Of Books and Bicycles

I enjoyed listening to Mark Haddon’s novel A Spot of Bother; I don’t think it’s quite as good as his first novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but it’s a good book nonetheless. The charm and interest of the first novel was in the narrative voice; the main character is autistic, and it was fascinating and sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking to see the world from his perspective. The tension between the way the narrator views the world and the way the reader can see the limits of his point of view keeps readers hooked.

A Spot of Bother is more traditional in its theme and style than the first one. It’s about a family that is falling apart, beginning with the father, George, who finds an ominous-looking spot on his hip and is convinced it is cancer. When he visits the doctor and hears it is excema, he does not believe it. He is convinced he is dying and falls into a depression that wreaks havoc on himself and his family. All the other members of his family are suffering too: his wife is having an affair and can’t decide what to do about it; his son, Jamie, is in danger of losing his lover; and his daughter, Katie, can’t decide if she wants to marry Ray, the man no one else in the family likes.

If all that sounds serious and heavy, it’s not — Haddon tells the story in a light, comic way. While you feel bad for George, you can’t help but laugh at his crazy leaps of logic and his dry sense of humor, and the interaction amongst all the characters reveals just how amusing family conflict can be — seen from the outside, of course.

The novel has a fairly traditional comedic structure: it’s about life falling apart and getting put back together again, and its plot revolves around weddings and marriages: will Katie and Ray get married? Will George and Jean stay together? Tragedy threatens — especially in the way George confronts the prospect of his inevitable death — but it never looms very large. It’s not terribly hard to figure out how the plot will resolve itself or what the novel’s climax will involve (even for me, who can never figure out plots), but the pleasure of this book is not in its plot twists, but in the dialogue and the records of the characters’ thoughts. The point of view shifts back and forth amongst the members of the family, revealing exactly what each person thinks of the other, a technique that lends itself well to comedy — no one knows exactly what the other characters know or what they think about everyone else, and the effort to guess or discover this truth leads to some amusing mistakes. It’s a story about the difficulty — and the urgency — of discovering the truth about the people one lives with and loves.

I can very easily see how this novel could be turned into a movie — in fact, if it’s not turned into a movie, I’ll be surprised. I feel ambivalently about this; on the one hand, it’s a movie I’d almost certainly enjoy, provided it were decently well-made. On the other hand, this characteristic reveals a certain predictability and formula-following that I usually shy away from. But I don’t want to look down my nose at an entertaining story that’s well told, so I won’t … instead I’ll recommend this book for a time when you need a laugh and some high-quality entertainment.

Devices and Desires is the second P.D. James novel I’ve read or listened to in the last month. This novel is at least as good as the first one, The Murder Room; both novels are long with lots of well-developed characters, both are thoughtful and philosophically-minded, and both fit the description Stefanie gave in a comment to an earlier post: James’s novels aren’t so much mystery stories as stories with mysteries in them.

In fact, the novel itself makes this very point in a passage where a minor character, stuck in a difficult conversation, wants to get back to the detective novel he has been reading:

He wanted to get back to Inspector Ghote, Keating’s gentle Indian detective who, despite his uncertainties, would get there in the end, because this was fiction: problems could be solved, evil overcome, justice vindicated and death itself only a mystery which would be solved in the final chapter.

In a way James is writing this kind of novel, and in a way she is not. Yes, the mystery is solved in the end, truth is revealed, and things are set to rights. But an air of mystery still lingers over the story, not about who murdered whom, but about why people do what they do and about what it’s possible to know of the desires and the longings of others. While by the novel’s end the reader knows the full story — or the facts at least — the detectives involved don’t know everything and never will. There’s a gap between law and justice and the complexities of human interaction.

Devices and Desires is interesting structurally for two reasons; one is that Adam Dalgliesh, James’s protagonist, is only a small part of the book and isn’t the main investigator on the case. He’s on holiday in Norfolk and just happens to be a witness to events related to a murder case. He nearly crosses the line from police officer to suspect, as he is the first one on the scene after a murder, and he finds himself having to decide what to share with the other officers and what information to keep in confidence. He’s in a quiet competition with Inspector Rickards, the chief detective on the case, to see who can put the facts together most convincingly. This tension between Dalgliesh’s role as a regular citizen and his job in law enforcement allows James to consider just how effective — or ineffective — police work can be, just how much an investigation can miss or misconstrue. Dalgliesh himself learns how unpleasant it is to be interrogated and suspected.

The novel’s structure is interesting also because there are two murderers; the first one is found relatively quickly, and the focus of the novel then shifts to the second, who, it turns out, is the real source of the novel’s mystery. This means that the “mystery” part of the novel doesn’t appear until the book’s second half. This seems to be a “Jamesian” technique, or least I can say that the two novels I’ve read both take their time getting to the center of the action. She slowly establishes the book’s atmosphere and introduces the reader to her characters before the narrative tension tightens.

The setting is crucial to this novel (as it was also in The Murder Room); it takes place near the sea on a quiet, nearly-deserted headland where everyone knows everyone else and nobody’s habits or proclivities are secret. The beautiful setting is marred only by the presence of the Larsoken nuclear power station, a source of controversy amongst some of the area’s residence and a locus of both hope and fear; it provides much-needed jobs for the local population, but it is also a potential threat — the book takes place shortly after the Chernobyl disaster.

This is a book to savor; it offers many pleasures, from an absorbing story to a cast of memorable characters to meditations on death, justice, and human nature. Here, for example, are Dalgliesh’s thoughts as he watches over a dead body waiting for the police to arrive. It’s a passage that brings me back to my opening thought about the limits of detective work and of mystery stories:

He thought: In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life. And the fear of death, however irrational, was surely natural, whether one thought of it as annihilation or as a rite of passage. Every cell in the body was programmed for life; all healthy creatures clung to life until their last breath. How hard to accept, and yet how comforting, was the gradual realization that the universal enemy might come at last as a friend. Perhaps this was part of the attraction of his job, that the process of detection dignified the individual death, even the death of the least attractive, the most unworthy, mirroring in its excessive interest in clues and motives man’s perennial fascination with the mystery of his mortality, providing, too, a comforting illusion of a moral universe in which innocence could be avenged, right vindicated, order restored. But nothing was restored, certainly not life, and the only justice vindicated was the uncertain justice of men.

I found Sophia Lee’s 1783 novel The Recess a bit of a slog, unfortunately. I had high hopes for it, as descriptions I’d read made it sound like fun, but it was too overstuffed with plot events and too lacking in character development, which, if I had to choose, is exactly the opposite of what I’d want.

The novel does do a number of interesting things, however. It’s an early example of historical fiction, first of all. It’s set during the reign of Elizabeth I, and its two main characters are (fictional) twin daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots. It has many historical characters who sometimes behave in ways true to the history books and who sometimes don’t, depending on Lee’s need to make her plot work. The edition I read carefully footnoted all the diversions Lee makes from historical accuracy, so the reader doesn’t have to worry about getting wrong information. Interestingly, though, the editor’s introduction to the novel describes how some of Lee’s readers got confused about fact and fiction in the novel and thought that Mary really did have twins. At any rate, Walter Scott often gets the credit for “inventing” the historical novel, and wrongly so. He had many predecessors.

The novel is also an example of Gothic fiction and of the novel of sensibility. It doesn’t have any supernatural elements (or seemingly supernatural elements) like you might find in Radcliffe or Walpole, but its atmosphere is dark and gloomy and it’s got frightening castles, scary authority figures, damsels in distress, kidnappings, prisons, murders, and disguises. It’s also full of the extreme emotion characteristic of sentimental novels of the time — it has plenty of sighs, tears, and fainting spells, and it has long passages of overwrought feeling, as the characters respond to the horrors they suffer through. It’s hard for a modern reader to understand that 18C people loved all this; to us it can seem silly and contrived, but, based on the popularity of novels like this one and on what people wrote about their reading experiences, readers took this extreme sentimentality seriously and sometimes responded with their own tears.

One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is the structure. It’s an epistolary novel, although there aren’t actually a whole lot of letters. But still the whole novel is written by one of the characters to another person, usually in the form of what the editor calls “memoir-letters.” There are three characters who tell the story, each of the sisters and Lady Pembroke, a sympathetic mentor and caretaker to the twins. What is interesting about this form is that the sisters’ accounts contradict each other, specifically in their response to the other’s love interest. The sisters are both presented as sympathetic characters, which, in this type of novel at least, means that they are models of perfection or nearly so. There aren’t a whole lot of mixed or ambiguous characters in 18C novels of this type. And yet one of the sisters at least must be getting something wrong. The first sister, Matilda, tells her story for the first 100 pages or so, and we get one view of her lover firmly established in our minds, but then the other sister Ellinor begins to tell her story and offers a much more negative interpretation. Suddenly the ground shifts and the reader doesn’t know which sister to trust and what sense to make of their claims. It makes the reader deal with uncertainty in a way that’s unsettling, especially after having read such a long chunk of the novel already. Matilda then steps in and continues her story, this time casting doubt on the suitability of Ellinor’s love interest. We’re never told whose interpretation is the better one.

Alas, while I found all this intellectually interesting, it didn’t translate into enjoyment in reading the story. It was simply too action-packed. I don’t mind the implausibility of it — it’s highly implausible that so many, many horrible things could happen to two people — but the rapid pace wore me out. After a while, it was no surprise at all when some new disaster struck and the peace and security the sisters were now certain they had found got snatched away.

But this novel was very popular in its day and it inspired many imitators who created their own historical fictions. There’s no proof, but there is a critical consensus that Ann Radcliffe was influenced by The Recess and Jane Austen read it as well. It’s interesting to me the way that tastes and reading preferences change over time. Modern-day critics I’ve read seemed to enjoy this novel, but I wish I knew of more people who had read it so I could see if I’m unusual or if others would agree with me. I suspect, though, that I’m not really unusual and that other people might wonder what exactly people found so moving in this book. Isn’t it fascinating to speculate on why people from a long time ago liked what they liked?

I finished listening to P.D. James’s mystery novel The Murder Room, and what a fun book it was! I have become a P.D. James fan. In fact, I liked it so much, I went to the library over the weekend to check out another James novel, Devices and Desires, another Adam Dalgliesh mystery. This time I’m reading it instead of listening; I miss having a narrator read the story to me — I miss the voice and the accent — but I like how I can read at my own pace and can back up to catch something I missed without having to push any buttons.

I liked how The Murder Room is long and detailed and takes its time telling the story. James has a large cast of characters, and she lingers over the introduction to each one, telling his or her story in depth. There isn’t anything gratuitous in it, but she never skimps on detail either. It’s a story to get lost in. She takes time to describe rooms and settings and landscape, as well as the characters’ thoughts and moods. It has a slow pace, but in a good way; it’s the kind of slow pace that creates a rich atmosphere you enjoy spending time in.

The story is about murders that take place in the Dupayne museum, a museum devoted to the history of the 1920s and 1930s. It’s a small museum with a modest number of visitors, but those who work there and those who visit are a loyal group who want to keep the museum going. But now its future is uncertain as the building is up for a new lease and one of the trustees doesn’t want to sign it. This leaves a lot of possible suspects when this trustee is found murdered …

Part of the appeal of the novel is the way it focuses on the small world of the museum, which has its own culture and history and a hierarchy of people, from the gardener and the housekeeper to the volunteers to the curator and the trustees. These people have worked together for long enough they know each other’s habits and personalities, but still, of course, many secrets remain.

I found myself much more interested in the interaction of the characters than in the mystery itself. I’m not sure if this is just me, or if the mystery aspect of the novel isn’t terribly exciting. When the murderer was revealed, I was surprised, but not particularly intrigued; it didn’t make me think about the earlier parts of the novel to try to put the clues together or to wonder if I could have figured it out if I’d paid more attention. Actually, I never figure out mysteries and can hardly ever predict the endings of novels, except certain kinds of 18C and 19C novels that always end in a marriage between the two virtuous characters. Generally I don’t even try to figure out how things will turn out. Hobgoblin will often be able to predict the ending only a few chapters into a book, but my mind just doesn’t work that way. Perhaps I’m a more passive reader, taking things in as they are given to me and not trying to work out where it’s all heading. Or maybe it’s that I want the experience of a sudden revelation all at the end, the pleasure of seeing how everything fits together all at once. I really think, though, that I never figure mysteries out because I’m not so much interested in the puzzle of it, but rather in the human interaction that takes place along the way. When I enjoy mysteries it’s because I like the protagonist, not because I want to see if I can figure out the clues.

Oh, I just saw that Danielle is reading Devices and Desires, the one I just started, and has similar things to say about the characters vs. the mystery aspect of the story.

First of all, thanks to Ann for choosing Alan Garner’s young adult novel The Owl Service for the Slaves of Golconda selection; I always want to read new types of books, and this qualifies, as I generally don’t read much young adult fiction. Perhaps I should read more. So thank you Ann!

I feel ambivalently about this book, though. What it comes down to is that while there was much in the novel that made me think, I didn’t enjoy the experience of reading it as much as I thought I would. I’m happy to have plenty to analyze as I read along, but I really wanted to get lost in the story, especially as it’s a young adult novel, and I never found myself fully absorbed in it. I felt distanced the whole time.

The novel tells the story of three young people who are vacationing in Wales; Alison and Roger are half-siblings and Gwyn is the son of the housekeeper. They discover a set of plates in their attic with a mysterious pattern on them, a pattern that when Alison traces it, creates owls. The pattern afterwards disappears, though, and so do the owls Alison has made. Soon the threesome notices a whole series of odd events, including strange scratching noises, objects unexpectedly moving, and walls crumbling apart. Gradually, with the help of Gwyn’s knowledge of Welsh folklore and information from the odd figure Huw Halfbacon, they figure out they are witnessing the resurgence of an old legend about a woman created from flowers who betrays her husband for the sake of a lover.

I began reading the book with no knowledge of this legend, and had to piece it together as I read; I think I might have felt less confused and have enjoyed the reading more if I’d been familiar with it to begin with. It took a long time for the pieces to come together. Rather than enjoying this process of figuring everything out — which is partly what reading is all about, of course — I felt there was information I should have had but didn’t.

The dialogue also felt odd to me, and perhaps this is simply a cultural matter, but the characters talked as though they were older; I had trouble believing they were teenagers. I had to re-read many passages of dialogue because the language and, even more so, the rhythms of their speech felt strange.

But I was fascinated by the class issues the novel portrays, and the way these issues touch on language. Gwyn’s mother chastises him for speaking Welsh because she wants him to leave his rural roots behind:

“You know I won’t have you speaking Welsh. I’ve not struggled all these years in Aber to have you talk like a labourer. I could have stayed in the valley if I’d wanted that.”

But Gwyn is drawn to the people and the culture of the Welsh countryside, intrigued by Huw Halfbacon and his mysterious pronouncements. He’s also self-conscious about his accent, however, and worried about whether his mother will allow him to continue his education, and whether that accent will hamper his progress. In one of the novel’s most painful scenes, he wants to borrow Alison’s gramophone to listen to records teaching elocution lessons. He is mortified when Roger finds out about this and mocks him for it.

As the son of the housekeeper, Gwyn is constantly reminded of his outsider status, and often cruelly so; Roger teases and belittles him, and when Gwyn begins spending more time with Alison than the others think proper, they make it clear they do not approve and that they will do whatever they need to to make sure he stays away. Gwyn is a hugely sympathetic character; it’s impossible not to feel for him as he struggles with his attraction to Alison, his worries about his mother, and his curiosity about all the mysteries that surround him, including that of the identity of his father.

So, again, I’m glad I read this, even though I had mixed feelings about it — I do enjoy reading books that make me think, even if a lot of what I’m thinking about is why I’m not loving them.