Ghosts and grudges in Tokyo
THE LOST FUTURE OF PEPPERHARROW by Natasha Pulley
(Bloomsbury £12.99, 512 pp) THE utterly beguiling characters from Pulley’s debut The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street make a much-anticipated reappearance here.
Clairvoyant samurai Keita Mori and shy musician Thaniel Steepleton, now a translator, have left the fogbound streets of Victorian London for an intricately plotted adventure in rural Tokyo.
Thaniel must find out the truth behind the sudden appearance of ghosts in the British legation, while Mori is involved in scuppering the plans of a power-hungry baron and the threatening off-shore Russian fleet.
Along for the ride are Six, their adopted child, a clockwork octopus called Katsu, Kabuki actress Pepperharrow, who’s nursing an old grudge against Mori, and scientist Grace Carrow (Thaniel’s exwife), who’s working on a project to destabilise Mori’s all-important memory.
Pulley’s world-building is wonderful, making for a story that is inventive, immersive and entirely unputdownable.
THE NINTH CHILD by Sally Magnusson (Two Roads £14.99, 336 pp)
ISABEL AIRD is grieving.
Miscarriage after miscarriage has left her ‘broken inside . . . awful broken’; her emotions are tamped down to embers, and her distant relationship with her husband, Alexander, is made more frosty by his inconsiderate decision to move them from Glasgow to the Highlands.
Alexander spends longs days doctoring the men who are working on the huge engineering project at Loch Katrine, leaving Isabel to wander the gorgeously described wilds, mourning her lost children. Keeping a watchful eye is housekeeper Kirsty, who recognises that she’s ‘easy prey’.
And then along comes the mysterious Reverend Robert Kirk, who looks ‘upon her with a huntsman’s eye,’ and waylays an otherwise beautifully pitched, entirely believable story of love and loss, into the realm of ‘faery’, a supernatural plot twist which doesn’t sit well with the emotional veracity of the Airds’ relationship.
THE BELL IN THE LAKE by Lars Mytting and translated by Deborah Dawkin (MacLehose £16.99, 400 pp)
IT’S 1880 and unmarried Astrid Hekne, young, fierce and rebellious, is determined to escape: from her home in a remote, frozen, Norwegian village and from her traditionally prescribed role as someone’s wife.
But love comes along and Mytting beautifully describes the conflicts of the heart as
Astrid finds herself drawn to two very different men — ambitious Pastor Kai Schweigaard and cosmopolitan young architect Gerhard Schonauer.
Their stories are set against the fate of the local, ancient, magnificently carved ‘stave’ church and their bells (rumoured to have supernatural powers), which are closely linked to the Henke family. When Kai sells the old church to fund the building of a modern one, he sets off a chain event that will have heart-breaking, far-reaching consequences.
Lyrical, melancholy and with beautifully drawn characters, this pitches old beliefs against new ways with a haunting delicacy that rings true.