I know, I know … I’m never satisfied. First, I criticize Valin’s first couple of mysteries are a little too “writerly,” too—in least in patches—filled I know, I know … I’m never satisfied. First, I criticize Valin’s first couple of mysteries are a little too “writerly,” too—in least in patches—filled with remarkable graceful, the kind (and here’s the rub) that call undue attention to themselves. This time, Valin thoroughly disciplines himself, constructing a thoroughly respectable mystery, with all the qualities a respectable mystery is supposed to have. Sinewy, accomplished prose, with no purple passage. And yet I’m still not satisfied. This time Valin played it too safe.
Don’t let me discourage you from reading this, though. You’ve have to love Valin’s best as much as I do—those great books Natural Causes, Life’s Work, and Fire Lake—to be disappointed with Extenuating Circumstances. It does exactly what it sets out to do.
Detective Harry Stoner is hired to find Ira Lessing, recently gone missing man in Covington, Kentucky—man of wealth, city commissioner, pillar of the community—best known for his continual, selfless acts of charity to scores of young addicts struggling to restore their broken lives. But when Lessing’s car is discovered filled with blood, and rumors surface hinting that Lessing’s charitable payments to young male addict may not have been about charity after all, the case suddenly looks a good deal different to Stoner than it had before.
As I said: go ahead, read it. So what if it’s not quite a masterpiece? It’s still better than the best books of many mystery writers. Read it. You'll like it.
It’s a safe bet. It won the "Shamus." So a lot of people must have liked it a little more than I did....more
This is another fine volume in the Nameless Detective Series, written by a consummate craftsman who knows how to balance humor and suspense, puzzles a This is another fine volume in the Nameless Detective Series, written by a consummate craftsman who knows how to balance humor and suspense, puzzles and thrills, convincing characters and vivid California atmosphere.
This particular plot involves two distinct mysteries: first, out hero is commissioned by an insurance company to investigate why widow Sheila Hunter refuses to collect on her husband’s insurance policy (“inconsistent behavior in policy holders bothers” them) and, two, Nameless’ mother-in-law Cybil—a mystery writer—is convinced that the death of her gentleman friend Captain Archie, who lived in her seniors complex, is suspicious.
Sheila Hunter immediately excites Nameless’ suspicions, for the woman is obviously terrified of something. And his internet guru and researcher Tamara discovers that, before their last ten years in Greenwood, there is no evidence that Sheila or her husband ever existed. Beside, Nameless is worried about their young daughter Emily. She has something she wishes to confide in him, but her mother frantically intervenes.
The novel builds slowly, as the detective investigates both cases, but the novel eventually reaches an exciting and satisfying conclusion. And by the adventure’s end, Nameless and his wife Kerry have learned a new lesson about love, commitment, and responsibility. ...more
This 22nd entry in the Nameless Detective series is a thoroughly successful “entertainment” (to use Graham Greene’s phrase) which is not surprising, s This 22nd entry in the Nameless Detective series is a thoroughly successful “entertainment” (to use Graham Greene’s phrase) which is not surprising, since Bill Pronzini is a real pro.
It starts out, as many mysteries do, with what seems to be a straightforward problem. Melanie Aldrich, going through the family papers after her mother’s death, has just learned that she is adopted, and she wants to know her “real identity”: who her parents were, and if either or both are alive. At first, Nameless gets stonewalled, for the details of Melanie’s conception and birth are sad and shabby, and nobody related the case wishes to dredge up the past the past. But our hero keeps digging, and soon he uncovers, along with the past, a violent vengeful person who threatens not only Melanie, but Nameless and his new wife Kerry too.
Yes, that’s right, I said “wife.” This is one of the reasons why Hardcase is essential reading for Nameless fans: the first chapter recounts the wedding of our detective and his longtime companion Kerry. Short version: everything go wrong (hilariously), but everything turns out alright.
In addition, this book, first published in 1995, gives us an account of Nameless’ tardy entry into the Digital Age. No, he doesn’t learn to operate the computer itself; that would be too much to ask. Instead, he hires a “hacker,” Tamara Corbin, an African American college girl with a chip on her shoulder. (She and Nameless get off to a bad start, but they soon develop a mutual respect. She is an interesting character, a good foil for Namless and I hope she’ll be around for many more books to come....more
Demons, the twenty-second entry in the “Nameless Detective” series, is one of Bill Pronzini’s best. The detective’s initial quest engages the reader’s Demons, the twenty-second entry in the “Nameless Detective” series, is one of Bill Pronzini’s best. The detective’s initial quest engages the reader’s attention, the incidental characters are credible, the complications are often surprising, and the resolution is both believable and satisfying.
The book starts out with what looks like a run-of-the mill case: Kay Runyon is convinced her husband Victor is cheating on her, and she wants Nameless to discover the identity of other woman, whom her husband refers to as “Nedra”. Nameless is reluctant, says he doesn’t do divorces, but Mrs. Runyon says she doesn’t want a divorce, isn’t looking for photographic proof of infidelity. No, she’s just worried about her husband: a straight arrow, faithful for nineteen years, he now seems unhealthily obsessed with Nedra. And recently she has started to gett threatening phones from some man, who seems to be obsessed with Nedra too.
Nameless soon discovers the woman’s name—Nedra Merchant—and also discovers she is missing. He begins to search for her, of course, and that search brings surprising consequence and puts Nameless himself in considerable danger.
For the Nameless fans out there, Demons is an essential book in the continuing saga. Nameless begins to come to grips with the loss of his partnership and his estrangement from his former partner Eberhardt, and his relationship with Kerry undergoes a crisis—a crisis that points toward possible resolution....more
In this exciting, well-crafted Nameless Detective mystery, our hero—who is of Italian ancestry—goes to North Beach to watch the old men play bocce, an In this exciting, well-crafted Nameless Detective mystery, our hero—who is of Italian ancestry—goes to North Beach to watch the old men play bocce, and ends up being hired by an elderly Italian paesano to find his missing granddaughter, a girl in her early twenties, the apple of his eye. “La belezza della belezze,” he calls her: his “beauty of beauties.”
It turns out not to be an easy job, for everywhere Nameless goes to look for Gianna Fornesi, he is met with cold stares and uncooperative silences. But as he continues to dig deeper, he uncovers a sordid world where Columbus Avenue sex-sleaze, illegal betting, and blood sports combine. And he begins to doubt that “la belezza della belezze” will ever be coming home.
This is one of my favorite books in the series. It combines a good solid mystery, an affectionate reverence for Italian traditions, vivid and disturbing descriptions of cock fighting, and a surprising, well-motivated—and very exciting conclusion.
For Nameless fans this is an important entry in the series: the situation between our hero and his partner Eberhardt reaches the breaking point, and Nameless’ disagreements with Kerry’s mother Cybill are finally resolved.
An essential entry in a likable, consistently professional series....more
This, the first “Hap and Leonard” adventure, is so early in the development of the detective series that Hap and Leonard aren’t even detectives yet. T This, the first “Hap and Leonard” adventure, is so early in the development of the detective series that Hap and Leonard aren’t even detectives yet. They are East Texas men in their thirties, working off-and-on at low-paying jobs (flower pickers in the rose fields, for example), just trying to get along, while amusing themselves by shooting skeet and beating each other up in martial arts duels. Hap is a straight white male, a sixties radical who did time for resisting the draft, and Leonard is a black gay Vietnam vet with serious anger issues (but then, how could a gay, black Vietnam vet not have anger issues?)
Into Hap and Leonard’s mostly tranquil lives walks Trudy, Hap’s manipulative ex- wife, who tries to rope Hap into a hair-brained project to resurrect some old bank heist money from the tributary of local Texas river. Soon, against Leonard’s better judgment (he hates Trudy), he and the still love-smitten Hap become part of Trudy’s radical sixties crew—boyfriend Howard, fatboy Chub, and facially disfigured Paco—who plan to used the bulk of the money to “save the whales,” or in service of some equally idealistic cause. Hap and Leonard, though, get an equal share each, and plan on keeping the money for themselves.
Of course, as is true of all such adventures, things do not go according to plan. Soon stupidity, betrayal, and unexpected evil take their toll, and Hap, Leonard and Trudy are on the run, trying to save not just their money but their lives.
This is an entertaining novel, full of twists and turns and a lot of smart-ass dialogue. I liked the local East Texas atmosphere (described by narrator Hap with an affectionate cynicism) and loved the two protagonists (particularly Leonard). Odds are good I’ll come back to this series for more....more
“The Wild Fields” was their name, the broad plains that stretched beyond the turbulent waters of the Dneiper River, those Central Ukrainian steppes th “The Wild Fields” was their name, the broad plains that stretched beyond the turbulent waters of the Dneiper River, those Central Ukrainian steppes that the Zaporozhian Cossacks once called home. Now, however, if you go looking for those plains, you will find nothing but water, water trapped by the dams of the Kahkhova Reservoir.
But in the 17th century, “The Wild Fields” were flowing with Cosssacks, running as dangerous and free as the rapids of the Dneiper. Originally a people of the steppes, related to the Khazars, the Cossacks developed into a voluntary tribe—accepting into their ranks runaway serfs, escaped criminals, war refugees, even a Tartar or two—bound together by a bellicose nature, steadfast loyalty, and a fierce pride in their status as warriors and in the truth of their Greek Orthodox faith. They battled against (and occasionally for) the Catholic kings of Poland, the tsars of Russia, and the khans of Crimea, showing themselves to be formidable enemies, dangerous allies.
The protagonist of Taras Bulba is one of these Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the novella tells the tale of a great campaign that the Cossacks once fought against the Poles. When Taras Bulba and his two young sons ride out to do battle, one son will become a hero and the other a traitor; how Taras Bulba faces the fates of his sons becomes central to this narrative of war.
When Gogol was in his twenties, he developed a passion for Ukrainian history, and hoped to earn a position teaching the subject at the University of Kiev. He was rejected for the position as unqualified (despite the support of his friend Pushkin) but the research he did to prepare himself for the post led to the writing of Taras Bulba (1835), Gogol longest effort up to that time. It is a work of unabashed romance, unapologetic nationalism, a celebration of the strengths both of Russia and the Ukraine.
Although Gogol is clearly influenced by the novels of Sir Walter Scott, he seemed to sense that his Cossacks, both in their savagery and generosity, were more primitive—and more monumental—than the medieval knights and Highland chieftains that the Scotch novelist took for his subjects. So Gogol sought a more elemental literary model, and found it in the Iliad of Homer.
I’ll end with with one epic digression, one battle encounter, and one epic simile. We begin with the digression, an anecdote of the early life of the Cossack Mosiy Schilo:
He was a muscular Cossack, who had often commanded at sea, and undergone many vicissitudes. The Turks had once seized him and his men at Trebizond, and borne them captives to the galleys, where they bound them hand and foot with iron chains, gave them no food for a week at a time, and made them drink sea-water. The poor prisoners endured and suffered all, but would not renounce their orthodox faith. Their hetman, Mosiy Schilo, could not bear it: he trampled the Holy Scriptures under foot, wound the vile turban about his sinful head, and became the favourite of a pasha, steward of a ship, and ruler over all the galley slaves. The poor slaves sorrowed greatly thereat, for they knew that if he had renounced his faith he would be a tyrant, and his hand would be the more heavy and severe upon them. So it turned out. Mosiy Schilo had them put in new chains, three to an oar. The cruel fetters cut to the very bone; and he beat them upon the back. But when the Turks, rejoicing at having obtained such a servant, began to carouse, and, forgetful of their law, got all drunk, he distributed all the sixty-four keys among the prisoners, in order that they might free themselves, fling their chains and manacles into the sea, and, seizing their swords, in turn kill the Turks. Then the Cossacks collected great booty, and returned with glory to their country; and the guitar-players celebrated Mosiy Schilo’s exploits for a long time.
Here is a battle encounter containing an epic simile:
“He has left untouched rich plunder,” said Borodaty, hetman of the Oumansky kuren, leaving his men and going to the place where the nobleman killed by Kukubenko lay. “I have killed seven nobles with my own hand, but such spoil I never beheld on any one.” Prompted by greed, Borodaty bent down to strip off the rich armour, and had already secured the Turkish knife set with precious stones, and taken from the foe’s belt a purse of ducats, and from his breast a silver case containing a maiden’s curl, cherished tenderly as a love-token. But he heeded not how the red-faced cornet, whom he had already once hurled from the saddle and given a good blow as a remembrance, flew upon him from behind. The cornet swung his arm with all his might, and brought his sword down upon Borodaty’s bent neck. Greed led to no good: the head rolled off, and the body fell headless, sprinkling the earth with blood far and wide; whilst the Cossack soul ascended, indignant and surprised at having so soon quitted so stout a frame.
The cornet had not succeeded in seizing the hetman’s head by its scalp-lock, and fastening it to his saddle, before an avenger had arrived. As a hawk floating in the sky, sweeping in great circles with his mighty wings, suddenly remains poised in air, in one spot, and thence darts down like an arrow upon the shrieking quail, so Taras’s son Ostap darted suddenly upon the cornet and flung a rope about his neck with one cast. The cornet’s red face became a still deeper purple as the cruel noose compressed his throat, and he tried to use his pistol; but his convulsively quivering hand could not aim straight, and the bullet flew wild across the plain. Ostap immediately unfastened a silken cord which the cornet carried at his saddle bow to bind prisoners, and having with it bound him hand and foot, attached the cord to his saddle and dragged him across the field . . .
I hate to sound like a broken record, but—as I said at the beginning of my review of The Claw of the Conciliator, the “jury is still out” on The Book I hate to sound like a broken record, but—as I said at the beginning of my review of The Claw of the Conciliator, the “jury is still out” on The Book of the New Sun for me.
True, Wolfe’s world is meticulously constructed, his lapidary prose (enriched by hard words) prepares a supportive mood for his world, and yet the narrator Severian’s artfully cautious tone—no less cautious in moments of candor—causes us (like a torturer) to put to the question every element of this carefully built world. So far so good. It may make for chilly fantasy, but I happen to like chilly fantasy. (My favorites: The Broken Sword, The Elric Saga, and the Viriconium series).
Still, there’s something about the whole project that seems unfocused to me. What is the nature of Severian’s journey? Is he mostly picaro, alchemist, or questing knight—or is he equally all three? I’m now three-quarters of the way through the The New Sun, and I still don’t have a clue.
Still, though, there’s plenty of neat stuff here: the frightening attack of the alzabo, the beast who absorbs and manipulates the personalities of the humans he devours; the encounter with the wily old god Typhon; his capture by the men who wear claws on their hands; the shore-dwellers battle with the floating-island men; and the final fight at Baldander’s castle.
So far, there’s been plenty here to keep me interested, and I look forward to the fourth volume, The Citadel of the Autarch. Still, there’s much here that is still unresolved, and I will be surprised (and extraordinarily pleased) if The Book of the New Sun is brought to a successful conclusion....more
People tell me that Gene Wolfe’s tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is a fantasy masterpiece, but after completing the first two volumes, the jury—at l People tell me that Gene Wolfe’s tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is a fantasy masterpiece, but after completing the first two volumes, the jury—at least this particular one-man jury—is still out.
In my review of the first volume, The Shadow of the Torturer, I praised the superb prose, the vivid descriptions, the realistic evocations of a pseudo-medieval world, and the tantalizing possibility that it may be the culmination of a great civilization (possibly ours) in decline.
All this is equally true of The Claw of the Conciliator, and it has been more than enough to keep me reading. But there is something about the studied guardedness of Severian, protagonist and narrator, that wearies me. I like a hero who, however flawed, I can identify with and root for, and the chilly precision of Severian’s voice—frosty even in his frankest revelations—prevents me from fully committing myself either to his story or his fate. And, not being fully committed, I have come to view Severian’s journeying—however unfairly—as picaresque meanderings, not a quest. (Besides, an event I’d looked forward to—Dr. Talos’ play—disappointed me. I understand it is founding myth, and a commentary on the characters, but it was very long, and I have concluded (pace Gene Wolfe) that Dr. Talos is a very poor writer.)
Still, there are plenty of individual scenes that pleased me here, scenes that remain in the memory: Severian’s interview with the green man from the future: our hero’s use of the Claw to fend off the man-apes, while something leviathan stirs the waters below; a midnight supper with Vodalus, where Severian consumes a lover’s flesh and enters into a kind of communion; the notules, small things that fly through the forest air and try to suck the life-force from Severian; the grotesque diminution of the gorgeous Jolene after the single bite of a blood-bat; and the final spectral dance in the streets of an ancient stone town.
As I said, my jury is still out. Well, let the deliberations begin again! On to The Sword of the Lictor!...more
I love many kinds of novels, but near the top of my list are the following: scary novels, coming-of-age novels, novels with a sense of place, novels w I love many kinds of novels, but near the top of my list are the following: scary novels, coming-of-age novels, novels with a sense of place, novels with a gothic atmosphere, well-written novels, novels set in rural backwaters, novels featuring houses with secrets, novels with emotional depth, and novels which deal honestly with questions of faith in an age of eroding belief. How lucky I was to have found The Loney, Andrew Michael Hurley's first novel. His book is all the things listed above and more.
The novel is set in Lancashire in the north of England, on a desolate stretch of beach called The Loney, where “a wild and useless length of English coastline” features the “dead mouth of a bay that filled and emptied twice a day,” where “the tide could come in quicker than a horse could run and every year a few people drowned.”
It is 1975, and this Holy Week—as in each preceding Holy Week--a London working class family (Mummer, Farther, and their two sons Hanny and Tonto), accompanied by a few friends and their parish priest, have come to make a pilgrimage to the local shrine of St. Anne. They come to fast, to pray, to confess their sins, and to ”look for God in the emerging springtime that, when it came, was hardly a spring at all.” Above all, they come—certainly Mummer comes—to ask for a miracle: Hanny, now an adolescent, still cannot speak and communicates only with signs.
His younger brother “Tonto” is our narrator. We follow him and Hanny as they explore the Loney, and he tells us a tale which involves one power struggle and at least three mysteries. The power struggle is between Mummer and young Father Bernard, whom she thinks lacks proper respect for the rigors of ancient ritual—not like Father Wilfred the former pastor, god rest his soul. The three mysteries: 1) what are the secrets of the old house where they are staying, 2) what is behind the apparent healings among the Lancashire locals, and 3) what—if anything—has this to do with the sketchy couple and the pregnant young girl who occupy the house across the bay?
The answers to these questions are often unsettling, and occasionally horrific. But as we see Father Bernard’s faith in action and how it differs from Mummer’s and Father Wilfred’s, as we begin discover the powerful and primitive beliefs of the people of the Lancashire countryside, we are drawn—as Tonto and Hanny are drawn—into questioning the nature of belief itself and our own relationship to faith.
Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly (1948) is an odd, accomplished noir, almost as effective as Bardin’s earlier The Deadly Percheron (1946), but this time B Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly (1948) is an odd, accomplished noir, almost as effective as Bardin’s earlier The Deadly Percheron (1946), but this time Bardin draws his inspiration not from the detective thriller but instead from the brooding “women’s pictures” of the post WW II period.
It begins its journey in the land of The Snake Pit, where our heroine, the gifted harpsichordist Ellen, waits for her husband Basil the conductor to bring her home from the mental hospital, but it soon takes a detour to the neighborhood of Gaslight as Ellen begins a feverish search for her harpsichord key, convinced Basil is hiding it from her. But soon Ellen encounters her old lover, the professional folksinger Jimmy Shad (his signature song is “The Blue Tail Fly”) and Bardin’s novel takes a darker, crazier turn into a funhouse featuring hallucinatory variations on a few feverish Joan Crawford and Bette Davis themes.
The book is not without flaws. For example, like many of the movies and books of the period, its psychologizing seems naive, its Freudianism outmoded. But in spite of all the twists and turns, all the craziness and flaws, the book is held together by two things: Bardin’s honest, deeply sympathetic portrayal of mental illness and his vivid writing about music as a craft and an inspiration.
One of the great sorrows of John Franklin Bardin’s life was that his mother, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was confined to a mental hospital and remained there until her death. He never forgot her, though, or her continual obsession with “going home,” which he used as an inspiration for both Percheron and Blue Tail Fly. His obvious sympathy with the character of Ellen makes this book more than a mere thriller.
The most important factor that unifies Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly, however, are the continual passages about the challenges and joys of music, for it is music that gives Ellen’s life its shape and meaning:
This was now, here and undeniable, an eternal instant. Irrevocable, irrefutable, it had a strength and a reality that defied oblivion. With it she was unique, just as it was unique; without it she ceased to exist, just as it was nothing. Rthis power to evoke music depended upon her reading of black marks on a ruled page, upon the dexterity of her fingers and her body’s sense of rhythm, upon her knowledge of the way it was, the quality of its sound. But she depended upon it too, for without it she did not know herself. Outside its orbit she was a bundle of sensations, a walking fear, an appetite, a lawless creature. But when this sound esited, she undertood, her life had meaning, order, morality. This was her end, she was its means.
The Crime at Black Dudley is the first in Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series, but it is not exactly a novel featuring Albert Campion but instea The Crime at Black Dudley is the first in Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series, but it is not exactly a novel featuring Albert Campion but instead a novel in which a minor character called Albert Campion appears and takes over the book.
I can see why Allingham refused to halt Campion in his coup, for he is an interesting character (certainly more interesting than the Scotland Yard pathologist George Abbershaw, whom Allingham chose for her hero). Campion appears—at first glance—to be nothing but an upper class twit, alternately amusing and annoying, but gradually reveals himself to be a sort of a Scarlet Pimpernel for hire. The difference is that, with Campion, the mask never never seems to drop: even at the heights of heroism and derring-do, he still appears to be a bit of a twit.
The plot is a hodge-podge of tired gothic imagery, country house mystery, romantic comedy, and saga of international crime—reminiscent of John Willards popular play The Cat and the Canary (1922). A group of attractive young people gather for a party at Black Dudley, a “gloomy old place,” a “great grey building, bare and ugly as a fortress. After dinner, an old family tale is told, concerning the bloody history of the prominently displayed “Dudley Dagger.” Soon a game is decided upon, the lights are extinguished, and the Dudley Dagger claims another victim.
I didn’t find this novel in the least compelling, for it veers off in far too many directions, and the murder and the murderer are not in themselves very interesting. Still, the individual scenes were either suspenseful or amusing, and I can see how Campion would make an entertaining hero.
Yes, I believe I may read another Campion novel someday....more
After a fifteen year hiatus, when he was approaching fifty, Michael Moorcock returned to the Elric Saga. The result, this novel, The Fortress of the P After a fifteen year hiatus, when he was approaching fifty, Michael Moorcock returned to the Elric Saga. The result, this novel, The Fortress of the Pearl, is clearly the book of a middle-aged man. The flights of fancy are fewer, but the world-building is solid and professional. The prose, occasionally less vigorous, is more balanced and finely crafted. The pace is more leisurely, the dialogue more philosophical, and the young Elric, less wildly Byronic—though still dark with fits of despair and princely cruelty—is a more sympathetic character here, almost a Siddhartha-like seeker after truth.
The novel is set during the period of Elric’s youthful wanderings, when he voluntarily relinquished his kingdom in order to see something of the world. He soon finds himself in thrall to Lord Gho of Quarzhasaat, the only source of the elixir that can save him from death. Gho’s command? Elric must deliver the great pearl of the title. When he discovers the pearl may only be found inside the reveries of a sleeping young girl, Elric joins forces with the beautiful “dream-thief” Oone, and together they journey into the girl’s dreams. The quest turns out to be an arduous one, through a marvelous and dangerous world, and it is Oone, the professional dream-thief, who guides Elric through its onieric perils, as Beatrice once led Dante out of Hell.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, one of the best in a superb series....more
I read Troubles because it is an esteemed historical novel, known for its richness of comic incident and irony, a novel which treats a place and perio I read Troubles because it is an esteemed historical novel, known for its richness of comic incident and irony, a novel which treats a place and period I find fascinating (Ireland during the “War of Independence”), but I ended up loving it for very different reasons: I found it to be--in spite of (or because of?) its dark humor--one of the finest romantic Gothics I have encountered. It is redolent with ironies, of course, but they are ironies darkened by tragic waste.
It begins in 1919, when British Major Brendan Archer, still a bit shell-shocked from the war, travels to the fictional east coast town of Kilnalough to visit a woman he is almost sure he is engaged to (although he has no memory of proposing). This woman, Angela Spencer, resides in her father’s seaside hotel near Kilnalough, and the historical interest of the book comes from the Major's observations—on and off, during the next two years—of the changes in the atmosphere of the hotel and the town as the Irish desire for independence intensifies, particularly as it affects the decaying Anglo-Irish Protestant gentry, like the Spencer family itself.
Just as interesting as the history, however, is the ghost of the gothic which envelops the book. In my gothic interpretation, the sex of the protagonist is reversed, with Major Archer in the role of Jane Eyre or the second Mrs. de Winter: he is intelligent, capable, but a bit damaged, and rather unsure of his position in this unfamiliar world.. Angela, who greets her “fiancee” ambiguously and then disappears somewhere into the upper rooms, suggests the crazy lady in the Rochester attic or the ghost of Rebecca de Winter: could she--and her cryptic letters--hold the key to the secrets of the old Majestic Hotel?
The Majestic Hotel! Just like the Rochester mansion or Manderley itself, this old, decrepit three-hundred room hotel is full of gothic terror and delight. Its very structure defeats the explorer, for it is filled with corridors that end inconclusively, stairs that don’t connect where they should. Besides, it is long past its heyday, and—as its future grows perilous and the staff neglectful, the building itself goes to seed. Tropical foliage overruns the “The Palm Court,” thick branches bulge and break through the sitting room walls, and dry rot bores holes in the floor. Odd smells and strange objects may be discovered in the individual apartments (a sheep’s head in a chamber pot, for example), and, throughout the upper reaches of the hotel, and even downstairs, in the old “Imperial Bar,” an army of feral cats—orange, with green eyes, like an Irish flag—are taking over.
Yes, the decaying hotel is a metaphor for the dying British Empire itself. And Farrell’s book is continually, sardonically amusing as it reveals its eccentric Anglo-Irish characters continually besieged by unavoidable entropy and casual hostility: the book’s aging, half-mad Rochester, hotel owner Edward Spencer; his vague, mysterious elder daughter Angela; his selfish, idle son Ripon; his teenage daughters, the malevolent and beautiful twins Faith and Charity; the dozen superannuated maiden lady hotel guests; and an old blind grandmother who packs a revolver.
Farrell is a fine writer. Here is a passage I love: it is an account of the declining days of Edward's favorite dog Rover, which manages to be darkly funny, genuinely poignant, and richly symbolic of the Anglo-Irish situation—all in brisk, straightforward prose:
Like the Major, Rover had always enjoyed trotting from one room to another, prowling the corridors on this floor or that. But now, whenever he ventured upstairs to nose around the upper stories, as likely as not he would be set upon by a horde of cats and chased up and down the corridors to the brink of exhaustion. More than once the Major found him, wheezing and spent, tumbling in terror down a flight of stairs from some shadowy menace on the landing above. Soon he got into the habit of growling whenever he saw a shadow...then, as the shadows gathered with his progressively failing sight, he would rouse himself and bark fiercely even in the broadest of daylight, gripped by remorseless nightmares. Day by day, no matter how wide he opened his eyes, the cat-filled darkness continued to creep a little closer.
If you prefer noir with a nouvelle vague air—less detached than Godard, less sentimental than Truffaut...something by Chabrol perhaps—then the crime n If you prefer noir with a nouvelle vague air—less detached than Godard, less sentimental than Truffaut...something by Chabrol perhaps—then the crime novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette may be just what you’ve been looking for.
This novel, in which Julie, an au pair just released from a mental hospital, and Peter her charge, the spoiled six-year-old nephew of a billionaire, are pursued by contract killer Thompson and his crew throughout the French countryside, is a fine example of what the author can do. Manchette, who honed his skills writing teleplays for French TV, has a great gift for spare dialogue which suggests more than it tells, and for economical descriptions which are easily visualized. This book could be a fast read, if you want it to be, but there is plenty here to savor and reflect upon too, if you are a contemplative sort of reader.
Manchette was a left-winger, radicalized by the war in Algeria, who holds up to criticism—but never in a preachy way—the materialistic values of a society poisoned by money. He does this through his sharp cynical dialogue (learned from Dashiell Hammett) and his talent for describing rooms and the objects in them (learned from the Nouveau Roman novelists like Robbe-Grillet).
But if you’re just in the market for a good crime novel, don’t let the political and literary influences worry you. I believe they make his books richer and deeper, but they never interfere with the clarity of his vision, the drive of his narrative, nor the diamond-hard edge of his prose....more
This is a great little novel, so compelling and disturbing that I have trouble writing about it. It is unique in its elliptical development, its harsh This is a great little novel, so compelling and disturbing that I have trouble writing about it. It is unique in its elliptical development, its harsh realism verging on nightmare, and its emotional viciousness. I have read it three times, at least, and each time I have a slightly different reaction to it.
The novel's main character is an advice columnist--hence the name "Miss Lonelyhearts"--who is going insane under the weight of his disordered life and the burden of the letters from desperate souls, piled on his desk every morning, On the surface it is a stark condemnation of the American Dream more disturbing than Fitzgerald or Steinbeck, made brutal by its hard-boiled prose, and brought close to apocalypse by a hero obsessed with Christ's wounds and the necessity of blood sacrifice.
But what I have said--strange as it is--normalizes Miss Lonelyhearts too much, for Nathanael West's book is also blackly funny in a way that only a book steeped in European cynicism and iconoclasm could be. In spite of its superficial similarities, it is a world--I almost said an ocean--away from the earnestness of the Great American Novel. It reminds me more of Georg Grosz and Nicolai Gogol than of The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath.
Nathan Weinstein--Nathanael West was his nom de plume--was born into an upper middle class family of Russian secular Jews who lived on the Upper West Side. He had little interest in his father's construction business and instead read precociously, devouring Shakespeare and Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy--all by the age of ten. He dropped out of high school, forged his way into Tufts; dropped out of Tufts, forged his way into Brown, where he continued to study little and read much. He had little patience for the staples of American fiction, favoring a literary diet of French surrealism and British decadence, enlivened with an occasional cup of Christian mysticism.
After graduating university, Weinstein moved to Paris, began dressing like a dandy, and changed his name to West. He completed the novel he had been working on fitfully through college: The Dream Life of Balso Snell, a deliberately offensive piece of surreal near-obscenity, filled with Freudian cliches and literary parody, which takes place entirely within the body of the Trojan Horse.
It is helpful to see Miss Lonelyhearts as a continuation of the artistic aims of Balso Snell. Its jarring transitions, its disturbing juxtapositions of mystical visions with scatological and sexual themes is all part of a plot to assault the sensibilities of the reader and alienate him from the text of the work itself. This alienation in turn may lead him to question his assumptions about literature and life (although I'm not convinced West cares one way or the other if he does so).
It’s funny though. Throughout all of the novel’s sordid scenes, throughout its hero’s dark comic fumblings and messianic delusions, that pile of letters on his desk—surrounded they though may be by crippling ironies—still move the reader. We cannot forget--anymore than he can forget—the abject miseries of those lost souls who pour out the details of their hopeless lives in the letters they addressed to “Dear Miss Lonelyhearts.”
I will with end this review with one of those haunting letters.
Dear Miss Lonelyhearts--
I am sixteen years old now and I dont know what to do and would appreciate it if you could tell me what to do. When I was a little girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the block makeing fun of me, but now I would like to have boy friends like the other girls and go out on Saturday nites, but no boy will take me because I was born without a nose--although I am a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes.
I sit and look at myself all day and cry. I have a big hole in the middle of my face that scares people even myself so I cant blame the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me, but she crys terrible when she looks at me.
What did I do to deserve such a terrible bad fate? Even if I did do some bad things I didnt do any before I was a year old and I was born this way. I asked Papa and he says he doesnt know, but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born or that maybe I was being punished for his sins. I dont believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought I commit suicide?
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