South and West by Joan Didion (2017)

 This is a very short book, covering some notes Didion took towards magazine pieces that never happened, and some additional memories from much later on. It's divided into two sections, one on the South and one, much shorter, on California. She goes back to the South with her husband in 1970, for the first time since visiting her father where he was stationed in North Carolina in 1942, when she was a child. I can imagine that this part has what might be politely termed a mixed reputation in the South itself. It is not entirely, in fact quite rarely, complimentary. Some of the criticisms are associated with conservatism and prejudice and seem entirely fair, but others feel prejudiced themselves and to be narrow views of the social spread of the region. But there's no doubt that it's an evocative view, with rich colour built into its picture of those small towns and cities. The comparison it brings to my mind are those Youtube videos of almost abandoned American small towns, where most of the main street is empty and tumbledown. My thought is that Didion was seeing some of these while they were still fully functioning, in fact probably just as their death warrants were being signed by oncoming neoliberal decay. It's also good to experience her work without overshadowing melancholy - the books on the death of her husband and daughter and her own ageing had a current of tension and lowering. The part on California is tiny, only a few pages, and basically simply says "I feel comfortable here". Too little to it. I'm not sure what was happening with the publication of this book; it seems too minimal to amount to one. The part on the South could have been expanded upon, perhaps, if she'd felt travel-able at that period? A bit thin, but the main part has flavour.

Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo (2000)

 This is one of those books which has a personal nostalgia-stamp on it. The group of London bookselling "hipsters" with which I was aligned at the turn of the century would have had reading it as a badge of recognition, if it had been available in translation then. It soon was, in 2003, in its first edition. Subsequently, this has been revised a couple of times. The original translation's title also followed the original much more closely: Not Before Sundown. Hipness is the thing which denotes it. It's the story of a young gay Finnish 'creative', living in Tampere, coming home from clubbing and sexual frustration, seeing in his apartment building's grotty, winter-windswept yard a group of youths bothering cruelly something in their midst. His intrusion and that of the 'concierge' of the building scatters them eventually. When the concierge retreats, satisfied, the creative homes in on what it was they were torturing. It's a troll: in these pages, that's a cat-bear-like creature, with humanish characteristics. This one is weak and skinny and whimpery, but silky-black-haired and fascinating. He's astonished, because in this world trolls are real, yes, but they are rarely seen, another dwindling species of the forest, forced into contact very occasionally with humans as a result of habitat-reduction. Myths abound about them, including all sorts of urban fantasms like "human" behaviour and influence over some people to the point of their being lost, having joined the troll-world. Enthralled, Angel (actually Mikael) takes the troll to his flat and tries to look after him. Angel is very good-looking, and twisted up in connections in his set, which includes ad executives, other creatives, and, handily, a vet. Some of them fancy him unrequitedly, sometimes it's the other way round. Angel names the troll Pessi, after a troll character in a book he read when he was young. He keeps Pessi's existence a secret, going through a worrying and hazardous process of trying to get him to eat and be well, as he seems almost to have given up on his life, having had too hard a time. Finally, with some convenient lies, he enlists at one remove the help of the vet, and, crucially, another character, a Filipino woman living downstairs with her abusive Finnish partner. Palomita is pretty well a prisoner, and only goes out to buy groceries or perform errands. Pentti keeps strong tabs on her, uses her sexually very harshly, and explodes if anything she says or does contradicts his ideas. She keeps tabs on the stairs of the building through the spyhole in her front door, and so sees Angel going back and forth. She provides some cat food for Angel's recalcitrant "pet", which she has never seen, early on, and thus begins a connection which is much more important in her eyes than his. Not knowing his predilections, she falls for him, and sees him as a potential rescuer. The novel veers into dangerous territory from here, as Pessi recovers and begins to flourish. Firstly, Angel seems to be erotically fascinated by him. I'm glad Sinisalo only took that so far; I was dreading some sort of "groover-analysis" of bestiality. But also, Angel takes some photographs of Pessi (photographic design in his stock in trade) which turn out magnificently, treated a bit with heavy contrast and dramatising effects. He has been asked by a seemingly straight chap he fancies enormously to come up with something for a jeans company's campaign. This is in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book, where characters are realistically mixed in their motivations, both selfish and caring by turns. The photographs were a playful punt - he puts the sample jeans onto Pessi and tries the shots, not necessarily expecting too much. He is so impressed by them that he decides to claim that they're complete fabrications based on his brother's photos of wild trolls. Martes, the ad executive, is blown away too. The campaign is a huge success and earns both a load of cash. A little bit later, Martes has another of these moments of unscrupulousness and uses one of the other shots for a sporting club's logo. Angel hasn't been asked or informed. He explodes in anger. Through this period, he has been casually getting together with Ecke, who is besotted with him. Returning to his own flat from Ecke's, angry after the revelation of Martes' perfidy, Angel forgets his keys. Ecke realises, and decides that now is the time to finally see Angel's flat, which has been denied him; he doesn't know why. Strangely, Angel isn't home yet. He goes in, thinking he'll surprise him. Angel has been waylaid downstairs with Palomita, who is trying everything she can to get this handsome young chap to see her. Unfortunately, Pentti comes home unexpectedly, and there's not only anger, but a wallop of course. Angel is thrown outside, but goodness knows what Palomita will now go through within. Angel stumbles upstairs with the master key he's got from the concierge. He finds inside a scene of horror. Pessi has seen Ecke as an invader of he and Angel's exclusive territory. Blood everywhere, Ecke dead on the floor, throat ripped open. Then there's a short denouement with police being called, the vet being pressganged into forensic-style work. Angel has disappeared, presumed a killer, though there were stories of a creature in the flat as well. We spend the last chapter with Angel, carrying a wrapped Pessi in his arms, taking a taxi and then proceeding on foot into some wilder woods which border a forest reserve. Here, in dubious light, a large male troll meets them, brandishing a gun (!). Pessi is bouncing all round him, excited and enthusiastic - is he Pessi's father / 'tribal' leader? He and Angel are led deep into the wilds, silently, like black shadows entering a netherworld. Finally, under the low branches of a spruce, two more shadow-forms emerge from a tiny space between two rocks, the only light the last sunrays, interrupted and speckled. The large troll gestures with the gun, unmistakably, and Angel joins them all, slipping between the rocks into - ? This summary is the best of this piece. I didn't care a great deal about the characters, with the notable exception of Palomita - sad not to know what became of her, and to think of her once again shattered expectations, let alone what Pentti may have done to her. There's an unresolved element of this whole piece for me, regarding exploitation. There are 'quotes' from historical works mentioning trolls interspersed throughout, some invented and some real, I'm guessing, which generally don't do a lot, and could have been dispensed with, apart from perhaps a couple of epigraphs to the parts. So, a mixed story, of potential and slight misfires. As it's her first novel, I wonder whether she's refined these aspects in later works.