The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
April 3, 2009
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
My brother gave me number 641 on the list for Christmas.
This is another novel in the detective genre, so I compared it as always to my benchmark: Agatha Christie novels. It was enjoyable but the “whodunnit” revelation was less satisfying than one of Poirot’s mise-en-scènes. Its focus seemed to be on recreating an environment (foggy and ominous) and a culture (wee British parish with a love for bellringing), in which a murder takes place, almost incidentally. What seems more important is a strained relationship between man and nature.
Note: Tailors are not “hemmers of pants,” but bells!
And Bunter rocks.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
September 13, 2008
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone is the classic detective novel, complete with an invaluable but cursed jewel, a mysterious theft, suspicious strangers from a foreign land, rigid British social classes, quicksand, interrogations, an unassuming detective and cigars in the billiard room. It seems unoriginal. Too much of what we’ve already seen: Sherlock and Watson, Poirot, even board game Clue.
However, The Moonstone was the Apollo 11 of the detective genre. It’s not a stereotype, but the prototype. It was a launching pad for all detective fiction. As a fan of the genre, I can vouch for this stellar novel. It’s out of this world!
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
August 8, 2008
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Born in a backwards fishing village, Sayuri was sold when her mother died and sent to an okiya in Kyoto. She longs for escape, since the resident geisha mistreats her, but the only path is to become a geisha. A blue-eyed beauty in a city of dark eyes, she soon becomes famous. But love?
Sayuri wonders if she has any control over her destiny. Is she a pebble in a stream, tumbled and pulled by the current of her circumstances? Or is she a fish, using the current to swim toward the destiny she desires?
Loved it. Slightly disappointed by Sayuri’s final choice.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
July 25, 2008
William of Baskervilles is an English monk visiting a rich Italian abbey on a political mission. Adso, the narrator, plays his Dr. Watson as William is asked to investigate a murder in the abbey. The monastery’s pious veneer is peeled back to reveal the dishonest and greedy motives beneath.
Eco’s slogan: “God is in the details.” He uses long lists to describe. Instead of writing “Adelmo’s illustrations portrayed imaginary creatures such as men with tooth-filled mouths in their bellies,” he tells us exactly what was on the page, in a sentence 207 words long.
Themes: loss of ideals, hypocrisy, possessions, poverty, temporality.
Christopher John Francis Boone is a 15-year-old with high-functioning autism.
Christopher likes: dogs, detecting, the colour red, math, murder mystery novels, prime numbers, the police, the fact that the universe is constantly expanding, things in a logical order, orange squash, his pet rat Toby and The Hound of Baskervilles.
Christopher doesn’t like: people touching him, real novels, metaphors, the colours brown and yellow, France, people moving the furniture around, strangers, information overload and holidays.
I liked: Getting to know Christopher, who seemed real. Mark Haddon gave me plenty of details. There were no simple sugar-coated solutions. But it wasn’t depressing either.
2 – The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
June 27, 2008
Oedipa Maas wanders into a quasi-invisible conspiracy to desert the U.S. Postal Service. Is it apophenia?
This book is the awakening from a dream. A dream in which you saw meaning in every detail and every event was related and was PROOF. But now you are awake and all the strands of your dream are slipping away and you are left with half-memories of urgent searchings and your dream companions (those specific strangers whom you knew surprisingly well). You feel a desperate triumphant urge to make sense of things. You can’t.
I felt like Oedipa at the deaf-mute dance. Bogged down.
1 – Mrs. ‘Arris Goes To Paris by Paul Gallico
June 5, 2008
I picked this novel first because the title made it sound easy to read. It was. This book is a simple souped up parable from the British 1950s. Mrs. Harris, a elderly cleaning lady who talks like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, discovers how far she is willing to go to get something she desperately wants. We root for her. The narrator shows her foibles and fortes. He teaches us a lesson: Look how heroic “insignificant” people are. Look at the drama and worth of the lives we never see on TV. And realize the high value of human friendships.
