My Year in Books 2023: February

Time for this month's book review post. And as is now usual, it's most library books with the occasional Abominable Books pick in the mix!

In case you're interested, here's my post from January. And here are the books I read in February...

The Nesting by C.J. Cooke (2020)

Another library book now! The Nesting begins with a woman called Lexi, who is recovering from a suicide attempt, breaking up with her boyfriend and finding herself homeless. Lexi’s background (and particularly her relationship to her mother) is troubled, and she is somewhat adrift in the world. Riding a train to London on her ex-boyfriend’s rail card, Lexi overhears a conversation: a woman named Sophie was planning to apply to be a nanny in Norway but has now decided not to send the application. Before you know it, Lexi has decided to swipe Sophie’s CV and application form and pose as an experienced nanny for a family living in Norway. This brief summary is actually only a description of the opening chapters of The Nesting, but it's what hooked me in to the story and its central character. What followed was a story that went in a bit of a different direction, but I can see it was important to understand Lexi’s backstory to follow her motivations in what comes. Lexi becomes Sophie and travels to Norway with Tom and his two daughters. Tom’s wife has recently died, and the house he was constructing for his family was destroyed in a storm. And there may well be a supernatural presence lingering around the tragedy-struck family. There is a lot going on in The Nesting (perhaps a bit too much), so it does feel like there are a few too many threads, but there’s a great sense of atmosphere and setting.

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty (2019)

And another library book – I’m still working my way through a big pile of them, so I think this might be the theme for a little bit longer. The next book I read this month goes to some incredibly dark (or rather bleak) territory, but it comes through it with an overall feeling of hope. I don’t usually give particular content warnings in these reviews (and I quite often recommend jumping into books without any preconceptions), but I think it’s probably best you know that this book is about someone who has committed suicide, and the opening chapters give a description of a specific method of suicide (albeit with a thought-provoking perspective rarely offered in fiction) that you might want to be prepared for. The eponymous ‘Platform Seven’ is a platform at Peterborough Railway Station, and the narrator of the book is Lisa, and the opening chapters describe a man jumping in front of a train at this platform. What follows is an incredibly moving and eye-opening account of the event and the aftermath, told in a detached way by our narrator, Lisa, who also died at Platform Seven (yes – the narrator of the book is a ghost). However, this is not a book that will leave you feeling bleak in the slightest. Heart-breaking as much of it is, Platform Seven is infused with a tangible sense of connectivity, hope and humanity. While the opening chapters are unsettlingly thought-provoking, the final chapters are almost breath-taking in their scope and message.

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (2021)

I haven’t read any other books by Louise Penny, but I’ve been a bit intrigued by the blurbs for some of her Chief Inspector Gamache books. I know it’s a bit strange jumping in at the seventeenth (!) book in the series, but I was quite taken with the description of this one – and, it turns out, Penny’s series can be read out of order without you feeling too lost (and with minimal spoilers for the previous books). The Madness of Crowds is set in a small Quebec village (Three Pines, which is the setting for the series as a whole) that is emerging from lockdown at the ‘end of the pandemic’. I was interested to see that the book was written at the height of the COVID pandemic, and that Penny was imagining what might happen afterwards. In the novel – as in real life – the pandemic has given rise to sinister conspiracy theories, which are gaining adherents at a frightening rate. Professor Abigail Robinson is the figurehead for one of these conspiracies. A seemingly reasonable statistician who has drawn some horrifying conclusions from her data analysis. When Robinson arrives in Three Pines to give a lecture, it seems someone has murder in mind, and Gamache has to investigate while grappling with some inner demons of his own. I enjoyed the mystery in this one, and Gamache is quite an interesting detective figure, if a little holier-than-thou. I might have to go back to the beginning of the series now!

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (2019)

I have to admit I chose the next book because of the title – it was one of the library books I got out during Imbolc – and because of the design of the cover. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the blurb, but that’s typical of me, to be honest. Harrow’s novel is a historical fantasy, which isn’t my first choice of genre. That said, it’s quite a charming book in a lot of ways, so I am glad I stumbled on it and gave it a go. January Scaller is a young girl who lives with her ‘guardian’ – a rich man name Mr Locke – while her father is away working for their benefactor. In Mr Locke’s house, January is either ignored or bossed around. She misses her father, and she becomes fixated on the idea of finding ‘Doors’ (which she describes with the capital ‘D’) that will allow her to pass from one world or another. What follows is January’s coming-of-age story, as she discovers the truth about the Doors and, of course, the truth about herself and her parents. It’s a rather light read, which is occasionally a bit of a problem as it touches on some ‘real-life’ darkness (particularly relating to race and colonialism) and pulls its punches in places. It’s also quite slow-paced, which I think is fine for a coming-of-age narrative (though it might frustrate fans of more action-driven fantasy). All in all, a pleasant enough read, though not my usual cup of tea.

Reprieve by James Han Mattson (2021)

The next book I read was from one of my Abominable Book Club boxes this year. The book’s description looked intriguing: a group of people enter an escape room game/full-contact haunted house experience, but by the final room one of them has been murdered. I like escape rooms, I like Saw, I like (and I didn’t know this was a niche subgenre, but it is) horror novels that take place in haunted house attractions. So, this one looked like a good bet for me. And oh – it really was! I wasn’t prepared for the idiosyncratic storytelling style here. Reprieve is told in a fragmented style, which is both unsettling and utterly compelling. Although it begins with the incident – in which a man with a knife confronts a group of competitors in the final room of the game – the novel moves back and forward between witness statements and interviews, and character backstories. The latter go back way before the escape room game begins, to give a full picture of the lives of the central characters and their journey towards the climactic incident in Quigley House. Issues of race and sexuality run through these stories, and these are explored with nuance and complexity. However, there are also some can’t-tear-yourself-away depictions of the ‘horrors’ that confront the participants in the game, which are so well written you almost imagine yourself in the room with them. I really enjoyed this one, and I found myself completely immersed in the story and characters. Highly recommended!