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robinwalter's Reviews (1.87k)
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was an interesting read, and a somewhat conflicting one. I scored it 4/5 which means that overall I liked it quite a bit, and there was a lot to like. The two characters who for me were the leads especially. The newly married Rhoda and her protégé Duggie. Stevenson made them both very likeable and she wrote about them with the sort of deep affection that is also evident in her descriptions of the book’s other main character - the Scottish Borders where the story is set. The story is basically sweet and straightforward, in the end good things happen to good people, and bad people get what they deserve - in a civilised low-key fashion of course. So, what's not to like?
In a review of a book by Stevenson's neighbour Molly Clavering, I mentioned that in several of Stevenson's works there were glimpses of what I called misogyny. This story presented considerable evidence of that attitude. Perhaps the most egregious example is the way in which Duggie's mother is described
Lizzie was rather a stupid woman
"Stupid" is a harsh pejorative, and toward the end of the book when we find out why she is so described (at which point she has been upgraded from stupid to "silly"), it's clear that it was poor judgement compounded by a lack of life experience and the trauma of being a very young mother during wartime. Her actions are described in this way:
“Silly people are often cruel,” said Adam. “You know that yourself. People with no imagination are cruel because they don’t realise what other people are suffering.”
What makes the charge of misogyny relevant here is that we learn that her husband made decisions which were at least almost as ill-thought-out and “selfish”, but he is not criticised at all. Instead he is viewed as the innocent victim of his wife's "stupidity", "silliness", "selfishness", when the key decisions they each took separately were remarkably alike. The woman is the villain, the man is the victim.
The very first instance of this misogyny that really caught my eye in the story was the one that follows:
Rhoda had imagined—most foolishly as she now perceived—that painting was a more important career than marriage
When I read that, the troglodytic mindset that displayed did annoy me, but I was also amused by a contrast that occurred to me immediately. Ngaio Marsh created a character who was a gifted painter, but the difference between Agatha Troy and Rhoda is the difference between night and day. Marsh described Troy as the closest of her characters to herself, and squadrons of flying pigs would have darkened the skies over the frozen wasteland of Hell before Agatha Troy ever subsumed her career to that of her husband. I'm a little biased here, because Troy was my favourite in that partnership, but it was a partnership, a union of peers. Rhoda, on the other hand recounted her life story to someone like this:
Nan heard how Rhoda had very nearly lost James by her own stupidity; how she had refused him because of her painting and then regretted it
Stevenson's willingness and tendency to write demeaningly and patronisingly about women is matched by her enthusiasm for writing panegyrically about male characters.
Rhoda realised how wrong she was to put her career ahead of marriage, but the men in the story are lauded for putting their work first at all times.
We are told at length about Duggie’s hidden talents, from his natural flair for drawing and painting to his teaching himself to read, and then doing so voraciously and widely, and then there is this description of his acting ability:
Rhoda realised how wrong she was to put her career ahead of marriage, but the men in the story are lauded for putting their work first at all times.
We are told at length about Duggie’s hidden talents, from his natural flair for drawing and painting to his teaching himself to read, and then doing so voraciously and widely, and then there is this description of his acting ability:
the honours of the evening were undoubtedly Shylock’s. The bent figure in the shabby black gown and the snow white wig was an extraordinarily convincing personality. Duggie did not shout like the other children, his voice was low but clearly audible and he played his part in an unusually sympathetic way. Here was no cringing coward or ranting villain but a dignified and pathetic old man, a man with mistaken ideals but justified in his own eyes for his vindictiveness
I liked Duggie, and was impressed and moved by that passage, but there’s a stark contrast with one passage in the story that I actually found disturbing in the brutal frankness with which a character outlined the perceived ideal ‘end’ for a young female:
he had hoped that school would help her to become more like other girls, to conform to the pattern as it were. … She would either conform to the pattern or else retire into her shell and remain there for the rest of her life.
The idea that conformity is ipso facto the ideal outcome for an adolescent female, with the only other possible outcome being an unhealthy introversion, and that boarding schools are excellent precisely because they exist primarily to impose that conformity was nauseating.
The moral of the story is clear: boys are great, and if they get the right help they can grow up to be amazing men, even if they're raised by “stupid” “selfish” women who don't deserve their husbands. A truly wise woman, on the other hand, will realise that marriage should be her ultimate goal and her husband should be the centre of the universe.
This book was written in the 1950s, which is why it is harder for me to excuse the fact that it reeks of attitudes prevalent in the 1850s. In the end, the positives outweigh the negatives: Stevenson's gift for descriptive writing, especially about the landscape that she loved and when she was writing about the characters she clearly had affection for, made the overall experience of right reading this book pleasant. Even though her attitudes toward the roles and place of women in society seem primitive and patronising when compared to those of her contemporary and my compatriot, Marsh.
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This one started very brightly, one of the most fun Flynns I've read so far. It was bright and breezy and seemed to be progressing nicely. The style of the language was consciously lighthearted, at times hinting at a Wodehouse feel.
Then it swerved, and I thought "Really?! Dragging out THAT old chestnut again?"
The story took a twist that reeked of a gimmick used in the very first Bathurst story, and I was not impressed. I rolled my eyes and wondered why he'd gone back there again (with a variant) but decided to plough on anyway.
After a while, the pointers suggesting the author was reusing the gimmick from the debut novel were so strong they seemed TOO strong, and had me thinking he was laying it on too thick and that it was all an elaborate feint.
in THAT deduction, I was correct, which was just as well, because I never came within cooey of guessing who actually did the deed. Well played Mr Flynn, well played.
Then it swerved, and I thought "Really?! Dragging out THAT old chestnut again?"
The story took a twist that reeked of a gimmick used in the very first Bathurst story, and I was not impressed. I rolled my eyes and wondered why he'd gone back there again (with a variant) but decided to plough on anyway.
After a while, the pointers suggesting the author was reusing the gimmick from the debut novel were so strong they seemed TOO strong, and had me thinking he was laying it on too thick and that it was all an elaborate feint.
in THAT deduction, I was correct, which was just as well, because I never came within cooey of guessing who actually did the deed. Well played Mr Flynn, well played.
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
After the first two books of my 2023 DeanStreetDecember yielded a disappointment followed by a DNF, Dalton delivered delight.
This was another enjoyable outing from one of my favourite "GA" detectives. Collier is so very likeable - low-key laidback and quietly good at his job. Although that latter was less in evidence with this case. Dalton did a great job of littering the story with an absolute plethora of potential killers, resulting in quite a high body count. Unlike the Travers mystery that kicked off my December 2023 list where no one had the common decency to die until the story was more than a third done, this one got STRAIGHT down to business, with the first of several corpses on display gratifyingly early in the story. I didn't feel so bad about not working it out since Collier was thorooughly stumped too. One thing that impressed me was the utter lack of remorse from the murderer when caught, especially given the trigger for the first murder.
Once again too, another shout out to Dean Street Press for securing Curtis Evans' services in writing the intro - a wonderful explanation of the wartime blackout backdrop to the story and a helpful mention of a real historical serial killer I'd not heard of before. From begining to end, this was good read.
This was another enjoyable outing from one of my favourite "GA" detectives. Collier is so very likeable - low-key laidback and quietly good at his job. Although that latter was less in evidence with this case. Dalton did a great job of littering the story with an absolute plethora of potential killers, resulting in quite a high body count. Unlike the Travers mystery that kicked off my December 2023 list where no one had the common decency to die until the story was more than a third done, this one got STRAIGHT down to business, with the first of several corpses on display gratifyingly early in the story. I didn't feel so bad about not working it out since Collier was thorooughly stumped too. One thing that impressed me was the utter lack of remorse from the murderer when caught, especially given the trigger for the first murder.
Once again too, another shout out to Dean Street Press for securing Curtis Evans' services in writing the intro - a wonderful explanation of the wartime blackout backdrop to the story and a helpful mention of a real historical serial killer I'd not heard of before. From begining to end, this was good read.
I started this book looking forward to a relaxing read, recovery from the disappointment of the underwhelming start to my Dean Street December 2023 that I experienced with Christopher Bush's "The Case of the Running Mouse". I have enjoyed most of the Molly Clavering books that I've read to date, but sadly I could not finish this one.
I started this expecting a gentle comedy of errors, a mildly-paced story where nothing much happened but where the emphasis was on people and places being both nice and pleasant. By the halfway mark what I got instead was political propaganda, and characters I could not like.
I loathe politics, and for my entire adult life I have gone out of my way to avoid interacting with politics to the extent humanly possible. The first half of this book however, was full of political statements expressed without subtlety and with a frequency and force that made it seem very likely the views expressed were those of the author.
I try to be very careful and resist the lazy tendency to assume that a character is a mouthpiece for how the author feels, but when every "pro"tagonist expresses the same point of view repeatedly, and no counterpoint is provided by any character who is portrayed sympathetically, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the author was expressing her own political convictions. At least in the half of the book that I got through those convictions boil down to, "most of the aristocracy/landed gentry work much harder than the proletariat, and do so out of pure altruism, the peons should love us and be grateful”. This is a perspective I cannot share and one that I ultimately could not put up with having repeatedly expressed as a significant part of the story. A few examples to illustrate:
Though the village was strongly Socialist in its politics—Communist, some of the stauncher die-hard Conservatives said darkly—the Cranstouns were well known and respected in a dour unyielding way. Jane sometimes felt that she did not altogether blame them for their socialist sympathies. (e.a.)
Of course they were unjust, these angry, hungry Socialists, where men like Sir Magnus, and women like his wife were concerned, men and women who worked far longer than Union hours for the good of their employees and poorer neighbours, on the County Council, on education boards, and committees without number. Nor had the Socialists any real idea of a landowner’s difficulties, the crippling death-duties, the constant expense of an estate that must always in these times of progress be a liability, the appearances that had to be kept up for the sake of morale if for nothing else.
It’s a thousand pities they can’t be made to see that the Conservatives are far more progressive than their own party, and that at bottom the aims of both aren’t so entirely different after all.”
It seemed to Gilbert that they were poles apart in outlook if not in actual policy, for the Conservatives still had the good old-fashioned idea of all for the people and nothing by the people
At this point, I should add in the interest of being "fair and balanced" that I’ve often dropped books where the author used characters as mouthpieces for political propaganda/proselytising on the other end of the political spectrum too.
Prior to beginning this book, I had a slight preference for Molly Clavering's stories over those of her more famous neighbour, D.E.Stevenson because of my discomfort with some of the views expressed (and seemingly endorsed) in Ms Stevenson's books. Her cousin, Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote extensively about his experiences in and affection for Samoa. Despite being very much a product of his time and upbringing, the indications are that the sincerity of his affection for the place has never been doubted in Samoa, where he is still held in high esteem. Ms Stevenson on the other hand often had her "positive" characters express points of view that I found disturbingly xenophobic, albeit very much the norm for people of her era and background. It is not hard in her books to find passages redolent with the paternalistic patronising misogyny and imperialist racism for which "Britannia" is (in)famous. Before starting this book my experience with Ms. Clavering's works had been very different.
It was disappointing to me to read Ms. Clavering express views of this sort and more importantly, make them central to the story as she did.
Since I read fiction for enjoyment and since the persistent political propaganda in the first half of this book robbed me of any, the sensible thing to do was to abandon it. That decision was made easier by the fact that quite apart from the political worldview expressed repeatedly by the "heroine", the book was very short on likeable characters. The setup for the romantic plot was bizarre, especially in terms of how the heroine justified it to herself. She came across as extremely passive-aggressive and whiny, while her younger sister was just a brat. I ploughed on through the "Tories are terrific" electioneering all the way to almost halfway, hoping to see some signs that these two central characters might become likeable, but when they did not, I fell back on the mantra that guides my reading choices – "life is too short". I am sure that there are many who will love this book, but I will abandon "Love" and cling to hope – the hope that the next Clavering I read is one I can finish.
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
At one point in my wading through this story I put it down to give myself break by ironing some shirts. That's a fairly clear sign the book was not clicking with me. This is the 27th Ludovic Travers story, and the 16th I've read, and it was heavy going.
The story seemed oddly slow to get going, and Travers' first-person narrative did more 'fourth-wall' breaking than I remember from other stories, directly addressing the reader with expressions like "you know what I mean" and "you're probably wondering how I missed it"
His first foray into PI land seemed implausibly inept for a detective of his skill, the shambolic fake name a particularly power example of this clumsiness.. Add to that the fact that the first third of the story dragged so much, I wondered how he got away with wasting so much paper - which made me smile when I came across this line:
The story seemed oddly slow to get going, and Travers' first-person narrative did more 'fourth-wall' breaking than I remember from other stories, directly addressing the reader with expressions like "you know what I mean" and "you're probably wondering how I missed it"
His first foray into PI land seemed implausibly inept for a detective of his skill, the shambolic fake name a particularly power example of this clumsiness.. Add to that the fact that the first third of the story dragged so much, I wondered how he got away with wasting so much paper - which made me smile when I came across this line:
"it was war-time, and paper was rationed"
I generally enjoy Bush's writing style, flashes like this one a big part of why I stuck it out
with a face something like Garbo’s, though the last one in the world to wish to be alone
It was not an awful story, rather one that simply failed to grab me. The second of the two homicides was sad rather than evil or scary, and that leads me to the BEST thing about this book for me:
I read this book as part of "Dean Street December", a reading challenge involving books published by Dean Street Press, and their edition of this book has two features that made the reading experience worthwhile - Curtis Evans' introduction, which is more pacy and engaging than the story itself and ESPECIALLY his wonderful analysis of the societal context of the book in his afterword. THe second (and most graphic) homicide in the story was very much a product of its time, and Mr Evans' analysis of how Bush's own life and real life events of the era shaped both the writing of the story itself and the way the characters were presented was fascinating. As a murder mystery, this one was a miss for me, but thanks to Dean Streat Press and Curtis Evans, the bonus material was truly that, a real bonus that redeemed the book.
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
It's Wodehouse, nuff said. The strongest stories in this anthology were the golf shorts, followed by the Blandings tale, Ukridge not quite quite for me.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Another outstanding work by Durkin. This one is more about the HOW of etymology, but the specific examples cited are fascinating. One piece of advice - the book will be easier to follow and more informative if the reader is familiar with IPA (I regret not knowing it)
challenging
informative
medium-paced
The author did an EXCELLENT job at creating analogies that let lay readers like me imagine they might have an inkling of what she was talking about. Her explanations of how data collection has improved and why certain theories and models seem more plausible than others were well constructed and clearly presented.
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If ever a book deserved to be called zany, this one does. FAST paced, frenetic and fun. A good continuation of the series not in spite of being way OTT, but because of being way OTT
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
VERY fast moving, I'm not sure I have the en ergy to keep up if the same storyline is dragged out across all 9 books