Jayaprakash鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

11,014

pages read

books read

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

The marble cake cat by Marjorie N. Allen

Shortest Book

pages

Longest Book

482

pages

Average book length in 2024

220

pages

Most Shelved

886,311

people also shelved

A Little Orphic Initiation by Cory C. Childs

Least Shelved

people also shelved

Jayaprakash鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.7

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

it was amazing

5.00 average

The Classified Dossier by Christian Klaver

Jayaprakash鈥檚 first review of the year

liked it

Titan Books have been specialising in licensed properties and such for a while. On a scale from fanfic scribbled on your late 90s LJ to Kim Newman/Philip Jose Farmer, this is a 2.5 but I'll round up.

The biggest problem is the wordy, clunky style. Arthur Conan Doyle was no Hemingway but he never padded his prose out and his diction was never awkward.

Then there's the need to force fit Moriarty. Moriarty features in almost none of the canon and didn ...more

闯础驰础笔搁础碍础厂贬鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

it was amazing

The Bells at Old Bailey by Dorothy Bowers

When You Leave I Disappear by David Niall Wilson

Why Marianne Faithfull Matters by Tanya Pearson

it was amazing

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

The Riverside Villas Murder by Kingsley Amis

Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

it was amazing

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie

it was amazing

The Ballroom of Romance and Other Stories by William Trevor

The Mystery of the Nervous Lion by Nick West

An Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley

it was amazing

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

liked it

Jayaprakash鈥檚 last review of the year

liked it

This novel centres on Iris Whittle, who works in a dollmaker's shop, painting and dressing porcelain dolls and also serving as a salesgirl. Not quite a doll factory, but to an extent the novel's title also has a thematic purpose, signposting the various ways women in particular might be turned into effigies, objects of display. Whether represented as dolls, or in works of fine art, such as those created by the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, who at t This novel centres on Iris Whittle, who works in a dollmaker's shop, painting and dressing porcelain dolls and also serving as a salesgirl. Not quite a doll factory, but to an extent the novel's title also has a thematic purpose, signposting the various ways women in particular might be turned into effigies, objects of display. Whether represented as dolls, or in works of fine art, such as those created by the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, who at the time of this novel's events, were still a scrappy band of rebel artists. Iris and her sister dream of saving up enough money to open a little shop of their own some day. Iris also draws and paints, running afoul of her sister for creating a nude self portrait. Then, she catches the eye of one of the PRB, and agrees to model for him in return for a much better salary than the doll shop gives her, and art lessons. The sisters are now estranged, modelling being a step away from sex worth according to the morals of the times. At the same time, a taxidermist named Silas, a solitary, sinister misfit, has also set his eyes on Iris, who reminds him of a long-lost love. There's a lot of parallel depictions of their encounters, which are fraught with meaning for Silas and peripheral for Iris, who is blossoming as an artist and also falling in love with the painter, Louis.
This novel is firmly set in the grimiest alleys and closes of mid 19th century Victorian London. The stink and noise almost waft out of the pages. The thread of Lily's artistic awakening and her fragile love with Louis are a rare leavening in this grim milieu. This sort of woman centric, feminist historical novel is having a moment now, and Macneal does a good job of not down playing the obstacles an intelligent, ambitious, yet poverty stricken woman faced. Less realistic is Lily's grasp of English. She and her immediate family seem to have quite a refined and extensive vocabulary, and perfect spelling.
In the last third of this novel, everything goes awry as Louis travels back to Edinburgh to be with his dying wife, and Silas finally abducts the object of his obsession. The situation that ensues is similar to that in The Collector by John Fowles. I'd consider all this far fetched, except we know that such things have happened in real life, more than once.
The other characters all fall away (in one tragic instance, die) at this point and it becomes a war of wills between crazed, murderous Silas and Lily, imprisoned in a cellar. The novel felt a little unsatisfying here because we see how Lily escapes, but are given no sense of whether she reunites with the remaining people who mattered to her, except what we can infer from an epilogue. An odd choice that I almost respect.
This novel reeks with squalour, yet sings with art. It's gripping enough, yet for all the historical detail (I hadn't heard of Waterloo teeth before) it feels a bit unfinished, a bit slapped together. It is a debut novel though, and I might try the author's subsequent novels because there's something in this mix that still works. ...more

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