Category: Book Reviews

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments
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I wrote some initial thoughts about The Body in the Library in my Sunday Salon post.  This is the mystery of who killed Ruby Keene. Ruby was eighteen, a professional dancer employed at the Majestic Hotel Danemouth as a dance hostess. Her body was found  in the Bantrys’ library at Gossington Hall in St Mary Mead. Then the charred body of another girl is found in an abandoned quarry. Who killed these girls and why?

The police are investigating the murder, including Inspector Slack, who is anything but slack, an energetic man, with a bustling manner. The police investigation is reinforced by the retired head of Scotland Yard, Sir Henry Clithering, whilst quietly in the background Miss Marple, at the request of Mrs Bantry, is also looking for the murderer.  I had little idea who it was even though I read the book very carefully. I had my suspicions and was completely wrong.

There are various suspects – Colonel Bantry, because the body was found in his library, Basil Blake who is connected with the film industry, has loud, drunken parties, George Bartlett, a rather dim-witted chap who is a guest at the Majestic, apparently the last person to see Ruby alive, and the Jefferson family – Conway Jefferson confined to a wheelchair, who was proposing adopting Ruby as his daughter, Mark, his son-in-law and Adelaide his daughter-in-law. Ruby was hired by the hotel as a dance hostess to partner Raymond Starr (also the tennis coach) after Josie Turner had sprained her ankle.

This is a satisfying murder mystery in that all the clues are there and when Miss Marple reveals who the killer is it is so clear that I don’t know why I hadn’t realised pages earlier, but that is Agatha Christie’s skill. A quick and enjoyable read.

For more reviews of Agatha Christie’s books have a look at the Agatha Christie Challenge.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

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Jane Austen has long been one of my favourite authors, ever since I read my mother’s copy of Pride and Prejudice   – it’s the brown book shown in the photo.

I’ve read this now so many times, watched TV and film adaptations that I’m not sure what to write about it. Usually I write about the plot and the characters to help me remember a book, but I don’t need to in this case.

What struck me this time in reading Pride and Prejudice is the language. Jane Austen is never sentimental or preachy, but treats serious subjects with humour and irony. Pride and Prejudice is full of wit and humour and timeless characters – foolish people, flirts, bores, snobs, self-centred and dishonest people as well as “good” people like Jane Bennet, who is determined to see good in everyone.

I was also aware of the many times she used the word “civilities”, and its variations. This was a society where manners were most important, behaving civilly towards each other and observing the correct etiquette. It’s a novel about manners as much as about pride and prejudice, about how people behave and how they see each other and the world. I like the original  title Jane Austen gave her book – First Impressions – because the first impression Elizabeth and Mr Darcy had of each other wasn’t love at first sight (or was it?), not a promising start. I used to try to work out which one was proud and which prejudiced, but decided that each of them is both. Fortunately, both weren’t too proud to admit they were wrong.

I enjoy reading about Jane Austen and her world and there are many books available. I have Maggie Lane’s Jane Austen’s World which looks at daily life in Jane’s England and includes accounts of the numerous dramatisations of her books. When I won a giveaway book from Dorothy at Of Books and Bicycles I was delighted that one of the books she had on offer was Jane Austen: a Life by Claire Tomalin. I’ve started to read it and now I’ve finished Pride and Prejudice I’ll be able to concentrate more on it. I love the cover, which shows the painting The Great House and Park at Chawton, owned by Jane’s brother Edward.

Several years ago I read Carol Shields’ biography, which lead me to James Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1869. He was her nephew and of course, knew her personally. I found a copy in my local library. In it he described her as a

clear brunette with a rich colour; she had full round cheeks, with mouth and nose small and well formed, bright hazel eyes, and brown hair, forming natural curls close round her face.

She was

fond of music and had a sweet voice, both in singing and speaking.

And he thought she was a calm and even person distinguished from other people by

that peculiar genius which shines out clearly enough in her works.

And I think that says it all – she was a genius.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Book Review

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I love the cover of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and the book itself is weirdly wonderful.

It’s only a short book, but there is so much packed inside its 146 pages and it’s definitely a book I’m going to re-read. The book’s narrator is Mary Katherine Blackwood, but I prefer her nickname of Merricat. She is anything but merry and as the book opens she is eighteen, living with her sister Constance and everyone else in her family is dead.

How they died is explored in the rest of the book. Merricat is an obsessive-compulsive, both she and Constance have rituals that they have to perform in an attempt to control their fears. They have set routines for cleaning the house, always putting things back in exactly the same places, never a fraction of an inch out of place. Merricat thinks she could have been born a werewolf, as the two middle fingers on both her hands are the same length and as she says in the opening paragraph she dislikes:

… washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantegenet, and Amantia phalloides, the death-cap mushroom.

The Blackwood family is feared and hated by the villagers and one of the major themes of the novel is persecution. They live in a grand house, away from the village, behind locked gates. Constance is hypersensitive and afraid, unable to leave the house, bringing in another major theme – agoraphobia. Then there is frail and feeble Uncle Julian, now wheelchair-bound engrossed in their family history, trying to make sense of what happened to them.

Just what did happen is only gradually revealed and Merricat is a most unreliable narrator. She is a disturbing and disturbed character. She makes trips into the village for shopping and library books, plagued by her fears of the children, that they might come near her, afraid they might touch her, that their:

mothers would come at me like a flock of taloned hawks; that was always the picture I had in my mind – birds descending, striking, gashing with razor claws.

She makes magical tours of the woods surrounding their house, checking where she has buried her treasures, a doll, a box of silver dollars and blue marbles which she imagines turn to jewels that are held together in a “powerful taut web” to protect them. These, together with a book nailed to a tree in the woods, are safeguards and as long as they are still intact Merricat believes that nothing can harm her and her family.

When Cousin Charles arrives, apparently looking for the Blackwood family fortune, Merricat’s world begins to disintegrate and terror takes hold. This terror is palpable as the outside world threatens to break into their lives.

I enjoyed this macabre tale, for its portrayal of fear, resentment, hostility and persecution of its disturbed and damaged characters.

Sunday Salon – Remember Me by Melvyn Bragg

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

remember-meI know that some people read one book at a time whereas others, like me,  have more on the go at once. Currently I’m reading two books, which is unusual for me. The two I’m reading are both long and detailed, one fiction, the other non-fiction,  and I thought it would be better if I didn’t get distracted by reading other books.

The non-fiction is A N Wilson’s After the Victorians, which I can just pick up and read without losing the thread. But the novel demands more concentrated reading. It is Remember Me by Melvyn Bragg, a fourth book about Joe Richardson. I read the earlier books a few years ago and waited with anticipation to read this one. Remember Me is fiction, but is based on Melvyn Bragg’s own life. I have to keep reminding myself it is fiction – the disclaimer at the front says that the characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. And Joe, recounting the story of his dead wife’s life to his daughter says

But fiction can be dangerous, especially when read as fact. (page 378)

It is a powerful novel, telling such a sad story, reflecting on Joe and Natasha’s lives together, their joys and despair, their depression and dashed hopes but I do wonder how much is fiction and how much is autobiographical. Memory and the limitations of memory are highlighted in the novel. Joe tells his daughter

There is no possibility and no point in trying to remember “everything” about Natasha; nor is strictly remembering the way of it for me. It is too fragmented, too unreliable, unshaped, a landscape without definition of final meaning, undermined by shames, veiled by guilt. Your mother has to be fiction and yet she  has to be attached to some of my recollections which rise up from the sea bed like monsters, or erupt into an unready mind like volcanoes or are frustratingly near yet ungraspable as they are today in Paris, in this cafe, with spring aching to be born, but the leaves  still furled, hidden in the bough. (page 262)

And again

Memory changes all the time and is dependent not so much on past certainties stored securely but on present challenges: memory fortifies the day, it regroups continuously to accommodate the moment. So my memories of your mother change as I write. (page 415)

Is this therapeutic? Joe thinks not and so does Melvyn Bragg, as reported in this interview in the Sunday Times last year. I’ll write more about the book when I’ve finished it and have let it settle more in my mind, it’s so full of anguish and longing.

As I near the end of the book, I’m wondering what to read next. Maybe it’s time for some Jane Austen – I’ve been meaning to re-read Pride and Prejudice for a while now or it may be Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon.tssbadge1 On the other hand I have the first three of Ian Rankin’s Rebus books, a compilation volume (borrowed from my son) to read, or an Agatha Christie mystery and the choices from my To-Be-Read piles are seemingly endless! It’s almost as pleasurable choosing as it is reading.

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

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This last February was the tenth anniversary of Iris Murdoch’s death. I’ve enjoyed several of her novels and biographies of her by John Bayley, Peter Conradi (an official biography)and A N Wilson (this last one was rather controversial). Recently I’ve read A Severed Head, first published in 1961  and have been wondering what to write about it without giving away too much of the plot.  As I was reading it I thought it would make a good farce and then I discovered that Iris Murdoch had adapted her book for the stage.

I felt I was looking into a different world and time. There are only a few characters – Martin, who is complacently happy with his mistress Georgie and his wife Antonia, Palmer who is Antonia’s analyst, Palmer’s half-sister, Honor, and Martin’s brother and sister Alexander and Rosemary. Iris Murdoch has made a tightly-structured novel, using Martin as the first-person narrator. Martin is shocked when his wife announces that she wants a divorce because she is deeply in love with Palmer. This sets in motion a sequence of events in which Martin’s weakness and need are clearly evident. Throughout the novel Murdoch uses the weather to indicate Martin’s mental and emotional state – the dense fog that covers the London streets and pervades his mind.

The novel depicts an amazing muddle and chaos ensues as Martin like a man possessed pursues Antonia, trying to keep Georgina at arms length whilst still not wanting to let her go.  He is a man in a mid-life crisis behaving like a teenager swept along by his emotions and falling in love at the drop of a hat.

There are some funny episodes as Martin moves his belongings out of his house into a flat and back again but set against that are serious issues such as abortion, marriage, incest and the struggle for power within relationships. Honor is one of the strangest characters. She is a powerful woman, an anthropologist who describes herself as

a severed head such as primitive tribes and old alchemists used to use anointing it with oil and putting a morsel of gold upon its tongue to make it utter prophecies.

She can wield a Japanese samurai sword like an expert, tossing a napkin  in the air she is able to slice it in half as it flutters to the floor. She has a pale sallow face with black gleaming hair, with “something animal-like and repellent in that glistening stare”. On her first appearance at Palmer’s house she appears to Martin like

some insolent and powerful captain, returning booted and spurred from a field of triumph, the dust of battle yet upon him, confronting the sovereign powers whom he was now ready if need be to bend to his will.

It’s not a novel I’d describe as comfortable reading, but it is entertaining.

(This is the 14th library book contributing to the Support Your Local Library Challenge.)

Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

agatha_christie_rcYears ago I read as many of Agatha Christie’s books as I could find, but I don’t remember ever reading Dead Man’s Folly before. This one features Hercule Poirot and Mrs Ariadne Oliver.  There is of course a murder with a most unlikely victim. It kept me guessing to the end as there is such a misleading tangle of evidence.

Mrs Ariadne Oliver has devised a Murder  Hunt for Sir George Stubbs at the Fete to be held at Nasse House, a big white Georgian house looking out over the river (based on Agatha’s own house Greenway in Devon). She has a feeling that something is wrong and summons Hercule Poirot to join her, ostensibly to present the prizes.

I did find the number of characters a bit bewildering – there are so many, including the bluff Sir George and his exotic and beautiful, if simple wife, Hattie; Miss Brewis (Sir George’s secretary); Mrs Folliat whose ancestors had lived at Nasse House for generations; a Member of Parliament and his wife; an atomic physicist and his wife; an architect; the butler; Lady Stubbs’s cousin; and a couple of girl hitch hikers in shorts who cause Poirot to shut his eyes in pain and reflect

 … that seen from the back, shorts were becoming to very few of the female sex. Why, oh why, must young women array themselves thus? Those scarlet thighs were singularly unattractive!

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The Murder Hunt goes badly wrong when the young Girl Guide, Marlene playing the part of the murder victim, is discovered in the boat house garotted with a piece of clothes line. Just who could possibly have a motive for killing Marlene? And what is the significance of the little white “Folly”, set high in the woods above the river?

The police have no idea and even Poirot is baffled for a while. The chief constable thinks he may have been “a little Belgian wizard in his day – but surely, man, his day’s over. He’s what age?” 

In the end, of course, it is Poirot who makes sense of it all.  I didn’t think this was as good as some of Agatha Christie’s other books, but it was still enjoyable.

To read more reviews of Agatha Christie’s books visit Kerrie’s Agatha Christie Reading Carnival.