Reviews and Comments

A tad overstuffed, but (because of this?) succeeds as (all of) hardboiled noir, speculative anthropology, and cathartic routing of white supremacy, which is no small accomplishment. Could have done with a more low-key ending, in my opinion, for some light and shade, but superb writing and characterisation throughout, with more than a few lines that elicited audibly-impressed noises. This alt-history nerd left happy.

Read this in a single sitting, staying up until 4am to complete it, and the plot and thrust of the novel have stuck to me like clay, but can't say I enjoyed it. Reads like three very different books sutchered together. The first third is genuinely great, but gives way to something altogether murkier, manipulating the reader. A lot of gratuitous unpleasantness, ostensibly intended as – what? – class commentary, but in a way that felt, to me, at least, like writerly laziness.

Smart, skillfully written mythic fantasy, which succeeds in doing interesting things with voice and viewpoint. Bit gay. Some violence, but treated thoughtfully, with actual stakes. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Powerful overarching framework, with useful concepts, analytics, and guidance, but intercut with terrible, capitalist realist case studies, based on the career change experiences of middle managers and C-suite executives in the 1990s-2000s. Wondering what an updated, 2020s version would look like, and how to reconcile this kind of identity work with climate change, systemic crisis, etc.

A conceptually provocative, but often disjointed narrative, following an extinction offsetting industry professional and an animal intelligence evaluator as they follow the trail of an unusually smart (and vengeful) species of fish (presumed extinct?). Strong and sophisticated worldbuilding, but the characters (and their motives) felt a bit flatter, and Beauman's different registers of humour and satire sometimes felt like they were pulling in wildly different directions (with riffs on Brexit and its aftermath reading much broader and less illuminating than, e.g., his perspective on the political economy of extinction-era environmental offsets).

Unlikely blend of science fiction and prose poetry, with the (complementary) Orcadian Scots and English translation run alongside each other, and a slow accretion of relatively contained poem-chapters building up to a bigger picture, a (fraught) romance intertangling with (what I took to be) a ghost story, and glimpses of an insular, long-isolated community on the brink of sudden, potentially far-reaching change. Enjoyed it a great deal, particularly at a more granular, linguistic and conceptual level. I was initially a bit perplexed by what seemed like an abrupt ending, with insufficient narrative resolution or closure, but, on reflection, have come to terms with this being about my own (genre) expectations (of science fiction), rather than any deficiencies in the text. Would warmly recommend, but I really should have tackled it in fewer sittings, as it clearly benefits from sustained reader immersion.

Accessible text offering an account of anticolonial scientific practice, based on insights from running a lab conducting research on plastic pollution and fish in Newfoundland.

Cobbled-together project documentation for an artwork describing a decentralised, feminist care protocol inspired by solidarity clinics active in crisis-era Greece. Slightly awkward jalopy of different texts, including testimonials from participants, and a fictive future Wikipedia entry. Succeeds in posing a bunch of (interesting) questions, but doesn't offer much in the way of answers.

Challenging to make progress on a book where, to stay focused and make sense of what's happening, you have to read out loud, and in a deeply unconvincing Scots accent.

Remembered enjoying A Visit from the Goon Squad when it first came out, and always keen to get my hands on 'literary' treatments of technology and/or the future, but while the self-contained chapters, here, often worked well (as short stories?), the impact of the novel as a whole was limp and flat, muted by a lack of focus. Effectively-written characters and detailing, but ultimately just a heap of narrative (however engaging), with little light and shade, and a scattershot focus.

No idea what it is, but I loved it.

Engaging, fluently-written work of narrative sociology, based on in-depth interviews with 30+ affluent mothers in an aspirational urban neighbourhood in Houston, Texas. Kimbro seeks an answer to why, despite everything they've been through, a majority of the mothers interviewed decided to remain in this community, despite its clear vulnerabilities. Accessible to a more general readership, without sacrificing academic rigour, and a useful insight into the social 'stickiness' of place, and how natural disasters (and, by extension, climate change) are experienced along intersecting axes of wealth, class, and gender.

Robust historical study of the entrepreneurial 'projector' in early modern England, and the part this widely stigmatised figure played in taming the excesses of incipient, early modern capitalism. As a book-length academic history text, the depth of evidence and level of detail was greater than my requirements, but it's well-written, with the early and concluding chapters did a good job of sketching a particular historical trajectory. I particularly appreciated the work Yamamoto does in connecting his arguments to contemporary debates about corporate social responsibility, innovation, and extractivist or rentier capitalism.

Self-described 'fringy anthropology' of Soviet legacies and 'wasting' in 2010s Estonia strives to make an asset of its 'polyphony of vignettes', but ultimately fails to cohere. Good chapters on repair practices, a street market, and the social and symbolic half-life of a disused late Soviet stadium and leisure complex, but the book gets weaker as it progresses, and the frame of focus widens. Scrappily written, occasionally compelling, but insufficiently disciplined, falling short of my (admittedly high) expectations.