Books Acquired:
Messiah, Gore Vidal
The Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess

Books Offloaded:
A Few Fiends to Tea, Virginia Coffman
The Watch Below, James White

Progress Made:
The Old Devils, Kingsley Amis
VALIS, Philip K. Dick
The Black Count, Tom Reiss

Books Finished:
A Few Fiends to Tea, Virginia Coffman
The Watch Below, James White

I almost gave up on The Watch Below several times because, though its central premise — parallel stories of a) Earthlings trapped in a wrecked ship at the bottom of the ocean, and b) an aquatic alien race having its own misadventures en route to our world, the two destined to meet — is an intriguing one, the execution of it is often clumsy and sometimes downright preposterous. We are asked to believe that a group of people sealed in an airtight compartment in a sunken ocean liner remain there, not for weeks or months, but for decades, through a series of generations. Any real humans would have fairly quickly found a way to escape their predicament, or died trying — but that does not suit White’s conceit. So he goes through great contortions to make such a scenario seem logistically possible (the ship happened to be carrying a large supply of food, for instance), despite the fact that it is psychologically absurd.

It was pretty short, though, and landed well. So no regrets.

A Few Fiends to Tea, a British suspense novel, likewise has an enticing overall arc — a dying man decides to use his last months to rid the world of evil people who have evaded justice for one reason or another — but tries one’s suspension of disbelief in its details. Still, it was light in tone and pleasingly arch, and served its purpose as travel reading on a trip to Hilton Head, Savannah, and Nashville. Then it went into the airport box along with The Watch Below.

Both VALIS and The Black Count are within easy finishing distance, but I got sidetracked by The Old Devils, which for whatever reason hit me right in that sweet spot where I didn’t want to read anything else. Set in Wales among a group of old friends — “friends” may not be the word; cohorts? peers? associates? “frenemies” seems accurate, if anachronistic — TOD is familiar enough to follow, but foreign enough to feel exotic. From pub to pub and house to house, half a dozen couples swill liquor and throw shade, with allegiances and grudges constantly in flux.

There is a distinct White Lotus quality here. These people may not be rich, exactly, but they certainly seem to have a lot of leisure time, which they mostly use getting plastered and behaving passive-aggressively. But as with White Lotus, they are recognizably human and you mostly think, there but for the grace of God….

This is another Amis book where alcohol is a main character, maybe the main character; the humans each get their moment in the limelight, but the booze is omnipresent. Everyone imbibes more or less constantly as a matter of course. Sir Kingsley evinces the drinking man’s delight in recounting the doings of people who drink more than he does, and this enthusiasm is contagious. (I just realized that I don’t actually know if Kingsley was ever knighted… I just got into the habit of calling him that… and I’m certainly not going to check now. In my opinion he deserves it, regardless.)

Check out the loving detail in this passage describing one man’s preparations for a weekend trip:

First into the cargo-space went, in quick time, a carton of drinkables: twelve-year-old Scotch, classy spring water to put in it, gin, tonics, a rare bottle of Linie-Aquavit from Oslo, a much commoner bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, ostensibly for Rhiannon, in fact no more than chiefly for her, one each of Asti Spumante and Golden Sweet Malaga absolutely solely for her, four large cold Special Brews in wet newspaper for him, and a spot of coffee liqueur and other muck he could not face simply throwing out of the house.

For extra credit, compare/contrast with the passage from Kingsley’s son’s book Dead Babies — written a decade earlier, FWIW — that I posted back in October.

Nothing much happens for most of The Old Devils and yet I find it riveting; as of this writing I’ve wolfed down 361 of its 384 pages. That gives me a good head start on May, which looks to be a good reading, and maybe writing, month. Hope springs eternal, they say, and there’s a reason they use that word. Spring, I mean. When the days are getting longer and the temperature warmer, possibilities begin to manifest. I wonder what the future holds?