Two Josephine Tey Mysteries

A little while ago, I read a few Josephine Tey mysteries, one after the other after the other. Tey is pretty original, even now; sixty odd years after they were written, these little novels still seem fresh. As you probably know by now, I have never met a mystery I didn't like, but I have to admit that I usually know going in what I can expect.

First I read "The Daughter of Time" (the title is part of a Francis Bacon aphorism: truth is the daughter of time, not of authority). It's about a bedridden Scotland Yard detective who sets out to solve the centuries-old mystery of who killed the two sons (the heir and the spare) of Edward the IV. The prime suspect has always been their uncle, Richard the III, the last of the Plantagenets and the man who became king in their stead. Listen, do you like those old-school documentaries that they used to have on the History Channel? Where they were like "Who killed King Tut?" or "What was this Atlantis place everyone* goes on about, really?" If you do, then you'll like this book. It's a fascinating period in history, and if the stakes seem low in summary, they never do when you're reading the book. It was a page-turner for me. It reminded me a little of Rear Window in its set-up. It sounds sort of boring and constrained in concept, but in both cases, the characters' limitations (on the one hand, and inability to leave one's apartment, on the other, an extreme distance from the crime) are exploited to great effect.

Brat Farrar was actually the most traditional of Tey's mysteries that I read, and also the most melancholy. I get the sense that Tey sort of regrets that someone has to die (even a fictional someone) in order for us to have our entertainment. This is an odd story: there's a family by the name of Ashby, owners of an important English estate. The family was once composed of Aunt Bee and the five children of her late brother and his (also late) wife. After their parents' death, the oldest child, Patrick, committed suicide, leaving his brother Simon the heir to the estate.  The story opens on the eve of Simon's coming of age, when a young man appears claiming to be Patrick, thereby challenging Simon's claim to estate. Patrick is of course Brat Farrar, and the meat of the story is concerned with what happens next. This was probably my least favorite of the mysteries; it was very "Rebecca." By Daphne Du Maurier? The story is haunted by Patrick's violent and inexplicable death, and there's an encroaching darkness about the whole thing. It's the only one of Tey's mysteries that really has about it a sense of menace.

***

In unrelated news, I have been listening to this during workouts at the gym:

I just really feel like it encompasses all the feelings I feel at the gym: euphoria, frustration, boredom, and the one where I'm about to die of a heart-attack.

***

Also, do you remember how good that first Coldplay album was? I mean, I was fifteen, so who knows, but remember how we felt? The second was not as good, but I heard this today, and oh, memories.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEoHFzEmld0?fs=1&feature=oembed] 

This was also the first video where I didn't think Chris Martin looked like an attractive alien life form. (The unattractive alien lifeforms all look like Jabba the Hutt and the things you find in tap water when you look through a microscope.)

*The conclusion is always that Plato is one of these. 

1493 by Charles C. Mann

I found this book the old fashioned way: I saw it in the window of a bookshop! And then...I bought it on my Kindle because that thing was like five hundred pages long and I was taking it to China.

This is a wonderful book that will turn you into a totally obnoxious jerk every time you read it with someone else in the room, because you'll be compelled to shout out interesting facts. The thing is, they're interesting in context, but probably not to someone sitting across the room trying to read Murakami's new book? Watever, boyfriend, you needed to know that there were exiled Samurais in colonial Mexico, because everyone needs to know that.

The book essentially covers the rise (so far!) of what the author calls the "homogecene era", and which you and I better know as "kudzu". Basically, since Columbus sailed across the ocean sea and everyone in the world became involved in a single economic system, our distinct cultures and ecosystems have been on an inexorable march towards uniformity. Did you ever wonder whether malaria and yellow fever are inextricably linked to the rise of chattel slavery in the Americas? You should! Did you know there were no earthworms in America before 1492? I mean, RIGHT? That's super-weird. Did you know there was a confederate colony in Brazil, at one point? They didn't put that in my American history book!

So, it's full of obscure little bits of fascinating history and also tells an important (crucial) story that helps make sense not only of what is happening to us environmentlly, but politically and culturally. I can't recommend it enough if you're looking for some historical non-fiction that's broad in scope and will make you feel like a smarty-pants.

CBR III Week 15: A Dance with Dragons by George R R Martin

It's finally here! Now we can all talk about it! I mean, right? No?

So you know how one of Martin's favorite things in this world is killing off important characters?

 
via PinkIndiaInk

Right. I like that he's willing to go there, you know? I really do. It's annoying to read a book where the main characters have plot armor. Here's the thing though: at what point does killing people off lose its shock value and become a "really, again?" thing? Sure, the world is a bleak and horrible place where stupidity and violence tend to triumph over all good things and...

Wait, where was I going with this? All those things are true. I wonder if Martin's concern with duty in this novel and specifically the way power and responsibility constrain those who would have them is a result of the struggle he's had pleasing fans and finishing this massive installment. A bridge too far?

Anyway, I read this, fangirled so hard I died, and then I came back to life. I think George would approve.

200ish Word Review: Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America

It’s hard to do such a sprawling book any justice in just 200 words, but let’s try: young French noble (Olivier) is kidnapped and put on a boat to America by order of his parents, survivors of the French revolution, in order to keep him out of (political) trouble. He is accompanied by a reluctant English servant he hates (Parrot). Hijinx, romance, and personal growth ensue. We become (extensively) acquainted with their complicated histories. The two reluctantly become friends and achieve different understandings of America as a country and an idea.

It was beautifully written, with the kind of luscious language that makes me wish I made more time for poetry, and there were arresting set pieces along the way, but I was occasionally bored because there wasn’t a clear sense of what the point was. It never comes together to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its many beautifully moving parts. The last few pages had me thinking it was all about the American experiment: the way the country’s character (like a person's) is both its luck and its doom, but that felt a little tacked-on, a little like an after-thought. There was an idea in there somewhere about how our origins mark us (but, you know, duh). The whole thing felt rough, like somewhere in there is the story that wants to be told, but Carey hasn’t quite got a hold of it. So: it’s not a great novel, but it’s still worth a read, especially if you’re a fan of historical fiction. As Ursula Le Guin put it in her review: “Are there hidden significances? I don't know. It's a dazzling, entertaining novel. Should one ask for more?”

200 Word Book Review: John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

 

For the longest time, le Carre has been on my reading list. Why? Rachel Weisz. People, since way back when I watched The Mummy in 10^th grade (please stop laughing at me), I have had a girl-crush on Rachel Weisz. She was so good in The Constant Gardener! John le Carre wrote that.

Anyway, I’m so glad this wasn't like the time I tried to read Robert Ludlum (of The Bourne Disappointment) after loving the movies. This book is a classic of old-school spy fiction, and it’s reminded me of how much I enjoy that whole genre. I went through a short phase during which I read a bunch of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler books. I really don’t know why I stopped.

Spy is an exceptional book because, and I hope I’m not giving too much away (BUT IF YOU’RE CONCERNED TURN AWAY), it’s totally un-triumphant, even beyond the cynicism you tend to find in other spy novels. Le Carre is writing about corrupt cold-war intelligence bureaucracies that uphold ideologies that are, on both sides, hollow and brutal. What effect does living a life molded by the demands and constraints of service to those bureaucracies have on a man? What is the role and what are the limits of redemption in such a compromised life? This book is haunted by ambiguity: towards heroism, towards patriotism, even towards love. It may be a short book, but it’s definitely not a light read. Oh, and obviously: it's really, really twisty and exciting.

200 Word Review: Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever

How good was Ship Fever?

You guys, it is about scientists. I have always wanted to be a scientist*.

If someone had told me that she was intending to write a series of short stories about the “mysterious allure of science” (as Kakutani would have it), I would have been all “what does that even mean, are you smoking crack again?” I’d never noticed how the desire to collect and to understand—to truly, intimately know—some particular thing is so much like an enchantment. Barrett is like an alchemist: she takes these people—discoverers, explorers, scientists—and under the heat of their fallibility, their imperfect loves, and their consuming ambitions, the cold substance of scientific discovery blossoms into magic. At other times, she seems to work her spell in reverse, and science is (always imperfectly) applied to understanding the nature of human relationships. In Barrett’s world, science seems less like a field of study and more like a particular turn of mind. Something to call people who can’t stop seeking, even when they can barely understand the impulse. Even when it can only lead to ruin. I think I read somewhere that Ship Fever is about the love of science, and the science of love, and honestly, now that I’ve read the book, I can’t think of a better way of putting it.

*Statement may not be factual, true, or accurate. 

200 Word Review: Andrea Camilleri’s The Terracotta Dog (audiobook)

I listened to this on my way down to Florida, the sunshine-induced-headache state. Chandler thought it was just ok, but that’s because he reads mysteries for the suspense and surprise, while I read them for food and place descriptions. I mean, I love a puzzle and some DANGER, but the ambiance is what really makes it or breaks it. The setting was $money$, even if you could see the ending coming from, basically, page 3. I’ve been to Sicily, where I stepped in dog poop 134,986 times, and I kind of disliked it, but this book makes me want to give it a second shot. Right in the head!

Sorry, the book was full of that kind of humor. Something happened when I heard this book read out loud: the dialogue became super-embarrassing. I don’t know why it didn’t bother me in print; it’s all either corny or melodramatic. After a little while you get used to it, though, like living with someone who farts in public. It’s kind of catching, actually. I mean the language, not the farting. I think at one point I was like “We’re low on gas. What has become of us? We’re the empty shells of the people who left Charlotte. GET IT? IT IS A PUN. I AM PULLING INTO A SHELL STATION.”

200 Word Review: Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle

This book was about as charming as an orphaned kitten playing with a ball of twine while it’s adoptive mother, a goose named Roger Snorkelbaum, looks on. I wish this book were a vacation that I took, or a room in my house that I could go to when writing goes badly (every day). As the cover promises, it is very romantic. Although that is not why I bought it. I bought it because Dodie Smith also wrote 101 Dalmatians, and for that alone she should have been made some kind of saint.

You know what? I don’t have any bad things to say about this book. Except about Rose, the sister who gets all the men and attention, and is generally just a huge asshole. The story’s one failure, I think, is that we never understand why someone hasn’t taken the initiative of pushing her out a window. Oh, and I suppose that bear episode isn’t exactly…plausible.

Part of the wonderfulness of the book is that it’s so familiar: it’s a fairly conventional story told in a vibrant voice. I guess it says something about a book when you feel so much affection for everyone in it (except Rose) that your main reaction is just “I want to hug you”. Recommended for sick days and just-kinda-blegh days.

200 Word Book Review: Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of This World

 

The good: This classic of Caribbean literature is set before, during, and after Haiti’s independence. It’s an early example of magical realism, somewhere between historical fiction and voodoo-inflected myth*. I found the whole thing pretty interesting in terms of understanding the Haitian national identity.

The bad: I decided to read this in Spanish, and about two pages in I thought: I’ve made a huge mistake.

The problem is that the book is in Cuban Spanish from before 1950, and I only speak Dominican Spanish from the mid-90s. Even though Alejo Carpentier died in 1980, he really should have worked this out. Also, the skips in time can be confusing on first read.

Carpentier works at creating a sense that shifts in power and the passage of time mean little to the always replaceable, and always exploited, Haitian peasant. It can all become wearying**. That the main character, Ti Noel, is going to end up in basically the same place he started is a foregone conclusion. Plus, Carpentier emphasizes the crushing oppression of the colony and later the Republic by stripping him of a lot of his individuality, which can also make the novella hard to stick with. Still, it’s a beautiful book, and well worth the effort. VOODOO!!!

*I feel like putting voodoo in a book is like putting a chase sequence in a movie or hot pepper flakes on pizza. Instead of being a Historical Novel it’s a Historical! Novel! Goat sacrifice on page six! Someone will definitely turn into a lizard!

Obviously, I read this book for the man-lizard.

**I mean who wants to read a tragedy that just stays that way!? Ew! I hoped there was going to be a party and everyone was going to pull a goat out from under their seat, like on Oprah. And then they would be like MOVE THIS BUS! and the Citadelle Laferriere was going to be a swiss chalet with a hot tub. But I digress.

200-Word Book Review: Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time

 

Yes. I am reading an enormous, déclassé fantasy series. These books are probably, on average, 700 pages long, and there’s fourteen of them, and when I first noticed I thought ‘Whatever, I read A Suitable Boy. I read Tolstoy. I can handle this nonsense.’ I was wrong, because I’m on book five now, and I’m exhausted.

The good: A fully realized world very much in the spirit of Lord of the Rings, so it’s perfect if you’re looking to relive your childhood. You should probably not attempt to relive your childhood.

The bad: I’ve read about 3000 pages and one measly year has passed in the story. The characters are flat. SO flat. And dense to the point of stupidity. That’s ok for the first book, but by book four, you wonder why these people can’t seem to have more than about five different thoughts, which are:

-“Is Rand going mad?”

-“Light, no! [description of something already described 57 times before in the exact same words]”

-“Who understands women/men?”

-“I will keep this vital fact a secret from everyone, thereby extending the plot by a completely unnecessary 300 pages.”

-“I am tired.”

Me too, guys! Me. Too.

200 Word Review: Tony Horwitz’s A Voyage Long and Strange

 
 

The good: I’m glad Horwitz took this trip for me, because boy was it unpleasant. I learned all kinds of things about 16^th century America, though! I immediately forgot them all, as one does. Oh, except:

Syphilis! Did you know it came from America?

Horwitz is a sharp, funny observer, with a great ear for irony and idiosyncratic voices.

The bad: Let me start by saying that I wanted to read “Confederates in the Attic”, but it’s not available on Kindle. This book was a good refresher on some of the stuff I’ve been studying for my novel, but it’s not very detailed. The book could easily have been twice as long (and twice as alienating to normal people). It’s not a history of stuff that was happening on the American continent between 1492 and 1620; it’s a history of the Europeans in America during that time. I guess that’s pretty much what’s promised on the book jacket though? Also Horwitz is easily depressed by pretty much everything that isn’t air-conditioned (but, like most people, he’s funnier that way).

200 Word Review: Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower

 

The good: This book made me want to move to 18^th century Germany and contract consumption, because it was that good. The writing was some of the most crisp and refreshing I can remember reading. That’s right: The Blue Flower is the cucumber of books. It’s a perfect summer read. Also, on one level, it’s about romantic love, and People Like That.

The bad: It ends.

Well…fine, it’s not really a book for people who enjoy heavy plotting, or consistent point-of-view, or who dislike a little high-brow, old-fashioned philosophizing about the nature of reality. But it’s only a little bit! 

200 Word Movie Review: The Secret in Their Eyes

 
 

The good: Great acting, and by people who are not alienating in their attractiveness. One of the best things about foreign movies is that so often the people on screen are not OHMYGOD THESE WHITE TEETH. They’re just people. The story is super-twisty, but in a way that is easy to follow. Also, it incorporates Argentine history with a really light touch. The more you know, I suspect, about what happened during the Peron years, the richer the movie becomes, but it’s hardly a prerequisite. The movie is funny. Especially if you speak Spanish.

The bad: The subtitles are…inadequate. The ending is operatic where the rest of the movie is sort of subtle, so there’s a shift in tone that’s a little jarring. But, it’s a well-earned ending. Even my boyfriend liked it, though I think he would want me to mention that going to the movies is a completely pointless and expensive experience generally. I do not share this opinion, but I respect it in the sense that I am constantly working against it. If his disdain were a river, I would be paddling upstream towards some village called “Let’s Put Beer in the Side-Pocket of My Purse*”.

*We should do this next time.