Benighted, Kit Whitfield
I suggested a book at the library, assuming they’d never bother with it — I suggest a few dozen books a year, and mostly I get the ones that everyone suggests, the Alice Munro, the Margaret Atwood, the Ruth Rendell. (I suggest these because then I am automagically put on the hold list when they do get the books.) This one is a fantasy book, so I was sure they wouldn’t buy it. But they did (and shelved it — weirdly — in fiction, probably because people read books that are fiction but not fantasy — everything that’s not explicitly about future worlds or space travel (and a lot that is) seems to be put in fiction).
The book is Kit Whitfield’s Benighted, a mystery, I think, in a world where most people are werewolves. I know, it sounds horrible, but it’s incredibly engaging — I am riveted, more than usual by a book, I can barely put it down. (I am about halfway through it; I started it late this afternoon.) It’s sad, so far; the world is sad and horrible, the social issues are divisive, the people are unintentionally cruel. (In this, it reminds me a bit of China Mieville’s work.) And yet, it’s mesmerising.
I don’t know if I’ll blog this book once I’m done (I’ve more or less stopped blogging books, which I called blooking at first: good word!). But I will absolutely remember — and recommend — it.