strange and random happenstance

When this adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles first came out I tried to watch it. I thought I had only made it through one of the four episodes but apparently I somehow actually made it through two of them. Now you might be thinking, oh, she had a problem watching this because Thomas Hardy is quite bleak and this is about rape, abuse, and eventual death, but you'd be wrong. It's not that I was OK with how horrible this story is, it's that I could barely get into the story due to the piercing headache I got at the hands of the score. Rob Lane's score is horrible, shrill, and just bores into my right eye socket and makes me almost pass out in pain. Every. Single. Time. The strings and the strings and the strings. Just make it stop! If his goal was to make me feel in pain to understand Tess's pain, well, good job. Now hopefully I'll be able to see out of my right eye again in the near future. People talk about the power of music, damn, this music packed a punch. And not in a good way. Just thinking about it makes my face hurt. What annoyed me even more about the score is once I was able to sit with the pain of the cluster headache behind my right eye I realized that the recurring theme of the score was triggering me to hum another song. You know how Tom Petty sued Sam Smith for similarities in Smith's song "Stay With Me" to Petty's song "I Won't Back Down?" Well, if you didn't, you now know. Petty won and is now listed as a co-writer. This came as no shock to me because every time I heard "Stay With Me" I'd get "I Won't Back Down" in my head. The same thing happened once I pushed through the pain here. I started getting the theme to Gosford Park by Patrick Doyle in my head. Which made me extra angry. Because not only is this music horribly painful to listen to, it's not even original. I really just can't with this miniseries. I was promised Anna Massey and instead I have baby voiced Gemma Arterton and a whole bunch of actors I have previously loved either being evil or miserable. Poor Jodie Whittaker, what this miniseries does to her makes the backlash of her becoming the Thirteenth Doctor look like child's play. And what do you get if you actually make it all the way through the miniseries!?! Fuck all. The love of Tess's life, Angel Clare, there has to be a special hell just for him. Let me recount for you what happened at the beginning of the third episode for your enlightenment. Oh, and to set the scene, it's their wedding night! Angel, in the depths of agony: I hired a whore once. Tess: I forgive you. BTW I was raped. Angel: You're a whore! Here's £25. I'll see you when I see you, I'm off to Brazil. Me: Hopefully to die from some horrible tropical disease. Fuck you Angel Clare. Fuck you and your hypocrisy. You could have all been happy, instead you chose misery. In fact, I wish for you to have to listen to the score to this miniseries for an eternity. That might just make up for what you did to Tess. Maybe.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Angel Clare, Anna Massey, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Gemma Arterton, Gosford Park, Jodie Whittaker, Patrick Doyle, Plagiarism, Rape, Robe Lane, Sam Smith, Score, Strings, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, Tom Petty

Behind the Shattered Glass by Tasha Alexander
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: October 15th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 272 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
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Emily and Colin are rusticating and recuperating at Colin's ancestral home Anglemore Park in Derbyshire after the birth of their twins. Aside from a few staffing issues involving their ward Tom their calm is only strained by the continued presence of Emily's mother, Lady Catherine Bromley, and her opinions on child rearing. After another torturous night en famille the calm is finally shattered when a man staggers through the French doors and drops down dead on the Axminster. Thanks to Lady Bromley's obsession with the aristocracy she quickly identifies the victim as the new Marquess of Montagu, Archibald Scolfield, who just happens to be Emily and Colin's neighbor. Emily rushes to Montagu Manor to deliver the tragic news to Archibald's cousin and Emily's acquaintance Matilda who is holding a party for her now deceased cousin. But could Matilda have had a motive for killing Archibald? She inherited all her grandfather's money but the title and the ancestral seat went to Archibald. Could this have strained their cordial relationship? Once Colin convinces the police to let him handle the investigation he vows they will get to the bottom of this crime.

As Emily and Colin dig into Archibald's life his character isn't as upstanding as one would assume. He had two fiancees, one an American buccaneer, Miss Sturdevant, the other the daughter of the local vicar, Miss Cora Fitzgerald. His rapacious attitude toward women might have been the reason for a scandal at Oxford. He ruined his best friend, Mr. Porter, with plagiarism accusations after they toured the continent together. And as for Matilda, who thought she was next in line for the title, in walks Rodney, the heir apparent, a treasure hunter who might be from the wrong side of the sheets. With everyone having a motive and more than a few of them lying Emily and Colin have their job cut out for them. And while they are trying to come to grips with this horrendous crime they have romance blooming under their own roof as their house guest, Simon Lancaster, Earl Flyte, seems to have fallen for their housemaid Lily. Things are precarious enough with a murderer on the loose but a romance crossing classes might be the final straw for everyone.

Every Anglophile of a certain age can trace the origins of their affliction to PBS airing Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1970s. I myself am a second generation sufferer with my parents indoctrinating me throughout my childhood until the whole series became available on DVD and the binge watching commenced. In fact I'd go so far as to say that Downton Abbey succeeded because it tapped into this need of American Anglophiles to root for the denizens of a grand manor house from both sides of the baize door. Behind the Shattered Glass is a break, pun intended, from Tasha's other Lady Emily books in that her secondary story isn't letters, diaries, or correspondence, but a view behind the baize door. We are seeing Emily and Colin from the POV of the servants. But more than that we are a party to their trials and tribulations, their loves and their animosities, we are finally seeing Cook in the kitchen instead of her sending up a menu. Davis the butler isn't just proffering port he's holding court in his chambers. There is just so much more that happens in houses of this period that for the first time in this series we're getting a complete picture instead of just a view upstairs.

While I have seen a few reviews critical of this installment saying the narrative is constricted I would like to firmly refute that by saying a more focused narrative doesn't mean a more constricted narrative. Just look to Gosford Park! A long weekend, a murder, and all the suspects available to us which is the bedrock of so many British mysteries and is a movie I could watch again and again. And much like Gosford Park, Behind the Shattered Glass shines a light on the issues that arise when those from the two different levels of the house interact. This is a powerful book to read in the #MeToo movement because it deals with many facets of consent. Not just sexual consent, though that is the core of this book not just with Archibald Scolfield's predilections when he is away from home, but the burgeoning relationship between Simon and Lily and how they navigate a relationship when one member is viewed as having all the power. But also consent to access someone's personal space. I know Lady Emily is involved in a dire investigation when she searches the servants rooms, but at the same time, it sat badly with me. She was wielding her power over her servants and not being the enlightened employer, showing that even Emily can occasionally stumble.

Which brings everything back to Colin's argument against aristocracy and why he keeps refusing to accept a title from the Queen. Who is anyone to set themselves up as better than their fellow man? Just because they treat their servants well at Anglemore doesn't mean that these people should be stuck being servants forever. There's almost this idolatry going on at Anglemore where all the servants drank the Kool-Aid and just love their work making everything perfect for their masters. What's more they view them as their betters! Hard, physical labor, and yet they love it because they are given basic humane conditions in which to live? This here is showing how the class system really started to fall apart and how the era of the grand country houses would implode. This era needed to end because it wasn't glorious or wonderful, it was hard work that for some is soul crushing. Just look to kitchen maid Prudence! She is miserable and I think she more accurately depicts what life was truly like downstairs. You are cut off from family and friends and work so that others can just live the idle life. Yes, this might be harsh on Lady Emily and the dream of Downton Abbey, but it's the truth!

Which brings me back to Pru. I literally spent the entire book hating her, because there's always that one servant that you hate, hello Thomas Barrow, meet your new BFF since O'Brien fled the coop, Pru! Though I doubt Thomas would talk to her, a kitchen maid being so far below a footman... But there it is, Pru is our Thomas, we are meant to hate her, yet by the end you see her more fully, more clearly, and pity should be your only feeling. She is what the class system made her. For comparison, whenever someone asks me "why are you angry" I think, hang on, I wasn't angry until you insinuated I was and therefore you made me what you thought of me. Pru has been made to be bitter and spiteful! So going back to those critics who call Behind the Shattered Glass constricted, no, it's not, it's you who have a constricted mind. You are unable to see how Tasha is exploring all these different angles of what it means to be a servant and what it means to be a master and how there's not just a symbiotic relationship there but a duty of care, actually in both directions. To say a book that is grappling with all these rather weighty issues isn't dealing with enough I just think you, whomever you are, need to open your mind.

But in today's America a closed mind is more common than an open one and we women, well, we are facing some scary realities. Our rights are in peril so it's nice to look back on historical context and precedent and think, at least we got from there to here so if we have to keep fighting we can. Also, please, go out and vote next week! Back to the book... it's interesting to see historical precedent which occasionally favors women. Because titles going down the male line is total BS. With Matilda it makes sense that she would want her family's title, not just because she was closest to her grandfather, but because she is for women's suffrage. She's Lady Emily on speed. She's throwing bricks and taking names versus trying to gently persuade. So much of this book is showing that change was needed and change was coming but it needed people like Matilda and Emily and Lily and even Pru for that change to happen. A man isn't always right and a patriarchy isn't always the right way. An episode of Magnum, P.I. I was watching the other day had a bumper sticker that said "The right man for the job is a wo-man." Now, I'm not going all militant feminist here, all I want is equality. Therefore can we hear it for Marchioness Matilda? Even if Queen Victoria wouldn't agree.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: #MeToo, Alexander Autumn, Anglophile, Aristocracy, Behind the Shattered Glass, Consent, Downton Abbey, Gosford Park, Magnum P.I., Murder, Patriarchy, Servants, Tasha Alexander, Thomas Barrow, Upstairs Downstairs

Manor of Secrets by Katherine Longshore
ARC Provided by the Publisher
Published by: Point
Publication Date: January 28th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

The garden party is stifling and Lady Charlotte would give anything to break free of the watchful eye of her mother, Lady Diane. She spies a servant sneaking off into the woods and daringly she follows. Janie is nothing more than a kitchen maid but as Charlotte watches her servant reveling in the shallows of the lake she wishes for such freedom. Charlotte has so many dreams and ambitions that are unacceptable for lady. She wishes for nothing more then to write and marry for love. But fantasizing about the footman is one thing, actually acting on those impulses are another, though kissing a servant might not be as alien to Charlotte's mother as Charlotte thinks. With the arrival of Charlotte's Aunt Beatrice hours before the shooting party The Manor has been turned on it's head. Yet Charlotte can not understand why the return of a relative she never knew of is causing such chaos. She needs information and everyone knows that servants know everything. Turning to Janie Charlotte breaches the rigid divide between upstairs and down. The two forge a tenuous friendship confined by societal expectations, but even trying to work within these strictures they are both jeopardizing more than they know. Can Charlotte find a way to live within her world and find love where she least expects it? Can Janie hold onto her position and her home with Charlotte undermining her? And what does a secret pregnancy from the past hold in store for these two girls divided by more then a baize door?

Manor of Secrets is an odd little book because it comes across that it doesn't quite know what it wants to be when it grows up. Much like the upstairs heroine Charlotte this book is in the midst of an identity crisis. The main issue I take is I don't know who the audience for this book is. It claims to be YA yet it feels Middle Grade. The simplistic writing, the laughable "secret," the overly large font used to bump up the page count, if there was a category somewhere between YA and Middle Grade, it might just fit there, but towards the Middle Grade end of the spectrum. While as a reader categorization doesn't matter to me so much as a good story, I will read anything, but knowing the intended audience sometimes helps you with your expectations. Especially if the story isn't catching you perhaps it's because of the author "writing down" to her audience, which in my mind is never acceptable, but alas, happens quite frequently. While I have bemoaned another "secrets" series I can't help feeling that for how much I disliked that series the characters actually had a little more depth, and that is a sentence I never thought I'd write.

The simplistic writing causes merry havoc with the story, dragging it down to a flat and superficial level. The lack of depth and detail is astounding considering that this book runs to over three hundred pages, see previous mention of font size. The great manor house that everyone lives in is literally called "The Manor." Um, could you think of a more generic and bland name oh author? I mean seriously, you couldn't come up with, oh, I don't know, anything more original than using the word that actually describes what kind of house it is? Heck, your last name "Longshore" could have been a better name than "The Manor." This lack of originality actually shines light onto the stupidity of Charlotte and her inability to see beneath the surface of someone. This "teaching moment" that smacks of moralizing Middle Grade reads isn't hard to understand when you look at the bigger picture. Charlotte lives in a simplistic two-dimensional world, it makes sense that she wouldn't be able to grasp three-dimensionality, it's beyond her ken. She doesn't get that people have depth and that you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover because in her world depth doesn't exist!

Continuing on to the upstairs/downstairs dynamic, the simplicity remains and makes this dynamic off. You have the "good" servants and the "bad" servants and no one can reside in a grey area. I SAY NO ONE! And the upstairs and downstairs people must be completely ignorant of each other because never the twain shall meet! Yet within their realms everything is just peachy and keen because everyone knows their place. Yes, they natter on about this radical concept of "change" but does anyone actually change? Oh no, that would be too radical and too multidimensional! When you look at what is really going on, the love affairs, the relationship dynamics, you should have a drama on the scale of Gosford Park with someone meeting the pointy end of a knife! Instead you get snide comments, from the bad, reassurances, from the good, and everything working out. Seriously? I really kept dwelling on Gosford Park and how the upstairs/downstairs dynamic when concerning a pregnancy shows the class iniquities and the abuse of power but here that isn't even addressed. With the world apparently changing, or so the rumors go, shouldn't this stop the culture of silence that is pervasive in this class system?

But then again, the truth of Charlotte's parentage isn't even viewed in a negative light except by those "bad" people. This is what, 1910 or so, the Titanic is under construction, and yet the heroine is all, "Hey everything is awesome, I have a sister." Once again pointing out how dim her world view is. She would be ostracized from society, she would be ruined, and instead she gets everything she wants! Perhaps living in a two-dimensional world has it's benefits, like being to totally ignore the reality of a situation? Yet there's something distinctly off in my mind about what the friendship between Lanie and Charlotte really says. Yes they are friends, but it only seems to be condoned because it turns out they are half-sisters. Would this class and rank defying friendship been accepted if they were just friends? If they had no blood ties at all? While the book would like you to think so, I don't think that's the actual truth. I think this is the one aspect where the book is right and is hiding a darker secret in plain sight. Their relationship is unconventional, yet somehow allowable because of this familial bond. While the "bad" people might still frown upon it, it is not as shocking as it could be and therefore fine.

In the end what everything boils down to is Beatrice. She is the catalyst for change. She represents the force of the future. Yet it is ironic that a person who went to such lengths to hide their sin would then be the one trying to destroy the system she bowed down to... but perhaps that's why she's doing it? One would hope, but again, two-dimensional shallows are being waded in here so that might be asking too much. Plus it's not like anyone likes her until the last ten pages. Throughout the book there's the theme of the world changing, but it's all talk and no action until the very end when Beatrice is like, I'm a suffragette, let's go be the change we want to see in the world. All while everyone is like, yeah, we're not sure about you and this whole actually standing for something thing. And then there's her household run completely by women. This makes you think two things, one she's removed temptation and therefore can't get pregnant again or two that she's a lesbian now. The whole women's suffrage doesn't even get on the radar until they're half-way out the door and on the way to Italy. Plus, just a question, the whole idea of woman's suffrage is equality. They want to be equal to men so shouldn't her household be staffed by the best no matter their gender? Equality NOT segregation. But that would require the book to actually look into causes and motivations and there is nothing here but surface.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Downton Denial, Downton Denial Denouement, Downtonesque, Gosford Park, Katherine Longshore, Manor of Secrets, Middle Grade, Secrets of the Manor, Shallow, Suffrage, Suffragettes, Titanic, Upstairs Downstairs, YA

Where Angels Fear to Tread
Based on the book by E.M. Forster
Starring: Rupert Graves, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Giovanni Guidelli, Helen Mirren, Barbara Jefford, and Sophie Kullmann
Release Date: June 21st, 1991
Rating: ★★★★
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Widow Lilia in a flurry of goodbyes flees her in-laws for the romance of Italy. There her and her charge, Charlotte Abbot, enjoy the sights, sounds, and especially the people. It's the people that is worrisome. Or one person to be precise. One person who Lilia met at her hotel in Monteriano whom she is going to marry. Of course she may have embellished Gino to her in-laws back in England. He has no title, and is the dandy son of a dentist. Also Philip's journey to prevent the marriage is hopeless, as they married the second they realized that an emissary from England was on the way. Lilia wants to finally be free of the constraints that she has lived under for so many years, little realizing that she is changing one prison for another. Philip returns to England with Charlotte in tow, and Lilia learns to live with her mistake. Gino wanted her money, not an independent English wife. She is stifled by him and slowly loses her will to fight and dies in childbirth. Back in England the Herritons decide that they will inform Lilia's daughter Irma about Lilia's death but not about her marriage or her child. Yet Gino doesn't wish Irma to be ignorant and soon an inconvenient postcard arrives and the young child isn't able to keep silent about her new brother and father. Realizing something needs to be done Lilia's brother and sister-in-law, Philip and Harriet, head to Monteriano to buy the child off Gino so that Irma will have her little brother. They surprisingly run into Charlotte Abbot, who claims to be there as spy for their family, not traitor. But what might have looked like an easy mission turns complicated when dealing with the Italian mentality and love.

I find it interesting in looking up other reviews of this movie how it was criticized for it's lack of depth and exploration of social themes that Forster was known for. Yes, Forster was known for this, but for his later work. He struggled to try to incorporate them into his first novel and failed miserably. Only Ebert was wise and educated enough to point out the flaw in the source material verses the film. Coming from just reading the book I see the film not in comparison to other Forster adaptations but in comparison to the book. What this movie was able to do is grasp what Forster was trying and failed to do with his book. The film is a tour de force comedy of manners satirizing societal values. It's an interesting conceit. Because it's like taking the most staid of Sunday night television viewing from PBS and then filtering it through the lens of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Despite the death and despair, there is never a time when the film takes itself too seriously. The entire thing is done with a nudge and a wink, wherein we, the audience, are part of the joke. We are there to laugh at and make fun of the drawing room foibles of the characters and the petty lives these people live wherein an inlaid box that was "lent" not "given" is more important than anything else. The fact that the cast is comprised of the same actors that appear in the work they are satirizing, well, that's just the cherry on top of the sundae.

The movie is able to effect these changes from a lackluster book to a fun movie by the simple expedient of streamlining the story and adding a little movie magic. The movie magic is that instead of showing the deplorable and unseemly side of Monteriano that Forster focused on, everything has been covered in pixie dust. Lilia's house isn't a ramshackle affair, it's actually quite nice. The town is picturesque. We see the world through a cinematic haze that makes everything that much nicer. Also by the magic of cinema, the language barrier is whisked away. Instead of having laborious misunderstandings everyone seems to magically know what everyone else means. Sure it's a little unrealistic, especially in the case of the ignorant Lilia, but it's expedient and let's the story focus on what is important and not have a stumbling block. Also Gino hardly being around doesn't hurt the film in the least due to his horrific casting, but that falls under another category all together. The one thing that did mystify me though was that the film underused Helena Bonham Carter. Charlotte Abbot is a rather important character and almost all of her storyline was pushed aside in favor of showcasing the foibles of the Herritons. As for the subplot of Philip falling in love with her, it was only hinted at in two scenes. While this does work in the film's favor, I have to wonder why she even took the role.

Despite how much I liked this movie I can't say it was without flaws. What worried me the most at first was the Helen Mirren factor. Unlike the rest of the known world, I greatly dislike Helen Mirren. The only movie I liked her in was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because she was a disembodied voice, and I tolerated her in Gosford Park because there were enough fabulous actors to balance her deficet. As for that atrocious Elizabeth I miniseries, NEVER mention that to me ever again. Of course my hatred of her was balanced by the fact she was playing Lilia and would therefore shuffle off this mortal coil pretty fast. So while I can't stand Helen Mirren, Helen Mirren doomed to die was acceptable to me. But her casting had more issues then just my dislike of her. She was too old for Lilia in my mind. In the book she is about 35, but Helen Mirren was 45 when she made this movie. Of course this makes the likelihood of her dying in childbirth more likely, but how likely was it that she'd get pregnant in the first place? Lilia is supposed to be believable to get with child AND be an older woman, but she has freakin' grey hair here! NOT the blond Gino boasts about. It's pushing credulity. And yet this is not the worst casting. Ebert nailed it when he said of Giovanni Guidelli who played Gino that he "never seems like a real character and is sometimes dangerously close to being a comic Italian." I couldn't have said it better myself! Gino is almost a pretty boy gangster who actually isn't that pretty and had more than a passing similarity to Lucky Luciano from Boardwalk Empire. If it wasn't for his character being minimized he might just have ruined the movie.

But above all there is one actress who raised this film to new heights. Who knew just how to deliver her lines and knew when a pause or a look would be better than something more dramatic and showy, and this talent is Judy Davis. While this film was made just at the beginning of her ascendancy to independent film darling, the epoch of The Ref being three years in the future, she is the star here. The way she keeps harping on about her lent inlaid box, the way she won't share a conveyance with an overweight woman who turns out to be a famous opera star, her trying to shush the excited audience at the opera, every line, every look, every interaction with her fellow cast shows that she was born to play this role. More than anyone else she understands the humor, though dark, that the film is trying to bring forth from the source material. She "gets" the film and takes the character of Harriet that is basically a catalyst in the book and makes her fully three dimensional and so wonderful that you are counting the minutes until she returns to the screen. The one scene I would highlight above all others is when Harriet and Philip have finally gotten the carriage to Monteriano and she just lays into him about his duty and how things are going to play out. Her exasperation is palpable. The way she sighs and glowers are too perfect, but what makes the scene perfection is how during the entire scene she is still worrying at her eye that got some smut in it back at the train station. Her belaboring of that injury perfectly captures he comedic capabilities and why you should watch this film just for her.

If there is one thing though I would change about this movie, it would be the score. Most people don't realize the importance of music in a movie, it shouldn't overwhelm, it should compliment. It helps aid in the emotional impact of the story. Rachel Portman's score did not aid this movie. Yes, at times it was suitably dramatic and had the right vibe, but sometimes it would try to force the situation. It would try to make Gino more menacing, so cue the menacing music. At times like this it felt like she was trying to do the evil music from old silent films that would accompany a moustache stroking villain tying the damsel to the train tracks. She could do grand panoramic music that is the standard miniseries fare but everything else was beyond her grasp. Even more perplexing to me is that I have loved some of her previous scores, for example Jim Henson's The Storyteller, that was fantastic. So one, being me, wonders where did she go wrong? Was it the director? Because he seemed to understand what he was doing all along and then just, what? Decided that he wanted to make the movie something more than it is and tried to fix it with the music? Seriously, that is never going to work. Music reflects the movie and vice versa, you can't try to change one with the other. Accept the brilliance that you have and enjoy. Because this is a movie to be enjoyed.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: E.M. Forster, Ebert, Forster Fall, Gosford Park, Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham Carter, Italy, Judy Davis, Monteriano, Mystery Science Theater 3000, PBS, The Ref, The Storyteller, Where Angels Fear to Tread

The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (Laurence Bartram Book 2) by Elizabeth Speller
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: May 1st, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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Laurence Bartram has been invited by his friends the Bolithos to come to Easton Deadall. William, despite his injuries from the war, has found a job. He is restoring the cottages in the village as well as creating a monument to the fallen. Easton Deadall lost all their men in the Great War, though the sad tragedy of the town goes back to before the war, when the five year old Kitty Easton was kidnapped out of her bedroom in the manor house and never seen again. While Laurence may question William's idea that a maze is the best tribute to the fallen, he is intrigued by the church he has been asked to look at. The carvings and the hastily tarred floor have secrets. They have pagan accents of green men and labyrinths. Yet inside the house is a world of hurt and pain. Kitty's mother still clings to the belief that her daughter is alive, while the rest of the household cannot move forward while Lydia clings to her dreams. Lydia is a sick woman, often laid up in bed, and the thought of her daughter is all that keeps her alive while it sinks the house into the quagmire of the past.

The arrival of Laurence and the Bolithos, as well as the return of the youngest Easton, Patrick, brings some much needed life and change to the house. Yet it also stirs up the past. When an excursion to London and the great 1924 British Empire Exhibition leads to the disappearance of the household's young maid, Maggie, the disappearance of Kitty, all those years ago, is brought even more into everyone's mind. The discovery of a dead female at Easton Deadall and a hidden chamber beneath the church lead to more questions and perhaps the possibility of finding out what happened to Kitty all those years ago.

I always find it interesting that my expectations versus the reality of a book can vary so much. I was not prepared to adore the first book in this series, The Return of Captain John Emmett, viewing it more as the book I had to read to be able to get to The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, which I assumed would be my dream book. I mean a country house in Wiltshire, land of chalk and Terry Pratchett (yes, that's how I refer to it in my head), a mysterious disappearance years earlier, and mazes! I mean, that maze is what was really selling it for me, seeing as I have more then a little obsession with mazes and have built more then my fair share in cardboard, paper, and metal over the years. So yes, you might say me and mazes, and labyrinths in particular, are buddies. But when it came to the book, I just felt it didn't live up to the promise of the first book. Maybe it was my expectations, but while I enjoyed this book, it lacked the spark and originality of The Return of Captain John Emmett. It was less unique and more a mish mash of other things. The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton was a bit of the Lindbergh kidnapping, deformities included, very much a strong helping of the Inspector Lynley episode "Limbo," and then to top it of, quite a bit of Gosford Park, at least with Digby and his darkness that mirrors Michael Gambon to an extent.

Now lets get to specifics. One aspect of the book that really annoyed me was the layout of the manor house, Easton Deadall. Now, I don't know if Speller intended the layout of the house to be a bit confusing to mirror the history of the house and its connection with mazes, the name itself perhaps a bastardization of Daedalus, but it just really got under my skin. I don't really get the layout at all. Were the gardens, terraces, maze, pond, basically all in front of the house? Because that doesn't really fit with, well, any kind of English architectural style. Usually they were behind the house with terraces, gardens, then tamed wilderness, to indicate mans taming of nature in successive steps from the full control of the house environs to the return to nature the further away you got. And William Bolitho, being an architect, would have commented on this rather strange set up in my mind. I need a place that I can get my mind around, a place of respite in the land red herrings and mysterious machinations, and the competing architectural styles combined with what Laurence saw out of certain windows drove me a little round the bend. His view from his room seemed to randomly change. Also, don't get me started on that oppressive maze. I like a maze, more then the next, but the setting was too confusing, labyrinthine and oppressive and instead of adding to the feel of the book, it just set me against it.

Yet, the manor house and all it's issues was nothing to what I found as the main flaw in this book. The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton is seedy and debauched. I couldn't get around this fact. While you might take the view that exposing the aristocracy and their flaws would be historically accurate and liberating to an extent, there's handling it with kid gloves and making it fascinating, a la Gosford Park where we absorb the horrors without them being explicit, and then there's exposing us to this world and going into vibrant detail about beatings and sexually transmitted diseases, pederasts and whore houses. No thank you! This also feeds into my issue of character development. Speller is a master of unique and individualized characters, but here, in the suffocating world of Easton Deadall, they are so beaten down and depressive, that I wanted to run there and give them all happy pills. Where was Laurence's wise cracking friend Charles when he was desperately needed? Speaking of favorite characters from the previous volume... one of the characters does something that I will not forgive Speller for writing. Is it realistic, yes. But you know what, in this horrid little bleak world she has created, I needed something good, someone good to hang onto. To take that away from me... that was the last straw. The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton may have kept me absorbed, but it did not keep me happy, which is what a great book should do.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Daedalus, Easton Deadall, Elizabeth Speller, Golden Summer, Gosford Park, Inspector Lynley, Labyrinth, Laurence Bartram, Mazes, The Return of Captain John Emmett, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton

The Crime at Black Dudley (Albert Campion Book 1) by Margery Allingham
Published by: Felony and Mayhem
Publication Date: 1929
Format: Paperback, 256 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

George Abbershaw is indebted to his friend Wyatt Petrie. Wyatt is having a large house party at his remote ancestral pile Black Dudley and to help out George he has invited Meggie Oliphant. George is a man of science, being a pathologist, and he has decided that his new feelings that have arisen for Meggie must be tested out at close quarters to determine if it is infatuation or love. Infatuation can run it's course and for the most part be ignored, but love, well, love is another thing. At dinner, sitting next to Meggie, they gossip about the strange array of people gathered. From Wyatt's invalid Uncle Colonel Coombe who lives year round at Black Dudley, to Benjamin Dawlish, a man with the hair of Beethoven and an implacable manner, to the foolish society fop, Albert Campion, who no one remembers inviting. The group seems so diverse, it's almost as if they were all brought there for a reason.

After dinner in the great hall, the guests eyes alight on a sinister dagger rather ostentatiously displayed over one of the fireplaces. Wyatt tells of a family legend of death and tragedy, that imbued the dagger with the power to bleed if it was held by a killer. In later generations, this has devolved into a ritual, a game of hide and seek where the dagger is passed back and forth among the guests in a darkened house, the one left with the dagger being the "killer." The guests are eager to take part in this ritual and soon the house is darkened and the "game" begins. Abbershaw views the game as insipid and uses the opportunity to go outside and check on his car, were he runs into Campion. The two amiably chat and return to the house together, where something is most definitely wrong.

Colonel Coombe has had a heart attack and been taken upstairs. Soon Abbershaw learns that Coombe is dead and is asked to hastily sign a cremation order. Abbershaw, very suspicious, gets a quick look at Coombe and decides that the man has most definitely been murdered. Though Coombe's thuggish friends, led by Dawlish, make it quite clear to Abbershaw, that not signing the cremation order is not an option. Something sinister is at Black Dudley. Come morning, all the guests realize they are captives. Dawlish has lost something of value and no one leaves until it is returned. If his item is returned, will he let everyone go though?

It is interesting to me that this is considered the first Albert Campion book seeing as, while a memorable character, he is by no means the star, that task is left to the too upright and altruistic Doctor Abbershaw. In fairness, The Crime at Black Dudley's blurb did warn me that Albert Campion is "in a supporting role, for the first and last time." I just thought he'd have a bigger part... apparently we have Allingham's American publisher to thank for Campion taking center stage. Originally she wanted to have Abbershaw be the star of her new mystery series. All I have to say to that is snooze fest. Campion is far more interesting in that he has flexible morals, but more importantly, was created to make fun of Lord Peter Wimsey. And right now, anyone taking the piss out of Dorothy L. Sayers gets two big thumbs up from me.

Personally, I can't decide yet as to whether I'll like Campion... he was too peripheral and there were just too many characters running around and mucking things up that I had to juggle. There really has to be some way to find the perfect balance of number of characters to narrative. But then there's authors like George R. R. Martin who are juggling so many they need an exhaustive appendix, yet I can keep them all straight, then there's The Crime at Black Dudley, where some of the characters are forgettable even to others in the book. I mean Martin is actually described as "just a stray young man" with black hair! How am I to remember anything about Martin with this vague description thrown in amongst all the the guests and thugs wandering around this house with impossible and improbable secret passageways and staircases and old areas that were part of the monastery? How I ask you? Also, throw in three characters with W's for names, Wyatt, Watt, and Whitby, add three doctors, and three ladies and I didn't care enough to keep track of who was who. Never mind that the ending was out of left field with no hints, by the end I didn't care, I was just glad it was over.

The main reason I disliked The Crime at Black Dudley was the mysterious organized crime element. Organized crime to me just doesn't feel British enough to my bones. While I know that's absurd, when I get a country house murder, I expect something more Gosford Park and less John Gotti. Sure, organized crime can be interesting... there was a time in my life I found it very interesting. Yet, with the hulking and stone-faced Dawlish as the "head" of the organization I was left cold. He didn't seem to have any intelligence or ingeniousness to lead a world wide crime syndicate. Also he seemed rather hesitant to kill. I'm sorry, but at the point where you've got tons of people locked up, and over half a million pounds on the line, just start killing them to get what you want. Leaving them alive gives them opportunity to escape... which of course, from the heroes point of view is felicitous, but unrealistic in my mind. Perhaps it's my dislike of the stolid Abbershaw that is making me see things through the eyes of the criminals... but really, kill them, be done with it.

Reading this fresh on the heels of Allingham's wonderful The White Cottage Mystery, I was struck by a similarity between the two. When I read Carola Dunn's first Daisy Dalrymble book, Death at Wentwater Court, it struck me as interesting that she let the criminal go free. I thought that this was an interesting twist on the mysteries of the 20s. Little did I know that Margery Allingham was also very fluid in the punishment meted out on criminals. Allingham definitely has a scale she uses to judge the guilty, and sometimes the scale does not point "go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $20." While I find it refreshing... two books in a row, well... it was repetative. Also, if at this point you're thinking, dammit, she's spoiled the book for me... remember the killer comes out of left field, so, no I didn't. I wasn't able to guess the killer and neither will you, the punishment is immaterial in this case.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Campion, Doctor Abbershaw, Dorothy L. Sayers, George R.R. Martin, Golden Summer, Gosford Park, Lord Peter Wimsey, Margery Allingham, Monopoly, The Crime at Black Dudley, The White Cottage Mystery

You might be asking yourself, what can I watch to get into that Royal frame of mind? Never fear, I watch way too many BBC productions and have a handy little list for you. It's even a little more off beat than you might expect, thinking I'll be all, just go watch Helen Mirren in The Queen... but no! And it's not because I haven't gotten around to watching that movie cause I'm kind of ho hum on the whole Helen Mirren thing, this is more, what I feel the Jubilee is about.

"Victoria and Albert" - Victoria Hamilton and Jonathan Firth
Get the all the haps on the only other Queen to make it 60 years. Very sweet story that I find is a far better dramatization than the newer The Young Victoria. I know, that's sacrilege saying that a non-Julian Fellowes adaptation is better than a Julian Fellowes adaptation, but I felt that the movie just took everything from the miniseries and condensed it down time wise with prettier actors (not dissing Jonathan Firth, the hottie), so we lose a lot of the interest and day to day mundanities and trials and tribulations that make Victoria and Albert amazing. Plus, Victoria being played by a Victoria, how can you miss out on that coolness, not to mention, she knocked it out of the park. Also, a young James Callis pre Battlestar Galactica and even pre Bridget Jones.

"Wallis and Edward" - Stephen Moore Campbell and Joely Richardson
Learn all you could want to know about Wallis and Edward without having to watch anything by Madonna. While I have to say that this love story doesn't interest me in the least, they are two selfish people who ended up befriending Nazis, needless to say, this is the reason that Queen Elizabeth is Queen! If Edward hadn't abdicated, George VI, Elizabeth's dad Bertie, would not have become king and then she would have never been Queen. Also Germany would probably rule us all... but that's beside the point. This is very well acted and stars some of my favorite actors, but still, be prepared for selfish people.

"Bertie and Elizabeth" - James Wilby and Juliet Aubrey
Before The King's Speech, the BBC did this wonderful little story about Bertie and his ascension to the throne. Most notable for me was this was the first time that I liked James Wilby in anything! Not that I disliked him before, he just is really really good an playing asses, Howards End, Gosford Park, I could keep going. Just a sweet little story about what happens when you unexpectedly become king... I'm sure there's probably some cross over with The King's Speech... but the thing is, I still haven't seen that yet... ok, yell at me now... it's Colin Firth and I should know better.

"The Queen's Sister" - Toby Stephens and Lucy Coho
A great in depth look at the wild younger sister of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret. This was the first time I was exposed to the wonderful acting of Lucy Coho, who has now been in everything from Upstairs, Downstairs to Torchwood. I mainly watched it for Toby Stephens, that glorious acting son of Maggie Smith, but I found the story so interesting. While Elizabeth was keeping the country together after the death of her father, her sister was the flamboyant one. A troublesome marriage to a photographer who she later divorced, yet introduced her to a Bohemian lifestyle. Drugs, sex, it's got everything that you want to associate with royalty who try to keep their noses clean.

"Doctor Who - The Idiot's Lantern"
Now, you might be wondering why I'm recommending a random episode of Doctor Who from David Tennant's first season... I know, you're thinking I'm just trying to promote my love of Mark Gatiss, and, while yes, this could be true, I have other motives. This episode takes place during Queen Elizabeth's coronation! Sure there's an alien using television to control the world, but really, watch the costumes, the block party, the feeling that permeates this episode. This is what Britain was like when Elizabeth became Queen... I won't comment as to the veracity of their being aliens or not. Oh, and there's bunting!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bertie and Elizabeth, Diamond Jubilee, Doctor Who, Gosford Park, Jonathan Firth, Julian Fellowes, Mark Gatiss, Queen Victoria, Stephen Moore Campbell, The 10th Doctor, Toby Stephens, Wallis and Edward