May your family fail in their efforts to humiliate you. Mine did not.
The Imagined Conversations of Ill-Conceived Characters: Anthropologie, Part Quatre
Next summer, I am going to be in my friend April's wedding. The other day, she was like “you will wear a sash” and I died and went to heaven, because if there is one thing I do not get to do enough of in this life, it's wearing sashes (sashaying? I mean, are those two things related?). But it made me wonder: “Hey, I wonder what's going on over at Anthropologie?”
SIDEBAR: Not so long ago, I was foolishly charmed into buying a raincoat from the Anthro. Oh, day that I most rue! I am full of regret, you guys! Because my bright red raincoat BLEEDS when it gets wet. Right onto my clothes. That's right, I have a raincoat that can never, under no circumstances, get wet. It only makes perfect sense. I think about returning it—about marching into the Anthro with a full glass of water and the coat and threatening to stain a spotless white bedspread that looks like a doily—but it's just...so cute.
Lately, I have been extra-judgmental of everyone around me, because I am super-frustrated with my thesis (sorry, guys), and insecurity makes me mean, but I am a kindergartener in the school of judgement compared to Lucinda and Peony, who have recently agreed to go into business together. I know this because they sent me their brochure. I transcribe it in full:
"Hello, friend!
We hope you're having a nice time in your “house” this holiday season(many people I have heard of own apartments, and I don't want you to think we don't mean you, too). Are you ready, though, to make your “house” into a home?
Lucinda and Peony now offer decoration services to the public (!), as long as there's no mold where you live. My friend Jacquelinda tells me mold is very bad, so we don't deal with that kind of thing. I have a very sensitive nose.
Anyway, here is some wallpaper that I did:
It's good, isn't it? Peony told me to apply it up-down style, but I told her that was so cliché. I think it looks much better, much more artisanal, this way.
We do wall painting:
Peony told me not to do one of my “designs”, so I went ahead and didn't do a thing. If that snotty cow wants someone to paint a wall in some boring shade of greige, she can do it herself. Anyway, I love chipping paint. You know, it's very chic. Jacquelinda came by with something called a lead test strip and swabbed everything, and then said I needed to do lead mitigation. I put on a sweater, obviously.
In this picture you can see a water heater I fixed up:
It's working perfectly now. I don't know, it's just something I've always been able to do. My uncle, Milverton Potts, told me once I was a savant. He's the very worst hypochondriac and goes around diagnosing everyone. You shouldn't listen to him, I'm sure your thyroid's fine and you just need to eat less cheese.
We do furniture:
Here I am doing something I call “existence” where I just sort of meditate on a space for some time before I go out and find you something just perfect (below...the chair was already in place, but the sculpture was something I found in Tijuana). It's really important to just sort of “be”, you know. Just “be” in a space before you go out and buy something. Many times you can get great deals on furniture if you mention your mother!
We do details:
These are some candlesticks I made from other candlesticks.
Finally, these are the contents of my purse:
Peony keeps asking if I have the receipts in there. She's doing the numbers and boring things for our little business. Really, I don't know what she does all day."
Molly Recommends: Archeology
Today, I walked away from a plate of delicious spicy hummus for 5 minutes and when I came back, that plate was as clean as if I'd washed it and NO ONE was in the room. Was it magic? Am I living among magicians and mages?
No.
There was a more sinister explanation: it turns out that The Squirrel Invasion (TM) has begun. They're making their home in the walls, from where they sneak out on all sorts of secret sabotage missions against the hummus-eating faction of this household. Molly saw them! She told me so.
She also told me she's been reading the Amelia Peabody mysteries, and that they are delightful, in much the same way as I Capture the Castle was delightful. Just a lovely bit of fluff if you need such a thing in the middle of winter. They're parodies of the type of adventure novel that was popular in the late 19th century, and they're set mostly in Victorian England and Egypt. You know Molly loves a good parasol. The main characters are archeologists digging up the Valley of the Kings and getting into it with mummies and criminals (as you do, when you're a Victorian archeologist or a character on Scooby Doo). Personally, I have been reading non-fiction (1491!). Nothing like the decimation of the native peoples of the Americas to brighten your winter. There have been so many fascinating discoveries both in archeology and anthropology that have revolutionized our understanding of the civi...wait, wait, don't go.
Anyway, I'm off to tie Molly up and cover her in nuts and honey. The Squirrels (TM) will never be able to resist. I'm going to be hiding in the laundry closet with a sharp knife in one hand and a heavy bit of wood in the other. Don't be nervous Molly! I've done this before, in my dreams.
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.
A Brief (Not Really) Update.
When my trusty old gateway laptop died a couple of months ago, it really took the winds out of my blogging sails. I don't know if you've ever tried to do anything on an Ipad, but don't. I mean, I love my Ipad for writing my stories, because I can't do anything on it but write and read worthless home decoration blogs and those are super-boring after a while, not like Hulu. Oh, Hulu! You are the only thing standing between me and being Sylvia Plath (also, a brain). Anyway, I have this fancy new Mac (I keep thinking something is wrong with it, because I spent so much stupid money on it and why isn't it doing my work for me?) and all this time I've been reading things, and also writing them down and then writing words about those things, but a lot of that got lost in the Great Water Glass Disaster of 2011, so here's this instead.
Things I Seem to Remember Reading in the Last Few Months:
-Remembrance of Things Past-- the key to reading Marcel Proust is to listen to Marcel Proust instead, which I did and it was wonderful. Walking on the greenway, listening to his description of a walk through the French countryside somehow brought both things to life for me. They sort of merged into this lovely, sensual whole. Also, some of the time I zoned out and that made the book go faster?
-The Private Patient, A Taste for Death, Devices and Desires, Cover Her Face, The Lighthouse, all by PD James-- well, of course I did. My very favorite of these was A Taste for Death.
-The Likeness by Tana French-- this was a really well written mystery with a totally absurd premise. It was like she finished her first novel and thought "I am really, super-good at writing. I'm going to write something with a ludicrous, almost Shakespearean premise (sidebar: I have never met a convincing transvestite, and yet Ye Olden Times were apparently full of them), and see how it goes." I just couldn't buy the set-up (which is: a woman, Lexie Madison, is murdered and Detective Cassie Maddox looks so like her that she goes undercover as the woman to find her killer. Also, the dead woman stole her identity from a previous Cassie Maddox undercover job. Lexie Madison, per say, never existed. What?)
-The Looming Tower-- a fascinating account of the rise of Al-Qaeda. It was incredibly frustrating to realize all the opportunities there were to prevent or limit the events of 9/11.
-Under the Banner of Heaven-- I actually had to stop reading this half-way through because I got so depressed. As a history of Mormonism, and especially, of the shortcomings and missteps of early Mormon leaders, this is a really riveting story. As a case study of religious extremism and how a religion is actually made: great stuff. As an account of the 1984 murder of a woman and her child by Mormon fundamentalists: intensely depressing. I mean really, really desperately sad. I may take it up again, I'm not sure? I've been reading (on and off because it's a tough read) Bartolome De Las Casas's writings on the early Spanish colonies in the new world, and I've realized that the entire world of fervent faith and religion is outside my understanding. I just don't get it (and I'm not saying that's a good thing, actually, just that it's totally diferent from my own experience).
-The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey-- Tey is a lesser-known writer from the golden age of British mysteries (Agatha Christie is probably the best known writer from this period). This was the first novel of hers I've read. I loved this, are you kidding? It's a mystery without a murder. I always think it's a little bit morally suspect that I get such pleasure out of reading murder mysteries, you know?
-Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy-- I think I like the idea of Le Carre better than actual Le Carre. So many names. So many names! How am I supposed to follow the story, since I have no memory and can't pick up a pen due to this crippling laziness?!
But: SPIES.
-A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin-- OHMYGAH. I mean, I know I already said this, but whatever.
I think that's it. That's probably it?
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.
Happy Blogday!
Today is the blog's officially official first birthday. It's been a whole year since I was in China on a business trip with my dad, reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, when I decided PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHAT I THINK. Born of boredom! Maintained out of the need for continuous attention! I love you, blog! In one year I have:
-Read more than 40 books (by my not-very-accurate count).
-Written about 26 books.
-Pimped my dog out for internet traffic 6 times.
-Made loving fun of Anthropologie 3 times.
-Read the NYTimes book review 2 times ( sad face!).
I have also finished a draft of my thesis and realized that I need to rewrite the whole thing! Things around here are pretty thrilling. Next year: more books! Maybe a little fiction written by yours truly (more on this later)! More Molly! Even if she doesn't want to.
Pictures courtesy of Chandler!
CBR III Week 14: Dubliners by James Joyce
A lot of the time when I am reading, I am like Clark Griswold in this scene in Vacation:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJH5tZLGis]
I hope you know German!
What I mean is that I don't take the time to digest whatever I'm reading, and to really try to understand what the author has done. This works well a lot of the time; after all, not everything deserves a long, hard look. Dubliners is the other kind of thing. What can you say about James Joyce, though, that somebody else hasn't already said? That his short stories are still startlingly good a million years later? That my favorite was "A Painful Case"?
Ok. There's that.
Also, did you know that the common usage of the word epiphany is something James Joyce is [partially] responsible for? One of the things that unifies Dubliners is that each story contains a moment of epiphany, which Joyce thought of as a sudden manifestation of the essential nature of something, a realization of the truth of a situation. As he put it, "little errors and gestures - mere straws in the wind - by which people betrayed the very things they were most careful to conceal." I also love what he wrote about epiphanies in Stephen Hero: "Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany."
CBR III Week 13: The Murder Room by PD James
This was one of the books I read the last time I was down in Florida. Memories! I have to admit that I kinda miss the beach. One thing I don’t miss is the 11 hour drive with my best friend Molly. You know when you’re in the car with someone/somepet for too long and you start thinking things like “wow, you breathe SO much” or “screw you for sleeping right now” or “I want to murder you”?
Which is what The Murder Room is about! Yay, segue.
This is PD James’s 12th mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh, and one thing I’ve noticed in my Extensive and Scholarly study of her novels is that she has a pretty strict formula she sticks to:
1-Introduce some interesting characters for like a hundred pages. There’s a lot of tension. Someone’s gonna get got!
2-MUUUUUUURDER. In this case, Neville Dupayne, museum trustee, heir, psychologist, and mistress to his female assistant (what is the word for a man-mistress?), dies in a fire.
3-Adam D arrives on the scene and begins his inquiries by talking to each suspect individually. The suspects are most commonly tied together by some sort of working relationship. In The Murder Room, they all work in the fictional Dupayne Museum, which is dedicated to English inter-war history. In James’s later books, the place of work tends to be an aging institution whose survival is threatened by one person (who gets got!). Here, the murder might have been committed by Neville’s siblings (brother and sister), who are his co-trustees, one of the museum employees or volunteers, the husband of the woman he was shtupping, etc. The complexities that develop in relationships even among casual acquaintances are put on display.
Are you so interested in this breakdown?
3-ANOTHER MUUUUUURDER. Adam D is maybe close to arriving at a conclusion—I personally never have any idea what that is. And then maybe there’s another murder, if PD’s feeling really sassy.
In The Murder Room, some girl who’s sort of only tangentially related to the plot gets murdered.
4-Adam D. has figured it out! Regrets, there are many. Thoughts about poetry (Adam is a poet on the side), etc.
Anyway, all this is to say that what’s interesting about PD James, and the reason I’ve decided to read all her books, is that she’s such a wonderful inventor of complex characters, and of realistic relationships, and those are the things that make these mysteries so compelling. It’s not who did it, so much as why. What circumstances, what frame of mind could lead someone to murder? And she’s a fantastic writer of place—there’s an attentiveness which to me seems a lot like love (of the English landscape and of the often troubling history that has marked that landscape). In my opinion, anyway.
CBR III Week 12: Room by Emma Donoghue
Another day, another book I listened to. This one was read by, apparently, Alvin the chipmunk. It was...special.
Room is about a little boy named Jack whose entire world consists of a small room he shares with his mother. How did they come to be there and blablabla? I mean we've all heard about this book, I think. His mother got kidnapped by a creepy weirdo named Old Nick, and he keeps them in a shed, like Fritzl, but less awful.
Donoghue’s Jack is so limited in his understanding of whatever is going on around him, as a result of both his age and his circumstances, that it becomes possible for Donoghue to have him describe, for example, Old Nick’s visits to Room, and for the reader to come away with an interpretation of what is going on in that is totally different—and much more harrowing—than Jack’s. At the same time, that same naiveté gives a grim situation lightness, and allows for moments of loveliness and grace in what is actually a fairly dark story. Told from an adult point of view, the story might be too horrifying, or too sentimental, or too exploitative to succeed, but as told by Jack, the world is too new and too riveting for any of that. Rather than being a story about captivity, it becomes a story about dizzying freedom: about the first, primal bond Jack has with his mother—which, stretched out as it has been, is edged in something dark, desperate and pathological—and the painful, exhilarating process of becoming independent, of becoming human, as opposed to “a me-an-Ma”. Jack’s story is successful because all the time we sense how close he is to somehow being ruined by his circumstances, even when he can’t, and in this light his everyday experiences become miraculous.
That said, the ending gets a thumbs down, y'all. But I can't talk about it without ruining it.
CBR III Week 11: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Major Pettigrew is a neat little satire set in (more or less) present-day England. It takes place in a small town called Edgecomb St. Mary, the name of which I managed to remember all by my lonesome—a miraculous feat of memory when you consider that I read this book before I got old and died and was resurrected into the body of some other woman. THAT is how long it has been.
The story is basically that retired Major Ernest P. falls in love with a widowed Pakistani shop keeper (Mrs. Ali) from his village who comforts him when his brother dies. There are complications (racism), a subplot involving some antique guns owned by Major Pettigrew and his brother, another subplot involving a Mughal-themed party at the golf club (racism!), and yet another subplot involving Mrs. Ali’s nephew acting in a MOST unappealing fashion. Also, Major P has a total jerkwad of a son. I don’t think I got all the subplots? Everything comes together—and comes right—in the end, as one expects from page 1. I mean, it’s a romantic comedy, really, except it’s about older people, and it’s genuine and charming in a way that belies that particular label.
Anyway, if the way this book is constructed sometimes feels too pat, we can apparently blame that on the fact that it was written over the course of Simonson’s MFA. Bad MFA! Bad! It doesn’t matter too much, because aside from, basically, a manual on how to write a Novel, she’s written a bunch of fantastic, warm characters that I was happy to spend a couple million hours with in my car. Oh-ho, yes, I listened to this.
Simonson is a gifted writer of that sort of cringey comedy that is Britain’s most important export nowadays, besides Dr. Who, although she’s not above throwing in some hijinks that are very much in the Wodehousian tradition. I like to mention Wodehouse in connection with every comic novel set in England because Wodehouse. Wodehouse Wodehouse Wodehouse.
Wodehouse.
A post about how to not update your blog for more than month.
You basically just grit your teeth and do it.
But I'll be back after the 28th, and I have so many books to review! I've been reading like it's my job, but actually it's for school.
I'm all about reading things this summer, and not writing stories, because the well is DRY.
Anyway, I found this on Amazon and when the description contained the words "science fiction" and "Victorian", I was like "stop saying all the magic words to me, Amazon" and bought it at once.
CBR III Week 10: A Certain Justice by PD James
One thing that happened this week was that I managed to slice open my thumb on my new chef's knife that Chandler gave me for my birthday (and that I refused to use for .58 years so it would always be beautiful and new) thereby christening it with my blood. It is ruined now--marred forever--so I will continue to use it to chop vegetables and do other awful, mundane things with its fancy sharpness.
One thing that did not happen this week was me writing 6 reviews. I don't have an excuse, but I do have a fourth review.
A Certain Justice is a murder mystery featuring Commander Adam Dalgliesh, of New Scotland Yard, who has been around for longer than most of the people I know, and maybe that's why he's so competent. This time around, an extremely unpleasant piece of work named Venetia Aldridge (a defense attorney by trade) (and an apparent victim of Classy Naming) has been found dead in her office in Pawlet Court. First of all, do you know about the Courts? It is all very confusing to me, but a defense attorney is still a defense attorney (probably).
Anywhizbang, the murder looks like an inside-the-office job, but initially the strongest suspect is a young man whom Venetia (I KNOW that this isn't a made-up name, but every time I hear it I picture a gondola) defended. Garry Ashe had been accused of killing his aunt, with whom he had been having a creepy incestuous relationship. All incest is creepy, but not all of it involves photographing your prostitute aunt having sex with her johns.
For two novels in a row, PD has featured an incestuous relationship, and what is that about, please?
After Venetia defends Garry successfully, he seduces Venetia's daughter. Venetia obviously flies off the handle, since she suspects that he was guilty, but mostly because she dislikes how it will affect and reflect upon her. In addition to being sort of a terrible mother, Venetia is extremely ambitious and makes enemies of many of her co-workers in her quest to become Head of Pawlet Court. She is also having an affair with a married politician, because obviously.
The feminist that lives in my left ear was sort of unhappy to see a powerful woman in such an unpleasant light, but maybe wielding the kind of power Venetia does requires one to be...ungracious...at times, precisely because one is a woman. Aside from that, I really enjoyed this. It was so, so creepy in its depiction of Garry Ashe, who, if not a sociopath, was definitely deeply disturbed. Also, there's a nice bit of substance under all the plottyness: the novel is very much concerned with the limitations of the justice system in actually administering justice. Defense attorneys, especially, have a strange role to play: their asessment of their clients' guilt has almost nothing to do with the job they must do. Theoretically, they bear no responsibility for the future behavior of the people they get off, and yet, in practice, it's often difficult not to assign them some blame, especially when, like Venetia, they view the law as an intellectual exercise and not as the expression of our deep-seated need for justice. The practice of the law is so cerebral, but to seek justice is so instinctual--a matter at least as much of the heart as the head.
As with all of James's mysteries, the plot is intricate. The solution to the murders (there is a second one half-way through), in keeping with the theme, illustrates the difference between knowing something and being able to prove it. For example, I could still be in my pajamas in the afternoon, but can you prove it? No you cannot.
Slings and Arrows
Slings and Arrows is such a good little comedy. When I first started watching it I was like "how did a satire about a Shakespearen company get a second season?" but then it turned out to be a Canadian show, and everything was explained. My favorite line is from the premier of the second season--the moment that I fell in love with this show for keeps--and is spoken in reference to a cremated theater director who's been replaced by his protégé, who can never quite get out from under the former's shadow:
"Oliver Wells is dead! I poured him in the river and swans ate him."
And they did.
CBR III Week 9: A Feast for Crows by George R R Martin
Since I've already reviewed the Song of Ice and Fire books that preceded this one, I'm not going to rehash all the things I said about the series in general. Instead I'm going to ponder whether it was a mistake to release this book or not. A Feast for Crows is, qualitatively, on par with Martin's other writing, but it's gotten some very middling reviews, because it only follows some of the characters we've grown to know and love (if memory serves, they are: Cersei, Jaime, Brienne of Tarth, Sansa, Arya, some Greyjoys, some Martells, and Samwell). Basically, Martin's manuscript got too long for publication and so it got split up into two volumes, by geography, A Feast for Crows being the first. This would've made sense if the two volumes had actually been published together, or within a year of each other, but instead, Martin took the second of these two volumes and expanded it (?) into a whole new fifth volume bla bla bla, which he's still working on.
I suppose it made commercial sense to do this, since Martin is a relatively slow writer (not that there's anything wrong with that), and Feast is a nice sop to fans. In the end though, it feels like exactly that: a half-baked attempt to maintain reader loyalty that doesn't necessarily make sense in terms of telling the story. Where is Tyrion, guys? Tyrion is like 95% of the reason I'm reading these books. In addition to the cranky-making absence of a dwarf, the format sacrifices a lot of the dramatic irony that makes the series so delightful. If you happen to be making your way through the series, I would advise you to stop at A Storm of Swords, and wait for the next book in the series to come out before reading Feast.
Of the published volumes, I think the first and third are the most effective because they each contain events that are major game changers. They read like Greek plays: their tragedies are on that scale. A Feast for Crows doesn't do much more than build up momentum.
Can I get a slow clap for the Arya storyline, though? She gets more emotionally complex with every chapter. Martin has made her transition into adulthood painful and fascinating, and I love that there's this potential that she'll grow up to be somewhat of a monster (like "sociopath", not like "Godzilla"). Talk about high stakes.
CBR III Week 8: In the Woods by Tana French
This book left me feeling, I don't know, maybe bereft is the word? Having read Faithful Place and Even Stevens's review of In the Woods, I knew I wasn't going to have a run-of-the-mill mystery on my hands, and In the Woods did not disappoint. The story has lingered in my head even weeks after I finished reading it.
As I've written before, one of the reasons I find mysteries so lovely and fun to read is because much of the time, the character I'm most attached to is fundamentally separate from the central drama of the story. Even when the detective or whatever is in danger, you sort of know that for the story to continue he or she needs to be ok, right? At the end of the story there's usually a putting-everything-in-its-placeness that makes me feel like a little kid picking up my toys at the end of an afternoon of play. French takes our assumptions of safety and just totally crushes them. To great effect! To survive is not necessarily to be alright and to look for answers is not necessarily to find them.
Let me tell you what the book is about, before I continue to make vague, mysterious pronouncements: a young girl's body is found at an archeological site outside the village of Knocknaree, which itself is a detached suburb of Dublin built in the seventies in some sort of developers-gone-wild frenzy. Two detectives from Dublin's elite murder squad are assigned to the case: Cassie Maddox (a fantastically realized female character, can I just mention that? no wonder she's the star of French's second novel) and Rob Ryan. As it turns out, Ryan himself grew up in Knocknaree, and was probably the only survivor of three children who went missing there in the eighties. He was known as Adam Ryan then, and after his two friends disappeared (never to be seen again), he was found clinging to a tree in the woods outside Knocknaree, his shoes soaked in blood and his memory wiped utterly clean of whatever horror he may have witnessed. Rob keeps his past a secret, even when he becomes involved in the investigation of the newer murder. He's drawn to the new case (inevitably, one feels) and for the first time in his life, he is forced to come to terms with how his childhood experience shaped him.
One thing I like to do when I really enjoy a book is to go on Amazon and read people's reviews of it, so I can feel vindication and contempt for other readers, in turn, depending on whether they agree with me or not. Obviously! So without going into details that will spoil this book for you, I will say that there's controversy all up in the ratings, but that's because French doesn't treat her characters like toys. Like any really good writer, she's willing to make her characters face the one un-faceable thing in their lives (and isn't that why we read good books?); she doesn't seem content with low stakes or facile endings.
My one little quibble: at times, this book was maybe a little over-written, especially when compared to Faithful Place. French is such a sensuous writer that it's probably inevitable that her prose occasionally gets a little overwrought. It's interesting to see how French is evolving, and I for one am looking forward to reading more of her stuff.
I got so angry I had to lie down.
Scene: A small room in the process of being redecorated, due to excessive boredom on the part of its owner.
Participants: One woman, one dog (hers). Dog is excitable, barks at random intervals for no discernible reason, except possibly malice. The woman is easily startled.
Result: One dropped, broken picture frame.
Ironic: Picture is of dog.
Progress report: I am almost done with The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
CBR III Week 7: Death in Holy Orders by PD James
Lately, I sit down to write things and before I can put a single word down, I look to my left and see my new nail polish and decide to paint all my nails jade green, because why not? I love jade green!
Anyway, my goal is to post a review every day this week and clear my backlog of books I've been meaning to write about.
I read PD James’s Death in Holy Orders so many weeks ago that it was still snowing then or something, probably. It’s a mystery, or did you get that from the d-word in the title? Specifically, it’s a mystery set in a remote Anglican theological college called St. Anselm’s. When I say remote, what I mean is that this place is like ten years from falling into the sea off East Anglia and when that happens exactly no one will notice. Adam Dalgliesh, James’s great poet/detective, visits St. Anselm’s one weekend to unofficially look into the mysterious death of one of the ordinands, at the request of his wealthy father. Dalgliesh’s weekend visit throws him together with a number of characters that are both temporary and permanent fixtures at the college, several of whom may have had motives for murder. Shortly after Dalgliesh’s arrival, another murder occurs, and Scotland Yard launches an official investigation into the people at St. Anselm’s.
There’s something so workmanlike about PD James’s writing. I can’t call to mind many writers who are quite so clear or self-effacing; she writes with so little ego. If I’m honest, I have to admit that I prefer this kind of writing to something highly stylized—there’s a wonderfully honest plainness to it: an understandability and accessibility that are possible, I think, only when a writer has great confidence in herself and her skills. So quietly authoritative is her voice that it allows her to insert any number of unlikely coincidences and subplots into the story without stretching believability. So, Adam Dalgliesh spent several summers in the seminary as a boy. So, one of the characters just happened to write down the thing that gets her killed in a diary (not a spoiler, actually!). Well, of course. In James’s hands it all seems sort of inevitable.
This is very much in the tradition of a British pre-war country house mystery, in that there’s a limited number of suspects, and the murderer must be found among them. It’s an interesting update on that concept actually, as it is profoundly concerned with elitism and tradition, and the cultural upending England has undergone since WWII, which has endangered both, for better and worse.
James had me right up to the very end. I had only one real problem with this book, but it’s a bit of a doozy. Without giving anything away, I had a hard time buying the murderer’s motivations for what he had done. I’ve recently finished another of James’s books (A Certain Justice), and in both the motive for murder is quite similar, and the murderers are characters that remain rather hazy to us, but the difference in believability is enormous. In the case of Death in Holy Orders, it feels as if, at the end, James had to fit the character to the plot, rather than the plot to the characters, which gives the whole story an unfortunate mechanical quality: it fails to convince us that it’s more than a cleverly constructed puzzle, and so lacks the power to move us.
Confession time.
You guys.
I broke my bed this week. STRICTLY speaking, this is not a books-related post, but I do almost all my reading in my bed, so tangentially it totally is.
This is how not to read in your bed. These people don't even have their backs to each other for warmth and alienation. Can they even read? Amateurs.
I don't really know how it happened, because I am not an extraordinarily heavy person, and even though the bed was previously in my grandparents' house where many children probably jumped on it or something, and the bed didn't break on the side I use, my sense is REALLY?
But actually, I do know why it happened. In college, I had a roommate (shared common room, separate bedrooms) named Tina, and she was a fan of the sextatorial arts. Every night, I would wake up to the sound of Tina screaming her little head off and also other noises that were very suspect and made me wonder if possibly she was demolishing things in her room with her vagina. Later, she would scream really charming, tender things at her boyfriend like "EW BABY IT IS RUNNING DOWN YOUR LEG" and I would hear the bathroom door slam and make a mental note to burn everything I owned that was in the bathroom and eventually I would cry myself back to sleep, because that's the kind of phase I was going through at the time. Sorry, college buddies!
Anyway, one day, I came home to find Tina and a handyman from the dorm looking at the broken, sad remains of what had been her bed. The handyman was in awe. "What happened?" he asked. And Tina said "I don't know", and in that moment, as I stood there watching them and holding my little tongue, my intense schadenfrorgasm birthed into the world the inevitability that someday my own bed would break.
And now it has. Where, oh where, will I read my books now? Every other place in the house is the worst place in the house, so long as I am in it trying to read. I will have no choice but to deploy my carpentry skills in service of fixing my stupid bed and also, can someone please let me know how to countersink a screw?
Pleased as punch.
I recently subscribed to both One Story and the New Yorker, because it was CHEAP (I paid like 60 for two years of the NYer!). Last year, I got a useless travel magazine that I read a lot and a food magazine that I didn't read at all. But I love this year's magazines! I'm so pleased! They're providing me with just the kind of reading that is perfect for when I take myself out on a burger date. Oh, you don't take yourself on burger dates? Some people are afraid of being out in public ALONEOMG, but I sort of enjoy the quietude I feel when I can observe people, which is delightful, while simultaneously not having to entertain anyone, and being able to retreat to the comfort of my reading. I feel like a small island in a river, or whatever, I'm not trying to write a poem up in this blog.
Anyway, speaking of burgers, I've been reading a lot of mormon hipster housewife blogs ever since that Salon article*. Maybe something that happens when you spend a lot of time in your house is that you begin to crave junk food, because they talk about burgers and donuts a lot. I identify with this very deeply. To the point where I've started to wonder if maybe I'm a Mormon at heart, which is maybe a sign I should pull back. However, all my favorite personal-life blogs have sort of petered out over the last year. This funny lady got a novel, and this person got married. So, yay, Mormons, for being available to my busybodyness.
So, my favorite by far is Nat. She's adorable. And she's funny! Then there's this girl, who has a really pretty life. I'm telling you this in case you needed something to read that was basically the literary equivalent of candy, which, who doesn't? Duh.
*What happened was one of those really unfortunate things where you laugh at people who are exactly like you, except that they have some weird obsession or behavior, and then some ten minutes later, you yourself have acquired that obsession or behavior and are totally puzzled by it. HOW CAN IT BE THAT WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON AND NOW ANOTHER THING...oh. I think this pretty much explains all of hipsterdom and why nobody likes hipsters.