Good evening!
I’ve read like a demon this week because I had some time off, which has been nice. It’s been much more successful than last week, thankfully, and I’m currently in the middle of what could be a favourite of the year. But let’s noy speak too soon.
If you’d like to buy me a coffee, on Ko-Fi, you can do here 🙂
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
Firstly, I finished Francisco Garcia’s We All Go Into The Dark (2023), a book about the formation of the myth surrounding the Scottish serial killer Bible John. This was a very interesting text, which had a lot in it about how the book was researched and written. I’d not actually heard of Bible John, and I don’t read a lot of crime stuff that isn’t explicitly horror, so this was a learning experience.
‘Bible John’ was the name given to a suspected serial killer, after three women from the same dance hall in Glasgow were murdered between 1968 and 1969. They were all killed in very similar ways, but it is the last victim, Helen Puttock, who drew attention to the situation. Helen had been out with her sister, who had interacted with a man that Helen ‘went off’ with, and who is suspected of murdering her. Helen’s sister Jean was able to provide a description of the man, as well as the detail that he knew his scripture. The press then gave him the nickname ‘Bible John’, sparking up the public’s imagination and making him into a cultural bogeyman figure in Scotland. Despite many years of investigation and many suspects, he has still never been identified.
What interests Garcia is not solving the crime, as many writers have tried to do before him, but how the murderer has become such a prevalent cultural figure. He looks into newspaper reporting, the role of the true crime ‘community’, and the people who were accused of the murders. He looks at a lot of Bible John related cultural artefacts, like a bizarre-sounding musical, and all of the books that have been written on him. He talks through his processes and gives his insight into how he navigates it, which I found quite fascinating. One thing I would have liked a bit more of is the landscape of religion and the nature of religious fear, which I think probably played a part in how this story gained a lot of attention. But then again, maybe that is me tapping into the fascination that Garcis writes about.
After I finished We All Go Into the Dark, I immediately picked up Elisa Shua Dusapin’s The Pachinko Parlour (2022), translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins. Unbelievably, I read this in a single sitting. Dusapin is Franco-Korean, and she writes her dual-nationality into her protagonist Claire. She is visiting her Korean grandparents who have lived in Japan for most of their lives, and through her European upbringing, she brings in a lot of perspectives on the country she is spending her summer in. She also takes up French tutoring for a small, reserved child to fill her days, and as a respite from her sometimes overbearing grandmother. Her grandparents own a Pachinko parlour, a game popularised by the Korean community in Japan, and largely looked down upon as a bit seedy.
This was really illuminating in terms of Korean-Japanese relations; I’ve read quite a bit on their war, but did wonder about migration between the two. Claire’s grandparents grew up in Japanese-occupied Korea, and then moved there after the separation of Korea into North and South -- something many Koreans did because of how unsteady things were after the war. They have lived in Tokyo for decades, but have never really picked up the language, perhaps as an act of defiance, perhaps because they integrated into a growing Korean community. A lot of Japanese texts address isolation (in Tokyo especially), but this often manifests in malaise and ennui, whereas in The Pachinko Parlour, this is very much about immigration and complicated post-colonial relations, and you can be othered in Japan.
One of the most interesting elements in the novel, to me, was Claire’s relationship with the child Mieko. Mieko is shy and often goes along with what Claire thinks she will like, but eventually opens up before Claire has to leave. There are some really vivid scenes in some of Tokyo’s tourist attractions for children, like Tokyo Disney and Heidi’s village based on the Studio Ghibli adaption. In these spaces, Mieko tries to sound out how she should, or could, act, and eventually rejects most of it. Claire’s reaction to this is largely based on her personal feelings and with little consideration for Mieko’s feelings, which is an interesting dynamic.
Next I picked up Soula Emmanuel’s Wild Geese (2023), which is one of the most exciting debuts I’ve read in a while. It’s about a trans woman called Phoebe, who is from Ireland but living in Copenhagen to complete her PhD. She lives a quiet life, commuting to the University and living in a flat with a small dog called Dolly Parton. She is unexpectedly visited by her ex-girlfriend Grace, who she has not seen for a number of years.
Over the course of a weekend, Phoebe and Grace come to terms with the people they were when they were in a relationship, and who they are now, now that they are in their 30s. They reflect on Ireland, and how it feels to live in it as Grace does, and to live away from it as Phoebe does. Phoebe’s transition isn’t an issue for Grace, and she doesn’t ask self-centred questions about the role she might have played in it -- rather, the conversations surrounding it flow quite naturally, which isn’t that very common in representations of relationships between a trans person and a cis person (usually because they’re written by someone who isn’t trans).
This isn’t a perfect book, but I think Emmanuel is an extremely talented writer. There is some absolutely gorgeous prose in this, as well as a lot of humour. It’s not overly formal, but it is serious where it needs to be. She also has a really keen, and fun, eye for detail, e.g. calling Lo-Fi music ‘luxury silence’. I’m really excited to see what she writes next.
I’m now a way into Lost On Me by Veronica Raimo, translated from the Italian by Leah Janeczko. It is out in early August from Virago. God I absolutely love this so far -- it reminds me very much of My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley (2021) in that it’s about tense relations within a family unit. It is incredibly funny while also being deeply cringe-inducing, just like My Phantoms.Will talk about it next week when I’ve finished it!
Books on my radar
I received a copy of Celia Dale’s Sheep’s Clothing (1988) from Daunt, who have previously reissued her A Helping Hand (1966). I own a copy of the latter and this provided a good kick to start reading it.