El desastre sanitario

 

No quiero que sea personal, pero claro es personal, y también político. Llevo en este pueblo desde marzo 2019 y en ese tiempo en mi centro sanitario he tenido al menos 4 médicos de cabecera. La última empezó hace un par de meses y al estar de baja de maternidad, y no la han sustituido. Hace 3 semanas tuve un trombo en la rodilla derecha, es mi tercer trombo y su origen, a diferencia de los otras dos, está sin identificar. Tengo 58 años y la suficiente capacidad para saber que esto no es bueno. La falta de continuidad con un médico de cabecera está afectando directamente mi vida, quiero cambiar de hematóloga, pues tengo que pasar por el médico de cabecera, ¿que quiero renovar una receta? Médico de cabecera. ¿Que quiero que alguien valide las recetas que me ha hecho el hematólogo privado? Médico de cabecera y así… 

No entiendo cómo esto se pueda justificar. Pero sin embargo en la Comunidad Valenciana parece que es normal y a nadie importa, parece que les importa más el nivel de valenciano de los médicos que el bienestar de sus ciudadanos. Huelga decir que a mí que mi medico hable o no valenciano me importa un Amaranthus blitum. Recientemente se ha retirado la ministra de sanidad del gobierno regional y ha sido sustituida por otro tío, pues a ver si hace algo porque aquí los que estamos sin un cuidado de primaria decente estamos sufriendo y muriendo.

A Monstruous Novella: Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I'm getting a little fed up of reviewing books by Adrian Tchaikovsky, but please bear with me... First there was Bear Head, which meant I then had to go on and read his other book about bioforms, The Dogs of War. I then reviewed his novella One Day All This Will Be Yours (Solaris Books, 2021), which was hilarious.

So my unhappiness is not because he's a bad writer, but because he's a bloody good one... Ogres is another novella, this time clearly located (at least at the beginning) in the field of fantasy and the most pure form of fantasy, that of the fairy tale.  And the plotline, at least initially, follows that of a fairy tale, ogres rule the world and our hero is a human, the son of an alderman who finds himself leading a rebellion against them. There are the standard ogre man eating tropes (this is NOT a story for the squeamish!), the rebel leader trope, and then, our hero is captured... And the story changes, the rural becomes urban; the medieval, industrial; fantasy, sci-fi, and the story becomes something far more interesting and even darker. There are few laughs in Ogres, but a heck of a lot of depth.

It is also impeccably written in that most difficult of voices, the second person, this annoyed me initially because I thought Mr T. was just showing off, but he does it so well, it hardly feels forced... Until the last few pages... And, kpow! At the very end there is another ruthless, breath-taking twist to the tale, which leaves you gasping.

The best thing written by Mr T. that I have read so far.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

Re-cut: "The Second Cut" by Louise Welsh

How much do you remember of a book you read 10 years ago? Apart from what they call a classic, I mean (that's probably why they're classics, they're memorable). Because although I don't recall all the details of "The Cutting Room", Louise Welsh's first book, I do remember the impression it left on me. This was that it was a very accomplished thriller with a particularly distinct setting. 

Therefore, I jumped, almost literally, at the opportunity offered to me by NetGalley to read The Second Cut. The Second Cut is not a sequel, but a thriller taking place in the same geographical setting with the same main character, gay auction room denizen Rilke, and with some recurring characters from the previous novel. Times, however, have moved on and the book is set in Glasgow once again but 20 years later. Rilke is therefore 20 years older, but not much wiser, and far more cantankerous. 

Society's approach to homosexuality and deviance may have changed somewhat in the Grindr. era, but there are still battlefields. Drug addiction is even more of a problem, as is organised crime which feeds it. Gay orgies are a thing. Poverty still rages and the auction business is still as seedy as heck.

Faced with the sad and suspicious death of an acquaintance, despite himself, Rilke cannot help getting involved again and very soon find himself up to his neck in the cutthroat milieu of the Glasgow underworld.

I am very happy to say that The Second Cut does not disappoint and is as memorable and atmospheric as its predecessor, the witty and pithy dialogue deserves particular mention. 

A fine read, but not for the squeamish.

Comic, Camp and Creepy: The Maleficent Seven by Cameron Johnston

It is not often that I am seduced into requesting a book based on its cover. In fact very recently I have criticised a book because the cover failed to live up to the narrative inside. But in the case of this book I admit I was seduced both by the title, I have a fetish for the number seven, The Seventh Seal and The Seven Samurai are among my most favourite movies, and the cover, I just knew I had to have it.

Do I regret this weakness? Not a bit. This was a good book, in a very rare form of fantasy, should we call it brutalist comedy? Or comic brutality? Anyway, a form of fantasy that it must be incredibly difficult to write; something that makes you laugh and cringe at the same time... 

One of the things that from the beginning that got this crone's seal of approval is that four of the seven are female, including the leader, the shifty demonologist. The other female characters are the necromancer, the pirate Queen and the orc (I mean the sex doth not the orc make, does it? And an orc in either sex would be as brutish). The male characters are the vampire, who is black (another break with the genre), the former war God and the MAD MAD alchemist, who no one likes. In fact the maleficent seven are truly maleficent, and they don't like each other very much at all. 

Now this may be one of the issues with the book, if you have a bunch of characters who are fundamentally evil and all betraying and backstabbing each other as well as the supposed goodies, it is difficult to find a sympathetic focus within the story. I never particularly found one, I think perhaps overall the characters most sympathetic to me was the vampire followed by the God. This is not much of a problem for somebody like myself, I mean I like Succession for God's sake, so I don't necessarily need an appealing character within the story to enjoy it, but it does help, and many people do.

However, the presumptive goodies are even worse. Whereas the maleficents all have their own respective ruthless personalities at least they seem to tolerate individuality, the goodies are Taliban level fanatics, using the justification of a religion based on beauty to repress, massacre and enslave the populace.

One of the main strengths of this novel is the plotting, which is pretty faultless, very much like The Seven Samurai, it is based on defending the demonologist's village from the fanatics. The world building is also extremely accomplished.

One weakness I perceived was the dialogue, I found it a bit stultifying, a bit slow, it should have flown freer it should have been funnier... I can't help but think that the author missed an opportunity here.

Would I recommend The Maleficent Seven to a friend? Yes, I definitely would, but only to that rather special friend with whom I share a tough stomach and a twisted sense of humour...

Counselling the Monster: The Devil You Know, by Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne

This is an important, informative and also, morally, a very beautiful book.

Dr  Gwen Adshead (a forensic psychotherapist, Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Gresham College, Jochelson visiting professor at the Yale School of Law and Psychiatry, and consultant forensic psychiatrist at Ravenswood House), seeks to determine no more and no less what causes people to behave in a violent and criminal manner. This is not a search for justification she makes very clear, but a search for explanation, meaning, with the aim of preventing such behaviour in the future and thus, make a significant contribution to human happiness, both in terms of the criminals themselves and their potential victims.

In a similar manner to the books of Oliver Sacks it is structured around a series of case histories. These are composites and they are used both to conceal the identities of the patient or patients concerned and to solidify the type of criminal conduct on which Dr Adshed is seeking to shed light. 

We are introduced to the notion of the "bicycle lock" a sort of five figure number that triggers the crime. The first two numbers of the pin are pre-existing, socio-political and unalterable, such as poverty, genetics or violence in the family home, the second two numbers are factored in to the person's life as they grow up, particular events, education, drugtaking et cetera, and the last number is the particular occurrence that triggers the crime, the last penny to drop, the unleashing.

The crimes covered are carefully selected: serial murder, gang violence, child abuse etc.

Dr Adhead's aim is to get her patients to recognise the reasons for their behaviour and gently coax them towards empathy, towards an understanding of the pain they have inflicted on their victims. She makes clear that for many this will not be a clement process, that if she is successful they will suffer more, at least in the short term, but she deems it necessary so they may eventually truly forgive themselves and heal. Thus, we are offered a complete biography of most of perpetrators this helps to contextualise and understand their crimes, which is the main thrust of the book, and then we witness, for most anyway, their slow plodding progress towards enlightenment. 

Ironically, there are actually only two offenders that Dr Adshead believes may be unredeemable, uncomfortably, they are both middle-class, well educated and white; privileged, in other words. The first, a solicitor, no less because she seems to meet the classic definition of mad, since a deep part of her, seemingly beyond the aid of either therapy or drugs, seems to be entirely out of touch with reality, although her presentation outside of this kernel of irrationality is highly organised and effective and therefore, deceptive. The second, a man and a former doctor, is because he is protected by his unassailable privileged position in society, is addicted to sadistic child pornography. Limited kudos to him, unlike the solicitor, at least he recognises he may actually have a problem, but ultimately he refuses to seek effective help for it, and cannot be persuaded to do so. One of the few comic moments of this book occurs when Dr Adshead confesses that she would rather be counselling one of her former criminal patients in Broadmoor, Britain's main high security mental asylum, then this apparently urbane GP, in her comfortable private practice.

This book is priceless one of the best endeavours I have encountered, I do not hesitate to recommend it, even for lovers (I confess I belong to that number myself) of true crime because it is invaluable in helping understand what makes those who have committed crimes tick, indeed, what makes us all, tick...

A Response to Andrea Long Chu

 

Where to start with this one? I suggest we start with the positive, a transwoman who is self-reflexive enough to admit to autogynephilia, is rarer than hen’s teeth. Generally, transwomen tend to be completely superficial, and this is one of the issues that feminists take with them, all surface, no depth. So kudos to Chu here.

However, this is virtually undone by what he writes next, autogynephilia, he asserts, is the “basic structure of all human sexuality”. Oh, come on! This is a classic case of projection, the pervert whose inner belief and defence is that other people are as perverted as he is.

The assertion is wrong on at least two counts, first an autogynephile is a narcissist. Narcissus gazes into the pool entranced, but the person he sees gazing back at him is Narcissa, his imaginary projection as a woman (the technical name for this is erotic-target identity inversion; I know, it’s a bit of a mouthful). Narcissus languishes by the pool and eventually dies. He is not productive, he does not socialise, he does not share, he does not reproduce, rather he wastes away in self contemplation. Narcissus is a moral, evolutionary, and physiological dead end. If autogynephilia were the “basic structure of all human sexuality” none of us would be here, and humanity would have become extinct a long time ago.

The second count is that autogynephilia is a perversion, a perversion is a "Distortion or corruption of the original course, meaning, or state of something." In order for a perversion to exist there must be an “original course”; a “straight and narrow” for every deviation. We cannot all be perverts and deviants, or queer, because then what is perverted, deviant and queer would be the norm, the original course. So, if autogynephilia were the “basic structure of all human sexuality”, all of us would be autogynephiles and Chu would not stick out like the sore, sad little thumb he is.

But that phrase is a work of genius compared to the incongruence of what follows: “The assimilation of any erotic image, is, by nature, female.” What under the high heavens is he burbling about here? Do we “vagina havers” hoover up erotic images as if we were some kind of supercharged sexual sponges? Are we all the bloody Borg? Why is the vast majority of porn consumed by men, then, what’s with that? Does Chu have any knowledge or experience of what being female actually entails? No, of course he doesn’t; he is a man an speaks like one, one who is completely lost.

This hysterical delirium continues… “To be female in every case [Wow! In every case…], is to become what someone else wants.” Verily, only a man, and only a man whose brain is half rotten with delusions of superiority and masculinity could say such a thing in the 21st century. Female is not becoming “what someone else [presumably male] wants”, tell that to hyenas, or lionesses, or wolves. This doesn’t apply to humans either, much as Chu would like it to. And only a transwoman, given that we are supposed to worship them as holy cows, even where they are dim and bovine, would be allowed to get away with saying it.

“At bottom [surely the definite article is missing here?], everyone is a sissy.” To which the natural riposte is “Speak for yourself, mate!”. Another variant of the “everyone is a pervert” of the first phrase and subject to the same objections, how can there be bottoms without tops or sissies without butches?

But he isn’t finished yet, oh no, now comes the veritable cherry on this prurient piss poor conceptual pile on… “The asshole is a universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed.” Excuse me, Chu, but only a cuntless prick could say that an arsehole is the same as a vagina. There are differences, you know. Here are several clues immediately available even to the slowest man. First, locative; “Cunts at the Front” (it rhymes, see? It might help you remember) … Arseholes at the back… Just in case you’ve gone a bit dizzy. Second, productive: Turds come out of arseholes, babies out of cunts, indeed, you yourself, Chu, came out of one. And third, sexual, and even more significant, ONLY REAL, NATAL WOMEN HAVE CUNTS, an arsehole being an entirely inadequate replacement. Women, lucky us, have both and arsehole and a cunt but you don’t; which is obviously why you’re a little confused on the issue. Simply put, then, your arsehole will not pass muster as a cunt, and you cannot access femaleness.

And there it is. Whatever name he cares to call himself, Chu is a man. He will never be a woman, he will never have a cunt or a vagina, he doesn’t know what it is to be a woman and he doesn’t actually think like one. He has confused the submissiveness that often passes for femininity, with womanhood, which encompasses the entire gamut of female adult behaviours and ways of being. He is a sad aberration who is attempting to assuage his drear reality by dragging the rest of us, but especially women, into his silly, insignificant, fantasy world, littered with rubbish and infantile ideas papered over with empty phrasing…

 

Chu, please, grow up, man up and get a fucking life.

Strong, colourful fantasy: The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

This was a very pleasant surprise. When I first saw it on the #NetGalley selection pages, I hesitated because it was fantasy, my favourite genre, and then decided to pass it over, probably because of the cover and because I didn't know the author. The next time, fortunately, I decided to select it. This is an unmissable picaresque tale. 

The world building is extremely original and vivid. Manreach is mainly inhabited by women because most of the men have died in successive wars against the goblins. The different human nations and nationalities are vividly portrayed. So although a protagonist is male there are any number of female characters of all descriptions: knights, witches, assassins, fencing masters, infantas, pirates, even giants. There are no horses in this world because the goblins killed them using biological warfare. Buehlman's portrayal of goblins and their culture is the best I have found, he manages to make them both disagreeable and at the same time strangely compelling. Magic is strong and folksy, some of it seems to derive from the magic of classic fairytales, such as those of the Brothers Grimm (no, I don't mean the Disney versions), or Russia.

 

Like all good picaresque tales this is told in the first person, our hero is a low ranked thief or Prank, attempting to make his way in this world, it has to be said not very successfully, when he becomes embroiled in a quest that seems far bigger than himself. The language is rich and salty there are swear words aplenty used to great effect in dialogue, descriptions and scabrous doggerel, which often made me laugh out loud. There are also several very strong scenes, Manreach is a brutal, violent place, the sensitive should therefore be wary. Overall this is a riveting book and I hope there are more in the series.

But Tor/Macmillan,  what the hell is with that drear, soulless cover? This is a tale full of rich colour and life, you should be illustrating it to reflect that.

As always, thanks to #NetGalley for allowing me to preview this text.