My Year in Books 2024: November

I read some good books this month. Admittedly, it's still a short list, but they were all good one!

If you're curious, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale (2020)

I got this one out of the library in late October. My local library had a lovely display of spooky books set up for Halloween, which I completely ruined by checking several of them out (sorry!). Initially, I wasn’t going to get this one, as I felt like I’ve read quite a lot of non-fiction about hauntings. Also, although I enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (the only other book by Summerscale that I’ve read), it didn’t set my world on fire. However, I did take a look at the blurb and it instantly reeled me in. This is a narrative non-fiction account of Nandor Fodor’s investigation into a poltergeist case in 1938. Alma Fielding is an ordinary woman from near Croydon who experiences a series of ‘paranormal’ incidents that she believes are hauntings. Fodor, in his role at the International Institute for Psychical Research, meets with Fielding and tries to work out the nature of the haunting. I am so glad I ignored my initial reservations and chose this book – I absolutely loved it. The way Summerscale contextualizes the haunting, not only in terms of the wider societal picture in the late 30s, but in terms of understandings and fashions in paranormal beliefs, was just wonderful. It made me think differently about poltergeists, to think about them in terms of class and geography – and there’s a beautiful line (I won’t ruin it) differentiating a poltergeist from other types of ghost that’s one of my favourite sentences of the year!

The Only One Left by Riley Sager (2023)

I got this book on the same library visit as the previous one, though it wasn’t part of the Halloween display. It probably could’ve been though, as it’s a nicely Gothic tale. It begins with a live-in carer called Kit being given a less-than-ideal assignment. In 1929 (the book is set in 1983), the Hope family were murdered in their cliff-top mansion. The only survivor was the seventeen-year-old daughter Lenora. Lenora was never charged with the murders, but the town has always believed that she was guilty. There’s even a Lizzie Borden-esque rhyme about her. A series of medical conditions have left Lenora bedridden and unable to speak, and Kit is called in to provide constant care to the seventy-one-year-old (possibly) murderess. Kit has her own darkness to deal with, which makes it hard for her to turn the job down. When she arrives at Hope’s End, she finds a decrepit 1920s mansion, complete with its own Danvers-like housekeeper, Mrs Baker. She also discovers that, although Lenora can’t speak, she can type, and she might just be ready to start typing out her story. This one has a lot of twists – some I saw coming, and some I didn’t. It’s a little reminiscent of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, but told in a very different style and tone. I loved the atmosphere of this one, and it's difficult to not find yourself rooting for a character that you really don’t expect to like. And it’s a proper page-turner too.

Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson (2023)

Completed a hat-trick of library books with this next one. I checked this one out at the same time as The Haunting of Alma Fielding and The Only One Left, and I read it in the same weekend. I wasn’t convinced initially, as the cover looked a bit derivative of some notable celebrity mystery novels that aren’t really to my taste, but I was totally swayed by the blurb from Stuart Turton (which, if you’ve read the book, you’ll know is pretty funny). This is a knowing bit of meta-fiction – a murder mystery narrated by someone who keeps up a running commentary on his own narration, breaks the fourth wall, and openly points out genre conventions. The plot is that a group of crime writers gather on a luxury train in Australia for a literary festival with a twist (it’s on a train). When one of the writers is murdered, the others (particularly the narrator) try to investigate the crime (or cover it up maybe). The plot isn’t very original, and the clues are pretty clunky and obvious, but I did enjoy this one. The story is fun to read, though most of the twists are things you’ll have seen before. I didn’t realize till I started it that this is a sequel, so I think I will be going back to the first one at some point. The writing style was very engaging, and I liked the narrator (especially because he was never quite as reliable as he believed).