Review of Agency – William Gibson

San Francisco, 2017.

In an alternate time track, Hillary Clinton won the election and Donald Trump’s political ambitions were thwarted.

London, 22nd century. Decades of cataclysmic events have killed 80 per cent of humanity. A shadowy start-up hires a young woman named Verity to test a new product: a ‘cross-platform personal avatar’ that was developed by the military as a form of artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, characters in the distant future are using technological time travel to interfere with the election unfolding in 2017. . .

Agency

William Gibson

Viking

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Stephen Litten

San Francisco, 2017: Clinton’s in the White House, Brexit never happened, and Verity Jones (the app whisperer) has got a new job. The pay means she could stop couch surfing at a friend’s apartment. But within seconds of opening the app, it has decided that Verity is in danger and takes steps to ensure her safety. Meanwhile, approximately 100 years in the future, Wilf Netherton has been drawn back into the orbit of London’s Police fixer Ainsley Lowbeer to assess the threat level of a new timeline stub. Will they need to shut it down? The very one initiated by Verity and her new app, Eunice.

This is a novel told in two timelines. The chapters alternate. Mercifully, the list of characters is quite small, with Verity and Will being the point of view characters. There is an intercept, and Gibson handles it well – time travel is not invoked. Verity and Eunice try to survive the attempts to wrest control of Eunice, who turns out to be a piece of repurposed military programming. Will and Ainsley, once they’ve assessed the potential of the new timeline, have a bigger question – Who benefits? London, and what survives of the United Kingdom, is run by the Klept, a shadowy group of oligarchs who stole power after a disaster.

0I enjoyed this read. I’ve been a fan of Gibson for quite a while and he has not disappointed. It is well paced, and the two strands, action thriller (sort of) and spy-fi (sort of), mix well. It is comfortably paced, with the action scenes not overly described. Gibson, despite a tendency toward hard SF, doesn’t wallow in techno-babble. My one complaint would be the length of some of the chapters. Some are barely two pages. But then again, chapters should be as long as they need to be and no longer.

Buy this book. It’s good. The stories are resolved well, and there are no glaring plot holes. I thank Penguin for the review copy.

Review of Grown Ups – Marian Keyes

They’re a glamorous family, the Caseys.

Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together – birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they’re a happy family. Johnny’s wife, Jessie – who has the most money – insists on it.

Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, other people like each other far too much . . .

Everything stays under control until Ed’s wife Cara, gets concussion and can’t keep her thoughts to herself. One careless remark at Johnny’s birthday party, with the entire family present, starts Cara spilling out all their secrets.

In the subsequent unravelling, every one of the adults finds themselves wondering if it’s time – finally – to grow up?

Grown Ups

Marian Keyes

Michael Joseph

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jan Butterworth

The story starts with a party to mark Johnny Casey’s birthday.  His sister-in-law Cara had a head injury earlier that day and is unable to lie.  Questions get asked and secrets are about to be revealed……..

The events of six months ago are then described – the Easter trip to Kerry.    We learn about the various Casey’s and other family members and friends, and   get an idea of what is happening in their lies.  Then the events of five months ago, four months ago, three months, two months, one month, and then we come to the dinner party again.  And see things go nuclear.

Along the way we’re introduced to a Syrian refugee to Ireland and the realities of life for asylum seekers in Ireland is explained.  This is done as part of the story and feels natural, not preachy at all.    This also brings up ‘period poverty’, something that’s an issue in NZ that had been hidden as it was embarrassing to talk about.  The story highlighted this cause as an organic part of the story and not virtue signalling.

I really enjoyed getting to know the Casey’s and getting a glimpse into their lives.  My only moan about this book is it ended too soon.  I want to know how lives turned out!

Buy it; read it; you won’t regret it.

Review of The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker

Queen Briseis has been stolen from her conquered homeland and given as a concubine to a foreign warrior. The warrior is Achilles: famed hero, loathed enemy, ruthless butcher, darkly troubled spirit. Briseis’s fate is now indivisibly entwined with his.

No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad: the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers’ camp – in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number – and she will be our witness to history.

The Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker

Hamish Hamilton

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

This has been touted as a great feminist novel, but I don’t think it is, not in any positive sense. It is more a polemic against a certain kind of masculinity, toxic masculinity if you like. And against war; the sheer brutality of war in ancient times. It might be supposed to be a re-telling of the Iliad from the point of view of a woman, of Briseis, the former wife of Mynes, a son of the King of Lyrnessus, who becomes the slave of Achilles. But it’s still a story about men, about strutting male egos and the consequences of their butting heads. Achilles even gets to be narrator in a third-person sort-of way some distance into the book, although his ‘voice’ always feels a bit awkward. I’m not convinced that it is even possible to write a truly feminist Iliad, because it’s essentially a story about men and the flaws of men. Could you even write an empowering story about women in that setting? Maybe, but not, I think, at the centre of Homer’s story. Which this is.

I can’t say I liked this book. I did find it oddly compelling, and I did finish it (unlike the last attempt to re-tell the Iliad from a female point of view that came my way).  The author has a fine command of language, although it often feels way too modern for the subject. But it’s a brutal work, pulling no punches in the description of violence and of the treatment of women. If you are at all sensitive to rape, violence or profanity, then this is not the book for you.

(And to add to that, I’ve just seen a flash fiction shared on Facebook that in less than a hundred words tells a better – and far more positive – story, focusing on Cassandra, Odysseus and Penelope).