@chrisno1, I prefer hardcovers whenever possible. Beyond the purely aesthetic reasons they're easier for me to hold when reading than a paperback and my aging eyes appreciate the larger print.
E.M. Forster’s most accessible novel finds young Lucy Honeychurch torn between the expectations of polite Edwardian society and the spirit of freedom exemplified by the ‘socialist’ Emerson family. Forster makes a metaphysical point about life and our expectations through constantly referencing views from windows: “It does seem hard that you shouldn’t have a view” says Charlotte Barlett to her cousin on the very first page, the intonation being that Lucy must have a life outside the confines of Summer Street – a hamlet near Dorking in Surrey – and her mother’s grand cottage Windy Corner. The Honeychurch’s of course are snobs of the upper middle class and Lucy has embarked on an old-fashioned Grand Tour of Italy, chaperoned by her much older cousin. Charlotte’s inability to play that role gives rise to a series of events which provide Lucy with a wider world view than that even from her hotel window. Florence and the Arno may be what she physically sees, but her emotions spiral out of control and far beyond that window view following a meeting with the reticent, but attentive and good-looking, George Emerson. On her return to England, Lucy is shocked to discover her fiancé, Cecil Vyse, has engineered for George and his aged father to rent a cottage close to Windy Corner and a comedy of manners ensues as the Emerson’s attempt to ingratiate themselves into countryside society and Cecil attempts to prise Lucy away to the big city.
As readers, we can anticipate where the resolution lies. Most of us have probably seen the superb film adaptation anyway. Forster’s prose is much more controlled than it was in either Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Longest Journey. If the narrative annoyingly drops into the omnipotent narrator occasionally, this seems to be done merely to make those philosophical points. Writer’s such as Hemingway and Faulkner would start to do away with these authorly interjections by the 1920s. Here, they serve to remind us of the intellectual battle being played out in everybody’s minds, especially that of Lucy Honeychurch. Forster’s gentle humour reminds us that what may appear profound is often absurd. He is particularly mocking of Cecil Vyse, an uptight, unfeeling, sloth-like man of letters clearly based on John Ruskin – who is name checked by several characters – and of whom Lucy eventually declares: “You’re the sort who can’t know anyone intimately.” Intelligence and education therefore does not bring forth life!
Forster excels too with his descriptions. He is particularly strong on Italy, although the landscapes have a peculiarly English bent to them, these tourists barely scratch the surface of the Italian culture, staying in a British pension surrounded by British people of a similar class and background. When the more effervescent Italians choose to express themselves, they are roundly admonished. Lucy finds the attitude of her elders mystifying, deepening the generational clash before it finally rears its head in autumnal Surrey. As with Angels, Forster ensures the climax is reached through a series of misunderstandings. Unlike Angels and The Longest Journey, we do not have a tragedy to witness, only plenty of dry wit.
A very fine novel which addresses changing social values with a sly wink at the reader while not forgetting to underscore the cultural commentary with a genuine heart-tugging romance of impulse and physical desire.
Short book of 200 pages, a form of memoir in which an Italian chemist devotes each chapter to an element that comes with a life anecdote, in chronological order. There is an undercurrent of tension in much of the book because Levi is Jewish and much of it unfolds against the backdrop of World War II; while the Holocaust has not yet come to Piedmont, there's the growing feeling that this will not end well and indeed the author winds up in Auschwitz - of course he survives or he wouldn't be writing this. But many along the way do not.
It is a fascinating account of the work many would find during war time, work which often came it seems with a black market, illicit flavour, a scam involved somewhere. It's not all grim, either.
Here is a recent review, a revisit, from a Saturday edition of the Times.
Now, there is an earlier memoir from Levi that details his time in the death camp and explains how he survived, If This Is A Man and it would be hard, upon reading The Periodic Table, not to want to order that one in. I'm not sure I will however - just a chapter or two before bed time of this book gave me unsettling or even unpleasant dreams - the prose is measured, precise and non-sensationalist but you feel the young man as depicted is in that situation where he's not only learning his trade but also in over his head in so many other matters.
A look at Wiki on the author's life - and death - doesn't make for happy reading though there is a dispute over his cause of death. Can you ever move on from those kind of traumatic events even when you survive, or do you just have to re-process them and re-evaluate as time goes on?
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,852MI6 Agent
edited August 18
That sounds very interesting, @Napoleon Plural. I'd imagine the trauma of surviving through the Holocaust would certainly stay with you throughout your life. I've experienced trauma on a much smaller scale than that and it definitely stays with you so I think it would have with Primo Levi too. Strangely I was listening to the BBC radio broadcast of Richard Dimbleby on the liberation of Belsen on CD the other day. I recall one of my History professors saying that it's something everyone should listen to and it definitely is. It's chilling and it puts into some small perspective how heinous the crimes committed during the Holocaust were.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Sorry to hear about that @Silhouette Man - the odd thing about trauma is imo it's not quite based on merit, or rather scale - it doesn't have to be an event that sounds like a big deal to anyone else, on the other hand a person might undergo a really bad experience and not be traumatised much at all. It's a state. I think it comes from having something bad happen - but crucially, if you don't register it at the time, it can stay with you. It you go into shutdown mode, it becomes hard to move on from, without realising it. The phrase 'somewhere there's a nine year old kid still in that room' is appropriate, it's what the TV celeb and now author Richard Osman said about his dad telling him he and his mother were getting a divorce.
Oddly, at the time you can think you're dealing with it quite well by not reacting, it feels quite matter of fact and non-emotional but that's not necessarily a good thing.
Forster’s fourth novel develops the theme of a supposed moral society’s unrest and disquiet at changing 20th Century attitudes, a topic he used at length for the basis of his previous novels. Here, he uses the titular country mansion as an extended metaphor for the decline of England and English class distinctions: while the structure of the building [society] remains sturdy, the people come and go like strays and the furnishings change to suit the occupants, forever altering the fabric of the building [society]. The rural idyl possesses a quietude that draws visitors to it; yet Howard’s End is steeped in its own mythology, of the late Mrs Wilcox, of the boar’s teeth clamped on the trunk of a yew tree, the vistas of imagined Roman hills. It is a place for contemplation while also assuming a thorough orthodoxy. The progressive London set of the Schlegel Sisters invade this closeted world and change forever the conservatism of the extended family of industrialist Henry Wilcox.
However, Margaret and Helen Schlegel are not as clever as they think themselves to be. Politically self-educated, irritatingly sanctimonious about their ideals, the sisters may be progressive, resembling as they do members of a sort of fictional Bloomsbury Group, but they are essentially naive about the conventions of Edwardian morality. The estate and station of women within that society, comes to haunt them time and again. Partial victories are won, but they are tempered by the need to compromise high ideals. Forster, in his prosaic descriptions of the countryside, seems to side with the Londoners, who thrive in romantic, poetic and foolhardy notions. The story however isn’t as clear cut as that. To the Wilcox’s, a family whose wealth has been generated from exploiting colonies in Nigeria, wives are for homemaking, husbands are for business. This traditional view pervades the male characters, from Henry Wilcox’s stubborn industrialist to the cuckold Leonard. Even some of the supporting females lean towards the accepted notions that a full existence is where responsibility is earned without merit.
Sexual and cultural politics play a great part in the characterisations. The hypocritical behaviour of predominantly the men of this era is exposed and their need for these rich men to sustain the status quo becomes evident as we witness how their selfishness and thoughtlessness affects those whose lives they touch. It is here, when dealing with the lower class Leonard Bast that both families, Schlegel and Wilcox, betray their own self-interest, a propensity to use money, station and materialism as bargaining chips; nature, emotion and empathy rarely enter into decisions. Only the impulsive, flirtatious younger sister, Helen, remains true to her passions. For her, the ills of the world really can be saved by rhetoric and principled thought. Yet even for Helen, being confronted by societies inequalities only has one solution: to throw money at Leonard Bast. She has not recognised that riches do not change one’s circumstances, for emotionally we remain the same. So while Howard’s End fluctuates with the times, the British Empire and its innate Englishness begins to flounder.
Money and power is irrelevant to Leonard Bast and his wife. They have none. Only moral courage sustains him. When circumstances prevaricate a moral blindness, he is stricken with guilt. Helen’s interference drives a wedge between herself and Leonard, as well as between herself and her sister, the upright, youngish spinster Margaret. Moments of sublime revelation are excellently described, creeping at the reader before exploding in a clipped sentence or two of astonishing realism, reactive pragmatism being a feature of the characters and of the E.M. Forster’s prose. His depictions of both poverty and wealth are exemplary. When Helen and Margaret’s cossetted cosmopolitan international orbit is threatened by social scandal, it takes the solid, outward reliability of Henry Wilcox’s man of property and dollars to even the metaphorical scales that are juggling the atmosphere of Howard’s End.
A very fine book of much texture and a strongly realised social position. It may be a tad too long, but Howard’s End’s philosophical point is nicely rounded off because Forster has made us care for these people and how their lives become ordered and fruitful from the chaotic catastrophes that surround them.
Have you considered doing this professionally? You use difficult words and concepts, so you should be qualified. If they pay by the word you can make a lot of money too! Just trying to be helpful. ☺️
I am glad you both enjoyed the review @Number24@Hardyboy [nice avatar BTW] punctuation issues aside, it isn't a bad go... I think it was instinct to put in an apostrophe. My bad 🙄
@chrisno1 seems coy about taking his reviews outside this forum I've found, even reluctant to do a blog - I attribute it to one of those Hammer movies where Vincent Price wreaks revenge on movie reviewers who have irked him...
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,852MI6 Agent
edited September 2
Nice review, @chrisno1. Talking of E. M. Forster I recall one of my English teachers at A Level saying that Forster wrote a lot of stuff he didn't much care for. However he said he did write one thing that he thought was very good and that stuck with him. It was "Only one's own dead matter." I'm not sure what novel that was from but it stuck with me too. I think that Howards End is the novel that coined the phrase "only connect" too which has since become the name of a BBC TV quiz show on rather arcane knowledge.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
THE CLOTHES THEY STOOD UP IN – Alan Bennett (1996 / 1998)
A novella from Alan Bennett that follows Mr & Mrs Ransome during the three months after a burglary which deprives them of every stick and stitch of their possessions. Disinterested policemen and a judgemental counsellor contribute to the couple’s emotional dissatisfaction. The story resolves itself before tragedy takes a grip. Finely etched, The Clothes They Stood Up In amuses and informs in equal measure, even if the circumstances of the burglary veer from the mysterious to the bizarre, all with a hefty dose of bafflement. The robbery serves only as Bennett’s jumping off point, a moment for his considerate Mrs Ransome to reassess her emotional life. Amusing and occasionally serious – especially when characters consider turn of the century culture and leisure – the novella is worth a read and as it is short, it won’t take long.
WYOMING STORIES FROM CLOSE RANGE – Annie Proulx (1999)
I picked this up from a shelf in the dentist’s surgery. Should I feel guilty about pocketing it? I’ll return it next check-up. It isn’t a proper book, more one of those freebie editions that used to come with Esquire magazine. This one features two short stories from Annie Proulx’s longer collection of tales Close Range, subtitled Wyoming Stories. All the stories in the longer version are set in and around the rural townships of the Wyoming farm belt. The most famous inclusion is Brokeback Mountain, which was made into a successful film. The two stories featured here are The Blood Bay, a fitfully amusing shorter-than-short tale of mis-identity, and the longer more intriguing The Governors of Wyoming. The second story involves Shy Hamp’s attempts to sustain a ranch and a wife while he comes under the influence of a political shyster in Wade Wells. Set in the 1970s but sounding much older, especially through the land-grab politics of many a western, the story weaves its web with some aplomb, although there are no resolutions to any of the issues raised in the prose, be they cultural, social or political. Proulx’s writing is fundamentally American and takes after the Hemingway school, where less becomes more. She changes perspective a little too often for me, revealing perhaps a lack of skill or heart for the short story, but the narrative flowed easily enough. Enjoyable.
E.M. Forster was not a prolific writer. After his initial successes of 1905 – 1910, he virtually ceased writing long-form fiction and turned to essays, short stories and lectures to occupy his thoughts. One of his greatest pieces is the prescient science fiction short story The Machine Stops. A stint in the medical corps during the Great War and two postings to Raj-dominated India informed his opinions about imperialism, war and religion. He became a civil liberties advocate, a republican and pacifist. His closet homosexuality influenced an unpublished pre-war novel Maurice (eventually published 1971). Forster’s humanist leanings informed his later, more academic, work and are also prevalent in A Passage to India, a novel that celebrates individual humanity over organised socio-religious culture.
Adela Quested and her future mother-in-law, Mrs Moore, travel to Chandrapore in India to visit her fiancé, who works as the local magistrate. The mismatched pair befriend almost nobody, stifled by the orderly faintly racist colonial courts of both public and private behaviours, and confused by the chaos which revolves around the two-faced fawning indigenous population. Through the schoolmaster Cyril Fielding, they are introduced to Dr Aziz, a Muslim determined to climb the social ladder. His suffocating attempts to ingratiate himself with the visitors results in an accusation of assault and attempted rape. The novel covers the preamble and aftermath of the Marabar Caves court case, an incident which changes the lives of the four protagonists forever.
A Passage to India is a stately novel. It is one of the abiding reasons Forster was nominated 22 times for the Nobel Prize for Literature – is that record? – and holds for him an important position in 20th Century English literature by its unashamed, less deferential representation of Imperial administration as well as being one of the first novels to depict cross-cultural acquaintances absent of deference and stereotype. Thus, Aziz and Fielding are new men in an old world. Their attempts to forge a meaningful friendship are thwarted by external pressures and internal prejudices. The beauty of Forster’s prose is how those fundamentals are interwoven within the framework of an unjust court case, including a long series of verbal and cultural misunderstandings which lead up to the assault. It is clear from Forster’s writing that he sees the boundaries between the two worlds as almost unbreakable; both men revert to type on several occasions. What resonates is the gentle persuasion they both possess, an ability to listen and accept – over time – the sentiments and histories of Christian and Islamic philosophy.
Forster is at pains to highlight how different Aziz and Fielding are to their contemporaries. Both men avoid accepted civilised favour. They prefer the solace of inner thought, an intellectualising of their respective positions within society. Allying them with two women who embrace the sentiments of the Orient through honest, quasi-religious individualism provides a contrast both to the men’s anti-establishment personalities and the un-nuanced padlocked interests of the colonial club, an establishment shunned by Fielding and disdained by Aziz. There is an order and expectation to both men’s lives that sits at odds to the surrounding culture which so noticeably influences them. They are entrenched in these ideals even as they baulk against them. Time and again Forster emphasises the contradiction between the person and the organised auspices of state, caste or creed. It is these insurmountable practicalities which result in accusations being improperly investigated and dialogues constantly misinterpreted.
The more sentimental aspects of Hinduism are depicted as muddled, charged with a spirituality born of deep thought but little pragmatism. The Brahman Godpole is partially responsible for the unfolding events at the Marabar Caves, yet he passes the incident off as a trifle and of no concern to his spiritual self. Here, Forster is clearly mocking organised religion, especially one that rejects the realities of the world outside an individual holiness. This is anti-humanism: where a disconcern for others rails against personal spiritual development. Godpole welcomes it; Forster rejects it. All the philosophising in the world can’t excuse the Holy Man’s lack of grace and manners when confronted with other people’s needs – they simply don’t concern him. Godpole is a minor character, but he plays an important catalytic role. Equally important is Mrs Moore, whose personal spiritual journey is ultimately reflected in Aziz’s emotional, although not religious, enlightenment.
As usual with Forster, the prose is stately, utilising a omnipotent narrator to allow his personal philosophies to inhabit the pages. Several times he wanders off the thread of the narrative to extol the virtues of his own intellectual notions. This doesn’t always sit well within the tight framework, but does assist in strengthening the suffocating atmospheres of Raj-ruled India and colonialisation at large, be they the blinkered opinions and actions of the British, the reactionary and emotive dialogues of the Indians or the general cut, thrust and chaos of sticky, humid, stifling foreign places and climates. Respite comes only in the quiet temple of the human mind, represented by the abandoned mosque Mrs Moore and Aziz fortuitously visit.
A Passage to India is a fine novel of much character depth, metaphoric insight and scenic description. Taken from a post-colonial viewpoint, the novel rightly mocks the British establishment, although Forster was criticised at the time for suggesting a favourable outlook on Indian nationalism. However, it isn’t blind to the categoric order the British provided, alluding to the differing aspects of the Mogul Emperors as justification for consistency. Aziz himself yearns for those times past, a reaction to the contemporary world he feels little part of. Aziz in fact is an Afghan, as much an outsider as Fielding, Mrs Moore and Adela, and this perhaps informs his outlook, which connects Islamic and Hindu cultures through a shared history of conquest and conversion, but keeps British culture manifestly apart.
MISS MARPLE’S FINAL CASES AND TWO OTHER STORIES – Agatha Christie (1979)
A posthumous publication from the Dame of Crime Writing, Agatha Christie, featuring gentle elderly busy-body detective Miss Marple. The six short stories were featured in American magazines during the 1940s, so they are not ‘lost’ stories or ‘new’ stories of any kind, they simply hadn’t been collected together. Anyone who has read my book and film reviews closely, knows I have very little regard for Dame Agatha and her pompous sleuths, but I saw this in the charity shop for a quid and thought ‘why not?’
Not much for me to be afraid of. Perfunctory prose that sets out place, time and character with ease and little nuance. Everybody reads the same. They all inhabit that upper middle class estate and read like it. The solutions to the crimes hinge on the tiniest of details, such as a dress-maker’s pin, or the assumption that any member of the upper middle class would never look a chambermaid in the face. The stories were all very short and I read them quickly without much interest. Had these six stories been written towards the end of Christie’s career I would put the prosaic indifference down to age, but given they originated from her prime, I am thinking they merely represent her simplistic [but probably extremely accessible] tale-telling structure in short form.
There are also two ghost stories, but Christie struggles to chill us in the same way her crime stories do not thrill.
With sales of over twobillionbooks there’s a few who don’t agree with you 😂 ( 1 billion in English, 1 billion in foreign languages).
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,852MI6 Agent
edited October 8
I personally think that Ian Fleming is a much better and more literary writer than Dame Agatha Christie. Maybe he didn't write or indeed sell as many books as her but that's certainly not the only criterion of greatness. His characters are certainly much better drawn and his descriptive powers are much greater. She may be a better plotter but to my mind character drawing is sacrificed on the altar of plot in her works. The cleverness of the plot with its misdirection and red herrings is everything in her books. That said, I have read several of Christie's Poirot novels and enjoyed them very much. She's not known as the Queen of Crime for nothing.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
I do enjoy reading her, but Chris's criticisms are valid IMHO. Her characters aren't very differentiated - a Colonel in one story is no different from a Major in another, her doctors are all identical, the young female leads are the same with different names, and so on. Her approach to class and other nationalities is often patronising (even offensive) to anyone not in the bracket she most identified with.
Her prose is often perfunctory, yes, though not always. Sometimes she does create an interesting character or background but given the sheer amount of stories she churned out over more than half a century that's perhaps inevitable.
None of that is why people read and enjoy her work, though. At her best her plots move smoothly and everything dovetails in a manner that doesn't appear contrived (a constant danger in her field) but inevitable, with the reader mentally kicking themself over missing the clues and details she has left in plain sight for them to pick up along the way. That way isn't a marathon, either, with even her regular novels not being very lengthy.
With Christie the reader knows what they will get, so there is the attraction of familiarity - they're often termed "cosy" and that's a fair description.
I wasn’t saying that book sales are indicative of writing prowess, simply that best selling authors write in an entertaining way that makes their readers buy them in their millions. I would rate Fleming higher than Christie, too. I agree with @chrisno1 in that I find Poirot pompous in the extreme, and I dislike the character. I’ve only read one Poirot, I have no desire to read any more. I like Jane Marple, though.
@chrisno1 and everyone else, are perfectly entitled to their opinions. In fact, it would be a boring site if we all agreed on everything.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
For me, one of the rare interesting aspects of Christie's writing - which I learnt thanks to a revealing documentary by the historian Lucy Worsley - was that she [usually] wrote the storyline WITHOUT knowledge of who the killer was. Upon reaching the famous 'reveal all' scene, she would make a decision on which character was responsible and revise the manuscript inserting the clues AFTER the initial draft. I say usually because The Murder of Roger Ackroyd cannot comply to this rule [if you do not know of the book, I will not spoil it for you by telling you, but in literary crime circles the novel's twist is considered groundbreaking]. This is unlike many novelists, certainly of the time, who would map their narratives to the nth degree and ensure all plot holes are covered BEFORE they start writing. Funny though, neither method seems to prevent plot holes 😁 and certainly not indignation!
Well your new mate Lucy spoiled The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in one of her murder mystery docs so I didn't need to read it. What you/she describes is similar to the gadgets in recent Bond films as let on by John Cleese - they work out what gadgets are needed along the way and then get Q to introduce them later in the filming schedule.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,811Chief of Staff
I enjoyed watching that Lucy Worsley feature on Agatha Christie, I’ve been to Agatha’s home in Torquay…but I haven’t read any of her books 👀
I’ve read a few other books lately though…
Mal Evans - Living the Beatles Legend by Kenneth Womack.
Obviously I was always going to love this book. Womack was given access to the diaries of Beatles roadie/bodyguard/driver/fixer Mal Evans. It’s a brilliant read and you get an insight into what went on throughout his time with them….the good and well, not very good. This book definitely puts meat on the bones of Mal, a guy every Beatle fan knows something about…he’s definitely a flawed person…a big-hearted guy with the frame to match. Some stories I’d heard before but there is an awful lot in here that is new - or at the very least you get a different angle on them.
I am reading Tombland by CJ Sansom, the last book for his Tudor England solicitor, Shardlake. It's the last because Sansom died last year, while half-way through the next one. This is annoying, from a reader's solipsistic point of view, because it means no more Shardlake murder mysteries, but also you wonder what might have been, and how the character's personal story might have developed - can they somehow release the unedited pages of the final book? If so, will it be like that old Hancock episode where he tries to find out whodunnit from the torn out pages of his library book? Did Sansom work on the final book knowing the ending and did he have the finale sketched out, or did he die leave us guessing?
That said, I'm not surprised he died in the middle of one of these things, because they were getting longer and longer and failed the Rankin test that all such books should be about 300 pages tops - this one is about 800 pages and I'm one-eighth of the way through. It's good company and absorbing, though there's a lot about property law to process, it doesn't really grip in those chapters. Authorial tricks as usual - we are left in suspense to find out the horrible nature of the crime committed, just for one chapter, but when we learn it, well, it's not nice but not so gothically gruesome imo. As we don't encounter a bona fide villain early on, we are instead given a role call of minor unpleasant characters, including a possible love interest for Shardlake's young male assistant. This is what stories have to do when the villain's entrance is delayed - it was Professor Dent in Dr No, and 'C' in Spectre.
While I enjoy it, it's a bit damning that I realise I read the last one just under a year ago and don't remember that much about it, things are always about to happen in his books. The good thing about these historical fiction novels like Sharpe and maybe Master and Commander (which I haven't read) and Cadfael is that they are not depressing like many of the classics, they don't change you as a person, they entertain. The bad thing is that often they are not that memorable really, they don't stay with you.
When a young boy is brutally assaulted and murdered all signs point to local English teacher and baseball coach Terry Maitland. After a mountain of forensic evidence is collected tying Maitland to the crime he is publicly arrested and his neighbors are calling for his head. The only problem is that Maitland has an air-tight alibi: he was several hundred miles away at a teacher's retreat, has plenty of witnesses attesting he was there and even appears on a video recorded at the same time as the murder. Can a man be at two places at once? So begins The Outsider, a novel featuring Holly Gibney, one of King's favorite recurring characters. When Holly's investigation points to a seemingly unbelievable explanation, the story's protagonists are forced to question their own beliefs and preconceptions and must open their minds to new possibilities if they are to solve the mystery and clear Maitland's name.
Like many of King's works, a lot of time is spent setting up the plot and introducing us to the characters. Holly doesn't appear until the second half of the story and the action doesn't really ramp up until the final chapters. When the final resolution comes, it all happens rather quickly and abruptly.
The characters are interesting if a bit problematic at times. Detective Ralph Anderson, the officer who arrested Maitland and drives much of the narrative, in particular is hard to pin down. He's presented as a capable and contentious cop who is forced to go beyond his rigid police training but he makes some absolutely horrible mistakes during the course of the story and frankly gets off a bit too easily at the end for my tastes. The same can be said for a few more characters. Others are made to suffer horribly despite being innocent and trying to do right by Maitland's family. The book comes off as a bit cynical in that way, at least for my tastes.
Still it was a fast and interesting read that held my attention and always had me curious as to what would happen next.
Nightcrawlers - A short story by Robert McCammon
When a Vietnam veteran stumbles across a diner in the middle of a raging storm and runs afoul of a hotheaded cop, he recounts an harrowing ordeal from his time in Vietnam and literally brings the war back to life.
The story was adapted into an entertaining and surprisingly faithful episode of the Twilight Zone reboot from the mid 1980s and is available to read for free on Robert McCammon's website. The episode can be viewed via YouTube. Definitely worth a read and a watch.
The set up was fascinating, I seriously couldn't put the book down for the first part. That doesn’t mean I didn't like the rest, just that the opening was so good it overshadowed the latter part.
Did you give a little cheer when Holly appeared? I did; having not read the blurb (never do these days) I wasn't expecting her, so was pleasantly surprised.
@Barbel, I knew she would factor into the book so I wasn't as surprised when she appeared. I did find it amusing how she basically pieced the entire case together in a day or so whereas the police were so closed minded that they were completely clueless as to what really happened.
Speaking of whom, I have been spending the last few months leisurely working my way through the adventures of Solar Pons, in my opinion the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche there has ever been. Around a hundred years ago, young August Derleth (look him up – he was well known in other realms of literature as well) was so disappointed when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announced that there would be no more Holmes stories that he wrote to him and asked for permission to continue them. Sir Arthur sent him a reply not unkindly refusing such permission, so Derleth decided to do it anyway but change the names to avoid copyright trouble.
So, Sherlock Holmes became Solar Pons, Dr John Watson became Dr Lyndon Parker, Mrs Hudson became Mrs Johnson and so on. Derleth wrote these stories on and off for the next few decades until his death, when his pen was taken up by one Basil Copper – essentially writing a pastiche of a pastiche. On Copper’s death, a David Marcum began writing the stories.
They’re collected in volumes entitled “The Adventures of Solar Pons”, “The Casebook Of Solar Pons”, “The Return Of ….” etc etc. I’m sure you get the idea, and there are lots of them. Derleth was a gifted writer and his tales have a certain lightness to them. The reader can feel the author taking great pleasure in churning out his stories (he once wrote three in one day) and typing them as fast as his fingers would allow. Not unnaturally this sometimes led to small errors, usually of the American (Derleth came from Wisconsin) to British versions of English variety – Conan Doyle would never have had Dr Watson refer to the trunk of an automobile, for instance – but the energy of the storytelling more than compensates for those if the reader is even looking for them.
Copper’s stories were longer, and although enjoyable the lightness of touch has gone. The reader can feel the author working. Marcum’s works are in general on the poor side and only for addicts like me. I haven’t bothered writing here about each individual volume of Pons stories as they’re all much the same and it would be very repetitive.
Anyway, I’m taking a break from Pons at the moment and reading about another well-known fictional detective, again in pastiche form. I’m nearly finished but I’ll write more here soon.
Comments
@chrisno1, I prefer hardcovers whenever possible. Beyond the purely aesthetic reasons they're easier for me to hold when reading than a paperback and my aging eyes appreciate the larger print.
A ROOM WITH A VIEW – E.M. Forster (1908)
E.M. Forster’s most accessible novel finds young Lucy Honeychurch torn between the expectations of polite Edwardian society and the spirit of freedom exemplified by the ‘socialist’ Emerson family. Forster makes a metaphysical point about life and our expectations through constantly referencing views from windows: “It does seem hard that you shouldn’t have a view” says Charlotte Barlett to her cousin on the very first page, the intonation being that Lucy must have a life outside the confines of Summer Street – a hamlet near Dorking in Surrey – and her mother’s grand cottage Windy Corner. The Honeychurch’s of course are snobs of the upper middle class and Lucy has embarked on an old-fashioned Grand Tour of Italy, chaperoned by her much older cousin. Charlotte’s inability to play that role gives rise to a series of events which provide Lucy with a wider world view than that even from her hotel window. Florence and the Arno may be what she physically sees, but her emotions spiral out of control and far beyond that window view following a meeting with the reticent, but attentive and good-looking, George Emerson. On her return to England, Lucy is shocked to discover her fiancé, Cecil Vyse, has engineered for George and his aged father to rent a cottage close to Windy Corner and a comedy of manners ensues as the Emerson’s attempt to ingratiate themselves into countryside society and Cecil attempts to prise Lucy away to the big city.
As readers, we can anticipate where the resolution lies. Most of us have probably seen the superb film adaptation anyway. Forster’s prose is much more controlled than it was in either Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Longest Journey. If the narrative annoyingly drops into the omnipotent narrator occasionally, this seems to be done merely to make those philosophical points. Writer’s such as Hemingway and Faulkner would start to do away with these authorly interjections by the 1920s. Here, they serve to remind us of the intellectual battle being played out in everybody’s minds, especially that of Lucy Honeychurch. Forster’s gentle humour reminds us that what may appear profound is often absurd. He is particularly mocking of Cecil Vyse, an uptight, unfeeling, sloth-like man of letters clearly based on John Ruskin – who is name checked by several characters – and of whom Lucy eventually declares: “You’re the sort who can’t know anyone intimately.” Intelligence and education therefore does not bring forth life!
Forster excels too with his descriptions. He is particularly strong on Italy, although the landscapes have a peculiarly English bent to them, these tourists barely scratch the surface of the Italian culture, staying in a British pension surrounded by British people of a similar class and background. When the more effervescent Italians choose to express themselves, they are roundly admonished. Lucy finds the attitude of her elders mystifying, deepening the generational clash before it finally rears its head in autumnal Surrey. As with Angels, Forster ensures the climax is reached through a series of misunderstandings. Unlike Angels and The Longest Journey, we do not have a tragedy to witness, only plenty of dry wit.
A very fine novel which addresses changing social values with a sly wink at the reader while not forgetting to underscore the cultural commentary with a genuine heart-tugging romance of impulse and physical desire.
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi.
Short book of 200 pages, a form of memoir in which an Italian chemist devotes each chapter to an element that comes with a life anecdote, in chronological order. There is an undercurrent of tension in much of the book because Levi is Jewish and much of it unfolds against the backdrop of World War II; while the Holocaust has not yet come to Piedmont, there's the growing feeling that this will not end well and indeed the author winds up in Auschwitz - of course he survives or he wouldn't be writing this. But many along the way do not.
It is a fascinating account of the work many would find during war time, work which often came it seems with a black market, illicit flavour, a scam involved somewhere. It's not all grim, either.
Here is a recent review, a revisit, from a Saturday edition of the Times.
Now, there is an earlier memoir from Levi that details his time in the death camp and explains how he survived, If This Is A Man and it would be hard, upon reading The Periodic Table, not to want to order that one in. I'm not sure I will however - just a chapter or two before bed time of this book gave me unsettling or even unpleasant dreams - the prose is measured, precise and non-sensationalist but you feel the young man as depicted is in that situation where he's not only learning his trade but also in over his head in so many other matters.
A look at Wiki on the author's life - and death - doesn't make for happy reading though there is a dispute over his cause of death. Can you ever move on from those kind of traumatic events even when you survive, or do you just have to re-process them and re-evaluate as time goes on?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That sounds very interesting, @Napoleon Plural. I'd imagine the trauma of surviving through the Holocaust would certainly stay with you throughout your life. I've experienced trauma on a much smaller scale than that and it definitely stays with you so I think it would have with Primo Levi too. Strangely I was listening to the BBC radio broadcast of Richard Dimbleby on the liberation of Belsen on CD the other day. I recall one of my History professors saying that it's something everyone should listen to and it definitely is. It's chilling and it puts into some small perspective how heinous the crimes committed during the Holocaust were.
Sorry to hear about that @Silhouette Man - the odd thing about trauma is imo it's not quite based on merit, or rather scale - it doesn't have to be an event that sounds like a big deal to anyone else, on the other hand a person might undergo a really bad experience and not be traumatised much at all. It's a state. I think it comes from having something bad happen - but crucially, if you don't register it at the time, it can stay with you. It you go into shutdown mode, it becomes hard to move on from, without realising it. The phrase 'somewhere there's a nine year old kid still in that room' is appropriate, it's what the TV celeb and now author Richard Osman said about his dad telling him he and his mother were getting a divorce.
Oddly, at the time you can think you're dealing with it quite well by not reacting, it feels quite matter of fact and non-emotional but that's not necessarily a good thing.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
HOWARD’S END – E.M. Forster (1910)
Forster’s fourth novel develops the theme of a supposed moral society’s unrest and disquiet at changing 20th Century attitudes, a topic he used at length for the basis of his previous novels. Here, he uses the titular country mansion as an extended metaphor for the decline of England and English class distinctions: while the structure of the building [society] remains sturdy, the people come and go like strays and the furnishings change to suit the occupants, forever altering the fabric of the building [society]. The rural idyl possesses a quietude that draws visitors to it; yet Howard’s End is steeped in its own mythology, of the late Mrs Wilcox, of the boar’s teeth clamped on the trunk of a yew tree, the vistas of imagined Roman hills. It is a place for contemplation while also assuming a thorough orthodoxy. The progressive London set of the Schlegel Sisters invade this closeted world and change forever the conservatism of the extended family of industrialist Henry Wilcox.
However, Margaret and Helen Schlegel are not as clever as they think themselves to be. Politically self-educated, irritatingly sanctimonious about their ideals, the sisters may be progressive, resembling as they do members of a sort of fictional Bloomsbury Group, but they are essentially naive about the conventions of Edwardian morality. The estate and station of women within that society, comes to haunt them time and again. Partial victories are won, but they are tempered by the need to compromise high ideals. Forster, in his prosaic descriptions of the countryside, seems to side with the Londoners, who thrive in romantic, poetic and foolhardy notions. The story however isn’t as clear cut as that. To the Wilcox’s, a family whose wealth has been generated from exploiting colonies in Nigeria, wives are for homemaking, husbands are for business. This traditional view pervades the male characters, from Henry Wilcox’s stubborn industrialist to the cuckold Leonard. Even some of the supporting females lean towards the accepted notions that a full existence is where responsibility is earned without merit.
Sexual and cultural politics play a great part in the characterisations. The hypocritical behaviour of predominantly the men of this era is exposed and their need for these rich men to sustain the status quo becomes evident as we witness how their selfishness and thoughtlessness affects those whose lives they touch. It is here, when dealing with the lower class Leonard Bast that both families, Schlegel and Wilcox, betray their own self-interest, a propensity to use money, station and materialism as bargaining chips; nature, emotion and empathy rarely enter into decisions. Only the impulsive, flirtatious younger sister, Helen, remains true to her passions. For her, the ills of the world really can be saved by rhetoric and principled thought. Yet even for Helen, being confronted by societies inequalities only has one solution: to throw money at Leonard Bast. She has not recognised that riches do not change one’s circumstances, for emotionally we remain the same. So while Howard’s End fluctuates with the times, the British Empire and its innate Englishness begins to flounder.
Money and power is irrelevant to Leonard Bast and his wife. They have none. Only moral courage sustains him. When circumstances prevaricate a moral blindness, he is stricken with guilt. Helen’s interference drives a wedge between herself and Leonard, as well as between herself and her sister, the upright, youngish spinster Margaret. Moments of sublime revelation are excellently described, creeping at the reader before exploding in a clipped sentence or two of astonishing realism, reactive pragmatism being a feature of the characters and of the E.M. Forster’s prose. His depictions of both poverty and wealth are exemplary. When Helen and Margaret’s cossetted cosmopolitan international orbit is threatened by social scandal, it takes the solid, outward reliability of Henry Wilcox’s man of property and dollars to even the metaphorical scales that are juggling the atmosphere of Howard’s End.
A very fine book of much texture and a strongly realised social position. It may be a tad too long, but Howard’s End’s philosophical point is nicely rounded off because Forster has made us care for these people and how their lives become ordered and fruitful from the chaotic catastrophes that surround them.
Have you considered doing this professionally? You use difficult words and concepts, so you should be qualified. If they pay by the word you can make a lot of money too! Just trying to be helpful. ☺️
Nice review, Chris--I'm actually teaching HE starting Tuesday and for the next three weeks. Only one correction... there's no apostrophe. 😁
I am glad you both enjoyed the review @Number24 @Hardyboy [nice avatar BTW] punctuation issues aside, it isn't a bad go... I think it was instinct to put in an apostrophe. My bad 🙄
@chrisno1 seems coy about taking his reviews outside this forum I've found, even reluctant to do a blog - I attribute it to one of those Hammer movies where Vincent Price wreaks revenge on movie reviewers who have irked him...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Nice review, @chrisno1. Talking of E. M. Forster I recall one of my English teachers at A Level saying that Forster wrote a lot of stuff he didn't much care for. However he said he did write one thing that he thought was very good and that stuck with him. It was "Only one's own dead matter." I'm not sure what novel that was from but it stuck with me too. I think that Howards End is the novel that coined the phrase "only connect" too which has since become the name of a BBC TV quiz show on rather arcane knowledge.
THE CLOTHES THEY STOOD UP IN – Alan Bennett (1996 / 1998)
A novella from Alan Bennett that follows Mr & Mrs Ransome during the three months after a burglary which deprives them of every stick and stitch of their possessions. Disinterested policemen and a judgemental counsellor contribute to the couple’s emotional dissatisfaction. The story resolves itself before tragedy takes a grip. Finely etched, The Clothes They Stood Up In amuses and informs in equal measure, even if the circumstances of the burglary veer from the mysterious to the bizarre, all with a hefty dose of bafflement. The robbery serves only as Bennett’s jumping off point, a moment for his considerate Mrs Ransome to reassess her emotional life. Amusing and occasionally serious – especially when characters consider turn of the century culture and leisure – the novella is worth a read and as it is short, it won’t take long.
WYOMING STORIES FROM CLOSE RANGE – Annie Proulx (1999)
I picked this up from a shelf in the dentist’s surgery. Should I feel guilty about pocketing it? I’ll return it next check-up. It isn’t a proper book, more one of those freebie editions that used to come with Esquire magazine. This one features two short stories from Annie Proulx’s longer collection of tales Close Range, subtitled Wyoming Stories. All the stories in the longer version are set in and around the rural townships of the Wyoming farm belt. The most famous inclusion is Brokeback Mountain, which was made into a successful film. The two stories featured here are The Blood Bay, a fitfully amusing shorter-than-short tale of mis-identity, and the longer more intriguing The Governors of Wyoming. The second story involves Shy Hamp’s attempts to sustain a ranch and a wife while he comes under the influence of a political shyster in Wade Wells. Set in the 1970s but sounding much older, especially through the land-grab politics of many a western, the story weaves its web with some aplomb, although there are no resolutions to any of the issues raised in the prose, be they cultural, social or political. Proulx’s writing is fundamentally American and takes after the Hemingway school, where less becomes more. She changes perspective a little too often for me, revealing perhaps a lack of skill or heart for the short story, but the narrative flowed easily enough. Enjoyable.
A PASSAGE TO INDIA – E.M. Forster (1924)
E.M. Forster was not a prolific writer. After his initial successes of 1905 – 1910, he virtually ceased writing long-form fiction and turned to essays, short stories and lectures to occupy his thoughts. One of his greatest pieces is the prescient science fiction short story The Machine Stops. A stint in the medical corps during the Great War and two postings to Raj-dominated India informed his opinions about imperialism, war and religion. He became a civil liberties advocate, a republican and pacifist. His closet homosexuality influenced an unpublished pre-war novel Maurice (eventually published 1971). Forster’s humanist leanings informed his later, more academic, work and are also prevalent in A Passage to India, a novel that celebrates individual humanity over organised socio-religious culture.
Adela Quested and her future mother-in-law, Mrs Moore, travel to Chandrapore in India to visit her fiancé, who works as the local magistrate. The mismatched pair befriend almost nobody, stifled by the orderly faintly racist colonial courts of both public and private behaviours, and confused by the chaos which revolves around the two-faced fawning indigenous population. Through the schoolmaster Cyril Fielding, they are introduced to Dr Aziz, a Muslim determined to climb the social ladder. His suffocating attempts to ingratiate himself with the visitors results in an accusation of assault and attempted rape. The novel covers the preamble and aftermath of the Marabar Caves court case, an incident which changes the lives of the four protagonists forever.
A Passage to India is a stately novel. It is one of the abiding reasons Forster was nominated 22 times for the Nobel Prize for Literature – is that record? – and holds for him an important position in 20th Century English literature by its unashamed, less deferential representation of Imperial administration as well as being one of the first novels to depict cross-cultural acquaintances absent of deference and stereotype. Thus, Aziz and Fielding are new men in an old world. Their attempts to forge a meaningful friendship are thwarted by external pressures and internal prejudices. The beauty of Forster’s prose is how those fundamentals are interwoven within the framework of an unjust court case, including a long series of verbal and cultural misunderstandings which lead up to the assault. It is clear from Forster’s writing that he sees the boundaries between the two worlds as almost unbreakable; both men revert to type on several occasions. What resonates is the gentle persuasion they both possess, an ability to listen and accept – over time – the sentiments and histories of Christian and Islamic philosophy.
Forster is at pains to highlight how different Aziz and Fielding are to their contemporaries. Both men avoid accepted civilised favour. They prefer the solace of inner thought, an intellectualising of their respective positions within society. Allying them with two women who embrace the sentiments of the Orient through honest, quasi-religious individualism provides a contrast both to the men’s anti-establishment personalities and the un-nuanced padlocked interests of the colonial club, an establishment shunned by Fielding and disdained by Aziz. There is an order and expectation to both men’s lives that sits at odds to the surrounding culture which so noticeably influences them. They are entrenched in these ideals even as they baulk against them. Time and again Forster emphasises the contradiction between the person and the organised auspices of state, caste or creed. It is these insurmountable practicalities which result in accusations being improperly investigated and dialogues constantly misinterpreted.
The more sentimental aspects of Hinduism are depicted as muddled, charged with a spirituality born of deep thought but little pragmatism. The Brahman Godpole is partially responsible for the unfolding events at the Marabar Caves, yet he passes the incident off as a trifle and of no concern to his spiritual self. Here, Forster is clearly mocking organised religion, especially one that rejects the realities of the world outside an individual holiness. This is anti-humanism: where a disconcern for others rails against personal spiritual development. Godpole welcomes it; Forster rejects it. All the philosophising in the world can’t excuse the Holy Man’s lack of grace and manners when confronted with other people’s needs – they simply don’t concern him. Godpole is a minor character, but he plays an important catalytic role. Equally important is Mrs Moore, whose personal spiritual journey is ultimately reflected in Aziz’s emotional, although not religious, enlightenment.
As usual with Forster, the prose is stately, utilising a omnipotent narrator to allow his personal philosophies to inhabit the pages. Several times he wanders off the thread of the narrative to extol the virtues of his own intellectual notions. This doesn’t always sit well within the tight framework, but does assist in strengthening the suffocating atmospheres of Raj-ruled India and colonialisation at large, be they the blinkered opinions and actions of the British, the reactionary and emotive dialogues of the Indians or the general cut, thrust and chaos of sticky, humid, stifling foreign places and climates. Respite comes only in the quiet temple of the human mind, represented by the abandoned mosque Mrs Moore and Aziz fortuitously visit.
A Passage to India is a fine novel of much character depth, metaphoric insight and scenic description. Taken from a post-colonial viewpoint, the novel rightly mocks the British establishment, although Forster was criticised at the time for suggesting a favourable outlook on Indian nationalism. However, it isn’t blind to the categoric order the British provided, alluding to the differing aspects of the Mogul Emperors as justification for consistency. Aziz himself yearns for those times past, a reaction to the contemporary world he feels little part of. Aziz in fact is an Afghan, as much an outsider as Fielding, Mrs Moore and Adela, and this perhaps informs his outlook, which connects Islamic and Hindu cultures through a shared history of conquest and conversion, but keeps British culture manifestly apart.
A beautiful, brilliant read.
MISS MARPLE’S FINAL CASES AND TWO OTHER STORIES – Agatha Christie (1979)
A posthumous publication from the Dame of Crime Writing, Agatha Christie, featuring gentle elderly busy-body detective Miss Marple. The six short stories were featured in American magazines during the 1940s, so they are not ‘lost’ stories or ‘new’ stories of any kind, they simply hadn’t been collected together. Anyone who has read my book and film reviews closely, knows I have very little regard for Dame Agatha and her pompous sleuths, but I saw this in the charity shop for a quid and thought ‘why not?’
Not much for me to be afraid of. Perfunctory prose that sets out place, time and character with ease and little nuance. Everybody reads the same. They all inhabit that upper middle class estate and read like it. The solutions to the crimes hinge on the tiniest of details, such as a dress-maker’s pin, or the assumption that any member of the upper middle class would never look a chambermaid in the face. The stories were all very short and I read them quickly without much interest. Had these six stories been written towards the end of Christie’s career I would put the prosaic indifference down to age, but given they originated from her prime, I am thinking they merely represent her simplistic [but probably extremely accessible] tale-telling structure in short form.
There are also two ghost stories, but Christie struggles to chill us in the same way her crime stories do not thrill.
Yeh, I don’t like Agatha Christie.
An Englisman who doesn't like Agatha Christie? 😲
Isn't this considered cultural treason that leads to some kind of punishment, like a Norwegian who doesn't ski or a German with a sense of humor?
With sales of over two billion books there’s a few who don’t agree with you 😂 ( 1 billion in English, 1 billion in foreign languages).
I personally think that Ian Fleming is a much better and more literary writer than Dame Agatha Christie. Maybe he didn't write or indeed sell as many books as her but that's certainly not the only criterion of greatness. His characters are certainly much better drawn and his descriptive powers are much greater. She may be a better plotter but to my mind character drawing is sacrificed on the altar of plot in her works. The cleverness of the plot with its misdirection and red herrings is everything in her books. That said, I have read several of Christie's Poirot novels and enjoyed them very much. She's not known as the Queen of Crime for nothing.
I do enjoy reading her, but Chris's criticisms are valid IMHO. Her characters aren't very differentiated - a Colonel in one story is no different from a Major in another, her doctors are all identical, the young female leads are the same with different names, and so on. Her approach to class and other nationalities is often patronising (even offensive) to anyone not in the bracket she most identified with.
Her prose is often perfunctory, yes, though not always. Sometimes she does create an interesting character or background but given the sheer amount of stories she churned out over more than half a century that's perhaps inevitable.
None of that is why people read and enjoy her work, though. At her best her plots move smoothly and everything dovetails in a manner that doesn't appear contrived (a constant danger in her field) but inevitable, with the reader mentally kicking themself over missing the clues and details she has left in plain sight for them to pick up along the way. That way isn't a marathon, either, with even her regular novels not being very lengthy.
With Christie the reader knows what they will get, so there is the attraction of familiarity - they're often termed "cosy" and that's a fair description.
I wasn’t saying that book sales are indicative of writing prowess, simply that best selling authors write in an entertaining way that makes their readers buy them in their millions. I would rate Fleming higher than Christie, too. I agree with @chrisno1 in that I find Poirot pompous in the extreme, and I dislike the character. I’ve only read one Poirot, I have no desire to read any more. I like Jane Marple, though.
@chrisno1 and everyone else, are perfectly entitled to their opinions. In fact, it would be a boring site if we all agreed on everything.
For me, one of the rare interesting aspects of Christie's writing - which I learnt thanks to a revealing documentary by the historian Lucy Worsley - was that she [usually] wrote the storyline WITHOUT knowledge of who the killer was. Upon reaching the famous 'reveal all' scene, she would make a decision on which character was responsible and revise the manuscript inserting the clues AFTER the initial draft. I say usually because The Murder of Roger Ackroyd cannot comply to this rule [if you do not know of the book, I will not spoil it for you by telling you, but in literary crime circles the novel's twist is considered groundbreaking]. This is unlike many novelists, certainly of the time, who would map their narratives to the nth degree and ensure all plot holes are covered BEFORE they start writing. Funny though, neither method seems to prevent plot holes 😁 and certainly not indignation!
Well your new mate Lucy spoiled The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in one of her murder mystery docs so I didn't need to read it. What you/she describes is similar to the gadgets in recent Bond films as let on by John Cleese - they work out what gadgets are needed along the way and then get Q to introduce them later in the filming schedule.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I enjoyed watching that Lucy Worsley feature on Agatha Christie, I’ve been to Agatha’s home in Torquay…but I haven’t read any of her books 👀
I’ve read a few other books lately though…
Mal Evans - Living the Beatles Legend by Kenneth Womack.
Obviously I was always going to love this book. Womack was given access to the diaries of Beatles roadie/bodyguard/driver/fixer Mal Evans. It’s a brilliant read and you get an insight into what went on throughout his time with them….the good and well, not very good. This book definitely puts meat on the bones of Mal, a guy every Beatle fan knows something about…he’s definitely a flawed person…a big-hearted guy with the frame to match. Some stories I’d heard before but there is an awful lot in here that is new - or at the very least you get a different angle on them.
I am reading Tombland by CJ Sansom, the last book for his Tudor England solicitor, Shardlake. It's the last because Sansom died last year, while half-way through the next one. This is annoying, from a reader's solipsistic point of view, because it means no more Shardlake murder mysteries, but also you wonder what might have been, and how the character's personal story might have developed - can they somehow release the unedited pages of the final book? If so, will it be like that old Hancock episode where he tries to find out whodunnit from the torn out pages of his library book? Did Sansom work on the final book knowing the ending and did he have the finale sketched out, or did he die leave us guessing?
That said, I'm not surprised he died in the middle of one of these things, because they were getting longer and longer and failed the Rankin test that all such books should be about 300 pages tops - this one is about 800 pages and I'm one-eighth of the way through. It's good company and absorbing, though there's a lot about property law to process, it doesn't really grip in those chapters. Authorial tricks as usual - we are left in suspense to find out the horrible nature of the crime committed, just for one chapter, but when we learn it, well, it's not nice but not so gothically gruesome imo. As we don't encounter a bona fide villain early on, we are instead given a role call of minor unpleasant characters, including a possible love interest for Shardlake's young male assistant. This is what stories have to do when the villain's entrance is delayed - it was Professor Dent in Dr No, and 'C' in Spectre.
While I enjoy it, it's a bit damning that I realise I read the last one just under a year ago and don't remember that much about it, things are always about to happen in his books. The good thing about these historical fiction novels like Sharpe and maybe Master and Commander (which I haven't read) and Cadfael is that they are not depressing like many of the classics, they don't change you as a person, they entertain. The bad thing is that often they are not that memorable really, they don't stay with you.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The Outsider by Stephen King
When a young boy is brutally assaulted and murdered all signs point to local English teacher and baseball coach Terry Maitland. After a mountain of forensic evidence is collected tying Maitland to the crime he is publicly arrested and his neighbors are calling for his head. The only problem is that Maitland has an air-tight alibi: he was several hundred miles away at a teacher's retreat, has plenty of witnesses attesting he was there and even appears on a video recorded at the same time as the murder. Can a man be at two places at once? So begins The Outsider, a novel featuring Holly Gibney, one of King's favorite recurring characters. When Holly's investigation points to a seemingly unbelievable explanation, the story's protagonists are forced to question their own beliefs and preconceptions and must open their minds to new possibilities if they are to solve the mystery and clear Maitland's name.
Like many of King's works, a lot of time is spent setting up the plot and introducing us to the characters. Holly doesn't appear until the second half of the story and the action doesn't really ramp up until the final chapters. When the final resolution comes, it all happens rather quickly and abruptly.
The characters are interesting if a bit problematic at times. Detective Ralph Anderson, the officer who arrested Maitland and drives much of the narrative, in particular is hard to pin down. He's presented as a capable and contentious cop who is forced to go beyond his rigid police training but he makes some absolutely horrible mistakes during the course of the story and frankly gets off a bit too easily at the end for my tastes. The same can be said for a few more characters. Others are made to suffer horribly despite being innocent and trying to do right by Maitland's family. The book comes off as a bit cynical in that way, at least for my tastes.
Still it was a fast and interesting read that held my attention and always had me curious as to what would happen next.
Nightcrawlers - A short story by Robert McCammon
When a Vietnam veteran stumbles across a diner in the middle of a raging storm and runs afoul of a hotheaded cop, he recounts an harrowing ordeal from his time in Vietnam and literally brings the war back to life.
The story was adapted into an entertaining and surprisingly faithful episode of the Twilight Zone reboot from the mid 1980s and is available to read for free on Robert McCammon's website. The episode can be viewed via YouTube. Definitely worth a read and a watch.
I liked The Outsider, it was very Hitchcock like in the premise. The ending was a bit too similar to It, but overall a decent King novel.
The set up was fascinating, I seriously couldn't put the book down for the first part. That doesn’t mean I didn't like the rest, just that the opening was so good it overshadowed the latter part.
Did you give a little cheer when Holly appeared? I did; having not read the blurb (never do these days) I wasn't expecting her, so was pleasantly surprised.
@Barbel, I knew she would factor into the book so I wasn't as surprised when she appeared. I did find it amusing how she basically pieced the entire case together in a day or so whereas the police were so closed minded that they were completely clueless as to what really happened.
Such is the way for all fictional detectives since Sherlock Holmes! 😁
Speaking of whom, I have been spending the last few months leisurely working my way through the adventures of Solar Pons, in my opinion the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche there has ever been. Around a hundred years ago, young August Derleth (look him up – he was well known in other realms of literature as well) was so disappointed when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announced that there would be no more Holmes stories that he wrote to him and asked for permission to continue them. Sir Arthur sent him a reply not unkindly refusing such permission, so Derleth decided to do it anyway but change the names to avoid copyright trouble.
So, Sherlock Holmes became Solar Pons, Dr John Watson became Dr Lyndon Parker, Mrs Hudson became Mrs Johnson and so on. Derleth wrote these stories on and off for the next few decades until his death, when his pen was taken up by one Basil Copper – essentially writing a pastiche of a pastiche. On Copper’s death, a David Marcum began writing the stories.
They’re collected in volumes entitled “The Adventures of Solar Pons”, “The Casebook Of Solar Pons”, “The Return Of ….” etc etc. I’m sure you get the idea, and there are lots of them. Derleth was a gifted writer and his tales have a certain lightness to them. The reader can feel the author taking great pleasure in churning out his stories (he once wrote three in one day) and typing them as fast as his fingers would allow. Not unnaturally this sometimes led to small errors, usually of the American (Derleth came from Wisconsin) to British versions of English variety – Conan Doyle would never have had Dr Watson refer to the trunk of an automobile, for instance – but the energy of the storytelling more than compensates for those if the reader is even looking for them.
Copper’s stories were longer, and although enjoyable the lightness of touch has gone. The reader can feel the author working. Marcum’s works are in general on the poor side and only for addicts like me. I haven’t bothered writing here about each individual volume of Pons stories as they’re all much the same and it would be very repetitive.
Anyway, I’m taking a break from Pons at the moment and reading about another well-known fictional detective, again in pastiche form. I’m nearly finished but I’ll write more here soon.