2022 #34 The Searcher (French)

 

The Searcher by Tana French
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Honestly a near "4 stars" but there were several aspects that didn't sit well with me.

Cal Hooper, an ex-cop from Chicago tries to "escape" to a major fixer-upper in a remote Irish village. This is not a page-turner---the pace is very slow. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you've got to be in it for the long haul. Roger Clark's slow drawl (most noticeable as the narrator and Cal Hooper) lulls one not to sleep, but you might need to adjust to the pace. There are some clichés -- he's divorced and has an awkward relationship with his adult daughter. That is actually important to the story, and I applaud French for not spelling it out at the end. The relationship changes and evolves and we understand why, but she doesn't hit us over the head with it.

There are various other characters who fill out the village, most importantly 13 year-old Trey, who approaches Cal (that's actually one of the slowest parts of the narrative) with a mystery to solve. Turns out that Trey too is a bit of a mystery. As is almost everyone in the village, including the effervescent neighbor Mart, who embodies the stereotypical happy-go-lucky-spend-every-night-at-the-pub Irishman. Beware false senses of security, however. French's gambit is very much "things are not what they seem" in this book.

The biggest negative for me was the actual "mystery." I found the outcome disappointing as well as the dispassionate treatment of the main event by those involved. Cal's behavior doesn't really make sense at the end, especially since there are many words given over to telling us about his "code" (including a particularly irritating bit when he talks about "morals vs. etiquette" in a way that's quite affirming of white privilege). That said, the relationship with Trey is what kept me in it. Cal does grow, and so does Trey...and French is careful never to get too maudlin. I could have used a bit more outrage on the part of Cal, however, when it comes to what befalls Trey. There's a subtext about poverty and manipulation here that didn't really resonate.

There are beautiful scenic descriptions in the book. This is my first Tana French work, and from what I've read, this is something she is known for. The book definitely does NOT disappoint on this front. From the fauna (rooks, rabbits, sheep) to the flora and everything in between, French paints with her words, and unlike some other recent reads, it never feels gratuitous. Perhaps there's a bit too much time spent in the pub (I'm just not that interested in hearing about people getting drunk), but French tucks in little details that are important, so stick with it.

The pace does make it seem more of a novel than a mystery. Not that they are mutually exclusive categories, but if you are hoping for a whodunnit-crime mystery, this book probably isn't what you want--that aspect almost recedes into the background. But definitely worth it for the scenery and character development

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2022 #33 A Small Place (Kincaid)

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm not sure I've ever come across a voice so forthright and beautiful at the same time. Jamaica Kincaid manages to reveal the underbelly of colonization (specifically in regard to her birthplace Antigua) while writing with blurry metaphor (blurry in the sense that things seems like metaphors and also not metaphors), wry humor, and a telling of political history in an almost folk-style narrative like a parable, but in reference to specific people. She unflinchingly deals out critiques yet manages to convey a sadness at the same time:

"And it is in that strange voice, then--the voice that suggests innocence, art, lunacy--that they say these things, pausing to take breath before this monument to rottenness, that monument to rottenness, as if they were tour guides; as if, having observed the event of tourism, they have absorbed it so completely that they have made the degradation and humiliation of their daily lives into their own tourist attraction." (69)

In eighty short pages, Kincaid shares a truthful experience of a land, the likes of which few get to see or experience when caught up in the "unreal beauty" of a tourist destination. Kincaid describes beauty as a prison, and in so doing, changes our understanding of that which might deserve a deeper look beyond the blue of the ocean and the colors of the sky.

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2022 #32 Faculty of Murder (Wright)

Faculty of Murder: Mother Paul Investigates by June Wright
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was really hoping to love this. Supposedly June Wright's "Mother Paul" was the first nun sleuth (it's a thing), and as that's a sub-genre I really enjoy, I was excited by the prospect of reading this pioneering story.

Sadly, almost every character in this book is wholly unlikeable, including Mother Paul. I'm willing to lay some blame at the feet of my own modern twenty-first century sensibilities, as opposed to those of 1960, but my quibbles would likely be the same, even if I had read it when first published. The young women at the University of Melbourne leave much to be desired, as the vast majority are whiny, fickle, mean, and/or duplicitous. Mother Paul herself is sketchy and manipulative, and seems to operate very much in the background. Miss Marple or Sister Fidelma she is not. Instead the protagonist (maybe) seems to be Elizabeth, who is perhaps the most typecast as the easily-shocked, 1960's version of a feminist who uses her wiles to make her nondescript fiancé jealous when he strings her along for too many years.

The big reveal was a bit of a let down, only because I cared so little for any of the characters that it came as a relief just to be done with it. Detective Savage is potentially the only truly likeable character, and he too must tolerate the whims of the Mother Superior.

Lucy Sussex's introduction is a worthwhile read, and contextualizes Wright's choice of a nun as her star sleuth in an important light. It is also important to note that Wright's life took a different path and she did not continue writing as many Mother Paul mysteries as she would have liked. That is a pity, because one gets the sense that Mother Paul might have developed and grown to be more than a conniving interloper.

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2022 #31 American Gods (Gaiman)

 

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This could have been so bad. It could have been full of easy to grasp metaphors and clichés. It could have been sensationalist drivel without any depth.

But it wasn't. It was a ridiculously amazing experience.

No review can adequately carry all this book has to give, but Gaiman's intercultural pantheon is something to behold. Pulling from a wide variety of traditions (Egyptian, Nordic, African, Greek, Germanic, Haitian, and more...) somehow the "fantasy" aspects become all too believable. No need to suspend disbelief, because Gaiman crafts a world where fact versus fiction really isn't all that important. Where Lucy Ricardo can be a...prophet? A taxi driver a jinn. And an ex-con (sort of) can be one of the most likeable (and quixotic) protagonists to surface in literature of the last fifty years.

Gaiman's amazing and encyclopedic cultural knowledge flows through the book with references as disparate as Saint-Saëns and The Beatles to Hieronymous Bosch. Everything is at once theatrical and ordinary, and this is the true feat. Nothing is not darkness in this land, nothing is something into which Shadow (the protagonist) can walk "with a strange fierce joy." (484).

It is a shame that Joseph Campbell died well before this book was written because Gaiman has both challenged and bolstered the idea of the monomyth. He has captured the iterative nature of myth, illuminating how it operates in our modern lives, dancing in between religion and science. And despite the depth of the book, it is full of humor and semi-sardonic tropes: "I think," said Mr. Nancy, "that wherever two men are gathered together to sell a third man a twenty-dollar violin for ten thousand dollars, he will be there in spirit." (551)

This could be a good storybook. But it can also be much more than that. Take the time to dig in---look up the characters in world mythology. Relish the double takes. Go back, read again. You won't lose the flow because there isn't any. And that, for once, is a good thing.

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