'The Seed Collectors' by Scarlett Thomas or the vanilla-pod enlightenment mystery tour

Scarlett Thomas, I salute you! I salute your mastery of our lexicon. I salute your dedication to the research process. I salute the big questions your books always ask. I salute your evolving and exploratory approach to your writing. I salute your storytelling skills! If writing stories was my talent, I would be learning from the best at the University of Kent.

Thankfully, you are writing the sort of stories I long to read. Ever since being mesmerised by 'The End of Mr Y', I have been savouring your works and recommending them to everyone and anyone: including my Mother! How often, as an adult, do you read a book in which your imagination is so ignited that you actually feel it with all of your senses? The pages literally fizzed and the edges faded into a brown, circular vortex- transporting me (via some sort of literary black- hole akin to the tunnel Alice enters wonderland via) to the troposphere. It is a rare and accomplished masterpiece. 'Pop Co' asked big questions about the way our consumerist, capitalist monstrosity of a society operates without losing an inch of the narrative pace it's gripping plot presented. The non-story approach of 'Our Tragic Universe' delighted me in its delivery and in the way it framed questions about the meaning our lives hold: is everything meaningless in the end? While all of these books are unique, they share a sense of mystery and intrigue, an ability to expose us to new concepts and philosophies that challenge us as readers and leave us ruminating for a long time afterwards: they all delight. You always have something valid to say and you say it well.

While 'The Seed Collectors' is of course different to your preceding works (as of course it would be) it does not disappoint. It's narrative flow reminded me a little of Woolf and her 'stream of consciousness' approach, something that really frees the writing up and allows you to deliver your meaning more effortlessly. Your study of ethnobotany infuses your writing on many levels. I am in awe of the many unusual and unexpected characteristics that plants manifest, in their battle to survive and how their deployment mirrors the human need to survive or perfect themselves as writ large in the vanishing nature of your generational protagonists. You do not shy away from exploring primal or base desires in your characters, despite the fact this may repel the audience- yet when you consider this more deeply, it mirrors the need we have to reproduce and propagate, which plants do unashamedly. Is the walking palm really so different to Charlie Gardner? Both are adapting to the challenges that are thrown their way.

Yet where plants are purely primal, the boundary that is created in contrast to human motivation is where the greatest opportunity for rumination occurs. In stages, the novel explores the secrets that all the characters hold: the private drives and insecurities that they manifest in their own destructive ways, instead allow us to transcend our human existence and consider even bigger questions relating to spirituality and enlightenment. This is tightly mirrored in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the parents of the main protagonists and their quest for a pod of magical propensities.

This exploration of enlightenment blew my mind all the more, in light of the synchronicity it threw upon my own current experiences. A friend recently felt compelled to purchase us both a book, despite it creeping her out for reasons unfathomable: 'The Autobiography of a Yogi'. She felt it was something to do with my deceased Gramphs- made all the more uncanny by the fact it was a book I had been thinking about, of his that I had perused many years before, one that felt like it spoke with some omnipresent voice in its exploration of enlightenment and had forgotten even what it was called.To my furtive imagination, this book feels like a gift from the other side: a focus from the most enlightened person I have ever encountered. I can imagine my yoga loving, Transendental Meditational Gramphs whispering 'read this girl, it will put you on the right path'. Imagine the resonance then, of being stuck at the point of Yoganada's work that states that life is an illusion (a maya), a prison of your own making that you must see beyond in order to reach enlightenment and immortality (not being distracted by the material world) when reading 'The Seed Collectors'. Perhaps these books are my own mysterious pod, indeed missing manuscript and the key to my own enlightenment! 

Perhaps I do have a story in me after all... An imperfect girl finding her way in an imperfect world, just like the Gardners. Namaste 

'The Watchers' by Neil Spring or tin foil has never been this scary..

Well that was a whirlwind of a page turner! I have to say that it blew me away. Perhaps I wasn't as excited as I should have been, with it's enticing premise, due to my prior excitement being dashed on reading 'The Ghost Hunters' (whose premise ticked every box on paper, but just didn't work for me). But what a read! From reading the first chapter, I could not put it down. I devoured it in under 24 hours, which is testament to its narrative power. Neil Spring is clearly one to watch, and reminds me that it always pays to give writers you think you should like another shot (David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' to 'The Bone Clocks' being a case in point- couldn't get into 'Cloud Atlas' but 'The Bone Clocks' is up there with the greats).

I have to say that the thought of reading a spooky story about Aliens/Ufos really isn't my bag. However, the enticing cover, with its monochrome lighthouse drew me in (proving that covers can help you judge a book). On realising that the novel drew on the very sightings in 70s Wales that had terrified me, as an impressionable infant, sneaking reads of my Gramphs' Unexplained magazines, I was sold. Alongside the Enfield poltergeist and Gef the talking mongoose (fertile subject matter Neil could ably explore) events in the Havens totally shit me up, sleeping with the covers pulled over my eyes style. These days I am able to style my fear out much better, most likely due to desensitising myself to all things supernaturally scary by reading/watching/exploring anything with a spooky theme! Rarely do things scare me. While Neil succeeded with giving me chills, perhaps this novel worked so well because it didn't attempt to neatly define itself as one genre. The suspense that pulsed through it carried the story, and while lingering on some of the alien interplay would have suited my own tastes, not focusing deeply on them did not detract from the story in any way.

That said, the menace of Stack Rocks really seeped through, as did Taid Llewelyn's Religious fervour and the hostility of a remote and insular community. You could really feel the wind chimes rattling, warning of an unknown threat descending. Despite some outlandish concepts, such as animal mutilation and secret societies deep in Whitehall your belief is totally suspended and they are woven together so effortlessly that you don't question the explanation offered by way of the developing plot. Roberts own doubts and psychological clouding, due to blocked childhood trauma, are a great device for delivering the story. His confusion and probing mirrors ours as the audience and allows us to assess the evidence as it is revealed in increments, allowing us to remain vested in a plot that could seem ridiculous if delivered in a more straightforward manner. This to me, highlights the crux of how Spring has developed as a writer- showing confidence and mastery when he delivers his story and delivering more than a great premise. While 'The Ghost Hunters' will clearly make great TV, this has the potential to be even better! I can't wait to see what Mr Spring will deliver next

The Man in the Picture- or never wanting to visit Venice, ever...

'The Man in the Picture' by Susan Hill

Well, I actually started my halloween- themed reading challenge.

I will let you take that in for a moment.

Yes, I am still in shock myself! Like all keen readers, though, I did manage a few detours through that precarious and teetering to read tower. In fairness, my three distraction reads could end up replacing some of the titles I have pre-selected to make up this challenge, so we shall see how the next week fairs. Jeanette Winterson's 'The Daylight Gate' was suitably creepy, like the Trio of Witches from that Scottish play writ large but transported to Pendleton Hill; Phil Rickman's first novel in the Merrily Watkins series (thank you Anna Maxwell-Martin for introducing her so well on screen), 'The Wine if Angels' was an eerie countryside crime caper centring on its Vicaress protagonist's spiritual struggles in her new diocese and it's twisted apple trees; and Neil Spring's 'The Watchers' blew me away, in the way I wished his previous work 'The Ghost Hunters' had, with its gripping exploration of extra-terrestrial events in South Wales circa 1970s (a subject that has creeped me out since reading about it in my Gramphs 'Unexplained' magazines).

More of that later, though. Susan Hill, what can I say? She expertly builds a sense of unease, the shiver down the spine, the raised hair on the arm and the furtive need to lift ones head, quickly, from the pages of the story to check that no one or no thing is watching you as your pulse quickens and your eyes widen. She expertly frames the tale within a Jamesian tradition. Elderly fireside narrators do not seem cliched, when you are so skilled at delivering your story that the dread builds in increments. Indeed, the plot works so well precisely because it is placed in a time just beyond the reach of modernity. Where darkness speaks its threat more intently, because it cannot hide beyond the comfort of bustling 24 hour living. Where it can be banished by the flicking of a light switch. Or the dialling of a mobile phone. So much more effective than the sepia- tinged halo that a gas lamp enables. Mobile telephony is like having your own personal exorcist to hand! One click fear banishment.

Yet Theo Parminter and ultimately the unsuspecting Oliver, to whom Theo unburdens his creeping curse onto via the sharing of his uneasy story are not afforded our luxuries. Instead their fears are heightened by the debilitating frailty and infirmity faced by the ageing, by the deserted rooms of University halls and the streets emptied by both the dismal weather winter promotes and the festive setting we associate with such haunting tales. In many ways loneliness is the real fear that underpins this tale, and is perhaps why Hill is usually so effective at writing haunting Novellas. She always allows us to relate to the fears she explores and roots them in reality, rather than opting purely for the fantastical. This is why we can swallow notions of haunted pictures (or dolls, or country houses, or marshlands for that matter) because the fears she explores are precisely our fears!

Yet, while I appreciate the ominous threat the picture contains and the mysterious desire that is expressed by an unknown party wishing obtain the painting, I have to say that the denouement was far from satisfying. Much like Germaine Greers' recent controversial comments about why Caitlin Jenner wishes to be a woman (for her part she proffers that she wishes to steal her step daughters fame for herself), I feel that this story also touches on some unexplored part of a complex issue that needs further consideration or explanation to be properly understood. Just as Caitlin Jenners' transformation, likely has more complex roots (something I think Greer is touching on but not exploring on in enough depth) so too does this tale with its focus on a scorned woman who is not satisfied with destroying the lives of those who have wronged her, but continuing to destroy the lives of those who own the painting. This aspect of the tale did not work for me, especially as it exactly mirrors the malign malice so expertly explored at Eel Marsh House. To rely on this again, instead, for me as a reader anyway, made me focus too much on the intent of the malice and in turn the writers exploration of it. More precicesly, why does Hill chose to explore it again? It makes it seem obsessive, yet the focus is misplaced from story to authoress. Perhaps this is the point. For my part, I would have preferred further clarification as to why this woman would want to harm others, especially when she has enacted her revenge. It also throws into question why Oliver is burdened by his jovial and much loved Professor to such devastating effect. Did he attempt to unburden himself? Are we all a little dark and twisted?

Unsettling and unclear, this uncanny tale leaves questions unanswered and you will wonder all the more about all our motivations and how deep they really are and the Venetian masks we wear...