The Yiddish Policeman's Union
By Michael Chabon

Man makes plans and God laughs.

This was a marvelous read and a book I found very hard to put down. Not only beautifully written but very witty, with a great dead-pan humour throughout. I actually found myself laughing aloud occasionally in fact.

I don't read police "procedurals" generally, although the recent Maigret read probably counts. Chabon's novel is decidedly different however. A murder mystery set among the diaspora Jews of Sitka, Alaska, in a world where Israel was snuffed out soon after its formation. So it is actually an alternate history novel and some subtle differences to our world are hinted at occasionally. The USA offered the Jews their new chilly far north home but the catch is that it is a temporary arrangement and that "reversion" to the US is about to take place after a fifty year run. Once again, the Jews have homelessness to look forward to.

With a hard-boiled, slovenly but dogged and capable detective protagonist, an ex-wife also in the police force and a half native Tlingit partner, the book shares many features common to the genre. However, suffused with Yiddish and Eastern European Jewishness, it is a very refreshing take on the hard-bitten crime story. I've learned a few Yiddish words here and, luckily, there was a Yiddish glossary in the back of my paperback edition. I now have a few other Chabon novels on my shelf to read sometime and this book is also one for a future re-read as well.

Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh have a great exhibition on at the moment called The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives. It covers a bit more than just the Colourists, including other artists working around the same time, such as: Sargent, Whistler, Melville (a great watercolour on display) and some of the Bloomsbury Artists, such as Duncan Grant.

Above: Leslie Hunter, Peonies in a Chinese Vase, 1925,oil on board (from Dovecot web site)

Perhaps it is a little easy to forget Dovecot Studios sometimes, unless you keep an eye on weaving and tapestry arts, but it is a bit more than a tapestry studio. It does a lot of art, craft, design and education as well and has a really good exhibition space. There were a lot more paintings being shown than I expected, which was a very pleasant surprise.

Above: Arthur Melville, Orange Market, Puerto de Los Pasajes, watercolour on paper, 1892

I was surprised and happy to see a painting by Kees Van Dongen :

Above: Kees Van Dongen, A Vase of Flowers, oil on canvas, 1920

Above: S J Peploe, Still Life with Bottle, oil on canvas, 1912

The building used to be public baths, built in 1885 and the first of the kind in Edinburgh. It's beautiful inside and the tapestry studio is where the original swimming pool sat :

Below: The viewing gallery, looking down on the tapestry artists.

I'll re-visit the exhibition before it finishes on 26 June 2025. It is well worth another look.

Many art works are not on display in galleries and museums because there is just not enough display space and the collections are large. However, it is still frustrating to see how many are out of sight.

One work I came across is an example: The Green Bottle by the Scottish Colourist Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell. I saw this for the first time recently and liked it a lot, but had never seen it before. Looking it up, I discovered where it was and was disappointed to see that it was "In Storage". A shame because it's a great painting. At least it is in the National Gallery of Scotland, so I might get a chance to see it in person sometime.

This one joins many other works out of sight, including works by other Scottish artists like S.J. Peploe and Leslie Hunter.

Speaking of Edward Gorey, I came across two things about him a day or so after posting about the "tribute" exhibition in Leith.

One was a link on Hacker News about a Comics Journal article by Cynthia Rose about how she had some correspondence with him many years ago. A lovely little story, short and sweet. It shows off more workings of his eccentric mind.

Over time, we discussed a range of topics: the Moors murders, the benefits provided by a ha-ha, Gustave Doré's views about the London slums, Lillian Gish in The Wind, Japanese ghost behaviour in the Edo era, spirit photography, London's cheap bookstores, Rudolf Nureyev's feet, illicit dissections and why green wallpaper had killed Victorians.

I'd never heard of a "ha-ha" until I came across it in Ian McEwen's book Atonement. It is : "a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a park or garden without interrupting the view".

The other Gorey reference was seeing that he had done the covers for two books by the writer of "strange" stories, Robert Aickman. I've read some Aickman (and will read some more) and his subtle and odd (sometimes unsettling) stories seem to be a good combination with the artist.

On the right is Gorey's cover for Aickman's collection Cold Hand in Mine. His art also graces Aickman's Painted Devils collection. I have Cold Hand in Mine and it is on my "to be read" list. Unfortunately it is not the one with the Gorey cover.

I found the image of the cover on the blog feuilleton by artist and designer John Coulthart. Some of his artistic interests closely match mine.

Take Back Plenty
By Colin Greenland

I have been trying to curate "good" books to read, so have been picking up "classics" (of whatever genre), as well as recommendations (whether BookTube, personal or otherwise). So far with a lot of success, but it can be hit or miss of course. I heard good things about Colin Greenland's Take Back Plenty (BookTube I think) so picked it up as my next read. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a miss for me.

Greenland is an academic and, according to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, did a PhD at Oxford in science-fiction (yes, I am surprised). Originally, he seemed to have some association with British New Wave science-fiction in the 1970's but this may have been tenuous with respect to his written work. This is his fourth novel, first published in 1990.

Take Back Plenty is not a bad book per se, just written in a jokey and "knowing" way I didn't always appreciate. I almost put it aside a couple of times actually, but carried on and finished it.

It's a "space opera", so expect spaceships, aliens, technology and planetary adventure; a story that could almost be described as a "romp" in times gone by. Although I'm not a fan of humorous books, I did find one or two moments in the book funny. But overall, the novel was a bit of everything, all over the place and too much going on. The central character, Tabitha Jute, had a lot of potential, but was a bit of a standard issue wise-cracking cargo ship captain, swept along by a never-ending sequence of events strung together. She seemed a bit feckless in some ways. I never felt much excitement or suspense and the "world-building" seemed a little confusing to me as well.

The novel won a few awards and also spawned a couple of followups but I will probably not bother with them.

Edward Gorey was an American artist/illustrator famed for his quirky, gothic and somewhat macabre drawings. In his centenary year (he was born in 1925, died in 2000), the Customs House in Leith was the venue for a small exhibition of works by artists paying him tribute.

Above: A view of The Shore in Leith from the Customs House. A blue sky in February.

Right: From the Pious Infant by Edward Gorey.

The art of drawing, illustration and printmaking is such a neglected field that it was great to have a show like this. I think most cities could really do with a dedicated gallery for the graphic arts, Edinburgh included.

Thanks to Paper Galaxy (Linda Hughes) and everyone else involved for taking the time to curate and put this together.

The exhibition was called Phantasmagorey.

The The Gashlycrumb Tinies is a great example of Gorey's work and black humour: an "ABCD" book of weird and wonderful situations ... and untimely deaths. The "tinies" come to unforunate ends.

Below: From the The Gashlycrumb Tinies (1963). This illustration is taken from the Gorey page at Lambiek.

Almost all the art at Phantasmagorey was by artists paying Gorey tribute, including a few I know such as Kate Charlesworth (who lives in Leith apparently), Tom Gauld and Steven Appleby. As you would expect, many pieces were quirky or macabre as well.

Right: The Prim Reaper by Morten Morland

Right: The Match by Ray Baker. A great "Pen on Paper" construction.

Below: I didn't catch the creator of this. Gorey loved making up strange animals.

Song of Kali
By Dan Simmons

This was not a very comfortable book to read at times. I enjoyed it, if that term is appropriate, and looked forward to sitting down and reading but it is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it was a little stomach churning in a few places! Labelled part of a "Fantasy Masterworks" series (Gollancz), it could be classified as "horror" perhaps, if one wanted to classify at all. In addition, it is unclear if there is any actual "supernatural" element here. A feeling of dread pervades the narrative.

This is a dark, bleak and unsettling story about an American writer who travels to Calcutta with his wife and baby daughter, with the aim of getting hold of a manuscript from a poet long thought to have been dead. The poet, M. Das, disappeared years previously but seems to have re-surfaced with a new work of a quite different nature. The American wants to collect the new work for publication in the USA and also meet Das but he is elusive. On finally reading this manuscript, it may not be something the world should see.

The city is a major character in Simmons' tale and can be a grim backdrop. This is not an India the Ministry of Tourism will like (although the book is set decades ago now).

Left: A depiction of Kali from wikipedia.

As Wikipedia says, she is the "embodiment of the grim worldly realities of blood, death and destruction". She is also the Goddess of cremation grounds. In Simmons' novel, she is all of these things.

There are many horrific elements to this novel but it is well written and fast paced. You continue to read but know things are probably not going to end well, at least for some. I loved a re-read of the Hyperion books last year and I am glad to have a few more of his novels on my shelf waiting for a read (or indeed a re-read).

My Friend Maigret
By George Simenon

I found three Maigret books in a Free Library near me. I've heard very good things about Simenon and his detective so I picked them up and have now read one. My first Simenon went very well.

My Friend Maigret is a short and incisive crime mystery set on a French island off the Riviera. A small cast of characters are in focus after a murder, with Maigret accompanied by Mr Pyke, an observer of his methods from Scotland Yard. There is humour with the wry interaction of Maigret and his quite taciturn colleague, who he seems to slightly resent but also admire, and also great local colour. This all takes place in the Fifties, and shows its age in some ways of course (telegrams, for instance). However, it is extremely readable and I found the prose sharp and quite witty. Human behaviour, and the types you might find in a place like this, are timeless though, and crime will always be familiar. Very well done novel and I look forward to the next one.

Helix Wars
By Eric Brown

Helix Wars is Eric Brown's followup to his Helix novel, a book I liked a lot. Whilst I would not rate this as quite as highly, it is a very worthy sequel.

Taking place about two hundred years after the first, the human colony has made its home on the Helix and been assigned a "peacekeeper" role by the Helix Builders. When one of the alien races on the Helix decides to wage a war of conquest on another, a human inter-world pilot is shot down and dropped into the midst of the terror and ravages of the war.

What we end up with is a great action and adventure story, with a chase, a rescue attempt, an alien partner, high technology and a brutal foe. Like the first book, Brown is good on the interaction and relationship between people, here alien people. We empathise with the alien point of view completely, and the morality of killing is explored as the characters debate and argue about what sort tactics to use and how justified killing is. It is an excellent science-fiction thriller: easy to read and pacy like the first book.

I will say that I don't particularly like the cover of the paperback I have though. It makes the book look like a video game, or some sort of "role-playing" fiction! Getting past that though, a straightforward action book I enjoyed reading a lot. Now to find the next Brown book to pick up: they are not all in print anymore I think.

The Chrysalids
By John Wyndham

This is my third Wyndham novel, and it is one some people consider his best. Another great adventure story, this time told from the point of view of an adolescent boy.

The story takes place in a much changed world after some sort of cataclysm (called the "Tribulation"), almost certainly nuclear given the descriptions of the state of nature and fear of mutation. We open with humans living in very basic circumstances in a farming community run under extremely strict religious law. David's father is the tyrannical and brutal leader of the farm clan, obsessed with rooting out any "deviation" from the True Image. In the Bible, Man is created in the image of God. God does not have six toes on a foot. Outside "civilisation" is a very different society, populated by people banished or born to live on the fringes and eke out a much harsher existence. Here, there is no "true" image and existence is very mean. In the world of the farm we encounter a child, then a few more, who have an extra ability of telepathy, more easily hidden than, say, a sixth toe. Until it is noticed.

David and his friends communicate long distances through their minds, and from an early age are aware of the danger they would be in if their difference is discovered. The books leads inevitably to this and their escape attempt. It turns out that being able to communicate in this way imparts some advantages.

A short book, it tells a well known story of the evils of persecution and the need for tolerance of difference. A shared humanity. But also considers what sort of "improved" human evolution might produce: perhaps even a "superior variant" of Homo Sapiens. I thought that the conclusion was a little quick and perhaps a bit pat. It also lapses into some polemic regarding evolution and change near the end, with Wyndham getting up on the podium to lecture. With this said, I enjoyed it, even though I would place it slightly below the The Day of the Triffids in my estimation. Many more good books and short stories of his to try next.

I visited the National Gallery of Scotland in the first week of 2025 to have a look at the Turner watercolours, shown once a year in January. I do this every year.

I am now very glad I went early, because the week after there was a big queue to get in, and earlier this week (Thursday 10am), another even longer queue. I have never seen queues before: snaking out the front door and up the side of the gallery building.

A reason might be that the exhibition was of the Vaughan Bequest from the National Gallery of Ireland this year for the first time. Maybe a good enough reason itself, or maybe good marketing, advertising or an "influencer" somewhere. They are such good paintings that I am just glad I managed to have a look.

From the National Gallery of Scotland site :

In 2025 the National Galleries of Scotland will commemorate the 250th birthday of beloved British artist JMW Turner with a once-in-a-lifetime, free exhibition. For the first time, visitors will be able to marvel at over 30 Turner watercolours from Dublin.

I over-heard a gallery assistant saying that Dublin has not got queues like this.

Adam Bede
By George Eliot

It was that moment in summer when the sound of the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the flower-sprinked tresses of the meadows.

I found Adam Bede, George Eliot's first full length novel, extremely moving. Yes, perhaps a bit romantic and sentimental, but nevertheless, a strong emotional response. Some chapters were almost unbearably difficult to get through because of the strength of feeling it brought forth.

It is easy to begin reading and get wrapped up in the world of the small English village of Hayslope at the turn of the 19th Century. Eliot has such beautiful prose, the countryside and people come to life and you are swept away to "Loamshire", her fictional English county.

There is a lot of sympathy for the lot of the common workers she pictures in her books. She has sympathy but also a sharp eye and the world she describes is not always one of dappled sunlight and radiant meadow. People might be grey faced and pinched as well as rosy cheeked and dimpled. The story itself is a well known and time-worn one, as the author, publisher and reader knew: the central event is based on a story Eliot heard from her aunt when she was young. A squire falling for a farm girl was a tale commonly melodramatic but here made fresh, immediate and more realistic.

It is a slow book and infused with Christian thought and speech, with strong moral sentiment. There is also a huge amount of empathy, love, respect and humour; there are some very funny observations by Eliot (as an occasional narrator) and her characters. Mrs Poyser has a sharp and witty tongue, not sparing anyone, not her husband or even her landlord, the old squire. The scene where she gives him a piece of her mind when he tries to push her into an unwanted business arrangement is a real gem. When Hetty Sorrel, her beautiful but very vane niece, lets her imagination run and struts in front of her bedroom mirror "with a pigeon-like stateliness", we see it and laugh, but it also becomes heart-breaking later. I felt for Hetty even though Eliot does a lot to expose her vacuity, thoughtlessness and vanity.

The book is not without faults, Adam himself is perhaps a little too unblemished after all, but the novel is one of the greatest I've had the pleasure of reading.