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evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
I guess Elizabeth George was worried that her Sayers shout-outs were too subtle, so Payment in Blood opens with a big pile of dubious Scottish eye-dialect. This one is a lot more likable than A Great Deliverance simply because it's got a sillier plot with a pettier motive, with actors murdering each other in a giant castle-turned-guesthouse for any number of ridiculous reasons while the sleuths try their best to react like they're working in the dark heart of the human whathaveyou instead of Grade A detective trash. There's one very human storyline about Barbara Havers' relationship with her ailing parents, and the rest is pure convolution - plus some silly Burdens of Nobility business that almost costs Lynley the investigation, and some even sillier angst about one of Lynley's love interests.
I'll probably skip the next book because it's got child abuse in it and I'm not interested in seeing that subject handled by George's Union Jack oven mitts. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to read any more books in the series. Probably life is too short, but life is too short for a lot of things that I somehow end up doing anyway.
Monstrous Regiment was good and Sylvester (by Georgette Heyer) was not bad, though not as funny as I expected it to be. About the former I have too much to say right now, and about the latter too little. Maybe in a couple of weeks when I get out of the busy season.
What I'm Reading Now
The Dollmaker is also chock full of eyealect, and at first I thought, "why on earth would you need to phonetically spell out 'a' and 'the'?" I was sold, though, when the characters move from Kentucky to the industrial hellscape of Detroit: I was so pleased that someone had noticed and recorded the all-purpose vowel slurries of my home state. Arnow is very meticulous about the way people talk.
Gertie is a young mother and artist who follows her husband to Detroit against her better judgement (she's pressured out of buying a farm by her mother, who thinks she should follow her man). He's gone up there for a wartime job and thinks he's going to save a truckload of money and be set for life. Instead, they sink all their ready cash into snow pants and bad grocery store cornmeal and get trapped in a debt cycle, while their kids learn to be embarrassed by their hillbilly parents. The descriptions of living crammed together in flimsy apartments and of children going out to watch "the pour" at a steel mill are fantastic. Sometimes the symbolism is so heavy-handed that it undoes itself - for example, the eccentric neighbor who goes door to door asking for dreams functions mainly as a reminder that novels are hard to construct convincingly. Sometimes it works. So far it's a non-stop misery-go-round, but not necessarily in a bad way.
What I Plan to Read Next
Somebody gave me an Agatha Raisin book, and now I'm going to read it! Maybe!
I guess Elizabeth George was worried that her Sayers shout-outs were too subtle, so Payment in Blood opens with a big pile of dubious Scottish eye-dialect. This one is a lot more likable than A Great Deliverance simply because it's got a sillier plot with a pettier motive, with actors murdering each other in a giant castle-turned-guesthouse for any number of ridiculous reasons while the sleuths try their best to react like they're working in the dark heart of the human whathaveyou instead of Grade A detective trash. There's one very human storyline about Barbara Havers' relationship with her ailing parents, and the rest is pure convolution - plus some silly Burdens of Nobility business that almost costs Lynley the investigation, and some even sillier angst about one of Lynley's love interests.
I'll probably skip the next book because it's got child abuse in it and I'm not interested in seeing that subject handled by George's Union Jack oven mitts. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to read any more books in the series. Probably life is too short, but life is too short for a lot of things that I somehow end up doing anyway.
Monstrous Regiment was good and Sylvester (by Georgette Heyer) was not bad, though not as funny as I expected it to be. About the former I have too much to say right now, and about the latter too little. Maybe in a couple of weeks when I get out of the busy season.
What I'm Reading Now
The Dollmaker is also chock full of eyealect, and at first I thought, "why on earth would you need to phonetically spell out 'a' and 'the'?" I was sold, though, when the characters move from Kentucky to the industrial hellscape of Detroit: I was so pleased that someone had noticed and recorded the all-purpose vowel slurries of my home state. Arnow is very meticulous about the way people talk.
Gertie is a young mother and artist who follows her husband to Detroit against her better judgement (she's pressured out of buying a farm by her mother, who thinks she should follow her man). He's gone up there for a wartime job and thinks he's going to save a truckload of money and be set for life. Instead, they sink all their ready cash into snow pants and bad grocery store cornmeal and get trapped in a debt cycle, while their kids learn to be embarrassed by their hillbilly parents. The descriptions of living crammed together in flimsy apartments and of children going out to watch "the pour" at a steel mill are fantastic. Sometimes the symbolism is so heavy-handed that it undoes itself - for example, the eccentric neighbor who goes door to door asking for dreams functions mainly as a reminder that novels are hard to construct convincingly. Sometimes it works. So far it's a non-stop misery-go-round, but not necessarily in a bad way.
What I Plan to Read Next
Somebody gave me an Agatha Raisin book, and now I'm going to read it! Maybe!
