Comment: Finds in the real world

A trip into Cardiff Cardiff led me into Waterstones, whose Cardiff store has gone mad and is offering 3 for 2 for on ALL BOOKS. Not a bad deal and from the look on the near empty shelves in the Sci-fi/Fantasy sections it’s doing quite well.

As I’ve said a couple of days ago there are lots of books that slip through the nets and a bookshop is the best way of finding the widest range of new and old releases. This selection is totally unscientific and purely based on five-second impressions.

Starting with Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh:

At the heart of this epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, is an old slaving-ship, The Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its crew a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. As their old family ties are washed away they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races and generations.

The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive – a masterpiece from one of the world’s finest novelists.

I read The Calcutta Chromosome, was it really 12 years ago? I remember there was an abandoned signal box. I’m sure that’s right. Anyway this is the first Ghosh novel that’s stood out since.

Next I spotted The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman

Witch.

Some words can kill . . .

To Güde’s son and grandchildren it could mean the loss of a loved one.

To Güde it could mean torture and death at the stake.

And to Güde’s daughter-in-law it could mean one less mouth to feed.

In a time when famine is rife and panic spreading, people resort to desperate measures in order to survive. So when Güde is accused of witchcraft by her daughter-in-law she must find the strength to clear her name and save her life . . .

I’m guessing I wrote this one down as it had the word Witch in the title. I’m not sure I’d actually want to read it.

Then I spotted, Everything Ravaged Everything Burned by Wells Tower

A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the sweat-smudged footprint on the inside of his windscreen doesn’t match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily, hilariously try to reassemble themselves. His characters – marauding Vikings, washed-up entrepreneurs, and jobbing hacks on local papers – are adrift from the mainstream, confused by contemporary masculinity, angry and aimless. Combining electric prose with compassion and dark wit, this is a major debut.

It was short stories, and thinking that I’ve not read anything from Granta since I was a student.

Cold Earth by Sarah Moss

Six young people meet on an archaeological dig in a remote corner of Greenland. Excavating the unsettling remains of a Norse society under attack, they also come to uncover some of their own demons, as it becomes apparent that a plague pandemic is sweeping across the planet and communication with the outside world is breaking down. Increasingly unsure whether their missives will ever reach their destination, each of the characters writes a letter to someone close to them, trying to make sense of their situation and expressing their fears and dwindling hope of ever getting back home…In fluid, witty prose, Moss weaves a rich tapestry of personal narratives, history, ghost stories, love stories, stories of grief and naked survival. Through these missives, the author explores themes that are at the very heart of our existence: What do people do in extremis? What do they think when faced with near-certain death? How do the group dynamics shift under such strain?

Another debut I think it was the cover this time.

Lastly we have The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske

When a series of gruesome murders coincides with the arrival of Dr Marvello’s Travelling Circus the performers find themselves caught up in some rather sinister goings-on. Prometheus the strongman winds up behind bars and it falls to ringmaster and master conjuror Cornelius Quaint, ably assisted by his Eskimo valet Butter, to investigate the killings and to clear his name. But Quaint, an irresistable mix of Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini, soon finds that these seemingly random killings are actually linked to dark secrets from his own past. Secrets that he may not be prepared to face. The Equivoque Principle is a fantastic adventure inspired by the penny dreadfuls and newspaper serials of the Victorian age and the first in a great new series.

It was the Victorian-age thing I think – I paused a little long after seeing it was published by the Friday Project.

There you have it. My magpie view of Waterstones Cardiff.

Anything you’ve spotted in a bookshop that you didn’t know existed until you saw it? The only one I knew of was Sea of Poppies