Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

I’ve been meaning to read Brave New World for years, and I wish I’d done so sooner – this novel is intriguing, disturbing and surprisingly engaging as well. The reader is shown round a world in which technological progression has reached the point at which babies are replicated in bottles, growth stunted or assisted according to their destined caste, and then conditioned as children to believe as their caste should. Everybody is happy because they have no wish to be anything other than they are – and when they are unhappy, there is the intoxicating drug soma to distract them for a while.

Bernard Marx, however, is a misfit, trying to reject the ideals of instant gratification and mindless enjoyment and to think, and feel, for himself. When he brings a ‘savage’ back from a reservation outside their utopia, questions start to be asked and human passions begin to cause turmoil in the stagnant, content society.

The main characters are well-developed and interesting, as well as the overarching ideas, and the way Huxley’s society in this novel views the human past with revulsion forms a challenging reversal of viewpoint. Brave New World strikes a disturbingly relevant note in our own increasingly materialistic, instant-gratification-demanding world, and really makes you rethink your values.

Overall, very thought-provoking and well worth a read, if you haven’t already. Also, I have no idea what's meant to be on the cover of my edition. I think I can see a face, but maybe I'm just imagining it? Guesses welcome below!

Next up: The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry

Absolution by Murder - Peter Tremayne

664AD has to be the earliest-set detective story I’ve read so far. Absolution by Murder is set during the Synod of Whitby, where religious delegates from the rival Christian factions of Rome and Iona met to decide the future of the kingdom of Northumbria. When a visiting Irish abbess is discovered in her room with her throat cut, Sister Fidelma, an Irish religieuse qualified to investigate legal matters in her own country, is asked to find the killer. Alongside a Saxon Brother, Eadulf, she races to uncover the murderer before rumours between the two factions spark a civil war.

Initially I found this novel difficult to get into, as the beginning is extremely heavy on early medieval religious history and politics, and the unfamiliar Saxon names also made it easy for me to mix up some of the characters. Once the action had really started, however, it became much more enjoyable.

Sister Fidelma is a refreshingly strong, forthright female detective, not taking sidekick position to her male counterpart, and refusing to defer to the expectations of the men she interacts with. Apparently this sexual equality is historically accurate, which makes a pleasant change to modern values being copied and pasted onto historical situations.

Overall, rather a slow start, but bear with it and it’s definitely worth it – enjoyable and intriguing reading, with plenty of historical ambiance.

Next up: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley