Tag: unreliable narrators

Day 366: The Pale Blue Eye

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Cover for The Pale Blue EyeGus Landor, a retired New York police detective, is dying, and he writes the account of his last case in The Pale Blue Eye. Gus is a lonely widower who earlier moved up to the mountains near the Hudson Valley with his wife and daughter to help improve his lungs. But his wife died within a year, and his daughter left him soon after. So, Gus lives as a veritable hermit.

On an October morning in 1830, an officer from West Point fetches him. The body of a cadet named Fry was found hanged the night before, presumably a suicide, but during the night his body was stolen and later he was found with his heart removed. Superintendent Thayer and Commander Hitchcock wish to hire Landor to find who stole the heart. Landor is quick to figure out that Fry did not commit suicide but was murdered. A mysterious message clutched in his hand seems to indicate an assignation.

Landor soon realizes that his investigations on the reservation will be sorely hampered without the assistance of an inside man. So, he asks for the help of an unusual cadet he has met who is not in good favor with the academy–Cadet Edgar Allan Poe.

This is a clever novel with a macabre mystery that would have been completely to Poe’s taste. Just when we think everything is figured out, Bayard presents us with a twist. His portrait of the young Poe, bombastic, ridiculously romantic, and fearfully intelligent, is a great pleasure.

I would only fault the novel for a slow-paced middle section, and only because Landor doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Most of the plot is driven forward by Poe’s reports, which begin to dwell on his infatuation with a lovely young woman, Lea, the daughter of the post doctor, who unfortunately suffers from the “falling sickness,” or epilepsy.

Of course, Landor is doing something–he’s deciphering Fry’s diary–but since he doesn’t relate its revelations, his investigation seems to flag, and he barely seems to look into a second death, with a second missing heart. Otherwise, the novel is well written, with well-developed and interesting characters and a surprising ending.

Day 214: The Sense of an Ending

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Cover for The Sense of an EndingBest Book of the Week!

The Sense of an Ending is a quiet novel that made me stop and consider. It is a meditation on memory–how we reinterpret past events. It is also about the lost opportunities of life.

Tony Webster begins the novel by considering his past, particularly his relationships with his pals from school. He and two other close friends chose to enlarge their circle to include a new boy, Adrian Finn, who was extremely intelligent and analytical. Adrian’s indifference to seeming cool made him very cool indeed. The four friends remained close throughout college and for awhile after, until Adrian committed suicide.

Tony also remembers his first serious relationship, with Veronica Ford, particularly an unpleasant weekend he spent with Veronica’s family. After they broke up, Adrian went on to date Veronica. He wrote Tony a letter apprising him of this as if he were asking permission to date her, and Tony’s recollection is that he ironically assented.

Tony has lead a comfortable life avoiding too much effort in his relationships. He sees himself as a “peaceable man.” He believes he understands the events from the past until he receives a legacy from Sarah Ford, Veronica’s mother–the only member of her family who seemed sympathetic during that long-ago visit. In addition to a small bequest, she has left him Adrian’s diary. This legacy confuses him. Why would a person he only met once leave him anything, and why would she possess Adrian’s diary? When Tony asks for it, he finds that Veronica has taken it.

In Tony’s attempts to gain the diary and his subsequent inquiries, he learns things that force him to re-examine and reinterpret his memories of long ago events and to reconsider the consequences of his own actions. He ends up also contemplating where his own life has gone and how he has evolved into this “peaceable man” from a boy full of curiosity and promise.

This very short novel is crammed with thoughtful observations, often wittily and wryly expressed. I found myself turning back to re-read and reconsider certain passages, which is something I seldom do. Sparely and beautifully written, the novel is an excellent illustration of the use of an unreliable narrator.

Day 121: Gone Girl

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Cover for Gone GirlBest Book of the Week!

A lot of people are reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and no wonder! Usually, I would wait awhile to present another Flynn book after just having reviewed one last week, but I couldn’t wait to do this one! If you like dark, twisted plots, and great psychological thrillers with a smidgen of evil humor, this is the book for you.

Nick and Amy Dunne are having some marriage problems. When they met, they were both cool young Manhattanites. He was a magazine journalist and she a quiz writer and the model for a series of Amazing Amy children’s books written by her psychologist parents. Five years later, they have both lost their jobs and moved to a dying small town in Missouri to help his mother take care of his ailing father. With the rest of Amy’s money, Nick has bought a bar to keep himself and his twin sister Go busy. Their relationship has been deteriorating ever since.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving evidence of violence. Of course, Nick is the police’s prime suspect, and it doesn’t help that he hasn’t been altogether truthful with them. The public, galvanized by the Amazing Amy connection, almost immediately turns against him. The investigation turns up money problems and worse. Secrets are flushed out.

Most of the first part of the novel is narrated alternately by Nick and by diary entries written by Amy. Amy seems disingenuous and appealing, almost giddy, reminding me sometimes of Bridget Jones. Nick commits many lies of omission. Here’s a hint. Both Nick and Amy are liars.

Just when we think we know what’s next, the plot twists. The book is completely engrossing and very darkly funny, suspenseful and chilling. Think psychopath, but guessing who that person may be is just one of the book’s pleasures. In the reviews, I’ve seen several comparisons to Patricia Highsmith, and I think that’s about right.

Day 118: The Solitary House

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Cover for The Solitary HouseBest Book of the Week!

I had an ambivalent reaction to The Solitary House, which is sort of a riff on Bleak House. It is not exactly a retelling of Dickens’s book. Although some story lines are re-interpreted, most of the Dickens characters appear in the background of the novel. My ambivalence is because Bleak House is one of my favorite Dickens novels, and I have not been happy with some of the retellings of classics that have appeared lately, particularly those that seem to miss the point of the original works. I am also a little dismayed by what Shepherd has done to some of my favorite Dickens characters. However, I find I have to admire the masterful way Shepherd has worked the threads of Dickens’s novel into such a different story. On the whole, almost despite myself, I am giving this novel a big recommendation for its originality.

Charles Maddox is a former detective for the London police force who left under undesirable circumstances. He is hired by Edward Tulkinghorn, a mysterious solicitor who has an evil reputation. A client of Tulkinghorn’s has been receiving threatening letters, and Maddox’s assignment is to find out who is sending them. Charles descends into the squalor of London to discover the author of the notes, but when he turns the information over to Tulkinghorn, the author of the notes is brutally murdered.

Thinking that this is not a coincidence, Charles begins investigating Tulkinghorn himself, as well as his client, Julius Cremorne. In doing so, he comes upon evidence of a serial killer. He also runs up against Inspector Bucket, his former police supervisor.

Charles’s story is written in a jokey third-person omniscient narration that often addresses the reader directly and is interlarded with many references to Dickens and some quotes from Shakespeare. Imagine a style that is like a postmodern Dickens. This narration is interleaved with the first-person narrative of Hester, seemingly the same quiet, loving, capable Esther Somerset of Bleak House. It is not until the end of the novel that these two stories merge horribly together.

Ultimately, I am coming down on the side of strong admiration for this book. It is completely absorbing and inventive, well written and literate, and actually convincing as a twisted alternate vision of Bleak House minus the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. It made me want to return to Bleak House, which I have not read recently, and dig out all the references. It is a gothic novel that becomes a serious creepfest, and you know how I love those.

I see that Shepherd has also riffed on Mansfield Park. As much as I am dreading what she will do to my beloved Jane Austen, I think I’m going to have to read it.

Day 68: The Lace Reader

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Cover for The Lace ReaderFrom the very beginning of The Lace Reader, the main character tells us she is a liar. The first time I read this book, I paid attention to that comment, but I could not detect any lies and eventually I forgot about that statement. As it turns out, Towner is not really lying, but Brunonia Barry’s novel is an outstanding example of the use of an unreliable narrator, and a haunting story.

Towner Whitney has not been home to Salem, Massachusetts, for 17 years, ever since her twin sister Lyndley committed suicide and she herself had a breakdown and was institutionalized. Now her brother calls asking her to return home because her great-aunt Eva has disappeared.

Towner’s female relatives are all unusual. She comes from a family of lace readers–people who can read the future in a piece of lace–and although she refuses to read, she is clairvoyant and can read people’s minds. These abilities, which she rejects, make her feel unstable, especially since she has gaps in her memory from electro-shock therapy. Towner’s mother May never leaves the island where she harbors abused women and teaches them how to make lace, and her aunt Emma has brain damage from a history of abuse by her husband Cal.

In Salem again, Towner waits for news of Eva. She learns that one of the police officers, Rafferty, is sure that Cal had something to do with Eva’s disappearance as he has been threatening her and other members of her family.

Salem itself is almost a character with its witch-based tourist industry, and now Cal has formed a group of religious cultists who call themselves Calvinists and who taunt the witches and threaten them with damnation. It’s a bad place for Towner to be, and she is just deciding to leave again when Eva’s body turns up.

The Lace Reader is a wonderful book, layered with secrets, an exploration in the difference between perception and reality. With an atmospheric setting, characters to care about, and a compelling plot, the book is a real page-turner. The last few paragraphs made me re-evaluate everything I had read.