I took my Christmas book credit and spent a tiny bit of it on a Christmas book. In part, because I really like Scalzi and I enjoy rereading him. And also in part because I couldn't get at my other Christmas books this year, which I think left me rather lacking in seasonal cheer. It has been a season of pneumonia (the Spouse) and lethargy with a side of struggle.

For example, after quite a few years of use and storage (more than six, less than fourteen), after carefully cleaning them and reinserting the points that had dropped out, and frankly, after marveling that they had survived so well for so long, this year I managed to break the frames of both of my Moravian stars.

But now is the time of recovery and rest and lying about with a fully stocked refrigerator and many delicious baked goods (ummm, breakfast cake!) and nothing to do for an entire week but eat and read since the university shuts down our whole department from the 23rd through the 2nd.

Yes, so a bunch of short humorous pieces and one absolute tear jerker. It's a good mix. With pictures, too. More books should have pictures.

Usually I don't mark a book Beloved until I've read it at least twice and was delighted both times. In this case I had read all but the three new pieces previously, so I decided to go on and count that.

Personal copy 

This is exactly the kind of murder I'm in the mood for. More stories about women upwards of "a certain age" who can get away with murder. That's much more fun than solving one.

I've been a fan of the Christmas murder story nearly as long as I can remember: there was a tiny book of four short stories put out by Reader's Digest in the early 70s. It had a white cover and four images in black one of which was a bishop and another was a sprig of holly. One story was about a man who had planned the perfect crime to murder his wife before taking a sabbatical in the US for a year. One was a locked room mystery about a chess player. Well, that's what memory says and it is of course always so precisely accurate.

Only one of these stories is about Christmas, "An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime" as do we all. But they all share a calm, quiet, unhurried feel. Maud isn't a stereotypical granny. Now, having just learned that there is a book about Audrey Hepburn in wartime as a member of the resistance, I have a strong longing to read about Maud as a college student during the war.

 Library copy, but something I'd like to own and revisit annually.

A great little Chistmasy story, and a particular hit with the younger child.

***

Wow, I'm amazed that all the times I've read this, it's never before been in December. Probably because inexplicably I don't own a copy. This was the one on display that sucked me into the picture books. I really was only running into the library to return some things. But then nostalgia.

Library copy

[10/05/18  Edited to add: I managed to upload a bad picture of my bingo card.]

This is such a good book I want to be a better writer to do it justice in my review. Waiting longer for inspiration is just not on though: my memory will let the details blur and the experience fade. 

Setterfield is a writer who's greatest flaw is not being prolific. Actually, that may be the only flaw. She has once again crafted a work of fiction that has a convincing Victorian setting with a modern sensibility directing the reader's attention to characters and incidents that a true Victorian wouldn't, but logic suggests that they are all valid. She manages to tell quite a few stories and examples of the craft of storytelling within a greater story of amazing events. While many writers succeed at making a house a character within their fiction, Setterfield has made part of the Thames a character, nor was she stinting in permitting this character moods. Okay, on the winter solstice the usual group are sitting around drinking in the Swan, an inn distinguished by the storytelling within. The door opens, a man, his face a bloody mess staggers in clutching a large doll in his hands.

Over the course of one year we watch the repercussions of that moment: how it affects characters major and minor and also, this is the tricksy bit, we watch how those events become stories. Yes, many stories dependent on point of view, and skill, stories becoming more stories as that one event is observed (or not), in light of new events, and then, still later developments. The metaphor is well served: there is an attempt to trace the roots of the story back to the beginning, which you can't do any more than you can trace a river back, fractally there are always more branches feeding in.

There is so much: there are clever half-starved orphans, prosperous farmers, the family of innkeepers, the town midwife, the minister, servants and animals, wealthy distillery owners, thieves and blackguards, despite the extensive cast one never feels that the author is coasting by with stereotypes or with every character having the same voice. There is plot and pathos enough for Dickens, and despite the 21st century sensibility there's none of that business of giving a character clearly modern ideas.

There is, of course, a supernatural element as well as a few mysteries, dreadful crimes and moments of grace. Everything is here, told my a humanist in the Pratchett vein, but without the jokes and footnotes. It is a lovely, suspenseful book that I couldn't bear to put down in order to post updates. Read it soon: give it to yourself or someone you really like as a gift for one of the several solstice-adjacent holidays. Just the thing for long winter nights by the fire.

ARC from publisher