Team B is back with Dust Jackets, where our booksellers review backlist books, classics, and other neglected gems. This time, Sam thanks former colleague Henry for a past recommendation, Giuseppe has an Italian classic, and Rohan spends some time in the jungle with Graham Greene…
To kick us off this month, Sam has been reading a modern SF classic. He said:
“I miss Henry. He joined Mr B’s when I did, he was a super nice guy, and he could usually get the printer to work. He also specialised in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Those genres are really popular, but I don’t know much about them, so I followed Henry while he talked about these cool books with mind-expanding ideas and imagined worlds to visit, and I made mental notes to refer to later.
“I was reminded of Henry’s amazing repertoire at a recent book group meeting when a pal of mine chose Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith for our next read. I commented that it was a bit of a niche 90s sci-fi book, and asked where he’d heard of it. Of course, it was a recommendation from some guy called Henry at Mr B’s. Henry’s fine, by the way, he just doesn’t work at Mr B’s any more. I wonder if he reads the newsletter. Hi Henry! The printer’s fine!
“From what I’ve read around it, Only Forward wasn’t a massive bestseller when it came out in 1994, but it became a word of mouth British Sci-Fi cult classic, passionately recommended by fans, and often cited by writers as an inspiration. The hero of this novel is Stark, a dependable private investigator with unique talents. Stark is tasked with rescuing Alkland, who has (maybe) been kidnapped. The genius of the novel is that the solid spine of this story you’ve read before supports a world of stunning imagination and psychological depth.
“Much of the fun of reading older science fiction is seeing the success or failure of the writers’ predictions about the trajectories of technology, politics, and society. Lots of the technology in Only Forward is wacky in a way that’ll tickle fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: everything is apparently sentient, from fridges and lifts to more imaginative items like the extremely rude ‘BugAnaly’ listening-device scanner and the fashion-conscious ‘CloazValet’ trouser press that changes the colour of your trousers on a whim. Everything argues and makes suggestions and gripes about its place in the world. It’s funny, and it’s not a million miles away from how my computer tries to write for me or my phone suggests I could walk more and turn my music down. But it’s not the novel’s main theme.
“Where Only Forward succeeds most, both imaginatively and in future-prediction, is in the fragmentation of its world. The novel begins in The City, which is divided into Neighbourhoods where people cluster around shared identities, values, and aesthetics. “Everything is compacting, accelerating, solidifying, but not all of it in the same direction.” Stark lives in Colour Neighbourhood, where surfaces change colour to complement the outfit or mood of the residents. Adjacent to Colour is Sound, where everybody’s extremely quiet. There’s a Cat neighbourhood populated exclusively by cats: you can visit, but only if you’re a fan of felines.
“To a reader in 1994 it might’ve seemed absurd: communities where you only ever encounter like-minded people, where you needn’t compromise, and the world itself is curated to your liking. But our modern digital lives are just like that. Polarisation follows, intolerance blossoms, and physical community is atomised.
“It’s unnecessary to have a modern political relevance to make a book worth reading, but for me this is what elevates a period piece to a cult classic. Regardless of any of that, Only Forward is well worth a read, especially if you like imaginative cross-genre brilliance. Not all of it has aged brilliantly: none of the female characters have much agency. Heap dust upon that. And there’s a pivot in the middle into horror and fantasy and a more serious psychological story about trauma and guilt, which some readers might find jarring, like Napalm Death playing an NPR Tiny Desk Concert (go watch it after you’ve read this). If it were written today Only Forward would be divided into two novels. You could see this as literary structural brilliance or just good value for money: it’s sprawling and generous and lengthy, unlike Napalm Death’s You Suffer, which lasts only 1.316 seconds making it the shortest commercially released song.
Anyway, I’m grateful to Henry for having recommended it several years ago. I would’ve enjoyed it if I’d read it then, but today it’s even more powerful.”
Giuseppe takes us back to post-war Rome and an encounter with the recently rediscovered fiction of Alba de Céspedes. He said:
“Forbidden Notebook is a novel of loneliness, memory, and the difficult courage of becoming visible to oneself — a timeless feminist classic whose emotional honesty still resonates powerfully today, and you can find it on my favourite shelf at Mr B’s.
“Through Valeria Cossati’s secret (and forbidden) diary, Alba de Céspedes captures the weight of domestic duty, the longing for personal freedom, and the painful awakening of a woman who begins to question the life she has built.
“Set in post-war Rome and first published in 1952, the novel is intimate and quietly political, revealing how easily a woman’s desires can be buried beneath the traditional roles of wife and mother. De Céspedes’s prose is sharp and elegant, and she understands that the deepest revolutions often happen in private, when a woman begins to listen to her own voice. A must-read!”
Graham Greene is a name comes up about as regularly as anybody when talking to customers in the shop, and he’s gone around our booksellers a few times over the years too. Now he’s made his way into the hands of Rohan, who has been immersing himself in the steamy jungles of Indochina with The Quiet American.
Greene spins the chaotic story of naïve and idealistic CIA agent Alden Pyne and his British friend, the foreign correspondant Fowler, as the limits of British and American power become more and more stark as they find themselves adrift in a foreign land in which they are far from welcome.
Rohan said: “A masterclass in simmering tension and astute political intrigue. In revolutionary Vietnam, wisened cynicism and brash idealism clash as the baton passes between dying European empires and the ascendant U.S.”
Sam wasn’t the only bookseller revelling in the recommendations of colleagues this week, as Annabel settled down to read The Secret Countess, by the wonderful Eva Ibbotson, who has slowly become a real shop favourite. The Russian Revolution forces young countess Anna Grazinsky to flee her native country and find refuge in rural England, where her family, now stripped of their wealth, must rely on the kindness of their only remaining friend.
Annabel said: “This was my first Eva Ibbotson and it came highly recommended from several colleagues, including Liv, Lottie and Rosa. It was just so lovely. Absolutely beautifully written, charming, and moving on a level I wasn’t expecting!
Finally this month, I have been back on the Bolaño train, after his madcap novel Distant Star was published in a new edition as part of the brilliant Vintage Brief Encounters series (click here to check out the full list – this is how you republish classics!).
Distant Star expands one of the profiles from the great maestro’s Nazi Literature in the Americas, a novel that takes the form of a series of biographies of fictional writers of North and South America in the years after World War II (or is it an alternative version of history – did the Nazi’s win the war?). Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was an unassuming poet, an unpromising part of Chile’s literary scene. When the coup happens in 1973, Ruiz-Tagle disappears, leaving a trail of blood and murder behind him. Years later he reappears, reborn as Carlos Wieder, a genius poet who writes his art in the skies above Santiago. But the violence of his past can stay hidden for only so long. This is another dark, noirish tale of art, love, revolution, and death, told with Bolaño’s customary verve.
Thanks for reading
Tom