Zahid Alam Alam itibaren Birshimul, West Bengal 713146, Hindistan itibaren Birshimul, West Bengal 713146, Hindistan

Lesbians, seances, betrayals and prison guards.

My local library system has three copies of this book, at three different branches. One branch files it under science fiction, one branch files it under fiction. At my library I tracked it down in the mystery section. What is it, then? Like Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next books, it is set in an alternate England in which certain wars went another way than in real life. Also like Tuesday Next, the protagonist's brother was killed at war, and she married his best friend. That's where the similarity ends. Where those books are exercises in absurdity, this one feels gut-wrenchingly real. Jo Walton has created a world in which Hitler's march on Europe went unchecked. A group of politicians known as the Farthing Set brokered an agreement with Germany that allowed England to remain autonomous. The US, under President Lindbergh, is increasingly isolationist, and has closed its doors to Jews. Europe's Jews live with yellow stars and ration books and ghettos and camps. England's Jewish population is free, but faces strong prejudice. This alternate history is the only SF aspect of the book, which otherwise reads as political mystery and social commentary (on the British class system, justice, anti-Semitism, and homophobia). A few months ago a friend suggested that I try reading Dorothy Sayers, but warned me that her books could be read as somewhat anti-Semitic. I found that in those cases I could dismiss it as a product of the time; not so with this book. I found the treatment of the Jewish characters in this system of casual ingrained bigotry to be absolutely gutting. The author really managed to make me feel that things could have as easily gone this way as the way they did. Walton is an excellent writer: I found it hard to put the book down. Her style feels breezy and effortless in a way that takes an enormous amount of work to achieve. The main characters feel real, and the split narrative (alternated first and third person chapters) works in a way that such things often do not. The only reason I'm rating this book four stars instead of five is the somewhat "to be continued" ending. Luckily, the second book is at my library (filed under literary fiction).