"Talulla Rising," by Glen Duncan

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

 I enjoyed reading Glen Duncan's "The Last Werewolf" so I was happy to get hold of the sequel, "Talulla Rising," from the library.

In setting up the start of "Talulla Rising" in the next paragraph, I will give away a bit of the end of the first novel.  If you have not yet read "The Last Werewolf" but think that you might, I suggest that you skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid a spoiler.

At the end of "The Last Werewolf," Talulla's lover, Jake (also a werewolf), has been killed and Talulla has just found out that she is pregnant (which she had thought to be impossible).  The sequel starts as Talulla is in hiding from WOCOP (World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena), and has acquired an unlikely birthing partner in the figure of Cloquet (who had tried to kill Jake in the first book).  The birth is a catalyst for a quest during which Talulla acquires both new allies - including a new lover - and new enemies, and werewolf once again clashes with both humans and vampires.

I think I might actually have preferred this book to the first although, from other opinions that I have heard, I might be in the minority on this.  I liked Jake's voice in the first book - and I know others have said how much they miss him - but I liked the new character of Walker, and I also enjoyed Talulla's voice.  It has started me thinking more about how effective it is  - or isn't - when an author adopts the persona of someone of the opposite sex.  Does it make a difference to the way I read something?  Certainly in this novel I sometimes found myself taking a mental step back - particularly when he was writing about experiences such as childbirth that are specific to the female body - and remembering the male author behind the character.  I don't think it is a fault of his writing; if anything, I was most aware of it when I felt he wrote something particularly effectively.  This is a reaction that is very personal to me and, now that I have become aware of my reaction, it will be interesting to think through that response in my future reading.  Why should it feel any different to me than, say, an author who has never killed writing in the persona of a murderer?  Both are acts of imagination. I suspect the answer to this should be that it isn't any different.

Aside from the fact that I struggled with an aspect of the internal logic to this novel, which I wrote about here, I am still enjoying this series of novels and am looking forward to the last in the trilogy.  I found myself being torn in two one night, because I felt tired and very badly wanted to go to sleep and yet I just as badly wanted to read on.  I don't think that there is a greater compliment than that to a book or author.

I've started reading "Talulla Rising"....

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

A few posts ago I read "The Last Werewolf" by Glen Duncan, and I wrote about it here and took part in the discussion panel on "The Readers" podcast.  I'm now reading "Talulla Rising," the next in the trilogy, and I'm still finding the narrative compelling.  However, there is something bugging me....

(spoiler ahoy) 

At the start of the second book, Talulla gives birth to twins who are also werewolves.  Now Glen Duncan has already established that, once a person has been bitten and becomes a werewolf, they don't age.  So does that mean that the twins will be forever babies?

Of course it's fiction and of course werewolves don't exist, but there is still a potential logical loophole there that is playing on my mind.  If sure you can argue that all bets are off if a child is born of two werewolves - which might well be the way that Duncan will go with this, as there isn't really anywhere you can go with the characters if Lorcan and Zoe never get beyond the screaming and puking stage - but I can't put away this niggling idea.  That's probably my OCD side manifesting.

If someone knows something I don't about the werewolf myth in literature that gives him a get-out clause on this, please let me know.

"The Last Werewolf" episode of "The Readers"

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

When I wrote my previous post on "The Last Werewolf," I mentioned that it was a Summer Book Club pick for "The Readers."  Their episode on Glen Duncan's novel has come out today and you can find it here and on ITunes.  I hope they won't mind me linking to their site.

As a result of my last post, which I tweeted them a link to, one of the hosts, Gav, asked me if I would like to join their discussion panel.  I was hesitant at first because I've never been on a podcast - I've been asked by a couple of other people and had wimped out - but I decided that it was too good an opportunity to pass up.  Also on the discussion panel were Sakura of the blog "Chasing Bawa" and Nicola Mostyn as well as hosts Gav and Simon.

It was a strange experience to be on the discussion panel, as it took place on my birthday and I was very nervous.  I wasn't sure whether to link to it because I was afraid that I might sound
a) like an idiot
and/or
b) like an adenoidal 13 year old girl
As this wasn't the case - at least not as much as I feared (although I did sound very Cornish sometimes) - I have posted the link above.  Gav and Simon's own thoughts as always are entertaining and interesting, and they also have a fascinating interview with Glen Duncan on the programme.

"The Last Werewolf," by Glen Duncan

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Life, like the boring drunk at the office party, keeps seeking you out, leaning on you, killing you with pointless yarns and laughing bad-breathed in your face at its own unfunny jokes.

I'm a little bit early with this post, but I wanted to get it written while it was still fresh in my mind; early because this is the one of the choices of The Readers Summer Book Club and it isn't up for discussion yet.  The Readers podcast - if you haven't already discovered it and, if you haven't, you really should check it out - is a very entertaining UK based podcast about books.  This is one of a few podcasts that I look forward to every week (along with the Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo movies podcast and, of course, the podcasts that my husband is on), and it is available from the link above and also on I-Tunes.  I'd heartily recommend it.  The Bookrageous podcast is also good but, as this is US based, I've occasionally been frustrated when they have talked about books that sound great but don't seem to be readily available in the UK.

Anyway, I already had "The Last Werewolf" on my list of books to read since hearing about it on the Bookrageous podcast - and, by coincidence, I had already borrowed it from the library when I heard that it was one of the book club picks. 

Glen Duncan's anti-hero is Jacob Marlowe.  Jake is just over two hundred years old, and for one hundred and sixty-seven of those years he has turned into a werewolf at every full moon.  And Jake is a marked werewolf, as the incredibly successful attempts of WOCOP (World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena) to eradicate werewolves mean that he is the last one left.  Jake has been managing to evade them, but they seem to be catching up with him, and he seems to have also attracted the attention of some vampires (which is odd as they normally revile werewolves).  In addition, "The Last Werewolf" is also partly a love/lust story, with a strong wolfish libido, so you would be advised not to buy this book for an easily shocked maiden aunt as a present. 

What sets this book apart from the glut of other vampire and werewolf novels, is Duncan's use of language.  I haven't read any of his other novels, but I gather that Duncan is an established, although previously not incredibly famous, "literary" writer.  Duncan's novel is mostly first person in Jake's voice, and I found Jake to be a very articulate and entertaining narrator.  In a nice touch, I found myself occasionally aware of little elements of ever-so-slightly archaic sounding language that seem fitting for a narrator who has been on the earth for such a length of time.  A couple of quotes which I loved have popped up in my Facebook timeline when I wanted to share them with friends (cars stopped by snow are "poignantly stupefied").  I rarely feel moved to quote from books in this way but when you discover an insult as brilliant as "pug-faced lolloper," you just have to share it. 

This magnificent insult also beings me to another thing I love about this book - yes, it is dark, but it has some wonderful moments of black humour sprinkled through the narrative.     I was particularly fond of an early passing reference to Jake having "eaten a forty-three-year-old hedge fund specialist."  I'm not sure why I found this funny - perhaps the specificity of the age, the profession; the matter of fact and mundane way this is mentioned - but when I reached this on page 5, I knew that I was probably going to enjoy this book.

Duncan's take on vampires is different from the kitsch, glittery, costume-jewellery vampires of Stephenie Meyer (thank heavens), and the werewolf is a dangerous, primal creature and not just a hunky man who every so often ends up naked in the woods.  There is another quote that I put on Facebook, so my friends on there might recognise it, which I found amusing.  I'm torn because I don't want to include it here - it's not a plot spoiler, but it is an ideological spoiler - but I want to re-quote it because I love it.  My solution to this is that I will quote it in the first comment on this post - if you are planning to read the book and don't want a funny couple of lines to be spoiled, then don't read the first comment.  Even if you are planning to read this book and do read this quote, there is a lot more to Glen Duncan's vampires than this quote might suggest.

"The Last Werewolf" is apparently the first in a trilogy.  The second in the series, "Talulla Rising," is now out, but my local library doesn't seem to have a copy (which is a form of torture for a committed bibliophile).  I'm considering buying it, and my willpower might yet wane when it comes to the next full moon...