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A review by merqri
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
4.0
Bringing historical facts together and weave a clever piece of fiction though it is rare and if done well, very enjoyable. The interpretation of Murder is such a tale.
Dr Sigmund Freud travelled to the United States of America to give lectures at a university. During that time a murder mystery unravels and a ferocious detective along with a Freud’s disciple take on to solve the case. This is a basic premise of the book, and on that, it delivers well. The story is compelling and even though there are no major twists in the tale, the ending is very convincing.
He has done painstaking research to describe the city of New York of 1900s. The rich families, the social connections show up in his writing, and so does the rise of electric taxies the labour strikes and whatnot. New York sounds like a very bustling place based on his writing. His writing is very fluent apart from the occasional rarely used words which were hard for me to follow. Overall, I think I enjoyed his writing.
The lead character is shown to have an interest in Shakespeare, and quite often he references the iconic line from hamlet, To Be or Not To Be. Towards the end, the author gives out an interpretation of that line and its a well-written part of the book. That, and his interpretation of Freud’s Oedipal complex, are the two highlights of the writing in this book.
Thankfully, the author has given a separate note segregating the fact from fiction and that is very helpful for someone who is not well-versed with the history of New York. It was my gripe when I saw Tarantino’s movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that the work of art should have some context to help the uninitiated, which this book has.
Spoilers ahead.
Although he has put in a lot of threads together to create a sense of whodunit, eventually you realise that they are not really well tangled. The perpetrators are quite different from the triumvirate, and there are really two different stories that take place. The overall involvement of Freud in mystery-solving is kept quite minimal. That was the only bad part of the book. If you are bringing in one of the famous figures in your fictional universe, you could make a little more use of that character.
Apart from this nitpicking, I generally had a good experience with the book and would recommend it.
Dr Sigmund Freud travelled to the United States of America to give lectures at a university. During that time a murder mystery unravels and a ferocious detective along with a Freud’s disciple take on to solve the case. This is a basic premise of the book, and on that, it delivers well. The story is compelling and even though there are no major twists in the tale, the ending is very convincing.
He has done painstaking research to describe the city of New York of 1900s. The rich families, the social connections show up in his writing, and so does the rise of electric taxies the labour strikes and whatnot. New York sounds like a very bustling place based on his writing. His writing is very fluent apart from the occasional rarely used words which were hard for me to follow. Overall, I think I enjoyed his writing.
The lead character is shown to have an interest in Shakespeare, and quite often he references the iconic line from hamlet, To Be or Not To Be. Towards the end, the author gives out an interpretation of that line and its a well-written part of the book. That, and his interpretation of Freud’s Oedipal complex, are the two highlights of the writing in this book.
Thankfully, the author has given a separate note segregating the fact from fiction and that is very helpful for someone who is not well-versed with the history of New York. It was my gripe when I saw Tarantino’s movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that the work of art should have some context to help the uninitiated, which this book has.
Spoilers ahead.
Although he has put in a lot of threads together to create a sense of whodunit, eventually you realise that they are not really well tangled. The perpetrators are quite different from the triumvirate, and there are really two different stories that take place. The overall involvement of Freud in mystery-solving is kept quite minimal. That was the only bad part of the book. If you are bringing in one of the famous figures in your fictional universe, you could make a little more use of that character.
Apart from this nitpicking, I generally had a good experience with the book and would recommend it.