Mike Futcher (Author of Void Station One)

Mike Futcher rated a book liked it King John by William Shakespeare	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Having read the vast majority of Shakespeare's glittering work over the last decade of my life, more recently I have been slowly working my way through some of his lesser-known titles – whose relegated status, unfortunately, is often deserved. So it ...more
Aug 31, 2026 11:18AM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Only a Hemingway aficionado would even think about picking up this book. But, speaking as such a person myself, I fear Hemingway's Boat is too dense a vessel for even the most committed of fans. While Hemingway's life is already pretty well covered a ...more
Aug 29, 2026 04:30PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it The Wall by Marlen Haushofer	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
An almost preternaturally restful and calming book, Marlen Haushofer's The Wall sees an invisible wall drop over the Alpine valley where the unnamed protagonist resides, leaving her cut off from the wider world – a world which, through some unexplain ...more
Aug 16, 2026 03:10PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Wall by Marlen Haushofer <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing Galahad and the Grail (Merlin's Isle, #1) by Malcolm Guite (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
"And through that shimmer in the air I seemed to hear a sound, as though a distant horn were blown in some lost land that I had known..." (pg. 1) Two summers ago I visited the ancient city of York and spent so much time walking its antique cobbled street ...more
Aug 09, 2026 03:19PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Galahad and the Grail by Malcolm Guite. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Galahad and the Grail by Malcolm Guite <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it Von Stuck by Eva Mendgen	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
An astute and compelling overview of the career of German painter and sculptor Franz von Stuck. Stuck was active between the 1880s and the 1920s in Munich and his strange, dark, unsettling paintings first caught my eye with 'The Wild Hunt', the centr ...more
Aug 04, 2026 12:05PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it Lullaby Road (Ben Jones, #2) by James Anderson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
While it takes a full half of its page count to really find a gear, Lullaby Road proved, by its end, to be a welcome if unnecessary follow-up to The Never-Open Desert Diner. That first book by author James Anderson was a surprising success that suite ...more
Aug 02, 2026 02:49PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Lullaby Road by James Anderson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Lullaby Road by James Anderson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Speak For England by James Hawes	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Ever rumbling but never really capable of bursting free, Speak for England is a neat idea that doesn't find its mojo. A man lost from an extreme reality-TV show in the jungle stumbles upon a lost colony of English people who survived a plane crash in ...more
Jul 27, 2026 02:21PM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book really liked it The Fortune of War (Aubrey & Maturin #6) by Patrick O'Brian	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
"Jack cut the thread and handed back the mended coat; he looked out of the window, where the Shannon's top-sails winked in the evening light, and said, 'Dear Lord above, how I do wish I could set you clear of all this dirty, ugly, underhanded mess: h ...more
Jul 19, 2026 11:25AM · like · see review
Mike Futcher rated a book it was amazing Shadow Divers: How Two Men Discovered Hitler's Lost Sub and Solved One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson (2005-08-15) by Robert Kurson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A book to tear through, Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers is an excellent example of narrative non-fiction. It tells the story of the discovery of an unidentified U-boat off the New Jersey coast in the 1990s, a deep and dangerous wreck that comes to clai ...more
Jul 11, 2026 11:49AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Mike Futcher rated a book liked it Stations of the Angels (Texas Pentagraph #2) by Raymond St. Elmo (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
"… to each is entrusted a Message they shall deliver but never read, except by perceiving the Dance of all the rest of Creation." (pg. 231) The first Raymond St. Elmo book I've truly struggled with, and this may be because it is the one book of his I' ...more
Jul 04, 2026 02:08PM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Stations of the Angels by Raymond St. Elmo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Stations of the Angels by Raymond St. Elmo <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Having read the vast majority of Shakespeare's glittering work over the last decade of my life, more recently I have been slowly working my way through some of his lesser-known titles – whose relegated status, unfortunately, is often deserved. So it Having read the vast majority of Shakespeare's glittering work over the last decade of my life, more recently I have been slowly working my way through some of his lesser-known titles – whose relegated status, unfortunately, is often deserved. So it was a pleasant surprise that I picked up King John and encountered a tidy little play that I didn't have to meet halfway or work too hard for, but could just accept as a regular happy dose of the Bard.

It's essentially a poor man's Henry V; political machinations and wars with France overlaid with ringing patriotic language and some subtler undercurrents on the nature of political power. The political scheming itself is a bit unfinished; the power-players are unclear, the stakes of either side are not clear beyond a binary 'this-king-or-that-king', and the play moves perfunctorily from one major event to the next without seeding those developments naturally – something that Shakespeare was a master at doing with great economy in the years immediately after with Henry V and Julius Caesar.

But the origins of the triumph of those later plays is worked out here in King John, for not only is Shakespeare beginning to grapple with the political mechanics here that he would later manipulate so remarkably, but King John also shows one particular fully-realised character and some beautiful language. In some of Shakespeare's lesser plays you find yourself making apology for their naked inferiority to his brighter works, but King John has the crackling Bastard Faulconbridge, whose dialogue snaps, and some stirring patriotic passages – not least the final "and we shall shock them" gem which ends the play. Unlike other lesser plays, there's no question in my mind who wrote this one: the Shakespeare voice you know and love is here in the language in a way no one else could be. And while it is objectively a lesser play, it's a compelling piece in understanding Shakespeare's development as a playwright, and therefore of certain value. ...more

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Hemingway's Boat
by Paul Hendrickson

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Only a Hemingway aficionado would even think about picking up this book. But, speaking as such a person myself, I fear Hemingway's Boat is too dense a vessel for even the most committed of fans. While Hemingway's life is already pretty well covered a ...more

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The Wall
by Marlen Haushofer

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An almost preternaturally restful and calming book, Marlen Haushofer's The Wall sees an invisible wall drop over the Alpine valley where the unnamed protagonist resides, leaving her cut off from the wider world – a world which, through some unexplain ...more

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Galahad and the Grail (Merlin's Isle, #1)
by Malcolm Guite (Goodreads Author)

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"And through that shimmer in the air
I seemed to hear a sound,
as though a distant horn were blown
in some lost land that I had known..." (pg. 1)

Two summers ago I visited the ancient city of York and spent so much time walking its antique cobbled street "And through that shimmer in the air
I seemed to hear a sound,
as though a distant horn were blown
in some lost land that I had known..." (pg. 1)

Two summers ago I visited the ancient city of York and spent so much time walking its antique cobbled streets – from the Shambles to the market to the town crier on King's Square, and thence underground to the pungent mud paths of excavated Jorvik, the old Viking settlement – that by the time I reached the great Gothic cathedral of York Minster it was already closed to its final visitors of the day. But in its grace it still provided me with a profound memory. Through the open doors of the cathedral I could see a mass of gentle candlelight amidst the darkness, and beyond them I heard the inimitably peaceful sound of a choir singing, sounding like angels beckoning to a better place.

I mention this because Malcolm Guite's greatest achievement in Galahad and the Grail, the first volume of his poetic epic 'The Arthuriad', is in evoking that Christian resonance of a lost world, an old England that does not exist anymore except in fragile glimpses and protected places. Just as the ethereal spiritual beauty of the notes of that choir in York passed through open doors which I could not enter, and somehow seemed even more achingly beautiful because of that, the world Guite renders in his ballad metre brings the old mystic Britain of Arthurian legend to life, and still tantalisingly out of reach.

The Arthurian legend of course possesses this quality regardless of who writes it – the nobility of Camelot, the loss of Avalon and the desolation of the Wasteland, the spiritual thirst at the quest for the Holy Grail – and when reviewing a book like this one it can be hard to draw a line between where the book is good because of the writer's skill and where it is good because of the underlying strength of the ancient story.

I do confess that my mental stamina did droop intermittently throughout Galahad and the Grail. Guite's poetry is very accessible and easy to read through, such that one is not likely to lose its thread, and readers new to the Arthurian legend will find this an easy point of entry, even though in our modern culture we find poetry in general to be less digestible than our forebears did. But I also found that there were very few lines in Guite that took my breath away, that I underlined or bookmarked, that rung like a bell amidst the general rhythm of the poem. It would be harsh to judge Guite against Milton or Dante or Homer, or even Coleridge or Tennyson, but those are the names and texts that come to mind when we weigh epic poetry in the balance. Considering Guite has lofty ambitions in writing his 'Arthuriad' (which I shall come on to presently), it's not unfair to say that his lines sometimes struggle to take flight, even though Guite is generally successful in both his poetry and his aims for the poem. (Certainly by modern standards of what passes for 'poetry'.)

But this is where my criticism ends, for what Guite does successfully in Galahad and the Grail, and what he will surely continue to do in the three subsequent volumes of his Arthuriad, is remind Britain of its ancient past, and rejuvenate the legend of King Arthur with the purely Christian heart which first animated it. This is deliberate – Guite tells us in his Appendices that he "longed to restore [the] lost element" of the story: the "deep Christian impulse" which had previously been marginalised or erased in previous modern versions (pg. 315). And while the occasional devotional passages may jar somewhat to a secular reader, they add an authenticity, a remembrance of that lost Christian world. Each stanza is a window into a Britain that is so hard to find nowadays, or even recall, and is therefore infinitely more cherishable when it is evoked.

Therefore, while the poetry itself lacks the spark of genius, it is nevertheless of high calibre and thoroughly honest and pure. Guite has rendered to modern ears a first volume of the Arthurian legend that speaks as true as it would have done to countless generations of Britons. Considering the cultural moment as I write in August 2026 involves a serviceable, if colourless and wonderless, film adaptation of The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan, inspired in part by a self-serving, nakedly politicised translation of Homer by Emily Wilson, the fact that Malcolm Guite has achieved such a noble balance in his own curation of a similarly sacrosanct cultural treasure is to be lauded. When Guite does introduce his own sensibilities – such as sprinkling in an ecological theme by bringing naiads and dryads as forest-spirits into the Wasteland – they read like an unintrusive and welcome garnish, a complementary addition to the ongoing folk legend rather than an idolatrous rewrite.

Who writes unashamedly Christian, long-form epic poetry about Arthurian legend in 2026? One would be inclined to say that they don't make them like this anymore. Except Guite has. His first volume of the Arthuriad seems like something borne out of the soil, one that strikes a chord precisely because it settles into its respectful place as part of a long tradition; one that appreciates and honours what came before and seeks to add to it rather than obstruct or revise or diminish. To read its tales of knights and castles is not to think cynically of the age of heraldry and feudalism, but to think of knights and castles as naturally as our ancestors must have thought of them. Guite's spell is such that when I read the book's earnest Christian implorations it did not cross my mind to question them, let alone scoff atheistically at them, but to accept them as part of the wonderful tapestry of myth and history I have inherited as a Saxon and a Briton and a cultural Christian. Galahad and the Grail is a wonderful way to revisit the evergreen Arthurian legend, and while I don't believe Guite's lines will stay with me in the long-term, the spirit they evoke make the book greater than the sum of its parts. To begin his Arthuriad is to step into a cool and ancient stream. ...more

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Von Stuck
by Eva Mendgen

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An astute and compelling overview of the career of German painter and sculptor Franz von Stuck. Stuck was active between the 1880s and the 1920s in Munich and his strange, dark, unsettling paintings first caught my eye with 'The Wild Hunt', the centr ...more

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Lullaby Road (Ben Jones, #2)
by James Anderson (Goodreads Author)

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While it takes a full half of its page count to really find a gear, Lullaby Road proved, by its end, to be a welcome if unnecessary follow-up to The Never-Open Desert Diner. That first book by author James Anderson was a surprising success that suite ...more

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Speak For England
by James Hawes

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Ever rumbling but never really capable of bursting free, Speak for England is a neat idea that doesn't find its mojo. A man lost from an extreme reality-TV show in the jungle stumbles upon a lost colony of English people who survived a plane crash in Ever rumbling but never really capable of bursting free, Speak for England is a neat idea that doesn't find its mojo. A man lost from an extreme reality-TV show in the jungle stumbles upon a lost colony of English people who survived a plane crash in the 1950s. They have been keeping the flame of 'merry old England' – the clichéd six-of-the-best, give-Hun-a-thrashing, crickets-on-the-lawn stuff – alive in their isolation, making this corner of a foreign field forever England.

This promises a satire: Lost Horizon crossed with the sort of self-satisfied humorous political-sketch work you can still find hanging on in the broadsheets like a Wimpy's on a forgotten A-road, although author James Hawes is never really clear as to which of the two Englands is being satirised: the bluster and ra-ra of 'Old England' or the false vigour and metropolitan façade which characterised the country of the then-current New Labour (the book was released in 2005).

I was braced for the former, for a centre-left metropolitan writer composing a smug, snarky mockery of all that England was before it was bottomed out and sold off. Happily, I can say this was not the case, and you are never quite sure where Hawes' loyalties lie. There's more nuance and grace here than I expected: if England is excessively proud of its past, Hawes is at least decent enough to recognise there was something to be proud of.

But while I was pleased to find that Speak for England was not a self-satisfied hatchet-job, I did find it puzzling to try to determine what the book was actually trying to do. It's not deep enough to survive solely as story – while the premise is interesting, it's not fleshed out enough to be an adventure, and the flippant comic tone prevents its characters from ever becoming more than caricatures: the craven, divorced sad-sack protagonist who Hawes never allows to grow a spine; the dotty sex vixen who Hawes is happy to have lie on her back without any apparent thought or calculation; the stern 'Headmaster' who is never as dangerous or charismatic as his role in the plot requires.

And while this story is pleasant enough to amuse for a few sittings – it evokes some of that residual charm of a lost England, more secure and chipper and boyishly confident than our current iteration – your mind is always drawn away to think about what the author is actually trying to communicate, for Speak for England is clearly geared to being a satire, a message about… something. Is it nostalgia being skewered here – that English sickness of hankering after our glorious past which prevents us from addressing our current problems – or is it our modern cynicism – our cultural ennui and gloom and sense of decline, which would so disappoint our industrious and war-like forebears? In the end, it doesn't matter, because my verdict is that the book reaches its end with things being prodded but nothing ever really in danger of being punctured. ...more

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The Fortune of War (Aubrey & Maturin #6)
by Patrick O'Brian

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"Jack cut the thread and handed back the mended coat; he looked out of the window, where the Shannon's top-sails winked in the evening light, and said, 'Dear Lord above, how I do wish I could set you clear of all this dirty, ugly, underhanded mess: h "Jack cut the thread and handed back the mended coat; he looked out of the window, where the Shannon's top-sails winked in the evening light, and said, 'Dear Lord above, how I do wish I could set you clear of all this dirty, ugly, underhanded mess: how I long for the open sea.'" (pp236-7)

While I initially intended to label The Fortune of War as just another solid entry into the Aubrey-Maturin naval adventure series, the same as I had for the previous five, upon reflection I realised that this book actually moved the needle for me. And no, it's not just because this is the book that gives us the glorious "lesser of two weevils" joke (pp54-5) that the 2003 Master and Commander film so gleefully re-enacted.

On the face of it, the experience of The Fortune of War is much the same as for this charming series so far: excellent characterisation flavoured with keen dialogue and infrequent though resolutely engaging naval action, held back from being truly loved by often-heavy prosing, less-than-clear storytelling beats (a blink-and-you'll-miss-it explanation for why the Java catches fire) and an indulgence of aspects of the story that interest me less (in essence, anything that takes place on land).

And while I had the same experience as with the previous books, The Fortune of War benefits from two new developments. One is that, by the time of this sixth book, I have learned that the Aubrey-Maturin books are best read with a gliding eye. I have come to understand how to approach the series, to extract the maximum nourishment from them with the minimum of encumberment. Sure, there are moments where the wind leaves my sails (again, pretty much anything on land, or involving Diana) but I consider these now a small price to pay for the priceless moments when the wind fills: the crack of dialogue as we approach battle, the stirring blow-by-blow telling of the naval engagements themselves.

But The Fortune of War also benefits from the fact that author Patrick O'Brian is trying to do something different, while still maintaining the pleasing conservatism of naval adventure. This is the first book in which one of our two protagonists, Jack Aubrey, is not in command of a ship; he is a passenger on the two British ships he sails on here and a prisoner on the American. This could be fatal for our interest, as these books often struggle when on land, but Stephen Maturin's espionage in Boston proves shockingly and thrillingly ruthless (pg. 248), showing us a side of him we have not seen before. Of the two naval actions here, the first is a humiliating defeat for the storied British against their upstart American juniors; with the second action coming at the very end of the novel, a gloom of defeat, imprisonment and wounded pride looms over much of The Fortune of War. Because of these two changes of tack by the author, both the de-captained Jack and the glory-thirsty reader spend most of their time humbled and with an opportunity to self-reflect.

This is to the book's advantage: the reset of the board is bracing and well-executed, giving both Aubrey and Maturin space to breathe, and makes it all the more cherishable when that second naval action ends the book. It's a distinctly British victory: though fighting a larger ship, the British captain sends a letter to his American counterpart in harbour, politely asking him to try their ships against one another in the open sea, before gently escorting the lady travelling aboard into a more secure area of the ship and apologising in advance for any noise she might hear. It sounds like surreal behaviour, but such is the author's skill in historical verisimilitude that this old world of martial energy, remarkable customs and sincere honour comes alive, and what's more proves a fine antidote to our own jaded, cynical and dishonourable times. The Aubrey-Maturin books have always had that authenticity, that ability to cast us back in time, but The Fortune of War was the first where I truly realised just how much I value it.

"'Golden days, Doctor, golden days,' said the master of La Flèche to Stephen Maturin." (pg. 71) ...more

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Shadow Divers: How Two Men Discovered Hitler's Lost Sub and Solved One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson (2005-08-15)
by Robert Kurson (Goodreads Author)

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A book to tear through, Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers is an excellent example of narrative non-fiction. It tells the story of the discovery of an unidentified U-boat off the New Jersey coast in the 1990s, a deep and dangerous wreck that comes to clai ...more

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Stations of the Angels by Raymond St. Elmo

Stations of the Angels (Texas Pentagraph #2)
by Raymond St. Elmo (Goodreads Author)

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"… to each is entrusted a Message they shall deliver but never read, except by perceiving the Dance of all the rest of Creation." (pg. 231)

The first Raymond St. Elmo book I've truly struggled with, and this may be because it is the one book of his I' "… to each is entrusted a Message they shall deliver but never read, except by perceiving the Dance of all the rest of Creation." (pg. 231)

The first Raymond St. Elmo book I've truly struggled with, and this may be because it is the one book of his I've read so far which goes so uncompromisingly into magical realism. I confess that this genre has never been to my tastes, but despite this I've enjoyed all the St. Elmo books I've read due to their quality, invention and freshness. Stations of the Angels is all of these things too, but for better or worse does not tailor itself for a wider audience.

It's the second of St. Elmo's five-part Texas Pentagraph series about an eccentric concentration of Texan ~~hicksvilles~~ rural townships, effectively a playground for the author's fantastical, idiosyncratic ideas. Stations of the Angels is the one book in this series that lacks an identifiable plot or protagonist, and this is what makes it hardest to access for a reader like myself who is not naturally enamoured of magical realism. Stations is less a story than an informed collection of character-based vignettes following people in their singular houses in the town of Angelica (one house is perpetually on fire, another is haunted, another has a lion, etc.).

It's St. Elmo's Cannery Row, and while I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of this (particularly at the end), as well as inspired, amusing moments like the teacher's seemingly baffled marking of Clarence's social studies report (pp63-6), the book did not charm enough to break through my deep-set limiters for magical realism. Happily, however, the five books of this series do not need to be read in order, and I haven't done so. I've now read all five and I'm pleased to say that despite not warming to Stations of the Angels, the next book (Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts) is a favourite of mine, a winsome small-town story at the nexus between literature and entertainment, and the final two books are also strong. Having cycled through the whole Texas Pentagraph in my own unorthodox way, I can conclude that it's well worth the time investing in it. ...more

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