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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Probably my least favourite Marlowe book. It’s the most casually racist so far and just doesn’t have that same sense of time and place that the other books do.
Guessed this one a bit early, especially compared to Big Sleep. All that said, twas a good read.
Four and a half stars. Chandler continues to impress, even though my favorite remains The Big Sleep. Marlowe has some interesting things happen to him here: he's shot full of dope and locked in a nuthouse at one point and there seems to be some homoerotic subtext at one point, too. This entry in the Chandler canon shows a little bit of a softer side of Marlowe, while still retaining his drunken, stubborn, racist tendencies. If anything, Marlowe even seems to drink more in this one than he usually does. The moral ambiguities and grey areas of Southern California during the 1930s also seem to be amplified a bit more as well.
The smirk never left my face as I read this. What dialogue! What turns of phrases! This was so much better to me than The Big Sleep. I can't wait to read everything Chandler has written.
While I gave both five out of five stars, I have to say I enjoyed this one even more than The Big Sleep. It's marvelously plotted, and the characters are very well-written. Parts of it are really quite funny, as well; I particularly enjoyed one part where Marlowe is coming to, having been knocked out, and he hears a voice describing what the course of events prior to his being knocked over the head might have been. Then he realizes that the voice is his own, and he is actually mulling things over out loud, whereupon he tells himself to shut up. I can't do the scene justice in that description, but it's really priceless.
Read Farewell, My Lovely (1940) if:
you want to read some fine evocative prose:
"Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk car, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked alone now. The noises died behind me, the hot dishonest light, became a fumbling glare. Then the lightless finger of a black pier jutted seaward into the dark."
you want to feel recognized in your human clumsiness:
"I looked at my watch, put my pipe in an ashtray, and then had to look at my watch again to see what time it was."
you are interested in the world's strangest and original similes:
"I lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber's handkerchief."
"I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups."
"The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love."
you have an amazing sense of humor (this detective is hilarious):
"I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of black shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared at it. Marriott saw me staring at it.
'An interesting bit,' he said negligently, 'I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial's Spirit of Dawn.
'I thought it was Klopstein's Two Warts on a Fanny,' I said.
Don't read Farewell, My Lovely if:
You want to read a technically good detective story.
you want to read some fine evocative prose:
"Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk car, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked alone now. The noises died behind me, the hot dishonest light, became a fumbling glare. Then the lightless finger of a black pier jutted seaward into the dark."
you want to feel recognized in your human clumsiness:
"I looked at my watch, put my pipe in an ashtray, and then had to look at my watch again to see what time it was."
you are interested in the world's strangest and original similes:
"I lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber's handkerchief."
"I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups."
"The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love."
you have an amazing sense of humor (this detective is hilarious):
"I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of black shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared at it. Marriott saw me staring at it.
'An interesting bit,' he said negligently, 'I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial's Spirit of Dawn.
'I thought it was Klopstein's Two Warts on a Fanny,' I said.
Don't read Farewell, My Lovely if:
You want to read a technically good detective story.
(4.5) I was going through my list of to-read books when it occurred to me that I hadn't dived into any of Raymond Chandler's Marlowe series besides The Big Sleep. I loved The Big Sleep; it's the novel that put me on to private eye works. Sadly, seeing as how most fictional private eyes are, with few exceptions, pale imitations of the original, I never thought to go back to Chandler, especially after I discovered Ross Macdonald. But after hitting up 16 out of 18 Lew Archer novels, I wanted to try something different and so here we are...
While The Big Sleep will rightly be remembered as Chandler's best, Farewell, My Lovely is more tightly plotted. I read most of it in one sitting, unable to put it down. Chandler's writing is smooth, his gift for dialogue unparalleled. You gotta take the bad with the good when you're reading him; Marlowe is a racist and misogynist. But this is a hell of a mystery tale that rockets the reader from beginning to end.
While The Big Sleep will rightly be remembered as Chandler's best, Farewell, My Lovely is more tightly plotted. I read most of it in one sitting, unable to put it down. Chandler's writing is smooth, his gift for dialogue unparalleled. You gotta take the bad with the good when you're reading him; Marlowe is a racist and misogynist. But this is a hell of a mystery tale that rockets the reader from beginning to end.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated