The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad follows the fortunes of Cora, a slave born on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Colson Whitehead constructs a framework for his novel that is grounded in history, but is more allegorical than factual, a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress through the worst of American history mixed with the satire of Gulliver’s Travels.

My historian brain battled with this, struggling to place the narrative in a fixed time period, questioning the veracity of the experiences Cora has, confused by seeming representations of American history that sources I checked couldn’t verify. There are anachronisms and a prefiguring of certain post-slavery methods of controlling black lives in among the events that have their roots in fact.

Hometown Tales: Highlands and Hebrides

Hometown Tales is a book series from the Orion Books imprint of Weidenfield & Nicolson. There are eight books in the series, each pairing a new writer with someone more established from the same region.

I bought the Highlands and Hebrides volume at a Mull Historical Society gig in 2018, because one of the two stories it contains is by Colin MacIntyre, the musician and writer who records under the MHS moniker. I’d read his novel The Letters of Ivor Punch not long before and enjoyed his fictionalised rendition of his home.

Kaikeyi

Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Hindu epic Ramayana from the perspective of Queen Kaikeyi. It begins in Kaikeyi’s childhood, when a brutal disruption leads the princess to seek the help of the gods to put things right again. That help is not forthcoming, but what Kaikeyi discovers about herself in the process transforms her life. She ceases to be the overlooked only daughter of a king and becomes a woman who will do anything to make a better life for herself and other women.

The Sixth Gun Volume 9

After finishing Volume 8 of The Sixth Gun, I couldn’t wait to complete the series, so jumped straight into Volume 9 on New Year’s Day. The final volume brings together the three concluding chapters in this epic, marshalling all the forces with an interest in The Six together for the final battle.

The Six are an ancient force, forged in the early history of mankind. They have taken many forms, and have been used to end and recreate the world many times. Over the centuries, they have evolved, becoming near sentient, able to manipulate their bearers to ensure that, with each remaking of the world, they remain active within it. But their existence is the cause of wars, enmity, power struggles and misery for those caught at the edges of conflict. In Volume 9, Drake Sinclair and Becky Montcrief have set themselves the task of remaking the world without The Six in it. But first they must stop the Grey Witch, Griselda, from remaking the world in her image.

Challenges Old and New

I don’t usually do end of year round ups, but I’ve decided to look back at how I did with the reading challenges I took part in during 2023. Mainly because I’ve been planning what I might read in 2024.