Of Books and Bicycles

Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett’s Death Rites was the book up for discussion at my latest mystery book group meeting, and I am, in spite of having thought about the book before the meeting quite a lot and having spent several hours discussing it with the group, still not quite sure how I feel about it. I liked the book when I first started reading it, but then at some point I began having doubts, and then I enjoyed it again, and then I doubted, and after I finished my reaction wasn’t any clearer. Then I listened to other members of the group explain why they didn’t like it, and it was hard not to be swayed by the general consensus.

I’m not usually so indecisive. The problem seems to be that the book never quite came together for me, so I liked this part of it, didn’t like that part, and could never quite pull everything together to have a real opinion.

Much of the problem for the book group was the translation, or at least the possibility that the translation might be bad made it hard to judge whether the book itself was any good or not. The writing was certainly awkward, with badly constructed sentences and bizarre images (although some of the bizarre images I liked). But there were other problems — a main character who can be intensely unlikeable, a plot that floundered at times, and a resolution that was too predictable.

To say something about the book itself, it’s set in Barcelona and tells the story of Petra Delicado, an inspector who has been working in the documentation department and who gets called upon unexpectedly to investigate a rape case. She is assigned to work with Fermin Garzon, a rather plodding, obedient type who is close to retirement. The two have to figure out not only how to run an investigation, something Petra at least has little experience with, but also how to deal with each other. There is tension between the two of them from the very beginning; Petra isn’t used to being in charge and has to figure out how to exert authority in a world that grants it to women only grudgingly, and Fermin has to figure out how to respond to a boss who knows less about investigating than he does. Plus Fermin has some pretty old-fashioned ideas about women that Petra does not like.

The two do a pretty bad job of investigating, or at least that’s what members of the press accuse them of. They have no good leads for a very long time and spend a surprisingly long period floundering about desperately looking for some kind of breakthrough. I’m not entirely convinced that they are bad investigators, though, or at least that they are bad as people think they are. They do make some mistakes, but they are rookies, after all. But even more so, I wonder whether this portrayal of an investigation isn’t more realistic than investigations often are in novels. What do investigators do when there are no clues? When no clues appear for a very long time? When every trail they follow leads them nowhere? The press accuses them of failing in their job, but I wonder whether other, more experienced investigators would have been able to do it better. In novels, investigators struggle and take time to solve their cases, but I wonder whether they struggle a lot less and take a lot less time than real-life investigators do.

We also talked in my book group about how often Petra and Fermin take breaks from their work and how often they are to be found in restaurants or bars, rather than working on the investigation. This is probably one of their most serious mistakes, but I have to say, I’m entirely in sympathy with their commitment to eating well and resting up. This is illogical of me, I suppose, since with a rapist on the loose, they really do need to be in a hurry. And yet I do get tired of detectives who never seem to sleep and who skip meals all the time and who basically act like their non-working lives don’t matter in the least. Petra has just bought a new house, and she’s trying to settle into it, and I sympathize with her occasional feelings of resentment at a job that’s pulling her away from it.

So these elements I liked, and I also liked Petra’s vocal feminism and the struggles she goes through to figure out how to establish and maintain power, and also how to use that power effectively without abusing it (which she fails at spectacularly a time or two). But at the same time, the narrative did get dull now and then and Petra’s character remains a bit elusive. There was some spark, something lively, missing from the book. And the translation was a problem.

That’s the best I can do with this book, it seems. For other thoughts, you can read Emily’s post.

I was in the mood for something Victorian not too long ago, and Margaret Oliphant’s The Perpetual Curate was exactly what I needed. It’s a long (relatively long, 500 not-too-dense pages), absorbing story with interesting characters and an amusing tone. Its mood is light, but it deals with serious situations and genuine problems, so it never felt frivolous.

The story is about Frank Wentworth, the perpetual curate of the title, a young man who loves his work but understands that it doesn’t pay enough for him to marry the woman he loves, Lucy Wodehouse. In order for that to happen, he would have to become a rector. This is actually quite possible, as he has three aunts who will soon have a living to bestow, but, alas, Frank and the aunts do not see eye to eye when it comes to how one should run a church service. The aunts lean toward the evangelical side, while Frank is more solidly, traditionally Anglican. The aunts unexpectedly show up to Frank’s Easter service, and are shocked at the sight of flowers on the alter and are displeased with his sermon. Frank realizes that those pesky flowers, which he is not sure he cares all that much about, may have ruined his chances for married happiness.

Oliphant piles problem after problem on poor Frank’s shoulders. Not only does he have the uptight aunts to deal with, but he is seen in what looks like a compromising situation with a pretty, young shop girl, and rumors begin to fly. The town that has stood behind him for the five years or so he has worked there now starts to have doubts. Then the local rector, newly arrived in the town, gets angry at him for running services for the poor in his district. And then his brother, Gerald, decides that he wants to convert to Catholicism and become a Catholic priest, even if it means abandoning his wife. There is also the strange, unpleasant, badly-dressed man who shows up in Frank’s lodgings, and whom Frank takes in for mysterious reasons, even though his neighbors are none too pleased.

Much of the novel has Frank running around from one disaster to another, trying to figure out how to appease his family, friends, and parishioners while at the same time staying true to his principles. Fortunately, as Oliphant frequently points out, Frank is young and can bounce back from disasters quickly. But still, it’s chilling to read a convincing description of how suddenly, and for no real fault of Frank’s, everything can suddenly go wrong. People misread events and misunderstand conversations, and because Frank can sometimes be a little oblivious, he doesn’t always realize when this happens. Suddenly his world is falling apart around him, and he hardly knows how it happened. This can happen to any of us, the novel implies, at any time, and there is little to be done about it.

The things that could be done to rectify the situation Frank rejects as impossible because of his strong sense of pride and honor. He can’t simply go to his aunts and declare he really didn’t mean it about the flowers because he can’t stoop that low, and he can’t simply explain that he doesn’t care anything about the pretty shop girl because he doesn’t want to dignify the accusations. This sense of pride and honor, which he and Lucy share, becomes so powerful and his and Lucy’s feelings are so delicate, that they threaten to become absurd. In fact, by the end of the novel I was wondering whether Oliphant was having a little fun gently mocking them. This suspicion was reinforced by the way Oliphant frequently draws attention near the novel’s end to the fact that it is a novel that she’s writing, as though she is pulling away from the narrative a bit to evaluate her characters more directly than she ever did before. Endings are tricky, she seems to be saying, and sometimes they can be a little silly or unrealistic, so don’t take it all too seriously.

The Perpetual Curate is part of a series of novels called “The Chronicles of Carlingford,” and this novel is the fourth book of six. I’m pleased to know this, because it means I can return to this world and to these characters five more times if I want to. If I’m able to find the books, that is. I will certainly be on the lookout for more Oliphant in the future.

I’m listening to my first Sara Paretsky novel right now, her 2005 V.I. Warshawski mystery Fire Sale. I’ve been meaning to read Paretsky for a while, ever since reading about her in Maureen Corrigan’s book Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading, where Corrigan has a chapter on mystery novels and praises Paretsky highly. With the caveat in mind that I am more likely to like a book I listen to than one I read on paper, I’m really enjoying the story so far. The novel is set in Chicago, and Warshawski is a private investigator. She has a thriving business, but in this novel, she is involved in a investigation she won’t be paid for: a case of arson and murder that she stumbles upon after agreeing to serve as a substitute basketball coach at her old South Chicago high school. The mother of one of the players asks her to investigate strange happenings at the factory where she works, and the next thing she knows, she’s caught up in a story of big business and corporate intrigue.

The basketball coaching and the investigation force her to spend a lot of time in South Chicago where she is confronted by her past, which was a harsh one. This novel doesn’t give very many details, but we do find out she lost her mother when she was young, and that she grew up to be a tough street fighter. In this novel, she still has that toughness, but also the perspective and experience of a woman who has seen more of the world. She is brave and courageous, although not without fear, and there’s a certain amount of sadness to her character, which, of course, is not at all surprising for someone who makes a living as an investigator.

The plot is overtly political, as Warshawski investigates a big Walmart-like corporation that exploits its workers and is run by a family full of nasty, suspicious, racist tightwads. The fact that they claim to be committed evangelical Christians makes them even worse. I suppose the argument here is a little too easy and too obvious — the religious characters are hypocrites, or at least the rich ones are, and all big business owners care about nothing at all but making money. But still, Paretsky’s picture of how families struggle to make a living working in low-paying jobs and are first exploited so they can barely get by and then condemned for the very fact that they struggle is a powerful one. Paretsky explores the complicated causes of poverty on the south side and why it is so many young people struggle in school and so many teenage girls get pregnant, while the big business owners live in their gated mansions in the suburbs, getting rich through their stinginess. The ideas and issues may be familiar, but Paretsky does a good job bringing them to life.

I picked up Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy because I might possibly teach it in a course I’m planning on travel and cross-cultural encounters. The main character, Lucy, a teenager from the West Indies, moves to the United States to work as an au pair, so the book will fit my theme nicely. It’s a first person narrative, and is full of Lucy’s observations about American culture and her attempts to make sense of its strangeness. It’s interesting seeing America through her eyes, and her observations are sharp, critical ones. Things that seem obvious and natural to the American family (and to me) are strange to her:

One morning in early March, Mariah said to me, “You have never seen spring, have you?” And she did not have to await an answer, for she already knew. She said the word “spring” as if spring were a close friend, a friend who had dared to go away for a long time and soon would reappear for their passionate reunion. She said, “Have you ever seen daffodils pushing their way up out of the ground? And when they’re in bloom and all massed together, a breeze comes along and makes them do a curtsy to the lawn stretching out in front of them. Have you ever seen that? When I see that, I feel so glad to be alive.” And I thought, So Mariah is made to feel alive by some flowers bending in the breeze. How does a person get to be that way?

So much about this exchange is typical — Lucy’s bewilderment at what Mariah and her family think and feel and Mariah’s insensitivity. If she knows Lucy hasn’t experienced spring, why does she keep asking if she’s seen it?

The daffodils keep returning: Lucy tells Mariah a story about reciting a poem on daffodils as a young child and receiving great praise for her elocution. She never names what the poem is, but it’s surely William Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” She feels so conflicted about all the praise she receives that she vows to forget every word of the poem, and then she dreams that the flowers are chasing her until she collapses from exhaustion and they pile on top of her. She tells the story to Mariah, who doesn’t quite know how to respond.

This is her experience in a nutshell — she is made to confront her racial difference and her origins in a colonized country again and again. She bristles with anger as people talk about their wonderful vacations in “the islands” and watches people get uncomfortable as they don’t know how to respond to some of the stories she tells — some of them told in an attempt to make people uncomfortable, some of them not.

This is also a novel about growing up. Lucy has to figure out her relationship with the family she works for, the extent to which Mariah is a substitute mother or a friend and the amount of freedom she will be allowed. She also explores her sexuality, figuring out what she wants and doesn’t want from the men she meets. Her story is an intense one because she is confronted with so much that’s new, so much that she has to absorb. Not only does she struggle to fit in with her American family, but she has to figure out what to say to her family back home, from whom she begins to feel estranged. She has experienced so much that’s hard to put into words.

This is a short, powerful novel, written in a simple, direct way that captures the intensity of Lucy’s experience. Her voice is one that can be uncomfortable to listen to, but is remarkably compelling.

I had the pleasure of reading a Rosy Thornton novel a couple years ago and I enjoyed it very much, so when she offered to send me her latest, I was happy to take it. Secretly I was hoping for another academic novel like Hearts and Minds, but even though it wasn’t that, The Tapestry of Love was a real pleasure to read. The storytelling is strong, the situation is interesting, and the characters are engaging.

The novel tells the story of Catherine Parkstone, a woman in her late 40s who moves to France to live in the Cevennes. She has bought a house and plans to set up a needlework business, creating drapes, cushions, and maybe even tapestries for the local farmers and villagers. She is nervous heading off on her own, and sad to leave her son and daughter behind, busy as they are with their careers and studies, but this is a dream of hers she is willing to take risks to fulfill.

In the opening chapters of the novel, she gets herself settled in the new house and tries to adjust to a new life — the quiet, the isolation, the tiny hamlets and villages, and, the first morning, a neighbor farmer delivering hay to her door for reasons she doesn’t understand. The pace is slow and enjoyable as we watch Catherine negotiate meeting the neighbors and coming to learn a little bit about the local culture. There are just a few residents on her mountainside, including the mysterious Patrick Castagnol who is native to the area but doesn’t quite seem to fit in at the same time.

Catherine slowly develops relationships with these people and begins to find her place there, meeting with business success as people begin to place orders for her creations and she sells her wares at the local market. The peace gets interrupted, though, when her sister visits and upsets the emotional and social balance Catherine had established. She has to figure out how she will respond to what feels like an intrusion.

One of the pleasures of the book lies in the quiet, thoughtful nature of Catherine’s character as she tries to find her way toward a completely new kind of life. The setting is another source of pleasure — the mountains are beautiful, and it’s enjoyable to read about Catherine’s walks through the woods and her drives up and down twisty mountain roads. And I enjoyed the book for a picture of a dying way of life; because of the establishment of a National Park, new businesses aren’t allowed in the area, and while there are a growing number of tourists, the local young people have been leaving, and the farmers are getting older and older. In a way, Catherine’s presence is a hopeful sign, since she brings new energy to the place, but she discovers before too long that her business is at risk because of the park rules. She waited too long to investigate the rules for setting up new businesses and now has to pay the price.

This was a satisfying read, and if you like thoughtful, well-written, quiet types of books, I can recommend it.