18MAR24 / accessions

North’s House of Odysseus: the institution has been stanning Claire North ever since Notes from the Burning Age—“the best solarpunk novel which has never been slapped with that label”, if you want the capsule plug—but also loved Ithaca, the predecessor to this new novel. Retelling the ancient epics in new voices and/or from the point of view of women is not exactly a unique trick these days—if anything, it’s approaching the point of cliche—but North’s mastery of voice and perspective means that the institution can trust her to tell the tale and take on the politics without getting all hectoring and obvious about it.

Tepper’s Grass: a masterwork with which the institution is unfamiliar… though on accession to the institutional library, it was noted that there are two Teppers already there that haven’t actually been read yet. Perhaps it’s time for a binge?


(As a curatorial side-note, it’s nice to see Gollancz have finally updated the livery of the Masterworks series to something less… well, something less screamingly skiffy, basically. The lurid acidic colour-scheme of the last restyle was a strange choice that hung on for far too long.

It is fortunate that the institution is not that sort of collector, or the department would be obliged to go through the collection replacing older Masterworks with these newer, nicer-looking editions.)

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