Once more I've hit my two book target, so I'm a steady one book behind.
I may rethink the Big French Summer idea. In March I wrapped up Gothic with
White is for Witching and began Mad
People with
The Bell Jar, which
proved to fall alarmingly within my existing headspace. Still no poetry.
I kicked off Audible's Definitive
Sherlock Holmes collection, written of course by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and all excellently read and foreworded by national treasure and fellow Old
Queen(1), Stephen Fry. It’s fascinating coming back to the Holmes canon as an
adult, steeped in the various western traditions of detective fiction, because
as detective fiction they are actually a little unsatisfying. It’s the
character who is fascinating; his deductions appear more in the manner of a
parlour trick, or perhaps the half-technobabbled reasonings of a CSI CSI. A substantial chunk of many of
the narratives – especially the first two novels – is given over to the
criminal’s own account of their life, and in this too the stories are notable:
That a good half of the perpetrators are as sympathetic as their victims, if
not more so.
Naturally, the collection begins with A Study in Scarlet, the first of the Holmes novels. This initial
foray into the world of the great detective serves to highlight some of the
limitations of the formula, especially when it comes to the longer stories,
with almost half of the narrative given over to Jefferson Hope's story, and a
number of Holmes' deductions based on information not made available to the
reader (a complaint which Doyle later owns, with Holmes making the same
criticism to Watson, albeit from his perspective of wishing a clear elucidation
of his methods.) The story also hinges on a perception of the Mormon faith
which buys into pretty much every ill its early detractors thought of it.
A Study in Scarlet is
followed by The Sign of the Four,
which wraps up the story of Holmes and Watson with the latter going off to get
married after what is very clearly only their second case together, whatever
later entries may say. Conan Doyle is on firmer ground with the Indian mutiny
than the founding of Salt Lake City, but while his Indian characters are very
well-drawn for the time, dear lord but the Andaman pygmy Tonga is something
else entirely, a near-bestial creature with the same alien ugliness Conan Doyle
ascribed to dinosaurs in The Lost World.
This is followed by The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the first of the short story collections,
including such classics as 'A Scandal in Bohemia', 'The Red-Headed League',
'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' and 'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches'.
Even at this stage in the proceedings, a certain repetition was apparent in the
stories. The Speckled Band and 'A Case of Identity' both feature women
grievously misused by stepfathers to control their fortunes, with the latter
featuring one of the cruellest devices in the canon, while 'The Five Orange
Pips' is notable for featuring the Ku Klux Klan in much the same role as the
Mormons in A Study in Scarlet, as a
ruthless secret society employing mysterious, inescapable assassins to punish
deserters.
'The Boscombe Valley Mystery' is one of the stories in which the
conceit of the narrative most conflicts with the narrative itself. It refers to
events which Holmes conspired to conceal, as the guilty party was dying and the
innocent not at threat, which feels odd given that Watson is apparently
publishing this well within the lifetime of most of those involved. It is
especially noteworthy as on several other occasions he refers to matters that
he cannot discuss, and the untimely death of Helen Stoner freeing him to speak
of the events of the Speckled Band.
'The Man with the Twisted Lip', 'The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle'
and 'The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor' are lighter affairs, with no murder
involved in any of the cases. 'The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb' is the
first of a number of stories in which Holmes addresses a problem before ever
visiting the scene (arguably; he never leaves London in 'The Five Orange Pips'
either, but he had planned to.) It is also referred to as one of only two which
Watson brought to his attention, although this is soon overturned in the next
collection, and features a gang of villains who get away while Holmes is
rallying the official force. This is another feature we will see again.
Finally, 'The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet' is notable for having a
female villain (‘The Engineer’s Thumb’ has a female member of the gang, but she
breaks ranks to aid the victim.) As is often the case with such characters in
the Holmes canon, she gets away scot free, but with predictions of future
unhappiness as her comeuppance.
I also managed to clear up The
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes this month, which means everything up to the
death of Sherlock Holmes is covered. As The
Adventures begins with the unequivocal classic ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and “the
Woman”, so The Memoirs opens with ‘Silver
Blaze’; perhaps a less known story overall, but featuring the original curious
incident of the dog in the night time. ‘The Yellow Face’ has a similar deal to ‘The
Noble Bachelor’, with a young widow and a second marriage, although here it is
a half-black child whose appearance disrupts the happy routine, and I can’t
believe that it wasn’t pretty progressive that not only Holmes and Watson but
the husband in the case accept the child completely. Similarly, ‘The
Stock-Broker’s Clerk’ treads similar, but not identical, ground to ‘The Red-Headed
League’, with a gang providing a too-good-to-be-true job as a means of getting
someone out of the way for a time.
‘The “Gloria Scott”’ and ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ treat of early cases.
The first is notable for the solution being entirely provided by the written
narrative of the victim rather than by any deduction of Holmes’, while the latter
once more features a female villain who vanishes into the distance to a
presumed life of doubt and fear. ‘The Adventure of the Reigate Squire’ pits
Holmes against the country set, while another classic, ‘The Crooked Man’
returns to familiar territory with an old offence from India leading to a
tragic ending. ‘The Resident Patient’ and ‘The Greek Interpreter’ each feature
a puzzle that Holmes successfully solves, but too late to save a life, and the
lack of sympathy for the dead man in the latter story is quite shocking. In
both cases, the criminal gang involved vanishes into the wind; by this point it
is clear that Conan Doyle has a limited interest in arrest and trial scenes.
‘The Naval Treaty’ sees Holmes act for the good of Queen and Country,
and his client, and features one of the strongest puzzles in the canon to this
point, with pretty much every step of the deduction available for the reader to
follow. Finally, in this collection, Fry brings the vital catch in the voice to
the closing lines of ‘The Final Problem’, as Holmes gives his life – or so it
seems – to end the career of the Napoleon of Crime, Professor Moriarty. Given that
it recounts the crowning glory of his career as a detective, ‘The Final Problem’
is notable for not giving any details of the chain of reasoning which led
Holmes to his nemesis.
In between chapters of Holmes, I caught a couple of short stories by
Neil Gaiman which follow the protagonist of American
Gods, Baldur ‘Shadow’ Moon. ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ sees our hero in
Scotland on a roundabout return route from Norway, walking the walks and seeing
the sights, when he is offered a lucrative job acting as bouncer for a bunch of
posh folks from England having a party in a local manse. The locals are an odd
bunch and Shadow is having weird dreams, but he chooses to take the job,
against the advice of the enigmatic barmaid Jenny and finds himself caught up
in an ancient struggle between men and monsters, with no-one to say truly which
is worse. Then ‘Black Dog’ brings him to England, and a rural couple with a
secret to keep.
The two shorts have many similarities: The rural settings, the old
traditions, and of course Shadow’s relentless bad luck with women. Critically,
Gaiman captures the difference of feeling between Britain and America. Assuming
by its popularity there that his depiction of the roadside faith of America is
accurate, he does the same for British folk beliefs, especially those in ‘Black
Dog’, practiced slightly furtively by unassuming folk, almost more as habit
than anything else. As always, Gaiman as author and reader is an excellent storyteller
and the stories are easy to listen to several times over.
The last book for this month is Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, which is one I’d been meaning to read for a while.
This was the audiobook, but it’ read by Peter S. Beagle himself. As in the
Rankin Bass adaptation, it tells the story of a nameless, ageless unicorn who
realises that she is the only one of her kind left in the world. She goes in
search of the others and learns that a cruel king has imprisoned them all with
the aid of a supernatural bull, and with the assistance of an erratic wizard, a
cynical romantic and a larval hero she clashes with the King for the fate of
magic and her people. In fact, one of the things that really strikes me about
the book is just how faithful the animated adaptation (screenwritten by Beagle)
actually was. The main difference is Beagle’s cheerfully anachronistic narrative
language. Reminiscent of TH White, it takes the novel’s setting from mediaeval fantasy
to the same sort of timeless Neverland as The
Once and Future King.
Within this Neverland, the story of The
Last Unicorn is one of a world of failing wonder. The disappearance of the
unicorns leaves a world that, for all its dragons and ogres and heroes, lacks a
certain sparkle. Heroing is a job; the tropes of romance are performed in a
perfunctory fashion. It’s fantasy as mundanity, and beautifully done; the book
is a classic for a reason.
(1) I maintain that this is the correct term for an alumnus of Queens'
College.
Saga is an ongoing series by
Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples about – more or less – the child of a pair
of star-crossed lovers, one from either side of a techno-magical space war, and
the various forces that want to eliminate/aid/capture them all. I came to it
via Wil Wheaton's use of the character Lying Cat to respond to statements from
the Trump administration. Volume 1 features the birth of our neonatal lead, a
cadre of genuine ghosts putting the Scooby Doo on invaders, a spaceship grown
from wood, and a six year old sex slave, which last is either going to be a
bold move or a complete deal breaker. In this opening segment, bounty hunter
The Will learns that his 'it's complicated' is working the same bounty and
decides instead to visit a space brothel, and on discovering said slave girl
determines to rescue her against seemingly impossible odds.
My other read – in and out around Wild
Swans – was Rick Riordan's The Dark
Prophecy, book two of The Trials of Apollo. The now-mortal Apollo travels west
with Leo Valdez and the (also mortal) ex-sorceress Calypso to Indianapolis,
where the second emperor of the Triumvirate has his stronghold. The self-styled
New Hercules is determined to remake the city as a monument to his own glory,
but to do that he needs Apollo to help him fulfil a prophecy. Apollo, meanwhile
must find another oracle in order to secure the second stage of his quest to
reclaim control of prophecy and fate from the Triumvirate and so, hopefully,
reclaim his godhood.
