strange and random happenstance

If you've ever watched anything written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff you know that he's not really big on plots or logic, he's in it for the vibes. Which, as a viewer, can be quite frustrating. Sometimes you'd like more than to be emotionally manipulated. You at least want a reason why. Well, if you're looking for a reason why you will not find out here. You have to suspend your disbelief and embrace the illogic of Stephen Polikoff or you will go mad. Being so close to the edge already I chose to embrace the madness. Because as the granddaughter of a photographer a miniseries about photography is obviously within my wheelhouse of knowledge so the sheer incorrectness of, well, everything, just drove me mad. But you already know that. What you don't know is that I was yelling at the television and screaming THIS IS NOT HOW YOU ARCHIVE MATERIALS every other scene. So, now you know that as well. Our tale starring Timothy Spall, Lindsay Duncan, and Liam Cunningham is about the Fallon Photo Library. The library is housed in a large Victorian building where instead of everything being kept in acid free boxes out of the light pictures are strung up across aisles and placed willy-nilly. Ah Stephen Poliakoff, going for the aesthetics over the actual. Though I will say that if this was a photographer's actual studio and not an archive this would be accurate. Eerily accurate. The building that houses the collection has been sold and the collection was to be disposed of. The head librarian Oswald, played by Spall, has, FOR MONTHS, kept this a secret from his boss Marilyn, played by Duncan, and the other members of staff. When Liam Cunningham arrives he expects an empty building not a presentation by the staff as to why the collection needs to be preserved. You see, Oswald is "special." And yes, this could, in this instance, mean many things both positive and negative, but here his specialty is that he knows this collection like no one else and can find any picture of anyone. He performs his "trick" by finding a picture of Liam Cunningham's grandmother within the archive. While it's a neat party trick it doesn't sooth the rest of the staff who are hustling to try to find a home for the archive days before Christmas, even debasing themselves to an advertising firm run by Andy Serkis. The real kicker is that Oswald attempts suicide and becomes an invalid. No longer the man he was. So my question is, while the collection is saved to an extent over these three episodes, when the one man whose brain was needed to preserve the collection's legacy basically destroys it what is this series trying to say? He literally wiped the hard drive. It just so happened it was more organic. Turning this character who is infuriating yet full of life as he runs around the collection to a lump on a bench makes no sense. Does he view this as his punishment? To be forever cut off from the collection? Did he view his life as the price to pay to save the collection? Shooting the Past just baffled and annoyed me and made me really want to organize. Not their collection, I do think that was a lost cause. I need to organize my own shit. So I'll go off and do that and you can do whatever you like. I hope, for your sake, it's not watching this miniseries.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Advertising, Andy Serkis, Archive, Fallon Photo Library, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Liam Cunningham, Lindsay Duncan, Photography, Shooting the Past, Stephen Poliakoff, Suicide, Suspension of Disbelief, Timothy Spall

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Harperteen
Publication Date: August 6th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

The Ralston family were the picture of American exceptionalism. Dr. Philip Ralston and his family summered on a private paradise renamed after the eminent physician in the Thousand Islands region of New York. Morning House was designed to foster good health and creativity for his six children, born within six months of each other, whom he adopted while working in England during the war. When he finally married a stage actress his young song Max increased his brood to seven. At Morning House the children lived in a playhouse worthy of the Brothers Grimm and followed a regimen of nutrition and exercise. But their perfect lives were shattered forever on July 27th, 1932. Four year old Max was found drowned in the waters of the St. Lawrence River. Later that night, overcome by grief, his eldest sibling, Clara, jumped off the roof of Morning House, ending her life at only sixteen. From that point on death stalked the family and Morning House was shuttered. Only one child, Benjamin, survived, returning just the once in 2002 to that ill-fated island. Marlowe Wexler is about to learn all about Morning House. At first, her summer seemed to be looking up. She got a job at the local ice cream parlor, Guffy's, with the girl of her dreams as her coworker and then everything went to hell because of petrichor. She was trying to impress Akilah and got a scented candle. There was a fire. The fallout wasn't good. She needed to put the town in her rear view mirror for the summer and her history teacher, Ms. Gibson, came to the rescue. A friend of hers is a professor of history at Syracuse and is working on a history of Morning House. Abandoned by the Ralstons in the 1930s and empty ever since it's about to be redeveloped and is open to tourists for the summer with a group of local teenagers that live and work there acting as guides and she's down one teen. Marlowe is one teen. But maybe she should have asked what happened to the teen she's replacing? The group at the house have known each other forever and have history. She's walked right into a fairy tale land that looks like it should be fictional and she has no idea what dynamics she's disrupting. Because she's there to replace a dead person. Sure, they say it was an accident, but could this house be cursed? Or is there something more at play? At least she has a clean slate if no one finds out about the fire... Or as long as there isn't another one...

I know some people complained when this book was announced because it is a standalone and not the sixth Truly Devious mystery. I would counter this complaint with the fact that this is the most Maureen Johnson book Maureen has ever Johnsoned. Mysteries in two time periods, check. Teen relationship angst, check. Cute LGBTQIA+ relationships, check. Snark and jokes aplenty, a thousand checks just for that dressing alone. What's more is that it's self-contained. While I love the Truly Devious series the fact that the first mystery doesn't resolve for three books came as a bit of a shock to me and then my wallet as I couldn't wait another six months to get to the head of the queue on OverDrive and had to buy the series. I just had to. So here, it's one and done. You get the mysteries solved, you get the love triangles worked out, and you aren't sitting here for over two years stewing about how David treated Stevie! I mean, how could he!?! Can they ever recover!?! Do I even want them to!?! But those are worries for another day, not today Satan! What really drew me into this book wasn't the teen angst, much like the Truly Devious series, it was the historical crime, and here, the Ralston family. Damn. They are a hot mess. And they're Nazis. So, hot messy Nazis. In this day and age it is more important than ever to stand up and say that Nazis are bad. Because, honestly, Nazis are all around us and it's terrifying. But saying nothing makes you complicit. And I will not be counted as one of those people who said nothing. And Maureen Johnson, oh, she has a conscience and a platform and she uses it for all she's worth. Really, if you do not follow her on her socials you are missing out. Yes, they are sometimes weird, but only in the best possible way, but more importantly, she is politically informed and helps out with valuable information about what is happening and even more pressing, what you can do about it. That's why I love Death at Morning House. A human connection to horror. Through a compelling story she shows why Nazis are evil. She shows how one person without a conscious and interest in eugenics can destroy an entire family. Of course, on person without a conscious and an interest in eugenics almost destroyed the world, but this shows it on a more human level. We connect with Clara and her siblings. We see their lives. We become a part of their lives and then their lives are snuffed out because of Nazis. Two of the siblings more literally because of a bomb during WWII. And the extra creepy eugenics twist? Well, I'll leave that for you to discover because this is a must read book. Though naming one of the kids Unity was chef's kiss brilliant. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Death at Morning House, Eugenics, Fire, LGBTQIA+, Marlowe Wexler, Maureen Johnson, Mitfords, Morning House, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Nazis, Petrichor, Socials, Suicide, The Ralstons, Truly Devious, Unity Mitford

The Witch Elm by Tana French
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: October 9th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 528 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Toby Hennessy is a golden child. Favored not just by his family but by the world. Nothing has ever stood in his way. Coddled in his privilege, that is what Toby is and assumes he will always be. But that is all about to change. There was a contretemps at work. He threw a colleague at the art gallery he does PR for under a bus in order to keep his job. Even though he himself was complicit. Such a victory deserves a celebration, a night out with the lads. A night that ends up with him being brutalized by burglars in a home invasion. He could have stayed in his room and called the cops. But he didn't. Because situations like this don't happen to people like him. People like him scare the burglars off, they don't end up forever changed, they don't end up with brain damage. His luck has finally run out. What's more, his family has been keeping secrets from him. The first of which is his beloved Uncle Hugo is dying of Cancer. Though this gives Toby an opportunity, to heal and help at the same time. Hugo has always lived in Ivy House. The home is the heart of the Hennessy family. Toby and his two cousins, Susanna and Leon, spent every summer there. There were perfect days and wonderful nights spent in the glorious garden out back under Hugo's benevolent eye. If anywhere can heal Toby it's Ivy House. He moves in with his girlfriend Melissa and for a short while it's perfect. Hugo spends his days working on genealogy with Toby's help and when Melissa get's home from work they spend the evening having a delicious meal in contented splendor. It almost seems as if this little bubble of calm and happiness with never burst. The attack is in the past and Hugo still seems his old self. But Susanna's son discovers a human skull in the wych elm and things start to fall apart. Ivy House is now a crime scene and the victim is Dominic Ganly. He was a classmate and friend of Toby's who supposedly committed suicide the summer before college. This is no suicide. This is murder. As Toby and Hugo both start to deteriorate, Toby is convinced that it was one his cousins who committed this crime. But obviously he would have helped them to take care of a bully and a pest, wouldn't he? He wishes he could remember. He wishes he knew the secrets. He should be careful what you wish for.

So far this is my favorite Tana French book after The Likeness. And I strongly suspect it's because of their similarities. They both are mysteries contained and concerning a home that is at once a safe haven and a crime scene. There's that bubble, that golden glow, that takes the characters out of time and they just live a small, circumscribed, but wonderfully content life. It's the day to day details, the joy taken in wandering from room to room and preparing a meal in the kitchen and strolling out into the garden that I just love. It's too bad that the story didn't stick to this cozy contained little world. And it's oddly not the murder or the secrets that implode this world, it's the fact that Toby is a privileged asshole. Yes he's an unreliable narrator, but you can love an unreliable narrator, you can't love Toby. What's the problem with Toby? Well, everything. He views that he's a good guy. He thinks he's always been a good guy. But, you know as well as I do, that golden boys aren't the good guys they appear to be. They have secrets, and if the worst of them is that they are oblivious to the plight of those around them, well, consider yourself lucky. So Toby could be worse, he just turned a blind eye to the torture of his cousins at the hands of Dominic, because Dominic was like him, he was his friend, and what his cousins said couldn't possibly be true. Here's the thing Toby. It's not how people treat their equals that matters but how they treat those who they view as their inferiors that does. And Dominic made Susanna and Leon's lives a living hell. And that's on you because you could have stopped it. And in your deluded PTSD brain you imagine that perhaps you did. Perhaps you helped them. You didn't. Your type never does. But that's not the main reason why I hate Toby. I hate Toby because he thinks doing a radical action will somehow free him, return him to his previous self. When Susanna and Leon did what they did to Dominic it released them from the horrors of their lives up until that point. Therefore Toby thinks that by doing a suitably grand gesture he too will be freed. There is no logic in Toby's thinking. He kills a cop who was simply doing his job, not a bully who was destroying lives, and he thinks, this will, what? Free him? That this will restore him? While I could just say two wrongs don't make a right, that's too trite. Too tidy. Instead I will say that Toby is a deluded narcissist who couldn't handle an imperfect life so decided to make it worse because there was no making it better or even sustainable. And this, this is why I hate him. You play the cards you are dealt, you don't shoot the dealer.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Art Gallery, Bullies, Burglary, Cancer, Cold Case, Dublin, Genealogy, Ivy House, Murder Most Foul, Privilege, PTSD, Secrets, Suicide, Tana French, The Likeness, The Witch Elm, Toby Hennessy, Unreliable Narrator

Affinity by Sarah Waters
Published by: Riverhead
Publication Date: June 5th, 2000
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

There are secrets in everyone's lives. Everyone knows that Margaret Prior hasn't been the same since the death of her father. Only a few know that she tried to kill herself. And only one other knows that the death of her father was only the first domino to fall. His death confined Margaret to Cheyne Walk. Her dreams of Italy and a life with Helen were crushed. Helen subsequently married Margaret's brother and bore him a child. Helen, Italy, her father, all of it lost forever. Her future being nothing more than her mother's dogsbody will eventually break her. But first a kind friend of her father's tries to help. Mr. Shillitoe has asked Margaret if she would be interested in becoming a "Lady Visitor" to Millbank Prison. The scheme is that Margaret, being from a well-respected upper-class family, will be a good influence on the female prisoners. Her manners and comportment will encourage the women to emulate her. During her first visit she's uncertain if she will ever return. The despair and drudgery. The claustrophobic air. Everything combines to sap the will to live out of you. But then she sees one prisoner remarkably holding a flower. In this is a place where nothing grows. It is a mystery. One that will take over Margaret's life. Because the prisoner is none other than the famous, some may say infamous, medium Selina Dawes. Selina is in prison because her patroness died after Selina conducted a private session with a young American, Miss Madeleine Silvester, who went into a fit after Selina's spirit guide, Peter Quick, manifested himself and was rough with the her. All of this Margaret learns over time. Some from her too short visits with Selina, some from the matrons, and some from the outside world. Because that's what has happened to Margaret. She believes that her world is the prison. That she is there with Selina. And yet she cannot show how desperate she is to see Selina. Her mother has already threatened to stop her visiting the prisoners. She thinks Margaret just gets too worked up. Also Margaret cannot let the matrons suspect her partiality for the medium or they too could stop her visits. She must spread her "good work" to other inmates, hiding her true feelings and desires. But Selina understands all. Selina has manifested miracles for Margaret, flowers in the bleakest of nights. Now it is up to Margaret to get ready for another miracle, Selina's escape. The two of them will forge a new life together. The spirits just have to be willing.

Until now I didn't know that Sarah Waters had reached her full potential and written a perfect book. I should have known given how beloved she is, but of her six books I've only read half of them so I only had half the picture. I felt that The Little Stranger left much to be desired despite having a lasting influence on me and Fingersmith overstayed its welcome. So much like Goldilocks it took until I read Affinity to find something just right. The problems I had with Fingersmith in particular highlight why this book is perfection. With the story of Sue Trinder and Maud Lilly we essentially had two novels. The first half was Sue's story and the second half was Maud's story, or, if I'm being honest, just the entire story of Sue rehashed once the "twist" was revealed. The book should have ended at the twist. Leave your audience wanting more with shock and awe, with a visceral gut punch that they will never recover from. Which, ironically, is exactly what Sarah Waters did with Affinity, the book she wrote before Fingersmith. I wonder if it's because this book left questions and in some places was open to interpretation that there were critics out there who said she should work on that and then she did and it made her work less than. I would rather be left wanting more than grow to dislike a novel. Sarah Waters does an amazing job with worldbuilding. People have rightfully compared her to Dickens. She brings Victorian London to life. You feel the oppression of the air on your skin, the din of the streets in your ears. But what I found astonishing here is that she brought an overlooked part of Victorian London to life in Margaret's visits to Millbank Prison. I felt like I was there, in Millbank. The chalky walls, the confining routines, the itchy clothes, the loneliness, the dark, I was there. I was a prisoner in Millbank. And oh how it mirrors the prison of Margaret's own life. She has her own jailor in the form of her mother, her own torment in seeing her lover married to her brother, her prison is just far more luxurious. And every time I picked up this book I was taken away from my world and lived in theirs. I was there with Margaret, I was there with Selina. I WAS THERE. For a little less than a week I lived in another world. A world where a skilled Spiritualist made a desperate and lonely woman believe in supernatural powers. Believe that there was a life they could make together. A world that was someone else's. And I so believed. As George R.R. Martin said "[a] reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." But not every book gives you that lived in experience. Affinity did. Sarah Waters let me live another life. A truly unforgettable one.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Affinity, Charles Dickens, Fingersmith, Gothic, Lady Visitor, Margaret Prior, Mediums, Millbank Prison, Peter Quick, Prison, Sarah Waters, Selina Dawes, Spiritualism, Suicide, The Little Stranger, Victorian London

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: 1944
Format: Paperback, 626 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Hazel is a beautiful busty blonde, always putting on a show for one lover or another. Marriage allows her to finally be herself, which doesn't please her husband one bit. He misses the good-time girl he married. She takes to drinking and hanging out with her neighbor who always seems to have a plethora of men at her place. One particular man takes a shine to her and her husband is out of the picture and she's a kept woman. Until one day she isn't. She moves from one man to another, being the good-time girl, a fate she's destined for as even suicide didn't take. Suicide is a theme returned to again and again, "Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live." All these people living desperate lives, barely scraping by. Yet the Crugers are well off. They have staff to take care of their every whim. Miss Wilmarth is a nurse that works for them. She is neither above nor below stairs. She is in her own world. But her employers let her little by little into their world. Of course to the Crugers she is a joke. They believe she is unattractive and like showing off their "Horsie." Because if one thing is true, those with money will make sport of their lessers. So the truth of "society" is revealed, it is there to be the punching bag, a position they aren't used to. But the truth is, behind the veil even those who are well off, those with jewels and pearls, they too suffer from melancholia. The world makes everyone suffer in the end. Though one lady out on a date might just adopt "Horsie," it's something she's prone to do after "just a little one." But as she gets drunker and drunker, her companion Fred has to hear her slur the reputation of their mutual acquaintance, Edith. Because the alcohol makes her maudlin and apt to say what she shouldn't even be thinking. But it will all be alright if they adopt just a little horse... Alcohol, class, loneliness, depression, this is the world as it is, but also with the cut and thrust of someone who has been there.

Everyone knows Dorothy Parker even if they don't know they know her. She is remembered primarily for her pithy one-liners. If you've ever heard someone say that men "seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses" that's one of hers. As is "what fresh hell can this be?" And "I hate writing, I love having written." Timeless snark that people use to this day, even if it's been slightly bastardized and altered. Despite her dislike of writing her output was prodigious, a poet, a reviewer, and short story writer, she did it all. What's more she even followed the writers inevitable journey west to Hollywood and garnered two Academy Award nominations. One of which might surprise you. She just happened to write the first version of A Star is Born. Though personally I'm more impressed with her doing Saboteur for Hitchcock. Her stories became wildly popular due to her and Alexander Woollcott producing an anthology of her work for servicemen stationed overseas during World War II. It was finally published for the masses in 1944 as The Portable Dorothy Parker. Since then it's been revised twice to add in more material and make it the behemoth that it is today, a paperback clocking in at 626 pages that could clock anyone if wielded properly. One would think that reading this vast conglomeration of work from her scatching review of The House at Pooh Corner to letters about staying with friends in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Europe to poetry and prose might give you a little whiplash. That you might just be overwhelmed by the sheer disparate quality of her work. But for me, this wasn't the case. Instead I felt like I got a glimpse of this fully rounded character, and boy was she a character. Her poetry showed her depth of feeling along with her astounding use of language. Her letters showed her inner life and her social conscience and how she was always fighting for the underdog, even if it did get her on the Hollywood blacklist. Her reviews showed that even if you were her friend she'd come at you both barrels blazing. And her short stories showed her wicked wit. While many people point to "Big Blonde" as her best story, might I counter with "The Game." Written for Cosmopolitan in 1948 it's about a newlywed couple hosting a few of their friends at their apartment. The game they play becomes more and more vicious with secrets revealed, especially about the husband's first wife... With this story alone you can see why she worked with Hitchcock. It's a marital version of Rope. You NEED this story in your life so you might as well buy the book. You wouldn't want her ghost showing up and decimating you with the perfect pithy put-down now would you?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Star is Born, Alcoholism, Big Blonde, Cosmopolitan, Dorothy Parker, For the Love of Book Clubs, Hitchcock, Poetry, Screenplay, Short Stories, Suicide, The House at Pooh Corner, The Portable Dorothy Parker

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Published by: Viking
Publication Date: August 13th, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

The death of her cat was the last straw. Nora's life is a dumpster fire. No one needs her. No one wants her. She's been fired from the music store she worked at and her only piano student has quit. And then her cat died. There's nothing for her in this world so she decides to leave it behind. Only instead of dying she ends up in a library. There her old librarian, Mrs. Elm, tells her that she still has a chance. Between life and death there is the library. You can read The Book of Regrets and then choose another life. Take down a book from the shelves and live the life that could have been had one thing been different. But she must be careful, if she experiences disappointment the new life will reject her and send her back to the library. Nora doesn't want to play this game of what ifs, she just wants to die. First she chooses to not jilt her fiance, and she learns that perhaps she was never meant to marry him in the first place. Then more disappointment happens when she tries to save her cat. It was the cat's time, so her regret is erased but the pain of loss is not. It dawns on her, could she really spend this time suspended between life and death righting the wrongs of her life? But everything good that could have happened had negative consequences, fame led to the death of those she loved, and happiness seems elusive. She encounters another soul searching for his bliss. Although he encourages her to try as many lives as possible. Not to pick one right away and stick with it. Don't craft her happily ever after, go on a journey of self-discovery. And this is what Nora does. She experiences it all, fame, polar bears, vineyards, anything and everything she could have been is available to her but in the end it's hollow. She wants something perfect and permanent. That's how she finds the life with Ash and Molly. A devoted husband and a beautiful daughter. She becomes fiercely attached to this life but the voice in the back of her brain, the one that told her suicide was the only option, whispers to her that she didn't earn this life. And that's enough to throw her back into the library. But Nora has wasted her time as she did her life. Is it too late to go back to the beginning and try to fix it? To rewrite her ending?

If you are one of the legions of people who loved this book I'm glad for you, and glad that you support the aphorisms on wooden planks business that is booming and your psychiatrist who is buying their second vacation home thanks to you. For all of us who don't fall for gimmicks and pop psychology let me break down the ENTIRE message of this book so you don't have to waste valuable time reading it; as long as you have time and potential that's all you need. Seriously, that is the entire message of this book. I mean, it is a powerful message, it's just not one that needed hundreds of pages in which to tell it. The Midnight Library is cliched and trite and the more I think about it the more it annoys me. I don't want self-help masquerading as fiction. I know what my problems are, thank you very much, and I read to escape them, not analyze them. And I'm sorry if this offends you, but if this kind of advice was actually able to help me I'd feel pedestrian. I'm not saying my problems are more complicated or different than yours, what I'm saying is that if my psychiatrist, and yes I have a psychiatrist, spouted this hackneyed advice at me I'd fire him. Because this book just feels like a "teachable moment" and if there's anything more cringe than that saying, it's what's between the covers of this book. And that's not even getting into the structural issues I have. So you just "know" in one of Nora's lives the band she abandoned became a huge success, because of course it did, and yet you have to wait what feels like forever to get to that life. I mean, wouldn't that be like the very first alternative you you'd want to be? Also, all these other lives somehow exist and yet Matt Haig doesn't go into the details. In the life where Nora has a daughter her daughter knows it's not her mother. She's too different. Which would indicate that this version of herself exists even without her in the body. So is she quantum leaping into other hers? Because that would be kind of cool. Personally I don't think Matt Haig thought it through in this regard, mainly because it would improve the book and doesn't have an improving message. But part of me hopes that Nora is Sam Beckett and in an attempt to fix her own life destroys all the lives she leaps into. Now why couldn't an editor have given Matt Haig that note? Probably because it would only be read by a small select group of people instead of all the rubes needing affirmation that flocked to buy this book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cat, For the Love of Book Clubs, Librarian, Matt Haig, Nora Seed, Pop Psychology, Psychiatrist, Quantum Leap, Rock Star, Sam Beckett, Self Help, Soul, Suicide, The Book of Regrets, The Midnight Library

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: October 6th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 498 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Editor Susan Ryeland has a bit of a problem. Alan Conway is a very successful author for her publishing house. Without him they'd be in serious trouble. As it is they've had a very rough year and his next book needs to be a success to stabilize everything. She's never much liked Alan, but there's no doubt that the reading public adores his Atticus Pünd series. It's classic golden age detection written today, with a deeply affecting and dark backstory for it's lead. The problem is his newest book, Magpie Murders, is missing the final chapters and Alan has committed suicide. Her boss Charles even receives Alan's suicide note in the mail. Susan knows how important this book is, not just to Alan's readers, but to her continued employment. Therefore she sets out to find the missing pages. But that's when things get weird. Alan's home turns out to be the fictional Pye Hall where both deaths happened in his newest manuscript. What's more, everyone in Alan's life has a counterpart on the page. Alan's sister, his lover, his neighbor, even the vicar, everyone is somehow represented within the pages of his story. Which makes Susan wonder, what is really happening on these pages? Could they be hiding a secret? Did Alan even kill himself? Perhaps it was murder! Alan seemed to really rub everyone the wrong way. When events start to happen just like they did in the book, Susan wonders what is really going on. There are some deep and disturbing secrets held within the pages of Alan's work. He was a vindictive man who wanted not just fame but prestige. He was wasted on golden age procedurals, at least in his mind, and he amused himself in very spiteful ways. If she can solve the crimes in the manuscript perhaps it will lead to solving the mystery of Alan. That or she's out of a job. At least her boyfriend would be happy. He wants to whisk her off to a Greek isle to help his cousin run a hotel. But Susan, the woman who could never guess whodunit, wants to solve the case, even if it costs her her life.

If there's one thing that Anthony Horowitz knows it's murder. Which might actually be my issue with this book. It's not that it's not deftly plotted and keeps you on your toes, it's that with Susan, an editor who can never guess whodunit, we have a character who has to give us "teaching moments" about writers and television shows, most of which Horowitz has written for, and I just felt like it was condescending while at the same time insulting Susan's, and the readers, intelligence. But Susan is a whole other problem I don't know if I feel like getting into. If you picked up this book because of Horowitz, you know what he's written, you know that Atticus Pünd is going to be a pitch perfect Germanic cousin to Poirot because Horowitz adapted eleven episodes for David Suchet. And so he is. There is no doubt of the bona fides here. And yes, you could say that it's done tongue firmly in cheek, like with his Hawthorne and Horowitz series where he has gone so far as to make himself an actual character in his books, but it just didn't feel that way to me. Perhaps it was just that Alan Conway is so full of himself and such a pompous ass that that superiority of being seeps into the whole book and it just gives off a smugness that I just don't care for. I don't know if it's that Horowitz is actually that smug about his career, or that I'm misreading it. I just felt like this book was in may face. It was at me trying to get it's point across. What was that point? Well, it's interesting in that it seems that Horowitz thinks authors have a duty of care towards their readers and that they shouldn't betray their trust. I totally agree with him here, it just could have been presented in a different manner. In fact, the number one thing I kept thinking about, as he'd name dropped her a few times, is what does he think about J.K. Rowling's decent into TERFdom? Because she has totally betrayed her readers. And looking online I saw him tweet in defense of her and then try to reframe the narrative. So. Yeah.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alan Conway, Anthony Horowitz, Atticus Pund, David Suchet, Editor, Hawthorne and Horowitz, J.K. Rowling, Magpie Murders, Manuscript, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Poirot, Roman A Clef, Suicide, Susan Ryeland, TERF

To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: July 1st, 2003
Format: Paperback, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Eloise loves to receive letters. She is smart enough to know that in order to receive one must give. So she's always jotting off notes to friends and family. Her hands are perpetually covered in ink as the words flow unimpeded from her hand much as they do from her mouth. Conversation and discussion are her very lifeblood. Therefore taking up a correspondence with her distant cousin Marina's widower after Marina's passing isn't that untoward. The importance Sir Phillip Crane's letters become in her life is surprising. And then he offers to marry her. He doesn't say it's because he just wants to have a happy wife and someone to look after his kids while he putters about in his greenhouse. He just assumes that Eloise still being unwed she would naturally want to avoid being a spinster and offers for her. With conditions, because he doesn't expect a woman from London to come to the wilds of Gloucestershire and marry him sight unseen. He suggests he has a chaperone come to Romney Hall and accompany her for a few weeks to see if they will suit. But then Eloise's brother marries her best friend and her world is turned upside down. So instead of writing to Sir Phillip that she is coming she just arrives on his doorstep. And neither is what the other expected. Sir Phillip thought he'd meet a demure spinster, instead he meets the woman of his dreams, until she opens her mouth and starts talking a mile a minute. This is definitely a woman who hasn't lacked suitors, in fact she's turned down more than a handful of them. Eloise knew nothing of his children, the terrors of the county, but thankfully she has so many nieces and nephews she knows how to handle children. Even if they decide to wage war on her the second they see her. But the main problem is her showing up unannounced means there's no chaperone. Every minute she stays Eloise is risking her and Sir Phillip being wed whether they wish it or not. And there is hope they will suit. Eloise is good with the kids, he is good with the kissing. But once her family descends on them... Well, things rapidly get out of hand. Especially as they assumed she had been kidnapped. Eloise did leave a note. She always does! She just didn't think it would be misplaced and the chaos that was enveloping her life would spread. But maybe things will all work out. Maybe.

Eloise's story is part The Parent Trap part Jane Eyre. It's occasionally cringeworthy, funny, horrifying, boring, and sexy with everyone getting their happily ever after except Marina. And that is my problem with To Sir Phillip, With Love, Marina, AKA Bertha by another name. She was a very sad and depressed woman who took her life. Yet she is little more than just a plot device to bring Eloise and Phillip together and because of that she lacks a voice. She isn't understood. She is handled almost callously. She was depressed and now she's gone so let's move on. There was a part of me that was crying out for her to have her own Wide Sargasso Sea moment. I wanted to see what happened to her through her eyes, not those of a detached male. The problem for me then becomes rooted in a conundrum; do I want the characters to handle mental illness as it was viewed then or as it was viewed when this book first came out. And added to that is how much mental health has even changed in the almost twenty years since this book was released. Mental illness historically wasn't well treated, just look what England did to their own King. So at least Marina wasn't in an asylum. Which means the real problem I have is with Phillip, who just seemed to give up. Fans of his, and I don't know who you are, would say, oh, but he jumped into the lake to save her, and what about when he vents to Eloise in front of Marina's portrait of all he claims to have done. I say too little too late. Julia Quinn was trying to walk back the insensitivity of a man who is all about himself. Yes, maybe Marina was so depressed nothing Phillip could have done would have helped her. But I see a man who locked himself in a greenhouse and shut out the world instead of trying to face what he didn't want to face. Personally I think my husband just leaving me in a room with the curtains drawn while he's more concerned about his plants would make me depressed too! What's more he ignores his children, not even knowing they are being abused, because again, he doesn't want to deal with that. And then he's so self-centered he plans to marry to have a happy wife who will take care of everything he doesn't want to deal with. And as for the criteria of a "happy" wife? That is horrible and putting a heck of a lot of pressure on your spouse. They MUST be happy! But all's well, because Eloise is happy and Marina is written off as someone who was sad her whole life so Phillip gets what Phillip wants. Phillip is an ass. And yet still not nearly as annoying as Benedict.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bertha Mason, Compromised, Correspondence, Depression, Eloise Bridgerton, Jane Eyre, Julia Quinn, Marina Crane, Mental Illness, Regency Romp, Sir Phillip Crane, Suicide, The Parent Trap, To Sir Phillip With Love

Madame Bovary isn't exactly a show to watch for some light fare unless you like watching someone die from eating arsenic. Emma Bovary literally has a "breakdown" in each of the four episodes. And by breakdown, I mean she throws a shit fit and takes to her bed because she didn't get what she wanted and "collapsed." Such causes for shit fits range from abandonment by lovers to not liking the shitty town her husband has stuck her in because he lacks ambition to financial ruin. Literally the only one worthy of a breakdown was the financial ruin she brought on herself. Because losing it over a young admirer whom you gave a rug to, seriously!?! You have got to admit that in older literature it's sometimes hilarious what causes women to suffer. Especially when they blame her second breakdown on plums. Yes. A doctor and a pharmacist blame her "illness" on plums! The absurdity of plums aside, this is worth watching for two reasons, the first is Tom Conti. I believe I first some him in an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's The Inheritance, where I first saw his patented air of benign absentmindedness. He is, in my mind, Mr Bennet in the flesh. Just sitting there in a room with a smile plastered on his face, exuding goodwill, and being baffled at the tumult around him. That is what he brings to Madame Bovary as her husband Charles. This wonderful vulnerable bafflement that makes you just want to protect him from his scheming wife. Out Emma! Let Charles just stick to what he does best and stop trying to make something of him. Ugh, if I had a husband as good as him I wouldn't treat him like filth. But, then again, by now you should have guessed I hated Emma. Though she did have a redeeming aspect, AKA, the second reason to watch this show, and that is that Emma was played by the always wonderful Francesca Annis! But the real reason is that this miniseries "reunites" her with Dennis Lill. Dennis Lill played Bertie, the Prince of Wales, in Francesca's career defining turn as Lillie Langtry in the miniseries Lillie. And while technically this was made first, I saw Lillie first, so I view this as them reuniting to have another affair. There should be some weird French or German word when you're someone's lover in different incarnations shouldn't there? Well, it sure tickled me to see them up to their adulterous ways once again. And it really tickled me when he dumped her ass. Oh, the blithe acting in that scene was perfection.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Affair, Arsenic, Bertie, Dennis Lill, Emma Bovary, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Francesca Annis, Lillie, Lillie Langtry, Louisa May Alcott, Madame Bovary, Mr. Bennet, Plums, Suicide, The Inheritance, Tom Conti

So Nicola Pagett is a woman unhappy in her marriage and pregnant by a man other than her husband. And no, this isn't season two of Upstairs, Downstairs, this is Anna Karenina. Though you could be forgiven for mistaking one for the other if you took out the fact that I like Karenin far more than I ever liked Lawrence Kirbridge. Moving on, I should put in a train reference here but I'm just not that witty today... Anna Karenina is a classic that I have been meaning to read for forever, have not gotten around to, knew it ended with Anna's death under a train, and eventually just decided to watch the miniseries. Because if there's one thing you can be certain of, this is the definitive adaptation. Yes, there have been many movies, yes, there have been quite a few other television adaptations, but are any of them ten episodes long and bother to included the somnambulist psychic Landau? No they do not! And I'm sorry, but Landau became my favorite character with only a single scene. He's basically Rasputin if he was played by Seth Green. Seriously, one scene just wasn't enough! What I loved about this series is that it makes you believe at all times that it is a true epic, but with a very human element, which is what the best epics are. There's love and betrayal and wonderful snarky society snubs that surely had to inspire Edith Wharton when she sat down to write The Age of Innocence. There's all this great grandness, even the palace from Netflix's recent adaptation of Shadow and Bone gets a look in, but at the end it's about Anna. And my feelings about Anna are complicated. I get the whole, she is trapped by the strictures of society of how a woman should behave and therefore her only option is suicide. But on the other hand, time and time again she is given options, she is given other ways she could live, and she chooses that which will make everyone as miserable as her. She makes people suffer for loving her. She has a slightly justified persecution complex, but one wonders, as she herself does, even if she hadn't found Vronsky was it all just inevitable? Was her life destined for entropy? All I know is that unlike some of the series I've watched for the first time for Fifty Years a Masterpiece, this is one I want to watch again. I want to live in the epic sweep of Russia. I want to admire the sets and the costumes again. I want to watch the tragedy play out. I also want to take joy in that small bit of happiness that Levin, AKA Russian Jim Henson, ekes out for himself.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anna Karenina, Edith Wharton, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Jim Henson, Landau, Nicola Pagett, Psychic, Rasputin, Seth Green, Shadow and Bone, Suicide, The Age of Innocence, Trains, Upstairs Downstairs, Vronsky

Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Based on the book by Agatha Christie
Starring: David Suchet, Roger Frost, Oliver Ford Davies, Malcolm Terris, Nigel Cooke, Jamie Bamber, Rosalind Bailey, Gregor Truter, Clive Brunt, Selina Cadell, Daisy Beaumont, Flora Montgomery, Vivien Heilbron, and Philip Jackson
Release Date: January 2nd, 2000
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Poirot arrives at a bank. He carefully removes a waterlogged journal from a safety deposit box. He sits himself down and reviews the journal of a depraved mind. A mind for murder. The events of which happened when Poirot retired to King's Abbot to grow mallows. On the day that Mrs. Ferrars was to kill herself Dr. Sheppard accompanied Roger Ackroyd's butler over to his neighbor Poirot's house. Poirot was attempting to successfully cultivate mallows with the loving care only an obsessive compulsive could lavish on the vegetables and yet he does not succeed. Thankfully Parker has come at the request of his employer to ask if Poirot's tour of the factory could be moved forward an hour, to which Poirot is glad to accede, the mallows will only frustrate him more. Years earlier Poirot lent his friend Roger Ackroyd startup capital and he has turned it into an empire. An empire with many pieces and many players, some of whom aren't happy. Before the tour concludes, Poirot will see Roger's unhappy secretary, Geoffrey Raymond, and Roger's distraught stepson, Ralph Paton, who is begging his father to not announce his engagement to Flora Ackroyd, Roger's niece, in this coming Sunday's paper, as well as a frantic phone call from Mrs. Ferrars. That night Mrs. Ferrars takes her own life and the next morning Roger asks Poirot to stop by his house. Poirot is disturbed to learn that Mrs. Ferrars was being blackmailed, though she refused to say who the culprit was. Poirot leaves as a dinner party arrives at Roger's house and he goes home to ruminate. Something isn't sitting right with him and he's worried for his friend. He has every reason to be worried because by the time Poirot returns to Roger's house later that evening Roger is dead, in a locked room. The sequence of events seems to be simple enough and Ralph Paton seems to be the culprit, but Poirot isn't so sure. He is reluctant to return to detection but to avenge his friend he must! And when another old friend arrives to help solve the crime it's like old times. Too bad it's old times that drove Poirot to the mallows.    

I went into this episode of Poirot expecting many changes from the source material. There are some things unique to literature that can not be replicated in a visual medium. A story narrated by the killer whilst simultaneously concealing their guilt from the reader, a trope that Christie used several times, would be virtually impossible to pull off for television, so in swoops the dramatist, Clive Exton, who restructures the story to a more traditional Poirot story. He takes Poirot, who was more a spectator, an outsider in the original story and puts him in the thick of it while bringing Chief Inspector Japp along for the ride, as we have seen in countless previous adventures. And that's what I missed most about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I missed how unique and original it was within Poirot's cannon. I missed this different kind of story that could have been told, instead we are given a framing device of the journal of the killer, which when you read the book is actually the book you are reading. What's more Exton upped the vitriol of our killer who is woefully miscast resulting in the denouement being totally unsatisfactory. Yet, despite all this it isn't a "bad" episode, it just could have been so much more, but it is thankfully saved because of the charm of Suchet and Jackson. The nuanced humor these two actors have developed over the years of working together brings joy to the screen because you can see how much fun they are having. What's more, Suchet is so effortlessly Poirot that he brings humor and pathos to the role in even the quietest of moments. My favorite scene is at the very beginning when Dr. Sheppard and Parker come over to Poirot's house. In the book I always thought it was odd that Poirot would retire to the country in order to raise mallows. Well, here we see a far more honest depiction of how that might have gone. His exasperation with his garden given with a sigh, a grunt, a flung vegetable, and a raised eyebrow are sheer perfection. In fact I couldn't help but think his babying of his garden combined with his frustration is something all of those who have taken to our gardens during quarantine are feeling. There's a little bit of Poirot in us all I think. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Agatha Christie, Clive Exton, David Suchet, Gardening, Jamie Bamber, Mallows, OCD, Philip Jackson, Poirot, Quarantine, Roaring Back to Reading, Suicide, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Unreliable Narrator

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Published by: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers
Publication Date: June, 1926
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Dr. James Sheppard has just been attending to the suicide of one of his patients, a Mrs. Ferrars. This tragedy effects another patient, and friend, Roger Ackroyd, who invites Dr. Sheppard to dinner with his family and other house guests at Fernly Park that night. The dinner isn't the most congenial of affairs, the other guests include Roger's sister-in-law and her daughter Flora, who announces her engagement to Roger's stepson Ralph Patton, Major Blunt, a big game hunter, and Geoffrey Raymond, Roger's personal secretary. The guests wouldn't be that important if it wasn't for what happened after. Roger reveals to Dr. Sheppard that his fiance, the widow Mrs. Ferrars, killed herself because she was being blackmailed! She apparently killed her first husband and the blackmailer knew it! Before the two get into too great a discussion about what all this could mean a letter from the late Mrs. Ferrars arrives and Roger asks the good doctor to leave. Dr. Sheppard though is soon called back to Fernly Park as Roger Ackroyd has been found murdered! The police suspect Ralph Patton, but nothing adds up. The room was locked, the letter from Mrs. Ferrars is missing, the call Dr. Sheppard received telling him of the death can't be traced, a chair has been moved at the scene of the crime, what does it all mean? It means Poirot is needed and Flora calls him in. As luck would have it he has retired to King's Abbot to grow vegetable marrows and is now living next door to Dr. Sheppard. Poirot is glad to come out of retirement because Roger Ackroyd was his friend. Dr. Sheppard, being such an important witness to the crime, becomes Poirot's Watson; leading him through the events as they happened and writing down the case for posterity. What an honor to work with the great Poirot! What an honor to see if the great detective's little grey cells are still up to the task of catching a criminal or are only good for cultivating vegetable marrows.

Sometimes you just need a really good whodunit. I was reading a list of the greatest locked room mysteries and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd topped the list. Now I loved a good locked room mystery, and while I still think that technically A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery might be the more locked of the rooms due to a window that the generators of this list seem to have overlooked, I will say that this Poirot outing was fun and unexpected in many ways. What I found most fascinating about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is that this is only Poirot's third book, his forth if you count the short story collection, and Agatha Christie already has him retired to the countryside to raise marrows! If you're wondering what a marrow is it's a vegetable similar to zucchini, and yes, leave it to Poirot to grow something that the majority of modern readers have to look up because they are no longer fashionable. Though I think even contemporary American readers would probably have had to look it up as well... or at least that's my hope in a desperate plea to not feel totally ignorant about vegetables. Given that Poirot is the star of 50 short stories, 33 novels, and 2 plays, I was thrown that we see Poirot pleasantly ensconced in retirement. Of course it doesn't last, but the fact that Christie was willing to toy with the idea of retiring her greatest detective so early as a sort of red herring goes to show how she revolutionized the detective genre by continually playing with the medium and not hesitating to take a risk. And in another unexpected twist we aren't seeing Poirot through the hero-worshiping eyes of Hastings! We get an entirely new view of Poirot through the eyes of our unreliable narrator Dr. Sheppard. Which then makes one think if we can even trust Hastings' narration in his stories. There are just so many implications to everything here that it makes one dizzy. In fact I'd say Christie subverting the detective genre's and her own most common tropes versus solving the murder brings more joy to the reader; but that just might be me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A. A. Milne, Agatha Christie, Hastings, Locked Room, Marrows, Mystery, Poirot, Roaring Back to Reading, Subverting, Suicide, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Red House Mystery, Unreliable Narrator, Watson

Mrs. Dalloway
Based on the book by Virginia Woolf
Starring: Rupert Graves, Vanessa Redgrave, Amanda Drew, Oliver Ford Davies, Natascha McElhone, Alan Cox, Hal Cruttenden, Lena Headey, Amelia Bullmore, Rupert Baker, Alistair Petrie, John Franklyn-Robbins, Phyllis Calvert, Katie Carr, Selina Cadell, Michael Kitchen, Robert Portal, John Standing, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Hardy, Denis Lill, Kate Binchy, Sarah Badel, Janet Henfrey, Faith Brook, Tony Steedman, and Christopher Staines
Release Date: September 4th, 1997
Rating: ★★★
To Watch

It is a beautiful summer's day in June. Mrs. Dalloway wonders aloud how is she so lucky to have her party on such a perfect day. When she was young, at Bourton, every day was perfect and spent with her friends, several of whom are coming to her party that night. As she walks to the florist she runs into one of them, Hugh, a rather hopeless case then and now. But he has his purpose. After picking out the sweet peas at the shop, just like her dear friend Sally Seton used to decorate the table one night all those years ago, a car backfires and she sees a young man in distress through the shop window. Septimus Warren Smith is out with his wife Rezia. They are due for an appointment later at the doctors because Septimus keeps threatening to kill himself and sees his dead friend Evans wherever he goes. The image of that young man will stick with Clarissa all day as she prepares for her party. And she has some unexpected hurdles; her daughter, Elizabeth, is insisting she won't attend because she'll be helping her friend Miss Kilman in her charitable work. There is also a little do-to about a boring acquaintance wishing to attend whom Clarissa would rather not. But the biggest surprise is when Peter Walsh walks through the door. Peter has been in India ever since Clarissa threw him over for her husband all those summers ago at Bourton. Peter's life, and in particular his love life, is a shambles and he breaks down in front of Clarissa. He can't help be overwhelmed by what his life has become and the thought that he loved Clarissa. He's uncertain if he still does, but the fact that he did has colored his entire life. Despite saying that under no circumstance would he be invited to the party he gets an invitation shouted after him as he flees the Dalloway's residence. Then finally, the hour has come, the party is to start, and Clarissa is sure it will be a failure. She just wishes to create this one perfect evening for her guests so that they can go out into the world afterwards and look back on the wonder of the perfect memory, the perfect evening, the perfect conversation, the perfect party. She worries that one of her guests, a rather renowned doctor, will ruin everything by discussing the suicide of his patient Septimus Warren Smith, by bringing death into her domain, but sometimes life, love, and memories, are greater than death, which has it's own kind of freedom.   

Remember the days when you'd just channel surf and see what was on because the only other way was to drag out the TV Guide, an actual, physical, small newsprint block of information, not that glossy mag that's still around today, and try to figure out which channel was which because each cable company had a different channel lineup? Well, back then I stumbled on this wonderfully British and evocative movie. I only got to watch about twenty minutes of it because dinner was ready but it left enough of an impression that I bothered to dig out the TV Guide after the fact and figure out that it was called Mrs. Dalloway. Knowing it was based on the book by Virginia Woolf, and at this time I would never watch an adaptation without reading the book first, I went out and got myself a copy of Mrs. Dalloway and it sat on my shelves for years. Then after The Hours came out a new edition of Mrs. Dalloway was released including the short story which was the initial inspiration for the book so I thought to myself, lucky I didn't read Mrs. Dalloway without reading it's precursor first! So the first copy sat around for five years and the second copy sat around for, I'm almost ashamed to say it, seventeen years, until it was finally dug out and read this year. Here's the thing, the book is a lot of work to read whereas this is an easy adaptation that you don't have to work for. Which means it's probably the exact opposite of what Virginia Woolf would have wanted but makes for a pleasurable moviegoing experience. Eileen Atkins, yes, that Eileen Atkins, the Dame, has taken Mrs. Dalloway and made it into a rather sweet coming of age story combined with the wistfulness of aging and first and lasting loves with an edge of social satire that has everything to do with the casting and nothing to do with the source material. In fact, the closer it gets to the source material, especially with regard to Septimus, played by Rupert Graves, and his PTSD, the less the movie works. This movie falls squarely into the time period of Rupert Graves's acting that I hate. He took himself so seriously and overacted so abysmally that I don't know how anyone can watch him in anything he was in from the start of his career to about 2005. In fact it wasn't until Sherlock in 2010 where I started to like him after the loathing and indifference. So if you can stomach some truly bad acting on his part and want a nice summery escape to an England that exists only in dreams of the past this idyll is for you.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, British, Dames, Eileen Atkins, Michael Kitchen, Mrs. Dalloway, Party, PTSD, Roaring Back to Reading, Robert Hardy, Rupert Graves, Septimus, Sherlock, Suicide, The Hours, Vanessa Redgrave, Virgina Woolf

The Mrs. Dalloway Reader by Virginia Woolf
Published by: Harcourt Books, Inc
Publication Date: November 15th, 2003
Format: Hardcover, 345 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Mrs. Dalloway is having a party and she has gone out to buy the flowers herself, as her maid is busy with other preparations for the event that night. The walk she takes through the parks and streets of London on this beautiful day in mid-June has Clarissa remembering a summer long ago in the countryside at Bourton, a summer where, little did she know it, the rest of her life would be set in motion by choosing the reliable Richard Dalloway over the lovesick Peter Walsh. As fate would have it Peter Walsh has just returned to England after a long sojourn in India. After being rejected by Clarissa he proposed to the first girl he met on the boat to India and has come back to England seeking a divorce because he has fallen in love with a married woman with two young children and they mean to marry, once their respective spouses are disposed of. But seeing Clarissa all these long years later hidden emotions come bursting forth like a damn collapsing and he finds himself crying in her presence. Fleeing her sight the two of them dwell on each other in their thoughts the rest of the day. Clarissa thinking of the failure their marriage would have been and Peter wondering if perhaps it isn't too late for them... As people cross her mind and the past is more relevant than the present, what is and isn't important shifts. Because while it may seem crazy to some, this party Clarissa is throwing is very important to her. It lets her connect to people, show them a little kindness, make it known that she thinks about others above anything else. Be it a book they'd like to read or a certain dish they'd like to eat, she always has others on her mind and at the end of the night one person will be on her mind more than even Peter, a young shell shocked veteran, Septimus Warren Smith. She hears from the young man's doctor at her party that he had committed suicide earlier in the evening. Little did she know that her day mirrored his, as his wife mused on their lives, as we followed Septimus and his Lucrezia, decidedly unable to enjoy this day in mid-June due to their burdens that, in the end, get set down.

The thing about "classics" is some classics aren't for everyone. You can see their historical significance, you can admire their ingenuity, you can even applaud them for breaking down barriers, all while not actually liking the book; and I did not like Mrs. Dalloway. At all. Written in a steam of consciousness style that played like a game of regimented tag with a shifting point of view the book is bound to easily lose your attention when it isn't infuriating you. Right now it's hard to escape the ever growing horror that is the news and reading is a refuge, a refuge that is at the moment hard to escape into even with the most perfect of books. Therefore to have a book so fragmentary and dreamlike, more poetry than prose, I found it simply impossible to connect with Mrs. Dalloway and it's complete lack of narrative. Mrs. Dalloway isn't even the star of her own book for Pete's sake! At times I felt I was going insane, which maybe was Virginia Woolf's goal? I seriously don't know what she meant to do here, because this "Reader" includes a plethora of critical essays and I was supposed to hate the doctors trying to help Septimus when I thought their care was thoughtfully presented... so therefore I'm disconnected from the meaning of individuality over conformity because I wanted him to get better instead of kill himself? Ugh. At least I didn't feel totally alone in my dislike. The author Sigrid Nunez, who wrote a book on Virginia Woolf's monkey Mitz, says that in her opinion Mrs. Dalloway is contrived. I personally think it might have just been overworked, because the book's precursor, "Mrs. Dalloway's Party," read fresher to me, but if you can imagine it, bleaker. And I won't even start on my contempt for The Hours which arose from reading all the critical essays. How can a "retelling" by A MAN win all these accolades? Unacceptable.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Clarrisa Dalloway, Classics, Doctors, Mitz, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway's Party, Party, Roaring Back to Reading, Sigrid Nunez, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide, The Hours, The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, Virgina Woolf

Most people know Virginia Woolf. Of course most people know the bare minimum; she was a feminist writer who killed herself. If you know a little more you know she was a feminist writer who was part of the Bloomsbury Group who killed herself with rocks. This is ingrained by high school curriculum and is a simplification of a life filled with brilliance and madness. Virginia Stephens was born into a blended household, with two boys and a girl from her mother's previous marriage to Herbert Duckworth, and a girl from her father's previous marriage to William Mackepeace Thackeray's youngest daughter, Minny. Her parents went on to have four more children together, including her, despite attempts to curtail their family at five children after the birth of Virginia's older sister Vanessa. Over the years it has become accepted knowledge that Virginia's accusations of sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers wasn't a product of her active imagination and probably fed into her mental collapses, the first of which happened when she was thirteen with the death of her mother.

She would suffer mental collapses many more times, the final resulting in her taking her life. Yet despite the fact that the death of her father triggered one of these collapses, it also resulted in her liberation. After his death the family moved to Bloomsbury where they lived as they wished, often holding salons for her brothers' college friends. They became known as the Bloomsbury Group, compromised of writers, philosophers, artists, intellectuals, friends, and lovers who's "prime objects in life were love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge." Her first book, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915 when she was 33, under her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company. But her second book, Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925 is easily her most famous. This was printed by Hogarth Press, a publishing house that Virginia established with her husband Leonard in 1917. Though married to Leonard until her death her great love was Vita Sackville-West. Though all the love and family in the world couldn't help her with the depression she felt with the onset of the second world war, and in 1941, at the age of 59, she committed suicide.       

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Group, Duckworth, Feminist, Hogarth Press, Leonard Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Roaring Back to Reading, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, The Voyage Out, Vanessa Bell, Virgina Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, WWII

The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: March 4th, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Laurence Bartram survived the Great War, his wife and child did not. In the years since he has become more and more recluse ostensibly working on a book about churches while hiding away in his garret of an apartment. A letter from someone out of his past is about to bring him back into the world. Mary Emmett, attractive and nymph like younger sister of his former classmate John Emmett has reached out to Laurence as perhaps the only person in the world who knew her brother well. This past winter John killed himself after a stay in a sanatorium and Mary wants to know why. Laurence insists that he is not the right man to make these inquiries on her behalf because he lost touch with John long before the war and he wouldn't possibly know where to begin. Yet his affection for Mary and what might have been reluctantly enlists his help, and she does have a suggestion for a starting point. John left three bequests in his will to people other than his family. A Captain William Bolitho, a widow named Mrs. Lovell, and a Frenchman the solicitors were never able to find, a Monsieur Meurice. With these three names Laurence starts to piece together a horrific event that happened during the war. An event that still has ramifications as those who were present start turning up dead. Sadly Laurence realizes that John Emmett has ended up being more important to him dead than alive... just as he is to a mysterious figure in a coat and hat who is following him.

The Return of Captain John Emmett is a good old fashioned ripping yarn that is reminiscent of the golden age of detection when Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham were writing murder mysteries that the world devoured. Just as I have imbibed the books of these "Queens of Crime" I couldn't put down Elizabeth Speller's book about Laurence Bartram. Phone calls went unanswered, emails were not replied to. I once again started to lament my inability to just absorb books into the very fibers of my being à la dark Willow in the season six finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But as much as I wanted to reach that grand unveiling, feverishly reading page after page, I almost didn't want the denouement to come because then this marvelous caper would be concluded. With each page I kept thinking back to the day I found this book at my local used bookstore and all I could think was, who could ever sell this awesome of a book? It had everything you could want! Atmospheric London right after the war, unrequited love, mysterious deaths, suicides that might not be as they seem, mistaken identities, adultery, murder, paternity issues, poetry, villains, heroes, humor, insane asylums, quaint rural pubs, love... everything! Seriously, there are some people lacking discernment in Madison. But there loss was my gain. As it always seems to be.

What the meat of the book hung off of was the amazing character development. Each and every person was such a unique individual. While I think it might be a sin to say that the protagonist Laurence wasn't my favorite, he just wasn't. Laurence means well, he's stolid and trustworthy and so sweet in how he always gets the wrong end of the stick, much like another favorite detective of mine, Inspector Morse, who also just stumbled into answers versus actually solving them. But my heart is forever with Laurence's best friend Charles. Firstly, Charles is a rabid Agatha Christie fan, even if she had only written one book when this book was set, a slight historical accuracy oops. Yet Charles' love of mystery fiction doesn't force the book into the cliched Watson and Holmes shtick that so many golden age mysteries suffer from. Instead it manifests in his rapid love of the case and his suggested reading materials to Laurence. Who doesn't love a sidekick with a reading list? Plus, having Charles around would be wonderful, he always has a cousin who knows all the gossip, plus a car to get around. Sorry Laurence, you are trumped in every sleuthing category by Charles. Yet that's why I love this book, it's like Watson is the accidental protagonist for once! But these are just two of the amazingly multi-faceted characters. From John Emmett's father and his very Mitford-esque nature, to the fiery red-head Mrs. Bolitho who was a nurse during the war and has very progressive political ideas. Not one character was flat and lifeless, they just emerged from the page fully formed and instantly became my friends. People versus characters.

Though the heart of the book is how Speller deals with the more difficult topics of what war does to someone. How to some, like the newspaperman Brabourne, it's just a phase in a life that will be reminiscences to his grandchildren, where to Emmett, it forever changed him and lead him to his grave at that folly in the countryside. Then there is Laurence, who has shut himself off from the world and become a recluse. This investigation Laurence undertakes helps to bring him back to the world and out of his shell. Because of a simple letter asking for help he is slowly reentering the world. The strong characterization of each individual in the book lets Speller examine the effects and tolls on myriad people, all who are different and unique. Life is a house of cards and one wrong rotten thing can ruin it... for some. Speller shows us clearly the difference of life during wartime and life after wartime, making this an interesting examination of the Great War. Sometimes things just happen in a war that you could never, ever see yourself doing under normal circumstances. And when the war ends, it's about coming to terms with what you did. How can life ever become what it was? But sometimes we can not be held accountable for everything that happens. We cope, we deal in our way. For some it's poetry, for others photography, some prefer isolation, and for others still, it is surrendering to your base animal instincts. Yet Speller handles all these sensitive issues and more without being preachy. She has created real people and through them we understand.

And what we have to understand most of all is that the Great War's biggest repercussion was that it was a great demystifier. Prior to being sent to their deaths among dirt and disease, these young men believed it was noble and patriotic to die for your country. But the Great War was just hell on earth. Literally. You were forced to do your duty because otherwise, well, otherwise you were dead. The most terrifying aspect of the war was that if you tried to desert because of cowardice, because you literally could not face going over the top, then you were killed by your own men. All told, the number of soldiers shot for cowardice was very small in the grand scheme of things, but to have to kill one of your own because they acted on what every single one of them was surely feeling, it's a betrayal to your own beliefs, surely. Something one might never get over. In recent years more and more literature, film, and television, has focused on shell shock and the mental repercussions of the war. But here Speller is able to show us both sides of the argument. She delves deep into that which supposedly had to be done for the greater good. Yet here the repercussions spin a complex yarn of a tale, a mystery that you'll want to go back to again and again. In fact, every time you see it on a shelf at a bookstore you might just want to pick it up to pass it along to someone who hasn't yet had the honor of reading it.  

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Fall of Poppies, Agatha Christie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elizabeth Speller, Laurence Bartram, Murder, Nancy Mitford, Shell Shock, Sherlock Holmes, Suicide, The Return of Captain John Emmett, Watson, WWI

Unity and Pamela are possibly the most diametrically opposed of the Mitford sisters, with Unity being the most notorious for her relationship with Hitler, and Pamela being the most unobtrusive, settling for a life out of the limelight with her horses. The warrior and the woman.

Unity Valkyrie Mitford was ironically conceived in Swastika, Ontario, where her parents would occasionally work a gold mine they owned. Later when she became involved with the Third Reich she would take this as a sign that she was destined to be with Hitler. By the time Unity was debuting in society her family had already made quite a ruckus, with her sister Diana leaving her husband, the heir of the Guinness fortune, for Oswald Mosley, the head of the British Union of Fascists. Unity was never the wit or the beauty of the family and seemed to set herself apart through her shock value. She notoriously would bring her pets to balls and when things got a little boring she would spice them up by saying her rat or snake was on the loose. She longed to find the perfect tease and initially she thought she had found it by joining the BUF and setting up against her younger sister Jessica and her fervent communist beliefs. But Unity's tease seems to have become real devotion, if a bit fanatical, to fascism. 

Unlike her sisters she didn't want to be "finished" in France and begged to go to Germany. Her parents relented and soon Unity found her place in the world and in history, dubious though it may be. She became obsessed with the Nazis and worshipped Hitler, spending months and months figuring out his routine and how she could cross paths with him. Her months of stalking paid off and she soon became a confidant of Hitler's, one of his inner circle. No one knows the extent of their relationship, but they were frequently in each others company. There is every chance that it was just true friendship and not salacious at all, but their closeness as war loomed on the horizon made Unity one of the most reviled women in England, along with her sister Diana. As war seemed more and more inevitable those close to Unity worried about her because she began to make cryptic messages about not being around if there was war because she couldn't face the two countries she loved fighting. On the day war was declared between England and Germany Unity shot herself in the head, but survived. She would live to see the end of the war in a bizarre infantile state brought on by the brain damage the bullet wrought. She would never make a full recovery and contacted meningitis and died before she was even 34 years old.

Unlike Unity, Pamela was quiet and retiring, the rural Mitford. She was called "Woman" by all her family members for her domestic aptitude and her love of home and hearth, becoming "Tante Femme" to her various nieces and nephews whom she adored. Pam also loved the horse and hounds life even though she had problems with one of her legs due to a case of polio as a child, which would trouble her more and more as she aged. She married and divorced without making waves and spent several of the war years caring for her sister Diana's children while Diana was in prison, but was sadly not blessed with her own children, suffering several miscarriages. Living for years on the Cavendish estate in Ireland, she eventually settled down in Zurich where she lived with an Italian horsewoman, Giuditta Tommasi. Much like Unity and Hitler, there was much speculation even among the other siblings about the relationship between Pam and Giuditta. Pam was still living an active life till the end, not letting age (and considerable age at 86) slow her down. On her deathbed her main concern was "Who won the Grand National."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: BUF, Diana Mitford, Fascists, Germany, Hitler, Jessica Mitford, Mitford March Mach Deux, Oswald Mosley, Pamela Mitford, Suicide, Tante Femme, Unity Mitford, Woman, WWII

Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery by Anthony Berkley
Published by: The Langtail Press
Publication Date: 1927
Format: Kindle, 214 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Roger Sheringham is about to go off on holiday with his cousin Anthony when his editor calls. The Daily Courier has gotten wind that the accidental death of a Mrs. Vane in Ludmouth might not be quite so accidental, as Inspector Moresby has been seen poking around after the inquest. Roger bullies Anthony into accompanying him, because a holiday is one thing, a holiday that doubles as a murder mystery is quite another.  Upon arriving in Ludmouth, Roger quickly runs into Inspector Moresby, whom he knows from the Wychford Poisoning Case, and the two discuss the fact that it is obvious that Mrs. Vane had to have been pushed from the cliffs in order to die. This wasn't an accident, and it certainly wasn't suicide.

The prime suspect is the comely cousin of Mrs. Vane, Miss Cross. Anthony soon makes her acquaintance and comes to the conclusion that such a pretty face is a harassed innocent, and Anthony and Roger soon go to great lengths to protect her and find another suspect, because the evidence very strongly points to her. Though the only other suspects would be the late Mrs. Vane's husband, Doctor Vane, or his lovestruck yet efficient secretary... or perhaps the oddly talkative Reverand Meadows, who reminds Roger of a goat. Roger has a new theory every day, and a new article for the Courier every night... but another murder throws all his what-ifs into question and he realizes that maybe he is wrong or maybe a careless word has led to another death... or maybe crime solving should be left to the professionals... no, Roger would never admit that.

Right about now you're looking at the disparate ratings between the first Anthony Berkeley book I read, The Layton Court Mystery, and this one, Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery, and probably thinking, oh my, what is going on, has she cracked? Though your surprise is nothing compared to my own. I was girding my loins as I reached for this book just imagining how atrocious it might be... and perhaps it's the fact that my expectations were so low, I mean, lower then the gutter low, that I really enjoyed it. I mean, sure, there was a bit of a rough start when I realized that there were quite a few similarities to the previous book, what with an accidental death/suicide not being as it appears and the murderer escaping justice, yet again, but somehow I had already come to grips with my gripes.

Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery is actually the third book in Berkeley's series staring that "keen-witted if slightly volatile Roger." For some unknown reason the second book, The Wychford Poisoning Case, which is referenced in this volume, has disappeared into the ether of time... perhaps it was for the best if it was on par with The Layton Court Mystery. So why have I done a 180 on this series? Well, I'm going with my fickleness as a reader as my defense. The problem I had with the first volume was all the flaws of Roger that just needled me till I wanted to slap that man silly... with some sort of cudgel that would result in pain and death. So going into reading another book with Roger I was well aware of his flaws. I now view Roger as that one friend you have, and don't say you don't have one, I know you do; everyone has a friend that says just the wrong thing at the wrong time, never censors what they say, and in most cases is just downright rude. The kind of friend that needs a disclaimer attached. Yet over time, you get used to their offensiveness. Sure, you've tried to curb it, but in the end, you just live with it. So Roger has become my friend whose flaws I know, but I put up with anyway.

As for the innumerable flaws, the belittling of his "idiot friend," his desire to hold important conversations in the middle of nowhere, his ludicrous theories coupled with the fact he is invariably wrong and blind to the obvious; they somehow work in this volume. His "stupid friend" in this instance is his cousin Anthony. And for some reason I feel the bickering and belittling between relatives more natural and tolerable then between friends. Also, instead of an underlying feeling of anger, their repartee has the feel of the long time association between family that let Anthony give as good as he got. Plus, the addition of Inspector Moresby can not be overlooked. Here is someone who Roger views as his "equal" so that he actually treats the Inspector mildly ok. They have a kind of Japp/Poirot relationship where Roger doesn't belittle his cohort... too much. Also, I have a niggling little feeling that Roger might be Moresby's "idiot friend" and that just tickles me to death that Roger doesn't realize it. Therefore it's more cohorts in crime solving, then the Roger Sheringham offends everyone show. And as for his weird desire to hold conversations in out of the way locals? For some reason perching on a rock looking at the cliffs seems more natural, like they're taking in the sights, then obviously going to a bench in a garden to conspire. Also, I love that his theories about the "weaker sex" come back to haunt him.

Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery carried on the meta nature of the first book, with actual crime versus fictional crime in a crime novel, but by thankfully dropping the Holmes and Watson bit Berkeley used ad nauseum in The Layton Court Mystery. This meta nature was able to not only exploit the obvious plot twists that you could see coming a mile off, but was then able to give you a twist at the end that you didn't see coming. In fairness to Berkeley, he stayed true to his writerly code, and you could see the ending if you didn't view the case through Roger's eyes, and I found this a little bit brilliant. While the romantic reader in me would have preferred the interpretation of the facts as Roger and I saw them, I can't help but love that Moresby smacks Roger down and points out to the writer that there is the mentality of a police officer and the mentality of the writer. These two mentalities are at odds, and sometimes it's better to not have too much imagination.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anthony Berkeley, Golden Age of Detection, Golden Summer, Japp, Meta, Murder, Poirot, Roger Sheringham, Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery, Sherlock Holmes, Suicide, The Layton Court Mystery, Writer

The Return of Captain John Emmett (Laurence Bartram Book 1) by Elizabeth Speller
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: March 4th, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Laurence Bartram survived the Great War, his wife and child did not. In the years since he has become more and more recluse ostensibly working on a book about churches while in his garret of an apartment. A letter from his past is about to bring him back into the world. Mary Emmett, attractive and nymph like younger sister of his former classmate John Emmett has reached out to Laurence as perhaps the one person in the world who knew her brother well. This past winter John killed himself after a stay in a sanatorium and Mary wants to know why. Laurence insists that he is not the right man to make these inquiries on her behalf because long before the war he lost touch with John and he wouldn't possibly know where to begin.

His affection for Mary and what might have been reluctantly enlists his help, and she does have a suggestion for a starting point. John left three bequests in his will to people other then his family. A Captain William Bolitho, a widow named Mrs. Lovell, and a Frenchman the solicitors were never able to find, a Monsieur Meurice. With these three names Laurence starts to piece together a horrific event that happened during the war, an event that still has ramifications as those who were present start turning up dead. Sadly Laurence realizes that John Emmett has ended up being more important to him dead then alive... just as he is to a mysterious figure in a coat and hat.

The Return of Captain John Emmett is a good old fashioned murder mystery that I could not put down. Phone calls went unanswered, emails were not replied to. I had a desperate need to just absorb this book into the very fibers of my being a la evil Willow in Buffy. In fact, I thought of the day I found this book at my local used bookstore and all I could think was, who could ever sell this awesome of a book? It had everything you could want! Atmospheric London right after the war, unrequited love, mysterious deaths, suicides that might not be as they seem, mistaken identities, adultery, murder, paternity issues, poetry, villains, heroes, humor, insane asylums, quaint rural pubs, love... everything!

What the meat of the book hung off of was the amazing character development. Each and every person was so unique and individual. While I think it might be a sin to say that Laurence wasn't my favorite, I mean, he was stolid and trustworthy and so sweet in how he seemed to always get the wrong end of the stick and he just stumbled into answers versus actually solving them, but my heart is with his best friend Charles. Firstly, Charles is a rabid Agatha Christie fan (even if she had only written one book when this book was set, not more, a historical accuracy oops). Yet Charles' love of mystery fiction doesn't go into too much of the cliched Watson and Holmes shtick that so many golden age mysteries suffer from. Instead it's manifest in his rapid love of the case and his suggested reading materials to Laurence. Plus, having Charles around would be wonderful, he always has a cousin who knows all the gossip, plus a car to get around. Sorry Laurence, you are trumped in the sleuth category in every category by Charles. Yet that's why I love this book, it's like Watson is the protagonist! But these are just two of the amazingly multi-faceted characters that are too many to be mentioned. From John Emmett's father and his very Mitford-esque nature, to George Chilvers, the power hungry possessive son of the owner of the secure facility that John Emmett was locked in, to the fiery red-head Mrs. Bolitho who was a nurse during the war and has very progressive political ideas. Not one person was flat and lifeless, they just emerged from the page fully formed and instantly became my friends.

Though the heart of the book is how Speller deals with the more difficult topics of what war does to someone. How to some, like the newspaperman Brabourne, it's just a phase in a life that will be reminiscences to his grandchildren, where to Emmett, it forever changed him and lead him to his grave at that folly in the countryside. Then there is Laurence, who has shut himself off from the world. This investigation he undertakes helps to bring him back to the world and out of his shell. Because of a simple letter asking for help he is slowly reentering the world. The strong characterization of each individual in the book let Speller examine the effects and tolls on myriad people, all who are different and unique. Life is a house of cards and one wrong rotten thing can ruin it... for some. Sometimes we can not be held accountable for everything that happens. We cope, we deal in our way. For some it's poetry, for others photography, some prefer isolation, and for others still, it is surrendering to your base animal instincts. Yet Speller handles all these sensitive issues and more without being preachy. She has created real people and through them we understand.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Bolitho, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elizabeth Speller, Golden Summer, Laurence Bartram, Murder, Nancy Mitford, Shell Shock, Sherlock Holmes, Suicide, The Return of Captain John Emmett, Watson, WWI

Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery by Anthony Berkley
Published by: The Langtail Press
Publication Date: 1927
Format: Kindle, 214 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Roger Sheringham is about to go off on holiday with his cousin Anthony when his editor calls. The Daily Courier has gotten wind that the accidental death of a Mrs. Vane in Ludmouth might not be quite so accidental, as Inspector Moresby has been seen poking around after the inquest. Roger bullies Anthony into accompanying him, because a holiday is one thing, a holiday that doubles as a murder mystery is quite another.  Upon arriving in Ludmouth, Roger quickly runs into Inspector Moresby, whom he knows from the Wychford Poisoning Case, and the two discuss the fact that it is obvious that Mrs. Vane had to have been pushed from the cliffs in order to die. This wasn't an accident, and it certainly wasn't suicide.

The prime suspect is the comely cousin of Mrs. Vane, Miss Cross. Anthony soon makes her acquaintance and comes to the conclusion that such a pretty face is a harassed innocent, and Anthony and Roger soon go to great lengths to protect her and find another suspect, because the evidence very strongly points to her. Though the only other suspects would be the late Mrs. Vane's husband, Doctor Vane, or his lovestruck yet efficient secretary... or perhaps the oddly talkative Reverand Meadows, who reminds Roger of a goat. Roger has a new theory every day, and a new article for the Courier every night... but another murder throws all his what-ifs into question and he realizes that maybe he is wrong or maybe a careless word has led to another death... or maybe crime solving should be left to the professionals... no, Roger would never admit that.

Right about now you're looking at the disparate ratings between the first Anthony Berkeley book I read, The Layton Court Mystery, and this one, Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery, and probably thinking, oh my, what is going on, has she cracked? Though your surprise is nothing compared to my own. I was girding my loins as I reached for this book just imagining how atrocious it might be... and perhaps it's the fact that my expectations were so low, I mean, lower then the gutter low, that I really enjoyed it. I mean, sure, there was a bit of a rough start when I realized that there were quite a few similarities to the previous book, what with an accidental death/suicide not being as it appears and the murderer escaping justice, yet again, but somehow I had already come to grips with my gripes.

Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery is actually the third book in Berkeley's series staring that "keen-witted if slightly volatile Roger." For some unknown reason the second book, The Wychford Poisoning Case, which is referenced in this volume, has disappeared into the ether of time... perhaps it was for the best if it was on par with The Layton Court Mystery. So why have I done a 180 on this series? Well, I'm going with my fickleness as a reader as my defense. The problem I had with the first volume was all the flaws of Roger that just needled me till I wanted to slap that man silly... with some sort of cudgel that would result in pain and death. So going into reading another book with Roger I was well aware of his flaws. I now view Roger as that one friend you have, and don't say you don't have one, I know you do; everyone has a friend that says just the wrong thing at the wrong time, never censors what they say, and in most cases is just downright rude. The kind of friend that needs a disclaimer attached. Yet over time, you get used to their offensiveness. Sure, you've tried to curb it, but in the end, you just live with it. So Roger has become my friend whose flaws I know, but I put up with anyway.

As for the innumerable flaws, the belittling of his "idiot friend," his desire to hold important conversations in the middle of nowhere, his ludicrous theories coupled with the fact he is invariably wrong and blind to the obvious; they somehow work in this volume. His "stupid friend" in this instance is his cousin Anthony. And for some reason I feel the bickering and belittling between relatives more natural and tolerable then between friends. Also, instead of an underlying feeling of anger, their repartee has the feel of the long time association between family that let Anthony give as good as he got. Plus, the addition of Inspector Moresby can not be overlooked. Here is someone who Roger views as his "equal" so that he actually treats the Inspector mildly ok. They have a kind of Japp/Poirot relationship where Roger doesn't belittle his cohort... too much. Also, I have a niggling little feeling that Roger might be Moresby's "idiot friend" and that just tickles me to death that Roger doesn't realize it. Therefore it's more cohorts in crime solving, then the Roger Sheringham offends everyone show. And as for his weird desire to hold conversations in out of the way locals? For some reason perching on a rock looking at the cliffs seems more natural, like they're taking in the sights, then obviously going to a bench in a garden to conspire. Also, I love that his theories about the "weaker sex" come back to haunt him.

Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery carried on the meta nature of the first book, with actual crime versus fictional crime in a crime novel, but by thankfully dropping the Holmes and Watson bit Berkeley used ad nauseum in The Layton Court Mystery. This meta nature was able to not only exploit the obvious plot twists that you could see coming a mile off, but was then able to give you a twist at the end that you didn't see coming. In fairness to Berkeley, he stayed true to his writerly code, and you could see the ending if you didn't view the case through Roger's eyes, and I found this a little bit brilliant. While the romantic reader in me would have preferred the interpretation of the facts as Roger and I saw them, I can't help but love that Moresby smacks Roger down and points out to the writer that there is the mentality of a police officer and the mentality of the writer. These two mentalities are at odds, and sometimes it's better to not have too much imagination.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anthony Berkeley, Golden Age of Detection, Golden Summer, Japp, Meta, Murder, Poirot, Roger Sheringham, Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery, Sherlock Holmes, Suicide, The Layton Court Mystery, Writer