Harriet Devine's Blog

Woman Not Reading

Rather mysteriously (to me at least) this lovely painting by the British artist Thomas Edwin Mostyn (1864-1930) is called 'Unsolved'. 

By the time you read this I'll be off on my hols - London first and then Sicily. Back at the end of the month. I meant to schedule some posts but I haven't. 

Innocent Blood by PD James

I thought I'd read everything by PD James, but not so. I saw this reviewed somewhere recently - can't at all remember where - and knew I had to read it sharpish. It is a truly amazing novel, probably James's best, and that's saying something. 

This is not a murder mystery or a detective story; it's essentially a psychological thriller of a particularly subtle and sophisticated kind. It's the story of young Philippa Palfrey who, at just eighteen, has decided to take the now legal opportunity of tracing her birth parents. Adopted as a child by wealthy, suave sociologist Maurice Palfrey and his anxious, ineffectual wife Hilda, she has created an idyllic fantasy about her birth parents, believing herself to be the child of a lady's maid and a young, handsome aristocrat. Her upbringing has been impeccable, she's clever and headed for Cambridge, but she wants to spend the summer exploring her roots. 

The first shock comes when she sees her original birth certificate and discovers her parents were a married couple, the Ductons. A bit of detective work on her part soon uncovers the whole truth: her father Martin, a humble clerk, was convicted of the rape of a child, and died in prison, while her mother Mary has been serving ten years for the girl's murder. When Philippa discovers that Mary has been moved to an open prison and is due for release very soon, she makes a massive decision. She has a little money, and she will spend it on renting a quiet flat in a distant area of London and spend the two months before university getting to know her birth mother.

Much of the story is devoted to the relationship between these two women. To Phillippa's surprise, they think they are fairly similar in many ways. Mary is cool, and not given to displays of emotion. She doesn't talk about the past, though she does eventually hand Phillippa something she says she wrote in prison, an account of what happened on the night of the child's death. The two of them become good, though not intimate, friends. They read books, go to galleries, scour the local junk shops for attractive inexpensive finds to cheer up their simple, basic flat. Soon they get a job, working together every evening in a fish and chip shop. Phillippa is pleased with the experiment, but has no contact with her adoptive parents, though she gives them her address in case of emergencies.

While all this is going on, something quite different and disturbing is happening in another part of London. Norman Scase is the father of the girl victim of the Ductons. He and his wife never got over the child's death, and now his wife has died, and he has heard that Mary is out of prison, he decides he must take revenge. He's a sad, plain, unremarkable little man, not lacking in intelligence, but his entire world is overshadowed by his need to avenge himself on 'the murderess', as he calls her to himself. Discovering where Phillippa and her mother are living takes some doing, but a combination of planning, luck, and skill finally reveals their address. Now he becomes a silent, secretive stalker, familiarising himself with their daily routines, planning how to gain access to the flat, arming himself with the means to carry out the inevitable deed. 

The narrative swings between the two women's story and that of Norman, with occasional glimpses of what is going on at the Palfreys. Both Maurice and Hilda are missing Phillippa, but it's worse for Hilda, whose life is desperately lonely and empty, apart from one agonising day once a month where she sits on the Juvenile Bench, a job she was persuaded into by Maurice, who, as we discover, actually wants the house to himself for the day so he can entertain his latest very young mistress. It's Hilda's weak, emotional nature that opens a chink in Phillippa's carefully constructed defences and makes way for the denouement.

The last part of the novel, as Norman's plotting is clearly getting him nearer to his goal, is unremittingly tense. A series of unfortunate events has made the flat a bit more accessible, and has caused the two women to decide on a house move. What happens I am obviously not able to tell you, but I will say that I was reading towards the end with huge anxiety, not knowing how things could possibly turn out for everyone. What I can tell you is that there are some considerable surprises, not least the ones in an epilogue which ties up some loose ends in very satisfactory ways.

So yes, a psychological thriller, but I've rarely if ever read one so beautifully observed and skilfully executed. In its mode it reminded me more of Ruth Rendell, or rather Barbara Vine, than of James, who is closely associated with the detective genre. In fact this one, written in 1980, halfway through her 14 Adam Dalgleish novels, is pretty much a one-off. If you've never read it, I strongly suggest you do so soon.

 

Girls Reading

This is Forbidden Books by Alexander Mark Rossi (1840-1916). It would be fascinating to know what the books are! and what the woman, presumably a teacher, will do to them for reading them. I think I've had this on here before but it rather appealed to me so, if so,  here it is again.

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Last year I was delighted to review Anthony Horowitz's experimental crime novel Magpie Murders, and did so very enthusiastically. Now we have this year's offering - equally experimental but in a very different way. That was a multilayered text, full of intertextuality, including extracts from a Christie-esque golden age crime novel.  This one is not like that - it's a supposedly straightforward account of the solution to a murder. However, one similarity is that the main protagonist of Magpie Murders was a literary editor turned detective and here in The Word is Murder the protagonist is a crime writer turned detective - but the crime writer here is called Anthony Horowitz and he shares most of his creator's life history and presumably his personality. This is a truly brilliant metafictional concept and works extremely well.

The story starts in 2011. Horowitz has just pressed the 'Send' button on his computer, dispatching the finished MS of his Sherlock Holmes sequel, The House of Silk, to the publishers. Now he's temporarily unsure what the future holds. His ongoing TV series, Foyle's War, is on the back burner until a decision is made whether to continue. He thinks he's finished the successful YA series on Alex Rider - he's written 10 books and feels its time to move on. He's been hired by Spielberg to write the screenplay for Tintin 2, but isn't at all sure his script will be accepted. So he's actually feeling somewhat at a loss, and, when he gets a surprise telephone call asking him to meet the caller, a retired detective inspector by the name of Hawthorne, he agrees to go. He just about remembers Hawthorne, who had been hired as an advisor on one of Horowitz's projects, and recalls that, though obviously useful and well-informed, he was awkward and rather unpleasant to work with. Now Hawthorne has a proposition:

'I want you to write about me,'

'What do you mean?' I asked

'I want you to write a book about me'.

'Why would I want to do that?

'For money.'

'You want to pay me?'

'No. I thought we'd go fifty-fifty.'

Hawthorne explains that he's doing consultancy work for the Met, and they've handed him a puzzling case. A wealthy widow, Diana Cowper, recently paid a visit to a firm of undertakers, where she planned and paid for her own fairly elaborate funeral. Later that she day, somebody murdered her. Horowitz is intrigued, but feels it's too far from his usual remit - not enough creative control - and turns the offer down. A few days later a chance question at a book signing ('Why don't you ever write anything real?') causes him to have second thoughts and soon he is following Hawthorne around as he tries to solve this indissoluble case. Essentially he becomes Watson to Hawthorne's Holmes and that's the pattern for the rest of the case.

In fact the resemblance is valid in more than one way. Hawthorne is clearly brilliant, always one step ahead of everyone else. He has the disconcerting ability of knowing things about people without being told, by Holmesian methods of following small physical clues. He refuses to divulge any facts about his past or his personal life, though Horowitz is constantly pointing out that he won't be able to write about him without them. He's condescending and patronising in his treatment of Horowitz, who he persists in calling Tony in spite of being told nobody ever calls him that. Horowitz, on the other hand, finds himself constantly wrong footed. He thinks he may have ways of helping the investigation, as Diana Cowper's son is a well-known actor, frequently working in Hollywood, and he follows up his theatre contacts, hoping to get some info that Hawthorne hasn't already acquired, but needless to say it misfires. He keeps thinking he's solved the case but he's always got it wrong, Eventually he finds himself in deep trouble - can Hawthorne get him out of it?

I found this novel a sheer delight from start to finish. I loved the way fact and fiction were constantly sliding together - a good example is the character of the actor/film star Damian Cowper, whose stage and film work are a wonderful amalgam of that of a number of other successful British actors (he's just back from the US, for instance, where he's been filming a successful TV series called Homeland). It was huge fun trying to separate the truth from the fiction, and I'm sure there were more instances I missed. Characters like Horowitz's agent, his wife and his sons put in an appearance, and several of his other media contacts too. Great fun to read, and I'm absolutely sure it was great fun to write too. As for Hawthorne, the only definitively and wholly fictional central character, he's a totally brilliant creation and we can only hope that he may reappear again, though maybe this joke is only good for one outing? In any case I need hardly say that this is highly recommended.

 

Shiny Review: The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

I can't remember now whether I requested this novel or whether it came to me unsolicited. Whichever is the case, I'm really glad it did. Lars Matting is a Norwegian writer who had a huge success with a surprise bestseller two years ago when he published his non-fiction book, Norwegian Wood: Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is the first of his novels to be published in English, beautiful translated by Paul Russell Garrett, and I absolutely loved it. My Shiny review appeared last month, and here is part of what I said about it:

This lovely, sometimes sad, always thought-provoking book is about one man’s search for his personal history, for identity, and for the parents he lost as a tiny child. Edvard Hirifjell has been brought up by his grandfather, Bestefar, in a remote farm on the coast of Norway. Together they grow potatoes and keep sheep. All Edvard knows about his life before this is that both his parents died in France and that he, aged three, mysteriously disappeared for four days before he turned up in the office of a local doctor.

Edvard's search takes his far from Norway, first to the Shetland Island and later to France, where his parents met their mysterious death more than twenty years earlier. 

Written in lyrical prose, with a wonderful sense of place, this is a novel of tremendous depth and richness. You can read my full review here.

Women Reading a Letter

I had quite a different painting lined up for this weekend but then I spotted this one and decided to use it instead. It's by the celebrated American genre painter Harry Herman Roseland (c.1867-1950) and it's called 'An Important Letter'. I love pictures that tell stories and this one clearly does. But what is the story? The letter is clearly important enough that the women need to stop work and gather round to read it as a group. But who is it from and what does it say? I'd love to hear some suggestions.