Death of an Airman by Christopher St. John Sprigg

 

My first book of the year! I'm so behind, can't believe it's taken me two whole weeks to finish a book. (At this rate, I'll never finish my annual reading goal of 100 books). I thought it would be fun to start the year with a mystery. I bought a stack of British Library Crime Classics on a trip to London a few years ago, and this one was a the the checkout -- I think if you bought three, you got one free, so I threw it on the pile. I cannot resist the covers, I love their vintage travel poster style. (I'm sure there's a name for it but I have no idea. If anyone is aware, please let me know).

Originally published in 1934, the story is pretty self-explanatory -- at a British airfield, a small private plane crashes, instantly killing the pilot. Or does it? One of the witnesses, an aviation student who also happens to be an Australian Bishop, realizes after the burial that there had been something odd: while waiting for the local doctor who was delayed, the body hadn't achieved rigor mortis, suggesting that the pilot hadn't actually died at impact, but much later. Further investigation reveals a gunshot wound -- clearly, a case of foul play. The investigation is taken over by a local policeman then heads up the chain to Scotland Yard as he starts digging deeper and reveals an international conspiracy. 

It sounded like an intriguing read, though I know nothing about aviation, nor do I have any desire to ever go up in a tiny plane. Sometimes readers don't need to have specific knowledge about a themed mystery -- until I started reading Dick Francis mysteries, I knew nothing about horse racing, but I never had any trouble following the stories. In this case, there was a lot of technical jargon which mostly went over my head. Plus, I feel like the story kind of meandered all over the place. I realize that it's in the nature of mysteries --  investigations always have leads that don't pan out and detectives have to keep exploring -- but it felt like it wasn't as tightly focused as some of my favorite classic mystery writers like Agatha Christie. I read all her books years ago and maybe she's just spoiled me for any other writer? Plus, this book was pretty sexist: 

"An intelligent girl," said Creighton. "I don't know why one is surprised when a good-looking woman has brains." Mmmkay. I get that it was written about 90 years ago but yikes. 

It was a slow read for me because I just wasn't that interested in any of the characters. It's less than 300 pages and it still took me about 10 days to read this book. It did pick up in the last fifty pages but not one of my favorite classic mysteries. I'm finding the British Library Crime Classics a bit disappointing. Maybe there's a reason most of these were out of print? I've think I've read four or five so far and none of them have been very exciting. I have a couple left unread on my TBR shelves and I hope they're better, otherwise I'm going to give up on this series.

I'm counting this as my Mystery/Dective/Crime Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge. One down, eleven to go!

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers: More Harriet Vane, Less Lord Peter Wimsey

Once again, I have waited until the bitter end to post my final book for my very own challenge. You would have thought that a Classic Crime Novel would be an easy and fun book to read, most likely one of the first books crossed off the list. I thought so too. 

Originally, my plan was to read one of several British Library Crime Classics I have unread on my shelves, but I'm sorry to say I've read two so far (in 2017, so I couldn't count them for this year's challenge) and in both cases I was underwhelmed. I started two others this year and abandoned both of them. I also thought about counting The Mystery of Edwin Drood or Whisky Galore, but neither really felt as though they fit the category -- Drood is unfinished, so it's not exactly clear if a crime was committed; and Whisky Galore is really more of a gentle comedy -- OK, they're stealing whisky, but it wasn't exactly the crime caper of the year. I also read Four Days' Wonder by A. A. Milne, which starts out with the discovery of a dead body, but that was really more of a screwball comedy. 

With less than a week left in my own challenge, and potential embarrassment looming, I gave up choosing from my own shelves and downloaded Dorothy Sayers' classic Gaudy Night from the library's online library. Published in 1935, it's considered by many to be Sayers' best novel. It's the twelfth in the Lord Peter Wimsey series and the third to include Harriet Vane, who is actually the main character in the story (Lord Peter doesn't even actually show up in person until the second half of the book). 

So. Harriet Vane, an alumnus of Shrewsbury College (a fictional women's college which is meant to be part of Oxford), receives an invitation to a reunion known as a Gaudy. On a whim, she accepts and after arrival, receives a nasty anonymous note stuck in the sleeve of her gown (back in the day all the students and instructors wore the black caps and gowns now traditionally worn only for graduation ceremonies). Having received poison pen letters in the past, she dismisses it and returns home. However, it turns out that someone at Shrewsbury is up to some mischief -- more notes and harassing letters are discovered, plus threats and destruction of property. The Dean of Shrewsbury is loath to contact the police, for fear of scandal, but she asks Harriet to return and quietly solve the mystery. Harriet begins to suspect various instructors, students, and staff members before enlisting the help of Lord Peter to find the culprit. 

Normally I do try to read series books in order, but I'd heard this was Sayers' best novel and I really wanted to read more about Harriet Vane. (I know many people love Peter Wimsey but he's not my favorite detective of all time.) It was a good choice, though, because I really liked this novel. It's the fourth of the series that I've read so far, and the second with Harriet Vane. My previous Sayers read was Strong Poison, which introduces Harriet Vane as a murder suspect on trial for her life. Naturally Peter saves the day and falls in love with her. Harriet's character is hardly developed in that story, and I'd actually find it rather annoying that Peter was so smitten without even knowing her. In this one, she takes center stage, and there's a lot more about women's education and the role of women, both in and out of academia. We learn a lot more about the attitudes of both men and women towards the rights of women, which I'm sure Sayers experienced first-hand when she was an Oxford student about the same time as her fictional counterpart. (We also get some insights about being a successful author which I particularly enjoyed). 

The reader does get more information about Peter and Harriet's relationship, which I admit was one of my favorite parts of the book. I did find the book a bit dense in parts when the academic characters are discussing philosophical points that I found a bit dry and obscure, and I had a bit of trouble keeping some of the characters straight, especially the other academic instructors who mostly seemed to run together. I particularly enjoyed Lord Peter's nephew Gerald who was quite delightful. It was a fun light read for the holidays, and I do want to continue with the series, though I'm not sure if I need to go back and read the rest in order or I can just skip around (I've heard Busman's Honeymoon is another of Sayers' best novels). Bloggers, what do you think? Read in order or skip around?

I'm counting this as my Classic Crime Novel for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: We Will Never Know Because It's Unfinished

It's taken me more than ten years, but I've finally finished all the major works of Charles Dickens. I had put off reading his unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, because I suspected I'd be frustrated with only half the story. I'm not going to lie, I was absolutely correct, but if you're a Dickens fan it's still worth reading.

Published serially in 1870, Drood is the story of a young engaged couple, the eponymous Edwin, and Rosa Bud. Both orphans, they have been betrothed since children by their parents, who were friends and partners. However, Edwin and Rosa don't really love one another. At the beginning of the novel, Edwin is introduced to a brother and sister, Neville and Helena Landless, who are studying in the town of Cloisterham, where Rosa is attending school. Neville finds himself attracted to Rosa, and Edwin is attracted to Rosa. Neville is also offended that Edwin treats Rosa in an offhand manner, and after several drinks, heated words are exchanged. Neville thus gets a reputation as a hothead with a grudge. 

The two seem to make it up on Christmas Eve, but the following day, Edwin is nowhere to be found. Naturally, suspicion falls on Neville. Eventually, Edwin's watch, chain, and shirt pin are found in a river, but no body. (There is also a pointed reference to a quicklime pit). After several months, Rosa gets a visit from Edwin's creepy uncle Jasper, the Cloisterham choirmaster (and a secret opium addict). He confesses that he's been desperately in love with her for years. Rosa is naturally revulsed and flees to London, to her guardian, Mr. Grewgious, and meets up with the Landlesses again. We also meet some other characters who may or may not be private detectives or spies -- but that's pretty much it. Dickens only wrote half the novel before he suffered a stroke in June of 1870 (after working a full day on Drood). He never regained consciousness and there is no written outline of the story; however, Dickens had discussed the novel with various people so it is generally believed that (highlight for spoiler) Uncle Jasper is indeed the murderer.

Having read many mysteries, (including Dickens' masterpiece Bleak House, one of my all-time favorite novels) I had my own suspicions about the real murderer. Since the fragment was published there have been various film and TV adaptations, most recently in 2012, and a musical. 

Clearly, this is Rosa cowering in in revulsion from Uncle Jasper.

I really liked this story, though it had been some time since I'd read Dickens, I'd forgotten how different his writing style is to Trollope and Hardy. He definitely tends toward more flowery descriptions and over-the-top, eccentric side characters (with particularly descriptive names); and as usual, the young ingenue Rosa has essentially no personality except she's so pretty, men fall in love with her at the drop of a hat (except Edwin, of course). Written just a few years after Our Mutual Friend, I'm sure this would have been among my favorite Dickens novels if it had been finished -- I felt like the story was just starting to get really good when it was sadly over. I'm not sure how the TV adaptations conclude the story but I've requested the 2012 miniseries from the library.

I was thinking about counting this as my Classic Crime novel for the Back to the Classics challenge -- my final category for the challenge. However, I'm a little torn because I don't know how the story is resolved or if there's a crime at all -- what if Edwin just took off or got hit on the head and is supposed to reappear at the end with amnesia? Or if it was just an accident? Bloggers, what do you think? 

Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

So -- just back from vacation, where I did actually have time to get some reading done, what with long flights, layovers, and jet lag.  I can hardly go on a vacation without a big fat Victorian novel, and this time I read Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the queen of the Victorian sensation novel.

Set in the 1850s, this is the story of the Aurora Floyd, who is young, spoiled, and rich.  Her father is a wealthy banker who fell in love late in life with -- gasp! -- a beautiful actress from a poor family.  Knowing a good thing when she saw it, Eliza Prodder married rich Archibald Floyd, nearly 20 years her senior.  However, they seemed genuinely happy despite all the sneering from the rich neighbors, but sadly, Eliza died in childbirth after just a year of marriage, leaving behind the eponymous Aurora Floyd and her doting but bereaved father.

Fast-forward seventeen years -- Aurora is beautiful, spoiled and used to getting her own way.  After some naughty behavior, she's shipped off to school in France.  She returns home to Kent after a year, looking poorly.  There are hints of some secrets -- is she being secretly blackmailed?  However, Aurora perks up eventually and is joined by her sweet cousin Lucy as a companion during the Season of balls during which all young ladies are essentially on the marriage market.  Two potential suitors stand out -- Talbot Bulstrode, the proud heir of a long line of aristocrats who is short in cash; and John Mellish, a blustering but lovable Yorkshire squire.  Both fall in love with Aurora, and at first it seems like Bulstrode is the lucky winner, though Lucy is secretly in love with him and pining away.

However, there's trouble in paradise.  A few months after their engagement, Talbot learns from a cousin that Aurora ran away from school and was MIA.  Suspicious, he confronts her, but she refuses to reveal her secret, and he breaks off the engagement.  Eventually, she marries Mellish, who promises never to ask her secrets and love her and trust her no matter what.  Of course, this promise comes back to haunt him when a handsome groom named James Conyers comes to work for her husband.  His appearance throws everything into turmoil, and that's when the book really gets rolling.

This book had a lot of great elements to it -- a strong heroine with flashing dark eyes, two men competing for her hand in marriage, blackmail, scandal, gossip, a detective -- it's a classic Victorian sensation novel.  A couple of years ago, I read Lady Audley's Secret by the same author, and loved it.  It's the second book I've read by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  Aurora Floyd has a lot of the same themes, but I felt liked it dragged a little in comparison.  There's an omniscient narrator that editorializes a bit too much for my taste.  I did find some of the plot points pretty obvious, and the author definitely depends on the deus ex machina as a too-convenient plot savior more than once.  Overall, though, I'm accepting this book as a product of its time -- Mary Elizabeth Braddon was pretty groundbreaking as a Victorian author, not just as a woman author.  She wrote more than 80 novels, which is impressive for any author, during any time period.  Most of them are out of print but a lot of them are available for free on Gutenberg.org.

I'm counting this as my Classic by a Woman Author for The Back to the Classics Challenge, and this also counts for the Reading England Challenge.

The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green

This is my final book for the Back to the Classics Challenge!  I can't believe I took so long to finish it.  I  think I took so long to get to this category (mystery/suspense/thriller) because I had a hard time deciding which book to read.  The only book I own that qualifies is The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens.  I kept putting it off (I've gone off Dickens somewhat this year in favor of Trollope) but I finally got an audio copy from the library, and I just couldn't get into it.  (I'm not sure if it was the reader, or if it's because the main character kept referring to the girl he loves as Pussy.)

Instead, I decided to look for another author.  I thought about Agatha Christie, but I honestly think I've read every single one of her mysteries, except for the Tommy and Tuppence stories.  I was searching online for other classic mysteries and I discovered The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green, an early mystery published in 1878, a full nine years before Sherlock Holmes, and by a woman!  Naturally, I was intrigued.

Here's the setup:  Mr. Raymond (we never learn his first name), is the junior partner of a New York law firm.  One day, he is alone in the office, when a very agitated young man informs him that Mr. Leavenworth, a longtime client of the firm, has been found shot and killed in the library of his home.  In the absence of the other partners, Mr. Raymond agrees to go to the home and do whatever he can to help, and is therefore drawn into the mystery.  The body was found in a room locked from the outside, and a servant girl is missing.  Suspicion immediately falls upon Mr. Leavenworth's two beautiful nieces, cousins whom he adopted when their parents died years ago. Mary, the younger of the two, was Mr. Leavenworth's intended heir, but Mr. Raymond is immediately smitten with the other niece, Eleanor.

However, the evidence is rather bad for the two cousins.  There are scraps of burned paper found in the grate, a missing key, and most damning, the fact that Eleanor knew how to fire the very same pistol used to shoot her uncle.  Mr. Raymond is so convinced of the ladies' innocence that he begins working with Mr. Ebeneezer Gryce, a private detective, to get to the truth of the matter.

I was really hoping that this would be an amazing discovery for me, a brilliant book that nobody reads anymore.  But sadly, it was a really slow read for a mystery.  It's rather wordy and melodramatic, almost a cross between a mystery and a Victorian sensation novel.  There's not a lot of motivation or character development.  For example, it seems that Mr. Leavenworth chose Mary heir to his fortune when she was a child, simply because she was a blonde!  And Raymond mentions over and over that the two cousins are beautiful and charming, but that's pretty much it for their descriptions.  Most of the characters are fairly flat.  The most interesting characters were Mr. Gryce and his assistant, the mysterious "Q" who is a master of disguise.

However, I'm probably judging it too harshly by modern standards.  For its time, it was most likely groundbreaking.  It was very popular and Anna Katherine Green wrote a total of more than 40 books, including eight other books about Mr. Gryce.  She was one of the first to write a series of novels about a detective, and also wrote about female detectives.  It's not among the best detective stories I've ever read, but I think it's worth reading simply for its historical value.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

This book has been on my radar forever, but somehow, I'd never gotten around to reading it.  It seems to be one of these books that a lot of book groups are reading.  I have to confess, sometimes I'm a bit snobbish when it comes to book group books.  There are certain books that become extremely popular with book groups, but when it comes time to choose books for my two groups at the library, I'm sometimes leery -- there are some books that absolutely everyone loves, and I end up hating them.  I hated, hated, hated The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which was really popular a few years ago; in fact, I hated it so much I demanded a refund from Target.  I also disliked Water for Elephants and I was really underwhelmed by The Paris Wife, which we discussed last month. (Everyone else loved it). 

But people kept raving about The Forgotten Garden, so I gave it a shot, even though it's more than 550 pages long.  So, if you are one of the 12 other people in the world who has not read this book yet (there are more than 83,000 reviews on Goodreads), here's the setup.  Basically, this is a historical mystery, which jumps back and forth between three main characters, following their lives across two continents and more than 100 years.

The book starts about 1905, in Australia.  A little girl, about four years old, is found all alone on the docks after a ship has docked -- somehow, she's come all the way from England and no one seems to know her name or who she belongs to.  The only clue is a white suitcase with a book of fairy tales.  The port master takes her home, and he and his wife (who have been unable to have a child of their own) end up keeping her.  The little girl eventually forgets all about this and on her 21st birthday, the young woman, now renamed Nell, learns of her mysterious origins.

Then we flash-forward 90 years and Nell is on her deathbed, with her beloved granddaughter Cassandra.  Her final words are something about "The Authoress."  Cassandra, who was raised by Nell from the age of ten when she was ditched by her own feckless mother, starts asking questions.  Who is the Authoress?  Is she Nell's mother?  Did she kidnap Nell and put her on the boat?  What happened to her?

The story then jumps back and forth between the Victorian and Edwardian eras, explaining the origins of the mysterious Authoress, the book of fairy tales, and, ultimately, the mystery of Nell and how she wound up in Australia alone.   We also learn about Cassandra's childhood and her own personal tragedies.

The book jumps around a lot, so I was a bit confused at first about the various characters.  However, after the first couple of chapters, which are broken up between the main characters, I was hooked.  Morton does a really good job of creating distinct characters and histories, and she's especially good at setting the scenes.  I especially liked the earliest time frame, when we learn all about the Authoress -- her back story is really quite Dickensian.

Morton's plot is also really well developed; in fact, I would almost say it's a little too perfect, if that makes sense.  There are plot points and characters that are so convenient that some parts are rather contrived, but I'm being nitpicky; also, there were some plot twists that I could spot a mile away.  Nevertheless,  I really got hooked on the story and wanted to find out how what happened.  It's well over 500 pages long, but I hated putting it down and read the last 200 or so pages in a stretch, staying up waaaay past my bedtime the last night.  It's long, but it's actually a very quick read.

I can definitely see why it would be popular for book groups -- there's a lot to discuss, and it's not difficult as long as you can keep all the characters straight.  I actually coordinate two different book groups for my library, so I'm already planning on putting one of her other books on the list next year for the other book group.

Has anyone else read this?  What about Morton's other books?  Which one should I read next?  And are there any book club favorites that everyone loves that you just hated?

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

With The Little Stranger, I've not only read another book for the RIP Challenge, I've also finally completed another owned-and-unread book from the TBR shelf.  I bought The Little Stranger at a library sale not long after I finished (and loved) Fingersmith, so I've been looking forward to reading it.  But like my last RIP book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, it wasn't quite what I was expecting.

Set just a couple of years after the end of World War II, The Little Stranger is an atmospheric story told in the first person by a British country doctor, John Faraday.  He grew in the shadow of Hundreds, a grand country house owned by the local gentry family, the Ayreses.  Though his mother was in service and his father a shopkeeper, Dr. Faraday was able to rise above his station through hard work and his parents' sacrifices.  He's not the Ayreses' regular doctor, but one day he's called out there as a substitute, to check on a young maid who's ailing.

The maid seems to be shamming, but confesses to Dr. Faraday that she's unhappy in the big house, which gives her the creeps.  He dismisses her fears -- the house is nearly empty nowadays, with only a full-time housekeeper; Mrs. Ayres, a widow; her daughter Caroline, who is in her twenties and unmarried; and her son and heir Roderick, who was a pilot in the war and was badly wounded and burned in a crash.

The Ayres family has fallen on hard times, and are barely able to keep the estate afloat.  With the pretext of helping Roderick with an experimental medical treatment, Dr. Faraday begins visiting the Ayreses on a regular basis.  He becomes a close family friend and confidant and is present when a terrible thing happens, the first of many odd occurences.

Three of Sarah Waters' novels are neo-Victorian, but this is her second foray into another historical era -- post-WWII Britain, which I thought she did extremely well.  Of course I'm no expert, but the past year or so I've been reading a lot more fiction written and published in that era, and the mood was very similar.  Waters does an excellent job evoking the period, but what I think was best about the book was her description of an aristocratic family fallen on hard times, and their struggle to keep their lifestyle afloat.  They're desperately hanging on to another era -- they can't keep the farm going, can't maintain the property, and can barely find servants to help them around the house.  It's a real contrast to the books I've been reading recently in which great houses have scores of servants and most women had few other job choices than to be a maid, cook, or governess.

The supernatural aspect of the book is not the best part, in my opinion, and I was a little disappointed in the ending, which didn't quite satisfy me.  But the book is so well written, I read it pretty quickly over a couple of days. I didn't like it quite as much as Fingersmith, but it was well worth reading.   One of my librarian friends is coordinating a historical fiction book group, and the December read is one of Waters' other books, Affinity, so I'm hoping to get to it in a couple of months.  This one is set in a Victorian asylum and also has supernatural elements -- as my friend Jason commented, "Nothing says Christmas like Victorian madhouses!"

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Another RIP read -- and a really good one.  In fact, it might be my ideal RIP challenge read:

1.  It's very creepy.
2.  It's very short (only 146 pages in my edition).
3.  It's a book from my TBR shelves that I've been meaning to read since it arrived in February in that Great Big Box of Penguins.

So, this book was a trifecta for a book challenge from the start.  Oh, and what is it about, by the way?  Well.  Published in 1962, this story is told in the first person by Mary Catherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat.  She's about eighteen when the story takes place.  On the day the story begins, Mary is has to go into town, to the library and to pick up the groceries.  Slowly, as she describes her walk, the reader learns about her very odd family.

Merricat lives with her sister and her Uncle Julian in a large mansion, but she's the only one that ever seems to leave.  Actually, her older sister Constance hasn't left the property in years; Uncle Julian is in a wheelchair, and he might be suffering from mental problems.  Pretty quickly, the reader realizes that almost everyone in the village seems to dislike the Blackwoods.  There are whispers and stares, and people pointing at Merricat.  At first I felt really sorry for her, and wondered what in the heck happened (though if you read the back cover it gives away more of the history. I really wish I hadn't, so I won't reveal it here).   As I kept reading, I realized there was a lot more weirdness going on.

Once again, I don't want to give away too much so I don't spoil it for anyone else.  All I will mention is that Shirley Jackson is just masterful at setting the scene and drawing the reader in, and the tension just escalates -- I couldn't put this book down.  Jackson is wonderful at revealing just enough to give the reader clues without giving away too much too fast.  I will admit that there was one big reveal I figured out pretty quickly -- I've read so many mysteries it's pretty easy for me to pick up on important clues.  However, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story one bit.

Before this, I'd really only read one other work by Jackson, her famous short story, "The Lottery," which is also creepy, but in a different way.  If you haven't read it, you can read it online here.  Jackson is well known for showing the darker underside of small-town life, and this book is so worth reading.  We Have Always Lived in the Castle is dark and creepy and Gothic, and I loved it.  A perfect quick read for the RIP season.

RIP 2011

Even though the temperatures are still in the triple-digits here in Texas, it's starting to feel like fall -- and it's time for the RIP Challenge!  Last year I only managed to squeeze in a couple, but I'm really hoping to tackle some more this time around.  I've signed up for Peril the First, which means I'll be reading four books.  I have a nice stack of novels just begging to be read:

From top to bottom:

The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow by Margaret Oliphant

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
Drood by Dan Simmons
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

And I have this nice stack of short story volumes that would fit the challenge nicely:

Tales of Mystery and the Macabre by Elizabeth Gaskell
Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice LeBlanc
The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark
The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories by R. A. Gilbert, editor
Murder on the Menu by Peter Haining

Plus I still have some library books I have on hold already, including The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morely;  The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole; and Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon!!   Any winners or losers in the bunch?  If I get half of these finished, I'll be happy.

Bloggers, what are you reading for RIP?

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

I have owned My Cousin Rachel for almost five years now, and I cannot imagine why I took so long to read it.  Rebecca, du Maurier's masterpiece, is one of my favorite books of all time, and it's the August selection for my classic book group that meets this weekend.  I practically know it by heart, so I grabbed My Cousin Rachel off the shelf this weekend to help get myself in the gothic mood.

I was a little worried that it wouldn't measure up to Rebecca -- honestly, I don't think many books could!  Also, I was really disappointed by Jamaica Inn, one of her more famous novels.  However, I'm pleased to report that My Cousin Rachel was quite a page turner and I couldn't wait to find out how it all turned out.

Here's the setup, in a nutshell:  young Philip Ashley is an orphan, raised by his bachelor cousin Ambrose, who is twenty years his senior.  Philip is the heir apparent to Ambrose's considerable family fortune, and is as close to him as if Ambrose had been his father.  When Philip is in his early twenties, Ambrose is forced by health issues to winter in Italy, where he meets a distant cousin, Rachel.  Though Ambrose had never been much interested in women, he and Rachel hit it off over a mutual love of gardening.  What follows changes the lives of both Ambrose and Philip forever.

Like Rebecca, this book is set on a large estate in Cornwall, and is a blend of mystery and romance.  However, this is actually a historical novel, like Jamaica Inn, though it took me awhile to realize it was set sometime in the early 1800s -- at first I thought it was set in the 20th century, like Rebecca, until Philip mentions his father died in the Napoleonic wars.  There's also no mention of train travel, and communication between Philip and Ambrose takes forever while he's in Italy.

I liked this novel -- the characters were well realized and I thought the pacing and tension were good.  My only quibble was I found Philip to be incredibly naive.  He's in his early twenties, and has led a rather sheltered life for a wealthy young man -- he knows absolutely nothing about women, and doesn't seem to have had any experience with them at all, which I find rather absurd -- he'd been to prep school and spent time at Oxford.  Even if this was almost 200 years ago, I can't imagine that there weren't any women around!  It's not as if he'd been raised on a desert island or locked in a tower, his schoolmates must have had sisters, or cousins -- not to mention all the village women.  When they come into contact with Rachel, both of these two men are so stupidly infatuated with Rachel that I wanted to smack them both.

Nevertheless, the mystery and gothic elements of the book are classic du Maurier.  I don't want to give away too much for fear of spoilers, but even though it's not as good as the brilliant Rebecca -- and honestly, what novel could be? -- but it's well worth reading if you are a du Maurier fan.  I still have The Scapegoat on the TBR shelves -- any other du Mauriers I should read?  Besides Jamaica Inn and Rebecca, I've also read Don't Look Now and many of her other short stories.

Bleak House Readalong, Week 8

This is my second reading of Bleak House, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it.  I can't help it.  I know, it's kind of a nineteenth-century soap opera.  It's melodramatic, and there are far too many coincidences, but I still love it.  It's kind of like a Victorian version of Lost, but without the island and the smoke monster. There's lots of characters whose lives end up mysteriously interconnected. . and they were on an island. . . and there was a lot of smoke in Victorian England. . . so I guess it's a lot like Lost!  (But without the plane crash.  Hey, what about a steampunk version of Bleak House?  Maybe a mashup?)

But I digress.  Sometimes I've fallen behind in the reading/posting, and for this, I apologize.  As far as a plot summary goes, if I describe too much at this point, it would spoil it.  I'll just say the action has really moved along here -- one of our characters is on a major downward spiral, one is in serious trouble, one is dead, and others are suspected of the crime.  Inspector Bucket, one of my favorite characters, had been introduced previously, but now he's really involved in the story.  He's one of the first detectives in English literature, if not THE first, which is pretty cool.  He may have been inspired in part by an actual detective in Victorian history, Mr. Whicher.

I have to admit that I've never actually read the print version of the book the entire way through -- it's so long, and I have so much else to read, that I've combined the audio and print versions.  I'm fortunate that my library has the Naxos audiobook version, narrated by Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher, and I think it's just wonderful.  Both of them are such great readers, and can do so many voices so well.  I'm always amazed when a male reader does a distinctive female voice, and vice versa.  With both of these excellent readers, I'm able to tell instantly when Ms. Gallagher is doing Mr. Jarndyce, or Mr. Vholes, or when Mr. Barrett is reading Lady Dedlock's part.  There are more than 40 characters in Bleak House (seriously, I once made a list!) and to be able to so many parts so well is real talent.   The right reader can make or break an audiobook -- I am quite sure that the audio of Wuthering Heights may have been what ruined it for me.

Alun Armstrong as Mr. Bucket

And as I've said repeatedly, I think the BBC miniseries adaptation of Bleak House is just fantastic.  Yes, they had to cut a few characters, and condense things a bit -- they've made a thousand page book into an eight-hour miniseries, so a few things had to go.  The series is quite faithful and really captures the essence of the story, if not every single detail.  I honestly can't say whether I liked the book or the series better, they're both just wonderful.

I still have more than 200 pages to go, with a lot of unanswered questions -- who is the murderer?  Will everyone learn Lady Dedlock's deep secret?  Will the Jarndyce case EVER be settled in Chancery Court?  And will Esther find true love?  And will someone finally smack Harold Skimpole upside the head?  See, I told you it was a Victorian soap opera -- stay tuned for the next episode.

The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski

So, another Persephone, but also, a neo-Victorian, and it counts for the RIP Challenge!  I'm killing three birds with one stone, plus it was only 120 pages!

But seriously, this is one creepy little book.  Our protagonist Melanie is a young married woman living in London, I'm guessing about 1950.  She has a young baby, but has hardly seen him because she is recovering from tuberculosis.  However, her prognosis is good, and until her husband can take her to Switzerland, she is recovering at home.  In fact, her doctor has said it's okay for her to get out of bed and move into another room.  Melanie is finally going to be able to look out the window, lying on an ugly Victorian chaise-longue she bought at an antique store when she was newly pregnant, shopping for a cradle.  She never actually used the chaise longue because she became ill.

However, things take a turn for the bizarre -- on her first afternoon lying on this antique piece of furniture, Melanie closes her eyes for a nap and awakens in Victorian England, lying on the same hideous chaise longue.  She's being attended by her bitter, cold sister Adelaide, and her name is now Milly.  She is upset and confused and her sister is angry and hateful, and though she doesn't understand what's happening, she recognizes pictures in the room, and names, and has snippets from memories of people she doesn't even know.

A Victorian Chaise Longue, not so ugly

This book is strange and unsettling -- without giving too much away, Milly's sister is angry with her and she doesn't know why, but Milly's life has strange parallels to Melanie's.  She doesn't know if she's been reincarnated or remembering a past life or if she's dead.  Some secrets are revealed at the end, but there are a lot of unanswered questions.  Though I was lucky to get a 1953 edition through interlibrary loan for free, I really wish I'd bought a copy of the recent Persephone edition because it has an introduction by P. D. James.  Persephone Books is now hosting an online discussion group, and if they continue in order of publication, The Victorian Chaise Longue should be the November read and hopefully someone in the blogsophere can answer all my questions.  It's a creepy little read and I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a copy.


Have you reviewed this book on your blog?  Please tell me in the comment section and I'll link to your review.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is kind of a weird book.  Not much happens, and a few days after finishing it, I'm not even sure how it ended.  I was kind of hoping I'd be able to count this as a mystery for the RIP Challenge, but I'm not even sure if this could be considered a mystery or a thriller.

I decided to read this book after I was talking to Amanda about going to see the movie adaptation.  (If you don't know Amanda, she's the author of the Zen Leaf, and is the Queen of Dystopian Fiction.) Of course since we are in the Flyover Zone, the movie  doesn't open here until October 1.  Sigh.  But I digress.  Amanda strongly recommended that I read the book first and avoid the trailer like the plague, since it basically gives away the whole plot.  But I realized after finishing this book, that there really is very little plot.  There are only three main characters, and if I try to describe the plot, I'll pretty much give away the whole thing.  Like the trailer.

I'll try to give some background without spoiling it too much.  It's set in the 1990s in Britain, and it's told in the first person by a young woman named Kathy who is a Carer.  For what, or for whom?  It's mysterious, but eventually revealed, though I don't want to give it away.  Most of the action in this book is told in flashback about Kathy and two of her friends, Ruth and Tommy, growing up at a special boarding school called Hailsham, which I keep mentally confusing with Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.  Perhaps this is not a coincidence?

These youths have spent their whole lives at this school, because they are being prepared for Something Special.  Unfortunately, when I put the book on hold at the library, I happened to glance at the bottom of the screen and the book's biggest secret was inadvertently revealed by the library's subject headings (which is a new phenomenon for fiction; you won't find it nearly as often with older books).  Curse you, Library of Congress subject headings!  And this is not the first book the OPAC has spoiled for me.  I guess I need to be more careful about my library catalog surfing.

Well, these secrets are revealed, of course, but there isn't nearly as much buildup or tension as I would have expected.  This is the second book I've read by Ishiguro, and though the subject matter is quite different than in The Remains of the Day, they are similar in that they are both Literary Fiction in Which Not Much Happens.   A lot of the book's action is consumed with the interaction between Kathy and her frenemy Ruth, such as "who said what to whom??" and "how they reacted" and "what does it mean???"  I found the minutia of this exhausting, like high school, but three times worse.  I suppose that's possible, since these youngsters have lived their entire lives at this school and that's all they know.  It was still interesting, but I was hoping for a little something more.  And I still can't remember the ending.

Bleak House Readalong, Week 2

Bleak House continues!  I shall try not to gush, but I do love this book so.  Since our last update, there have been some interesting developments.

So far, Esther Summerson and her two companions, Ada and Richard, are settling in quite nicely with their guardian John Jarndyce, at Bleak House.  They've had some visitors, like Jarndyce's school chum Mr. Boythorn (who also has a connection with the Dedlocks; they are in a dispute over property boundaries and a right-of-way). Richard is trying to decide on a Profession.  Although he's hoping to make his fortune from the Jarndyce court case, his guardian keeps telling him not to get his hopes up.  There's also a visit from one of the London law clerks, Mr. Guppy, who has the hots for Esther, much to her chagrin.

Meanwhile, the Dedlocks have returned from Paris.  Tulkinghorn, the lawyer, has made inquiries about the law writer whose handwriting so interested Lady Dedlock.  He tracked him down to a squalid room (coincidentally, the very building housing another person with an interest in Jarndyce, the daffy Miss Flite).  Unfortunately, Tulkinghorn finds him dead from a drug overdose, so his connection to the story remains a mystery.  Tulkinghorn is suspicious.

This seems like a lot of unrelated material, but it all ends up like pieces of a puzzle.  I admit that if I hadn't watched the miniseries before I'd read the book, I probably would have been totally confused.  You need patience with Dickens.  I'm just over 200 pages into the book (close to 1000 pages!), and there are several storylines that sometimes seem unrelated.  However, it all starts to come together soon.  Because this story was originally stretched out over 18 months, Dickens took a lot of time setting up all the different elements.

I admit that sometimes Dickens does tend to blather on a bit (there are a few sections that I have been known to skim, especially when he's trying to make a point about the terrible Byzantine judicial system). I still firmly believe it's worth getting through the boring bits in order to get to the good stuff.

One of the things I love most about Dickens is his delightful use of names.  Frequently, they give us a subtle (or not-so-subtle) hint about the characters.  For example, a law clerk, Mr. Guppy, is kind of annoying fishy sort of person; Tulkinghorn, the lawyer, is kind of a looming, scary presence; Miss Flite is a flaky, crazy bird lady (the Victorian version of a crazy cat lady); Esther Summerson, our heroine, is supposed to be as bright and cheerful as the summer sun.  There are lots more characters with fun names; in fact, there's probably forty or more principal characters!  At one point I actually started making a list, just for fun.  I don't have any problem keeping them all straight because they're very memorable.  Dickens' great characters are just as good as his intricate cliffhanger plots -- I'm so glad I didn't have to read this as a serial, because the waiting would have made me crazy.   I hope everyone else is enjoying the Bleak House readalong!

Click here for more posts on the Bleak House readalong.

Bleak House Readalong, week 1

First of all, thanks to Amanda for organizing the Bleak House Readalong!  Every week I'll be posting my thoughts about this amazing book, my favorite Dickens novel, and one of my favorite books of all time.

I love this book.  It's my second reading, or actually, I should say listening.  I have the audio version from Naxos Audio books, which is excellent.  Audio is a great way to enjoy Dickens -- I think it really forces me to slow down and enjoy the writing.  Sometimes I tend to skim over long passages because I'm so intrigued by the plot, and there is so much great writing in Dickens!  His prose can be somewhat flowery and long-winded at times, but it's worth it.  

Bleak House is centered around a civil case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that's been languishing for years in the court of Chancery.  Dickens drew upon his own experiences -- first, as a court reporter, before he became a successful novelist; then again as a plaintiff in a civil case.  After the runaway success of A Christmas Carol, Dickens sued a publishing company that was selling a book which was a very thinly veiled knockoff.  He won the suit, but the publisher declared bankruptcy, and Dickens was forced to pay the court costs for himself and the defendant!  Talk about adding insult to injury!   Dickens had no love of the British court system.

Anyway, the Jarndyce case has been going on forever.  The two main stories at the beginning are related to the case.  First, we have the story of Esther Summerson, a young orphan aged about 20, who is the ward of Mr. John Jarndyce.  The reader learns her back story, and now she's on her way to live at Bleak House, Mr. Jarndyce's country estate.  Esther has never met her benefactor, but she's going to live with him to be the companion to Ada Clare, a young lady who is one of the possible beneficiaries of the Jarndyce case.  Her distant cousin, Richard Carstone, another ward of the Jarndyce case, is also going to live there.  Much of the action is about their arrival at Bleak House and their first impressions of it, Mr. Jarndyce, and of the colorful characters that surround him.

The other story is about the wealthy Dedlocks, who live in another grand estate, Chesney Wold, which is dark and depressing.  Lady Dedlock is also a possible heir to Jarndyce.  She's married to the much older Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, who married her for love.  She's bored to death. 

Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock

So, somehow, these stories are connected.  The beginning of the book is mostly back story and character exposition.  It seems like a lot of unrelated stories, but since this is one of his longest, most complex works  (more than 900 pages long and was originally published in a serial format, from March 1852 to September 1853.)

My likes and dislikes so far -- well, I love how beautifully Dickens sets the scene.  Chesney Wold, the Dedlock estate, is so dark and dreary sounding, I can practically hear the rain dripping as I read it.  I also love his description of London, as young Esther first sees it -- it's so smoggy that she's convinced there are fires everywhere, and the gas lamps are lit quite early since it's so dark.  I can't imagine living somewhere so polluted.

Also, I love how Dickens creates his characters.  Mr. Jarndyce is sweet and benevolent, but sort of shy.  Some of the side characters, like Jarndyce's friend Harold Skimpole, and Mrs. Rouncewell, the housekeeper at Chesney Wold, are also very vivid (I especially love the description of Mrs. Rouncewell's corsets.  My biggest complaint is Esther -- she's really pretty saccharine.  I've read about half of Dickens' works and nearly all of them contain a sweet ingenue who is pretty and vapid and kind of annoying.  Esther isn't as bad as some, but the book also contains another ingenue, her companion Ada Clare, and everyone looooves her -- Esther's only known her a few days and always refers to her as "my darling."  Based on the book I can only surmise it's because she's sweet and has pretty golden curls. How shallow.  

Nevertheless, this book is worth sticking with.  Dickens creates some amazing supporting characters, some of whom are quite grotesque, but I'll get to those later as I continue my weekly updates.  This book has so much in it -- romance, mystery, satire, drama, wit.  I love this book as much the second time around as I did the first. 

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

I've been a mystery lover since my mom took me to see Murder on the Orient Express, which is still one of my all-time favorite movies. (This should have scarred me for life, as I was only eight, but oddly enough it didn't.  And I showed it to my girls when they were eight and twelve.  Didn't hurt them any either)  Anyway, this started my love affair with Christie -- I've read everyone one of her mysteries, including the plays and short stories.

For this Classics Circuit, I decided to branch out, and at first I was  disappointed.  Maybe Christie has spoiled me for other authors.  First, on a librarian friend's recommendation, I tried The Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr, supposedly the quintessential locked room mystery, but I was totally bored with it.  I switched to Dorothy Sayers, whom I've never read, and decided to start with her first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Whose Body?   Again, I just couldn't get excited about it -- Lord Peter seemed so contrived and unreal.  Neither of these authors was able to get me hooked like Christie.

Finally, I returned to this side of the pond, and picked up Rex Stout's Fer-de-Lance, the first mystery starring the enigmatic Nero Wolfe and his narrator sidekick, Archie Goodwin.  First published in 1935, this classic Depression-era mystery is complete with hardboiled private eyes, roadsters, dames, and snappy dialogue.  It's a bit like a cross between a cozy mystery and a Sam Spade classic detective story -- genius Nero Wolfe never leaves his beautiful apartment, filled with his beloved orchids, so his intrepid helper Archie does all the leg work and provides all the clever asides and quips.

As entertaining as this book was, I will admit it started out a little slowly.   The first third of the book consist of setting the story, but the reader doesn't get that much background about Archie or Nero, and  we don't even meet the primary suspects until more than 100 pages had passed.  Even then, it's not so much a whodunit as a "how did they do it?"  Unlike Agatha Christie or many other authors, there was no great "aha!" moment, in which the clever detective decides which of the many suspects was the culprit.  There are some surprises and an interesting little twist at the end, but it's very unlike many of the British cozies I've read.

I think the great appeal of this book was the character of Archie.  Nero himself doesn't get a lot of exposure -- he's a recluse, an eccentric genius who never leaves the house and has a strict schedule.  Archie and his snappy dialogue, and the 1930s setting are the real appeal of this book, in my humble opinion.   Here's one of my favorite paragraphs from the book:

If I ever kill anybody I'm pretty sure it will be a woman. I've seen a lot of stubborn men, a lot of men who knew something I wanted to know and didn't intend to tell me, and in a quite a few cases I couldn't make him tell no matter what I tried; but in spite of how stubborn they were they always stayed human.  They always gave me a feeling that if only I hit on the right lever I could pry it out of them.  But I've seen women that not only wouldn't turn loose; you knew damn well they wouldn't.  They can get a look on their faces that would drive you crazy, and I think some of them do it on purpose.  The look on a man's face says that he'll die before he'll tell you, and you think you may bust that up; a woman's look says that she would just as soon tell you as not, only she isn't going to.


I can just imagine Humphrey Bogart or someone of that era delivering Archie's lines.  It almost makes me wish I lived back then, just so I could hear if people really talked like that.  Great stuff!

I have found that with mystery series the first one isn't usually the best.  Fer-de-Lance is pretty good, though I didn't find it a real page turner.  I may give Nero Wolfe another try to see if the later books are an improvement.  It was worth exploring though -- if you're looking for a change from classic British detective fiction it's a lot of fun.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale

CSI:  Victorian!! 

If you have any interest at all in Victorian sensational or detective fiction, or in the neo-Victorian detective fiction, this book will probably interest you as much as it did me.  Mr. Whicher gives great insight into the Victorian frenzied fascination with crimes and detection.  Summerscale shows the influences of this case, as well as other Victorian true crimes, on such famous novelists as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

This book explores a sensational case that mesmerized the British public in 1860. The real-life detective, Mr. Whicher, was the inspiration for several fictional detectives, including one my personal favorites, Inspector Bucket in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. As I read the book, I couldn't help but picture Mr. Whicher looking exactly like Alun Armstrong, the actor who portrayed Inspector Bucket so perfectly in the 2005 BBC adaptation.

In the early hours of June 29, 1860, a terrible crime occurred in the town of Road, Wiltshire County.  After the entire household was shut up tight,  Francis Saville Kent, not quite four years old, was taken from his bed while still asleep in the dead of night and brutally murdered.  His absence was discovered the following morning and not long afterward his small body was found in the servants' privy.

Since the house was completely secured, suspicion fell on the members of the household. That night the residents were: Mr. Kent, his second wife Mary, who was eight months pregnant; three servants, and the children: four children ages fifteen to twenty from his first marriage; and three small children from the second marriage.  In particular, suspicions focused on three people:  the nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough, who slept in the nursery with two of the children, including young Saville, the victim; Constance Kent, 16, from Mr. Kent's first marriage; and Mr. Kent himself.

After several days of investigations by the local police, the media had caused such an uproar that the entire country was riveted on the case, and a Scotland Yard detective was called in: Mr. Whicher.  This case became a media circus.  If you think the paparazzi and the media are bad now, it was just as awful 150 years ago.  This case tore the family apart, exposing all their quirks, and secrets.  The case revealed some oddities; first, that the late Mrs. Kent had been considered mentally ill before her deat; that the second Mrs. Kent had been the family governmess, who was in control of the household while the first Mrs. Kent was ill; that the oldest Kent children, from the first marriage, lived on the third floor, on the same level as the servants.  This raised some very interesting questions -- had Mr. Kent had an affair with the governess while the first wife was alive?  Was the first Mrs. Kent truly mentally ill, or were Mr. Kent and the governess simply trying to get her out of the way?  Were the older children badly treated by their stepmother?  And was Mr. Kent having an affair with the nursemaid?  The speculation by the media, the public, and the police were overwhelming and went on for years until the mystery was finally solved.

This book is both well-written and well-researched.  Summerscale pored over original documents, and the book includes diagrams, illustrations, and photos of the family and the house -- and an extremely useful note on currency conversions.  It's both fascinating and creepy.  I've read a lot of mysteries, but hardly any true crime.  The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher also explores the Victorian fascination with detectives and fantastic popularity of detective fiction and sensational novels.  If you've read Bleak House, The Moonstone, or The Turn of the Screw, you may recognize elements from this case.  It also inspired many other "locked house" and "country estate" murder mysteries.  The creepy part is that it's all true.

This book counts as my first book in the Our Mutual Read Challenge.  This blog entry is also posted at Our Mutual Read.

Black and White and Dead All Over by John Darnton

This was another book group selection.  Normally I wait until closer to the meeting so I won't forget anything, but we're low on copies so I decided to start it right away so I can return it for someone else on the wait list.  Plus, I was looking for another excuse to put off reading Jude the Obscure, the selection for one of my online groups, which I have been dreading.  I did vote for it, months ago, but now that it's time to actually make the committment to reading it, I'm worried.  But that's fodder for another blog.

I haven't been reading that many crime books or thrillers since I've been on my Literary Fiction/Classics obsession, but I was vaguely interested in this since Once Upon A Time I had aspirations of a career in journalism.  I even went so far as to select it as my college major, which included an internship at a small paper in a small city in Michigan -- though nothing nearly as complex or fascinating as The New York Globe in this novel [a thinly veiled version of the New York Times] but we did actually have presses and editors and deadlines and whatnot, though this was in the days before the Interwebs.

The premise of this is book is intriguing -- a much-disliked editor is killed in the newsroom, with an enormous cast of supporting characters with various motives, which provides the author with endless opportunities to create cliched characters and thinly veiled counterparts to the actual NYT times employees.  However, I think he was so busy making up clever names for them, and satirizing the decline of print journalism, he forgot how to write a coherent mystery. There are way too many supporting characters, most of them poorly developed, and they popped in and out of the story so fast I couldn't keep track of most of them. Some of them are so briefly introduced with so little explanation, that when they finally reappear at the end of the book that I had no idea who they were. I felt as if I should have taken notes -- and the book's not that long, only 350 pages!  It's not like a Charles Dickens novel -- Bleak House [one of my personal favorites] -- is almost 1000 pages long and was published serially over 18 months, and includes about 40 principal characters.  In that case, I feel that notes are justified.  Not so much with this book.


And the thing that bothered me the most is how sexist the characters were -- all the female reporters are sluts or bitches, or both, and apparently they can't possibly write anything but fluff pieces or get promoted unless they've slept their way to the top or both.  In the non-reporter female roles, the murder victim's assistant is a dried up old spinster, the protagonist's estranged girlfriend is a shrew. . . the only remotely likeable female character was the detective assigned to the case, because she's the love interest for our intrepid reporter Jude --who, naturally, solves the case. Because, obviously, women should just aren't smart enough to do that, and should stick to their assigned roles as the love interest. Annoying.

I'm not even going to attempt to describe the plot, but I will mention that there are various subplots which I suppose are satirizing/exposing the difficulty of putting out a newspaper, the good old days of journalism, plaigairism, the dumbing down of the media, tabloid journalism, corporate takeovers. . . shall I go on? I didn't think so. If you like convoluted mysteries, I won't spoil it for you, and if you don't, don't bother. On Goodreads, I gave it 1 1/2 stars.  At the time I was reading it, I didn't hate, but now I really wish I had those hours back.  Maybe Jude the Obscure would have been the better choice after all.

A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot

This book has been on my to-read list since I watched the DVD several years ago.  Lately, I've been trying really hard to be strong and only read books that are A) on my bookshelves, unread or B) for a book group. However, I was volunteering at the library last week, and I could not help myself, the book went into my book bag and I finally gave it the attention it deserves.

In a way, I really dislike seeing the movie adaptation of a novel first, because then I have a preconcieved notion of the characters, locations, etc.; however, I only very dimly remembered hearing about this book before I watched the movie, which is wonderful. It's actually tough to say which is better, since I watched it about four years ago, but it really stuck in my mind and I've been wanting to read the book ever since. But is it literary snobbery to only read books, and pooh-pooh film adaptations, especially if they're wonderful?  Discuss!

Anyway, back to the novel:  This is a historical fiction/mystery novel about a young Frenchwoman, Matilde, who is searching for answers about her fiance's death during WWI.  In 1919, two years after Matilde's fiance, Manech, supposedly died at the front, Matilde receives a letter from a dying soldier, who has information about the day Manech died.  Matilde, who's been unable to walk since she was three, visits the soldier, Esperanza, at the hospital, where he confesses that Manech, along with four other soldiers, didn't die in the line of duty -- they were court-martialed and convicted for self-inflicted injuries.  Instead of execution, the five convicts were sent to the front and pushed into the no-man's land between the trenches, where they died in the crossfire. Esperanza was the soldier who wrote out and mailed five farewell letters the condemned men sent to their loved ones. 

Esperanza gives Matilde copies of all the original letters, but she isn't satisfied, and begins digging deeper into the story.  She becomes convinced that Manech, and perhaps others, somehow survived.  She begins to investigate the mystery, writing letters to the families of the men and placing ads in newspapers.  Her family is wealthy and she uses their considerable resources to aid in her quest.

I found this to be a really intriguing mystery, as well as a romantic story.  Matilde is dogged in pursuit of the truth.  Much of the story is told in letters and interviews she has with other soldiers who witnessed the event and the lost soldiers' families and friends, so there are a lot of different viewpoints and opinions by different characters.  This approach really reminded me of how many different truths can exist, even if it's all the same event, especially amid the confusion and horror of war, and how narrators in books can sometimes be unreliable. 

The only difficulty I had with this book was that I did find it a little difficult keeping some of the characters straight -- besides the five soldiers, who have their given names, plus the nicknames given by their comrades, plus the other soldiers who were witnesses, plus family members. . . and they're all French, of course.  After a few chapters I began to wish that I had made a running list of all the characters and taken notes as I went along.  However, I can't say that I blame the author, it's probably my fault for not paying better attention at the beginning. 

I loved this book, and I was just as drawn in by the characters and the mystery while reading it as I did when I watched the movie. I really felt like I was right there, experiencing everything in France right along with Matilde and the soldiers.  I'm only sorry I took so long to finally read it, and I'm going to watch the movie again as soon as I go pick it up from the library.  After I watch it I'll report back and see if the movie holds up as well to the book.