bury my bones in the midnight soil / plant them shallow and water them deep / and in my place will grow a feral rose / soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth —V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Autumn here with its promise of bonfires, pumpkins, cider on tap in the Pub, of blackberries fat and tart on their prickly bushes and pumpkins ripening on the vine, but it’s also the time of year that we get serious about getting ready for Winter. If you visit us on this Scottish Estate, someone will no doubt ask you to pitch in on some task that needs doing. So dress appropriately, have a good attitude, sturdy footware and you’ll be appreciated here quite nicely. And your first cider will be on me.
Now why don’t you give me a few minutes to finish up this Edition and we’ll head off to the Kitchen as the season’s upon us when the staff’s making babka, that exquisitely chocolate rich Eastern European sweet, leavened bread along with just as tasty rugelach, both a good treat as the weather cools…
.Cat kicks off our China Miéville retrospective with a review of a limited hardcover edition of Miéville’s debut novel King Rat. ‘Call it magic realism. (It is.) Call it an urban fantasy. (Also correct.) Call it dark fantasy if you like. (It is definitely that.) Or call it horror, as it most certainly is that as well. It is, in some senses, a nastier version of the London created by Gaiman in Neverwhere.’
Jason gave the highest of marks to Miéville’s breakout novel Perdido Street Station, though not without some caveats. ‘I won’t lie to you, the book isn’t easy to read. It’s dense and complex and has a circuitous plot that sometimes seems completely irrelevant, until you keep reading and find that it is essential. And at 700 pages plus, it requires patience.’
Next Jason reviewed The Scar, a follow-up of sorts to Perdido Street Station and the second of Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy. ‘A new menagerie of creatures is presented here, including mosquito-people, vampir, llorgis and grindylow, in addition to his established khepri, cactacae, and Remade. He has added to the already lush environment created in Perdido, expanding the scope of Bas-Lag to the far reaches of the world.’
Finally, Jason took a quick romp through one of Miéville’s’s novellas. ‘It’s amazing to see Miéville’s prodigious talent and range increase with each successive publication. The Tain is a remarkable story of survival and coping, of making the best of a horrible situation. It shows the adaptivity of humanity, that we can survive almost anything, and the ending is so unexpected and so fitting that you may feel the top of your head lifting off as you read it.’
J.J.S. Boyce delved deep into the mystery that is Miéville’s The City & The City, set in two intertwined but strictly segregated urban enclaves. ‘The unique geopolitical landscape of the city & the city complicates what would indeed be a simple murder investigation elsewhere in the world. Because here the victim appears to have been killed in one city but dumped in another, suggesting a forbidden passage over one of the invisible borders, an action much worse than the murder itself.’
Kathleen had high praise for Miéville’s first young readers’ book. ‘Un Lun Dun is his first actual novel for young readers, and — marvelous paradox — it is a wonderfully mature work. The writer’s voice is focused through the child’s vision like light through a ruby, becoming coherent energy, light with a sword’s edge. His previous hints of childishness become instead a clear-eyed look at fantasy, heroism, tragedy and redemption from the viewpoint of a 12 year old girl.’
Kestrel found Kraken to be a good introduction to Miéville’s writing. ‘On the whole — and this is something which I never thought I would find myself saying about a China Miéville novel — this is an incredibly fun read. Also, at five hundred pages, it makes a pretty good beach book (although probably not if you are the nervous over-imaginative sort as, see above, ominous giant squid god).’
We naturally raise our own pigs here and if can Gus, our Estate Head Gardener reviews this book, he’ll tell way more than you need to know about them. So yes, Jennifer L.S. Pearsal’s Big Book of Bacon gets reviewed by him: ‘Yes bacon. We use a lot of bacon at this Scottish Estate. Bacon in cheddar and bacon rolls, bacon and tomatoes in eggs, bacon in beef stew for a little extra flavour. Even one enterprising Kitchen staffer even created ice cream with smoky bacon and chocolate as its flavour. It actually tasted rather good. Well you get the idea. So when I discovered this book in a pile of galleys sent to us, I decided to give it a review.’
We can’t recommend this series off abd it feels Autumnal to me, so here it is once again. If ever there was a series that felt like it was British to the core and autumnal in its setting, it is the one Kathleen and her sister Kage wrote up, Two Fat Ladies, whose series documented that they were brilliant British cooks who rode a motorcycle with a sidecar, drank excessively, smoked whenever they pleased and cooked using bloody great hunks of meat, butter and anything else that isn’t ‘tall good for you. And funny as all Hell, which indeed the review is as well.
In new music, Gary admires jazz saxophonist Miguel Zénon’s latest offering. ‘Golden City is Zénon’s exploration of and tribute to the history and evolution of the West Coast’s cultural mecca, San Francisco, where he has been a member of the SFJAZZ Collective since the early 2000s. In these 11 pieces, he and his formidable ensemble dig deep into Zénon’s compositions that reflect that history, from the Bay Area’s occupation by Indigenous Ohlone people, through the Gold Rush, the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the loss of community due to gentrification, and other historical and cultural tides and trends.’
Gary also gives a thumbs up to the latest from rootsy Americana singer Melissa Carper. ‘Melissa Carper gives a graduate level seminar in classic country music style on her third solo release Borned In Ya. Carper is the real thing when it comes to Americana music, as I’ve been preaching since covering her previous albums Daddy’s Country Gold and Ramblin’ Soul.’
He also enjoyed New Moon by a New York trio that blends Carnatic music and American jazz. ‘Arun Ramamurthy Trio’s debut Jazz Carnatica was one of my favorite releases of 2014 (indeed, of the entire decade of the Teens), and I’m delighted to report that their follow-up, although a decade in the making, is even better.’
Speaking of Autumnal, Our What Not is a matter of a very special pumpkin as Denise tells about the Folkmanis’ Mouse in a Pumpkin puppet: ‘All hail the spice! Pumpkin everything is the rule of the day this time of year, and I’m all for it. Give me my pumpkin donuts, pumpkin pies, spicy roasted pumpkin, and pumpkin crumble. And okay, a PSL or two while we’re at it, though I’m more a Chestnut Praline Latte gal myself. So when Folkmanis decided to indulge my love of the orange squash, my grabby hands eagerly shot out. And I’ve been snuggling with this adorable puppet ever since.’
So I’ve got some Autumnal music for you that I think fits pretty much any season. It’s Michele Walther and Irina Behrendt playing Aaron Copland’s ‘Hoe Down’from Rodeo. I sourced it off a Smithsonian Institution music archive which has no details where or when it was recorded (which surprised me given how good they usually are at such things), but it may have been around fifteen years ago.
