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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
Rendu là dans la série, on s'entend que chaque tome additionnel se lit quasiment une fanfiction destinée au lectorat le plus fidèle (& le plus porté sur la romance & les citations de Shakespeare), mais ça prend juste l'arrivée inopinée de quelques bons cactus meurtriers (spoilers?) pour racheter la patente.
Sayers' witty dialog and interesting characters made this especially enjoyable for me.
I hated this and couldn't even finish it -- I don't like Lord Peter Wimsey at all, and I don't like the change in Harriet Vane's character.
An elegant British cosy mystery. But this novel is more than just a mystery as Sayers' explores the challenges of a newly married couple as they begin to work more as a couple and also describes Wimsey's PTSD (of course in the 1930s, it wasn't called that). The representation of "class" is discomforting, but shows the times.
This was my first time reading a book by Sayers in the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane series, although I've seen movie adaptations of their earlier stories. Lord Peter and Harriet have just married and escaped (from reporters and relatives) for their honeymoon to a country house they purchased near the village where Harriet was raised. When they arrive, however, the previous owner is missing and the house has not been prepared for them. After getting a key from a relative and making the house somewhat comfortable for the first night, the mystery becomes more perplexing when debtors start showing up the next day to whom the previous owner, Mr. Noakes, owed money. While a sweep works on trying to clear the house's stopped up chimneys and entertaining not only the debtors but also the local vicar who pays a call, a body is discovered. The honeymooners next play hosts to the police and later movers come to repossess the furniture. Of course the Wimseys eventually solve the case. Written in 1937, this book features witty dialogue between Lord Peter and Harriet, colorful characters, and the super-efficient, ever-prepared valet Bunter who keeps everything running.
Read again in March 2022 because I just watched the series of 3 Lord Peter / Harriet Vane mysteries adapted in the 1980s. Strong Poison / Have His Carcase / Gaudy Night are three of the four Wimsey-Vane novels written by Dorothy Sayers. (The BBC was apparently unable to get rights to "Busman's Honeymoon" which is a real shame because they did a great job with the other three.)
So, anyway, I wanted to "finish" the storyline so to speak and therefore re-read this old favorite. (And incidentally, discovered I didn't actually own a copy. That oversight has now been rectified.)
Why I think I like the Wimsey-Vane pairing: because it describes two intelligent, independent people stumbling toward something that is Greater than the sum of their individual selves.
Without being graphic, Sayers writes a swoon worthy payoff to the previous books in the series. But you will have to have your brain engaged (or at least, Google translate). One of my favorite lines comes when Harriet wakes up first the morning after they are married. Eventually she asks her new husband, "Sais-tu enfin qui je suis?"
And I think that's a pretty succinct way to sum up what many of us want in marriage: "Do you know who I am? Do you really know me? And, knowing me, do you still want me and love me?"
See? Swoon.
One star subtracted only because the book is over-longish (a few spots could have been more tightly edited. As in "Gaudy Night", Sayers does get carried away a few times) and the ending is just heart-breakingly abrupt. Because once you know and love Lord and Lady Peter, you will always want more of their adventures and insight.
(P.S. Yes, I've read Jill Paton Walsh's continuation of Sayers' characters in a new series. Paton Walsh is a skilled author on her own but she's not Sayers. It's just not the same.)
So, anyway, I wanted to "finish" the storyline so to speak and therefore re-read this old favorite. (And incidentally, discovered I didn't actually own a copy. That oversight has now been rectified.)
Why I think I like the Wimsey-Vane pairing: because it describes two intelligent, independent people stumbling toward something that is Greater than the sum of their individual selves.
Without being graphic, Sayers writes a swoon worthy payoff to the previous books in the series. But you will have to have your brain engaged (or at least, Google translate). One of my favorite lines comes when Harriet wakes up first the morning after they are married. Eventually she asks her new husband, "Sais-tu enfin qui je suis?"
And I think that's a pretty succinct way to sum up what many of us want in marriage: "Do you know who I am? Do you really know me? And, knowing me, do you still want me and love me?"
See? Swoon.
One star subtracted only because the book is over-longish (a few spots could have been more tightly edited. As in "Gaudy Night", Sayers does get carried away a few times) and the ending is just heart-breakingly abrupt. Because once you know and love Lord and Lady Peter, you will always want more of their adventures and insight.
(P.S. Yes, I've read Jill Paton Walsh's continuation of Sayers' characters in a new series. Paton Walsh is a skilled author on her own but she's not Sayers. It's just not the same.)
It was a bit hard to get into - felt like it was written for folks who are already familiar with the protagonists. But once I did it was intriguing enough, not so much for the style of writing but for the glimpse in time. By writing about an unusual couple Sayers is saying a lot about what was usual back them. It feels even more distant from now than it did when I was a kid. Amazing how much the world has changed in a century.
I love this. I'm a fan of Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and by extension Harriet Vane, and this, was rather lovely. Sayers describes the story between Wimsey and Vane as a romance into which mystery butts its ugly head. This was the last she published (though Jill Patton picked up a last story and finished it within the last couple years, then picked up the series to mixed reviews) and the tone of the characters and their relationship change when they get married - I'd be surprised if they didn't change a bit.
It's not my favorite Dorothy L. Sayers book, but it's good even so...
It's not my favorite Dorothy L. Sayers book, but it's good even so...