I like Louise Penny mysteries. I’ve read many and reviewed many here and I don’t have much new to say. Same good stuff: descriptions of food, truth about a person can be read in their eyes, being a murder investigator Takes a Toll, etc etc. This latest offering, A World of Curiosities had me legit in suspense though – like had to put the book down, walk away and make a cup of tea I was so nervous – in suspense. Take note: I prefer my mysteries to be cozy (though I’m not sure Gamache qualifies) and very, very comforting. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy this one – I really did! Just that I had some genuine concern. And there was no inclusion of maple bacon or flaky warm croissants! True deviation from the series. Be warned. Make your tea first and be prepared to be a littllllee nervous.
Tag Archives: Mystery
A World of Curiosities: Louise Penny Made Me A Little Nervous.
Filed under Bestseller, Canadian Literature, Fiction, Mystery
40 Words for Sorrow: 🙁
After enjoying No Such Creature so much I got the first in the Cardinal detective series by Canadian crime writer (as the internet calls him) Giles Blunt. Four or five pages in I got worried: the murder victim is a young indigenous woman in a remote northern community. Okay, I think, so much crime fiction is about murdering young women and splashing their bodies about, let’s see where this goes. No where good. The detectives talk about how the “Indian” community is “different” and “not like us” and drops in Windigo stories and haunting spirits. Granted the novel pivots to killing other non-indigenous characters (men, too!), but the initial dive into the detective and the community is one of stereotypes and racist tropes. And then also that ugly women are destined to be unloved, unloveable and consequently MURDERERS. Sooooo… pass.
Filed under Canadian Literature, Fiction, Mystery
No Such Creature: Win #Win Win
Guys. Folks. Folx. PEOPLE. Giles Blunt’s No Such Creature is so good!
[What if I stopped writing in sentences and paragraphs and just did the whole post in hashtags because no one reads anymore (which I get is an ironic complaint when you’re reading a blog post about reading a book and so clearly you are someone who reads and I’d argue reads too much if you’re reading This? I DIGRESS). So here’s my attempt: #suspense #mystery #literary #fiction #men #actors]
Oh I already want to weep. Like how do the people tolerate themselves with all the ###.
Right, so here we go in round two:
I came to Giles Blunt by accident. Camping with all the family mum realized she’d already read her book and so we swapped. She ended up with something too on the nose about the 1918 pandemic (#why) and I found myself with Giles Blunt’s No Such Creature. And I thought, okay, camping book, fine fine. And then! What fun! What a romp! What great writing! More exclamations!
Following Max and his great-nephew Owen as they traipse around the country pulling off elaborate heists, the novel is as much about familial belonging and love as it is about the tense moments of robbery. No, it’s more about that. It’s about what we do out of guilt, out of commitment and out of love. It asks readers to imagine new constellations of family all while packing a steady pace of drama and intrigue. There are scenes of toes being cut off layered next to poignant scenes of childhood loss and grief. It’s a marvel!
There’s nothing provocative or political about the book – except maybe some out-of-wedlock-sex? #hahaha – and depending on where you’re at right now that may be a #win or a #loss. It’s really just two white men getting away with crimes so #theworld #shrug
Honestly. Closing weeks of summer this one is just #fun. We’re headed to the cottage next week and I just ordered the first in Blunt’s more popular and well feted Cardinal series. So stay tuned for more #enthusiasm from me if the series proves as delightful as this standalone contribution.
The Silent Wife: When a ‘Good’ Book is Determined by Its Success in Distraction
If you’ve ever found yourself confined to a space – think airplane, waiting room, pandemic hideout, room-room – you’re familiar with how important high quality fiction can be for taking you out of that space, even while you remain physically rooted. I find myself in the unique (for me) experience of spending a little over a week in a smallish room that takes me six small steps to walk across. In my initial packing for this trip my suitcase was almost entirely dedicated to thick and heavy mystery novels. When S. pointed out that I might rather some of the real estate be given over to snacks and clean clothes, I scoffed. Wasn’t he aware that a new novel was worth several days of sink laundered underwear? Well. He persuaded me to put all these books on my tablet and – for the week – suspend my hatred of reading on screens. It’s too soon to tell who was right, but having removed the books and filling it instead with a yoga mat, I am *still* washing underwear in my sink, and so we were both (probably) wrong #marriagehacks
Anyway. So far – three days in – I’ve read a book (and refreshed my news feeds about ten million times): The Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison (which now I’m thinking her first name must be part of the mystery?). It was okay? I feel like my sense of what is good writing has been completely obscured by my assessment of whether or not the book is sufficiently distracting. In this case it did well enough in that I read it in a day. Otherwise it’s pretty bland: rich white woman kills her husband in order to remain rich. I think the book tries to be interesting by layering on the rich white lady’s own complex psychology, but mostly it reads like a glossy magazine where everyone drinks expensive wine and has more than one couch.
The effort to be interesting piques with the back and forth narration between ‘her’ and ‘him,’ I suppose an effort to show how the murder is really a miscommunication – like had they been able to have full and honest conversations with one another then he might not have left and she might not have killed him (it’s not a spoiler btw to say she kills him – as much comes out on the first few pages). And what a warning for all of us in relationships (and aren’t we all in some kind of relationship) of the perils of avoidance, denial, deception and on and on. Like it’s so easy to just be honest. Or like honesty never got anyone in trouble.
Anyway. I’d hardly recommend it, but I wouldn’t scoff if you said you were planning to read it. A perfectly acceptable book for captivating your interest if you are stuck somewhere. Which isn’t the high bar I’d usually set for a novel, but then, here we are.
Literary Vice 