several cardinals. He asks Bellini what to do. Bellini says that he should destroy the evidence. Instead he distributes the evidence to all. In the 7th vote, Lomeli (to his horror) is leading. Bombs go off nearby - the church is under threat. Benites wins the vote. Lomeli finds out that he's a woman with such a large clitoris that he was brought up as a boy. Benites says that the Pope knew this.

An easy read - a good audio book choice. Like others, I found it unexpectedly gripping. I was interested in the factual background and liked the way that individual morality is contrasted with the future of the institution - without doubt there is no faith; being pope may be a personal sacrifice for the sake of the church.

Other reviews

• Ian Sansom (Conclave doggedly sets out to provide readers with the fundamental satisfactions of story: of sequence, configuration and organisation.)
• shereadsnovels (it was the ending which struck the only wrong note for me. I had been able to sense that some sort of twist was coming up, and when it did, I felt slightly cheated. It was something that had actually passed through my mind earlier in the novel, only to be dismissed because I had also thought of several other, more convincing ways in which the story could end)
• dearauthor (I am still in shock trying to figure out what happened to me when I was reading this story, because I found it *gripping*. I could not put it down even despite the fact that any more or less experienced reader would know who will become a Pope the moment this character appears in the story.)
• John Boyne (it's a shame that Conclave, while an entertaining read, proves far less insightful than it might have been. ... Perhaps it's because their villainy is so rather mundane that Conclave fails to engage. It's not unreasonable to assume that many cardinals would like to become pope, but as each one slips from grace, the whole thing starts to become a little daft. ... Unconcerned with religious debate or philosophical argument, Conclave quickly descends into high camp. ... for all its faults, there’s no denying that the novel is a page-turner. The action moves at a breakneck pace and, with each passing ballot, the reader is keen to discover who’s up and who’s down. The twists keep coming, some visible from a mile away, some genuine surprises, but it’s the final one, saved for the closing pages, that stretches credibility to breaking point.)

"Old bones in Puglia" by Tom Benjamin

An audio book.

Dan (an English widower living in Bologna with his 19 y.o. daughter Rose) goes on holiday with his boss/father-in-law Giovanni (a private investigator) and Rose's friend Delores, 29. They go south. They meet an ancient relative, Adolerata, who promptly dies having seen Rose. They meet an archelogy prof and his young helper Persefone. There's a local cave which is being excavated. The prof says that an anfora from the museum has been replaced by a fake. Is the Malvaggio (the local mafia) to blame? Giovanni investigates, checking with local dealers. He used to be a policeman there, and had solved a famous case - he'd literally smoke out an old lady poisoner from the village's network of tunnels. He visits the studio of a local artist - Cornelius. He's disappeared, leaving blood which has disappeared by the next day when the police visit. There's a broken virility statue of a local businessman, Diamante - is someone putting a curse on him to cause erectile dysfunction? There are historical interludes - about Padre Pio; about how old relics have a certificated chain of provenance, like racehorses; the "male bottleneck" - a time when there were far fewer males than females.

The prof going missing. Grasso is killed minutes after giving Dan and Giovanni info. Dan sees who did it - someone who knows a local female teacher. He tells the police before he realises that being a witness of a mafia killing put him and his family at risk. They find the prof chained in a farmhouse where there's illegal betting. Persefone invites him to her house. They have sex. When he awakes, he's in handcuffs and his car has gone. He releases himself. A sex game? Rose and Delores have hardly been mentioned. Now Rose is missing. The streets are packed - a religious procession with hooded people and random fireworks. He's chased by a hooded person with a knife. He kills in self-defence. It's the female teacher. He's arrested, released. He and Giovanni explore the caves. They find a coven - a circle of cadavars and women. For decades, women have been killing men who've been bad to women. Adolerata was a leader. Rose is next in line. She's told to kill Giovanni (the poisoner had been part of the coven) otherwise Dan would be killed. They escape. There is no Malvaggio - it was a rumour the women concocted to keep the mafia away. But now the real mafia were infiltrating. The prof had been selling off relics to pay off his gambling debts, replacing them in the museum with fakes.

I think you'll need to enjoy reading about history and Italian culture to enjoy this book. Fortunately, I do. But I'm not so keen on "blood visibly dripped from the handle of her knife". Visibly?

Other reviews

• goodreads

"The illustrated man" by Ray Bradbury (Harper Perennial, 2005)

First published in 1952. In the prologue (which I found promising) a man meets a wanderer who's cursed with skin that shows stills and movies. The wanderer sleeps while the man watches the movies one by one. There are 16 stories. After reading The Veldt, Kaleidoscope, The Other Foot, The Highway, and The Man, I decided to skip the rest. The plots are sometimes ok, always straightforward, often predictable. Ditto the characters. The men generally act like your average guy.

See the Wikipedia page for details.

"Killing in the shadows" by Kate Ellis

An audio book set in York (though it's unnamed).

Little Freya is visited at night by a little girl Anna. Her brother Tom is visited by Jack. Lexi Verity, a TV presenter, is found dead in her swimming pool, stabbed. Her husband's a Lord. Her first husband's a TV actor. He's been paying Lexi's chaffeur and housemaid for information. Nathan Cord, who used to stalk her, has been recently released. Her ex-boyfriend, a chef, has asked her for loan. She's been having an affair with the gardener. Carling, a psychic who Lexi used, has bouts of authenticity that help the police. Sirus, who's making recreations of local murders in a museum exhibition, does an inexact recreation of Lexi's death. A museum worker is the ex of a policeman.

Douglas, the boss of a gambling firm (an ex-cop) is found dead, stabbed. He had a daughter, Izzy (18), out of wedlock. He'd just gone to a solicitor to change his will in Izzy's favour.

There'd been a fire in the house where Freya lives, when it was a pub. A child had died. The father (a widower) had committed suicide. The child's nurse, Matilda Smith, had been sleeping with him. Lexi's housekeeper had found docs and a birth certificate showing that Lexi had been Matilda. Bobby, a half-sister of Anna, is becoming a nun. She realised recently that Lexi might have been Matilda. Lexi had lied to police about Bobby to protect her from accusations of arson.

Penny lives in the house next to Freya's family. She's a solicitor (the one that Douglas saw). She used to be a barmaid in the pub and had a key for it. She fancied the owner. She's lit the fire. She hated Lexi and was worried that her next TV series about crimes would involve her. Douglas recognised her. She's arrested in the museum while she's looking after Freya and Tom.

PoV is quite tightly controlled but only at the expense of people having very expressive eyes, etc - e.g. "Ben thought he could see a knowing look in her eyes". Police are happy to tell suspects (or Lexi's agent) about what other suspects have said. There are many suspects and interconnections between them - much more plot than psychological depth.

Other reviews

• Carol Westron (It is an excellent story, with engaging central characters that depict the police as human and vulnerable, but also caring and decent people. The plot is complex but coherent, with many skilfully laid false trails)
• classicmystery (So many seemingly disparate threads that come together slowly to form a complete picture. Things that seemed irrelevant suddenly becomes part of the main plot, but in a way that makes sense. ... And while there’s a supernatural element in the story, it just enhances the mystery rather than distract from it.)

"She's always hungry" by Eliza Clark (faber, 2024)

• Build a body like mine - A woman who's had weight problems finds that she's losing weight though she's still over-eating. Her female lover advises her to see a doctor. She has a tapeworm. Managed, it solves her problem, thought her partner leaves her. She offers tapeworm eggs online [No - the idea's ok but the execution's rather flat]
• The problem solver - Juliet's been raped, we're told. She wants to tell someone but the only person available is flatmate Oscar. He thinks she should report it. Against her wishes he goes out (Juliet following), finds the rapist in a pub and punches him, knocking out a tooth in front of mutual friends. She starts getting messaged [No. Execution too ordinary]
• She's always hungry - Published in "Granta". It's a mermaid piece with stronger-than-usual SF/alien/coming-of-age overtones. [Yes. The world-building's unobtrusive. Could be a first chapter. The content guide says that "it takes place in a matriarcal village, where men are heavily subject to gendered repression and systematic violence"]
• The shadow over little Chitaly - Online reviews of a half-Italian, half-Chinese takeaway [No]
• Hollow bones - 33 pages. Min wakes in an alien craft. The rest of her crew died while at a dig on a distant planet. She has a leg wound which puzzles the alien, friendly Dr Noah. She drifts in and out of consciousness, thinking her mother is still alive. To complicate matters further, her translator's on the blink. Fen is beside her. Her wound is luminous blue, When she touches it, her hand develops blisters. Fen and Min distrust Noah - is Min being used as an experiment? They get a ship to collect them. Min has her leg and hand amputated. Then she notices a blue luminesence in her mouth
• Goth GF - The narrator who works in a bar has a female Goth co-worker who criticises colleagues' make-up and taste in music. She self-harms. On Instagram she has rude selfies and a big following. The narrator (who late in the story is revealed to be male) fancies her - she's doing a Ph.D. He gets tattoos like hers. She bluntly rejects his offer of a date. He gives her his tips as long as she continues to belittle him.
• Extinction event - Earth is dying. Some plant/animals are brought back from a distant plant. They breath chlorine, eat microplastics, and exhale oxygen. The narrator looks after them and works out how they reproduce. When they're transplanted, the Earth improves, but the beings die from disease and grieve for each other. The narrator doesn't think this is moral.
• Nightstalkers - California. Keith tells his mother that he doesn't want to continue school. He wants to start a band with friend Tommy and get a girl vocalist. He and Tommy sneak into unlocked houses and take things. Tommy has a new girlfriend Rainbow who wants to try acid. Keith and her try some. He drifts off on a high. Tommy finds him in a house. They start making out. They run off back to Rainbow when the owner threatens them with a gun. Keith's happy.
• Shake well - The female narrator, 15, has bad acne and older boyfriend Kyle, a minor drug dealer. She squeezes and squirts until she buys an online remedy that seems to work fine. But her face becomes brittle, it cracks and bits come off. It can be mended. She'll made do. [Not much of an ending]
• The king - The narrator is in a phone-selling company. Shauna, a colleague, isn't impressed by him. He killed and ate his father. He eats only humans. He's working his way through Roy at the moment, who's tied up in the narrator's home. Roy is a seer. He predicts the end of the world in 63 days. The narrator prepares. There's mutually assured destruction. He sleeps for 100 years, wakes to become leader of survivors who live in a theme park. He teaches them technology and farming. He expands his power. Shauna appears with her band of followers. The narrator turns out to be a female. The narrator wants to mate with Shauna rather than humans, to create a master race. 30 years later Shauna's taken control. She cuts the narrator's head off but because she doesn't eat him, he regenerates, swimming to the continent and starting a new group, planning to conquer Shauna's tribe.
• Company man - Dora's father works for the party. She's on probation. She used to be Marti. Through the story she compares her (Dora's) reactions to those Marti would have had. She has a recurring, progressing dream involving a red tent. A man from the water board dates her. She lies that she's a widow but was lonely before that. He says his young son died and then his wife died of cancer because she didn't want treatment. They start having frequent sex. She dreams that she reaches the tent, that inside there's a cabaret. The emcee gives her a knife and there's a baby. The man says he's been searching for her - she killed his son and because of her father's connections was able to start a new life with a new identity. He strangles her. She dreams that at the cabaret she's put in a cage and sees the others have fun. [Without the dream sequences this would have been passable, readers speculating about Dora's past, and her attempt to forge a new self - another SF piece? The dreams add a layer of interpretation.]

The content guide (i.e. trigger alerts) is over 2 pages long. One entry says "The shadow over little Chitaly" contains extensive descriptions of food.

After a weak start there's impressive variety - Keith's high in "Nightstalkers" is nothing like Min's drugged confusion in "Hollow bones". There's variety also in the plot/character balance. In pieces like "Extinction event" the plot summary tells you the piece's purpose. In "Nightstalkers", though a lot happens, it's Keith's thoughts about his future life that are significant. All stories involve people who can't be trusted. Gender is pretty fluid. I'm not impressed/disturbed by the humour or horror in the way that the reviewers are. Yes, there's cannibalism but it's not gratuitous.

Other reviews

• Yagnishsing Dawoor (Clark is a bona-fide queen of body horror, sadistic in her choice of imagery. ... The title story, set within a matriarchal community with strict rules for its men – fishers vulnerable to the dark call of the sea – is a delectable, code-scrambled mermaid tale that plays with ideas about male and female power (“The machinations of men had done so little for this place, and for the world outside of here”) and adds a mischievous twist to notions of communal safety and female self-sacrifice. It comes swaddled in influences, from Andersen’s fairytale to Orkney folklore and Lovecraftian mythos ... The King satirises the “femgore” subgenre with which Clark has been identified, dramatising its excesses while relishing its cliches)
• Emily Fletcher (Clark addresses sensitive topics with a humour that doesn’t feel dismissive. Instead, her approach is both relatable and, surprisingly, comforting, striking a balance that acknowledges the seriousness of these issues without losing her unique, and comedic voice. ... ‘The Shadow over Little Chitaly’ is the story that stood out to me the most – This story was extremely laugh-out-loud worthy.)
• Ian Mond (“The Shadow Over Little Chitaly” is easily one of the funniest stories I’ve read in years ... Equally funny, but with lashings of cannibalism and gore, is “The King”, my favourite piece and one of three science fiction stories in the collection.)
• Emily Goulding (My personal favourites were ‘The King’ and ‘Shake Well’, as well as the outstanding ‘The Shadow of Little Chitaly’)
• thefictionfox