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10th out of 20 books
—
12 voters
Wit's End
If you loved The Jane Austen Book Club, you�ll revel in Wit�s End, a sly and clever novel of mystery, intrigue, and virtual reality.
Wit�s End is many things: a quest novel�a young woman�s search for the truth about her dead father�'s past; a mystery�the story of a long-ago murder in which that father might have been complicit; and a game�one that ensnares readers in cunnin...more
Wit�s End is many things: a quest novel�a young woman�s search for the truth about her dead father�'s past; a mystery�the story of a long-ago murder in which that father might have been complicit; and a game�one that ensnares readers in cunnin...more
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published
April 1st 2008
by Putnam Adult
(first published 2008)
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Preface: I won this through a Readinggroupguides.com contest. I have read The Jane Austen Book Club, which was also set in the Norcal area, so I'm right at home with that.
Update: Just because you get a book for free does not mean you should read it. There was no point or direction to this book. The storyline was very scattered, none of the characters were developed enough to like or emphathize with them, and it was peppered with unnecessary profanity and moral issues that came from left field. T...more
Update: Just because you get a book for free does not mean you should read it. There was no point or direction to this book. The storyline was very scattered, none of the characters were developed enough to like or emphathize with them, and it was peppered with unnecessary profanity and moral issues that came from left field. T...more
Too much Wikipedia, not enough story. I thought that all of the "themes" were a great set-up: the dollhouses, the Maxwell Lane stories, etc. "Ice City" the mental place with an imagined geography, inside a fictional world, was the best thing I got out of it. But Ice City was a very small part. Did I miss something bigger because I listened to it?
Also, I just have something against people spending too much time on their computers in novels (unless its SF). I asked myself about this, and telephon...more
Also, I just have something against people spending too much time on their computers in novels (unless its SF). I asked myself about this, and telephon...more
2 likes · like · see review
I bought this book in the UK; I prefer the US title, "Wit's End," as it is a more accurate indication of the book's themes and content.
The UK jacket copy made the book sound like a lighthearted romp with a fictional detective come to life to help the heroine.
Instead, the book is a rumination on grief, the creative process, and just who "owns" a creative work once it is accessible by the public. Does it belong to the author? To the fan? To the real life people & events on whom the fictional...more
The UK jacket copy made the book sound like a lighthearted romp with a fictional detective come to life to help the heroine.
Instead, the book is a rumination on grief, the creative process, and just who "owns" a creative work once it is accessible by the public. Does it belong to the author? To the fan? To the real life people & events on whom the fictional...more
I am going to apologize right here because I am not going to capture the creativity and the talent in this novel. Set in Santa Cruz, a city I recently visited for the first time, the reader is introducd to a successful mystery writer, a staunch Democrat who anticipates evil in the world when the Republicans control the White House. Further, Addison's readers are so intrigued by her books, plots and characters that they have blogged and tweeted about her to a dizzying degree, compromising her pri...more
Another perplexing read for me:Really great writing, well drawn setting and an unsympathetic main character unsupported by a cast of strange characters blended together with a plot that I found difficult to follow. We are put into the head of Rima who is visiting her godmother, Addison, who is a renowned mystery writer. Rima's mother, brother and dad have all died and she is alone in her late 20's. Grief stricken Rima is our narrator but, she is not reliable because she is miserable. She suspect...more
As reviewed for Library Journal:
In a change of pace from her best-selling The Jane Austen Book Club, Fowler has written a mystery that's barely a mystery but is every bit an absorbing and funny novel. Rima, a woman who has mastered the art of losing (including her mother, brother, and father) arrives in Santa Cruz, CA, to stay with her godmother, the famous and reclusive mystery writer Addison Early, whose book titles and plots provide chuckles throughout. Rima wants to learn the truth of the na...more
The best part of this novel is the author's wit. Fowler, as many reviewers note, really does have a wonderful voice. Her character insights, asides, ruminations--all are engaging and interesting. The whole of Wit's End, however, is not as good as the sum of its parts. With so many odd and fascinating side stories: grief, loss, obsessive fan adoration, theft of artistic ownership, cults, mystery novels, mysterious letters, mysteries within mysteries... not to mention complicated and fascinating c...more
In this thoroughly engrossing book, Karen Joy Fowler explores the relationships between readers, characters and writers.
Rima grew up with very little real information about her godmother, the famous mystery writer Addison Early. She knows that one of Addison's characters is named after her father and that she, herself, is named after another of her characters.
After her father's death, Rima visits her godmother determined to find out more about her family and the relationship between Addison and...more
Rima grew up with very little real information about her godmother, the famous mystery writer Addison Early. She knows that one of Addison's characters is named after her father and that she, herself, is named after another of her characters.
After her father's death, Rima visits her godmother determined to find out more about her family and the relationship between Addison and...more
Jul 27, 2009
John
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
audiobook,
library_books
I'm giving this one three stars, although 2 1/2 would be more accurate. Though Fowler is tremendously good at setting and details, as well as introducing quirky characters, that didn't make up for the "plot", such that there is.
We start with the protagonist, Rima Lanisell, arriving at the Santa Cruz, CA home of her godmother Addison Early, famous (think: Stephen King famous) author of a serious of mystery/thrillers featuring the character Maxwell Lane, and antagonist Bim Lanisell (Bin Laden?), s...more
We start with the protagonist, Rima Lanisell, arriving at the Santa Cruz, CA home of her godmother Addison Early, famous (think: Stephen King famous) author of a serious of mystery/thrillers featuring the character Maxwell Lane, and antagonist Bim Lanisell (Bin Laden?), s...more
After the death of her father, Rima Lannisell goes to stay with her godmother, Addison Early. Addison is an author, creator of the famous detective Maxwell Lane. Rima wants to know what Addison's relationship with her father was; they were estranged for most of Rima's life, despite the fact that Addison is Rima's godmother. Some of the best parts of the book are about the relationships that exist between creator, character, and fans. Maxwell Lane has a fandom built up around him, complete with f...more
I rated this a 5 as a reaction to all the low ratings, I think It's witty, fey and clever with two dachshunds -- Berkeley and Stanford -- that almost had me laughing out loud.
I think the low ratings came from people who were expecting a standard cookie-cutter whodunit instead of charm. I'd heard of Holy City near Santa Cruz before -- when we lived in California -- and had spent time along the coast so appreciate descriptions of fog and the seaside.
Our heroine, Rima, is thrice bereaved and visits...more
I think the low ratings came from people who were expecting a standard cookie-cutter whodunit instead of charm. I'd heard of Holy City near Santa Cruz before -- when we lived in California -- and had spent time along the coast so appreciate descriptions of fog and the seaside.
Our heroine, Rima, is thrice bereaved and visits...more
At the end of this book, the viewpoint character, Rima, writes to another character, "I hope you'll agree it's best to leave the past in the past." If you see this as the hard-won wisdom of a young woman finally overcoming her grief, chances are you'll like this book. It's very well-observed and full of wry turns of the phrase that sometimes made me laugh out loud.
If you read that quotation and think, "That's a cop-out. Fowler toys with the structure of a mystery but never really solves it, and...more
If you read that quotation and think, "That's a cop-out. Fowler toys with the structure of a mystery but never really solves it, and...more
I really liked it... yet there is no discernible reason that I did. There is no concrete aspect that I loved. I didn't love the characters, I didn't love the beginning, middle and end of the story (oh, because there wasn't one!) But I loved it as a whole all the same.
It was very... current. In a way that I've never experienced in a novel. There were constant cultural references that were very now... polar bears on LOST for example, crazy fan-fic and website forums of fans.
I never understood the...more
It was very... current. In a way that I've never experienced in a novel. There were constant cultural references that were very now... polar bears on LOST for example, crazy fan-fic and website forums of fans.
I never understood the...more
Feb 05, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
Critical reception of Wit's End ran the full gamut. Like The Jane Austen Book Club, the novel should appeal to lovers of mystery books and to readers who enjoy pondering the relationship between characters, their creators, and their fan bases. Yet while these critics couldn't put the book down, others panned it. Pop culture references, such as the Internet Wiki-wars (where fans analyze Maxwell Lane's life), perhaps make up for what some critics described as relatively insipid characters and myst
...more
This is a very difficult book to review.
Even though I liked the author's voice and the fact that the main character was largely unlikeable, thus quite real, I just couldn't get over the inconsistency of the plot. I often found myself re-reading paragraphs or pages because I wasn't able to follow the events, or even understand who was doing the narration. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be able to summarize the plot.
I understand that the author wanted to create a "mystery" atmosphere, but it all...more
Even though I liked the author's voice and the fact that the main character was largely unlikeable, thus quite real, I just couldn't get over the inconsistency of the plot. I often found myself re-reading paragraphs or pages because I wasn't able to follow the events, or even understand who was doing the narration. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be able to summarize the plot.
I understand that the author wanted to create a "mystery" atmosphere, but it all...more
4.5 stars
I think, unfortunately, that this book is misreprented by the tag line on the cover and the publisher description; both those seem to promise an overarching mystery, a sinister encroachment of the both the past and of an author's fans.
What it actually is - and succeeds quite well at - is the first person narrative of a woman without roots trying to find some purpose. Rima struggles with grief, tries to figure out the puzzle of her father's life, tries both to connect and to avoid connec...more
I think, unfortunately, that this book is misreprented by the tag line on the cover and the publisher description; both those seem to promise an overarching mystery, a sinister encroachment of the both the past and of an author's fans.
What it actually is - and succeeds quite well at - is the first person narrative of a woman without roots trying to find some purpose. Rima struggles with grief, tries to figure out the puzzle of her father's life, tries both to connect and to avoid connec...more
I really enjoyed reading most of this novel. The characters were well developed, and the writing was full of wit. Fowler used a somewhat omnisceint narrator. It was mostly told through the point of view of the main character Rita, but then occasionally we would be privy to the thoughts of Rita’s god mother. Although I laughed while I was reading it, I kept waiting for something to happen. The plot line was weak. It never got exciting and not much happened. I also Hated the ending. Not a book I w...more
This book was a ridiculous convoluted mess! I started reading it, wasn't enjoying it or really getting it so I decided to listen to it while I walked so it wouldn't be a complete waste of time; for some reason I can't just give up on a book, have to keep trying. I should have given up. It just wasn't there for me - I actually am not sure what it was about. If she had just told a mystery story about a murder and/or the Rima character getting her life together, it may have been OK but as it was to...more
Reading this book made me wonder why Jonathan Lethem, Junot Diaz and the other fan boys get all the credit for playing with genre. Karen Joy Fowler's meta-mystery, about a woman trying to decipher the relationships between her family and a famous murder mystery writer, has just as many layers and asks just as many big philosophical questions. Set in a Santa Cruz populated by cults and clowns and 12-stepper housekeepers, the book is as colorful as any traditional mystery. By adding plot lines tha...more
It wasn't bad. But I didn't get it at all. There seemed to be no point to the story. The ending just left me scratching my head wondering what I had just read. Not in a good thought provoking way. But in a what was the point, kind of way. The whole point of the book seemed to be the main character trying to prove that her father couldn't have been the murderer in a work of fiction. Her godmother, a famous mystery writer in the book, used her father as the basis of a vilain in one of her books. W...more
I enjoyed the language and tone in this book so much! I ignored my family in order to finish it. Her imagery was very vivid but a lot of the conversations were vague, which I thought was an interesting combination. Fowler spent a fair amount of time talking about what people said, then commented on what they meant versus what their listeners THOUGHT they meant. This made an interesting change from the instant understanding that many fictional characters seem to enjoy. Wonderful evocation of Sant...more
I didn't quit this book during the many times I wanted to, because I have a policy of not being a book quitter. I am now re-thinking this policy.
Even after finishing it, I could not tell you what this book is about. It was boring, and didn't ever seem to go anywhere.
There was only one paragraph that made me smile and it was, "The actor was campy and sardonic. Sarcasm without wit. Rima had once taught middle school; she'd had enough sarcasm without wit to last a lifetime."
The only redeeming quali...more
Even after finishing it, I could not tell you what this book is about. It was boring, and didn't ever seem to go anywhere.
There was only one paragraph that made me smile and it was, "The actor was campy and sardonic. Sarcasm without wit. Rima had once taught middle school; she'd had enough sarcasm without wit to last a lifetime."
The only redeeming quali...more
The book I actually read was called "The Case of the Imaginary Detective". The setting is California, but for some reason, I kept thinking it was set in England. Having enjoyed this book, I was happy that I had on hand another Karen Joy Fowler entitled "Wit's End" and began reading only to find that this is the American edition, and I had read the British edition. I really don't understand the title change. All in all an interesting different mystery which was more about coming to terms with dea...more
This book had a lot of potential for a great story--it explores the relationships between authors, readers, and characters and how those relationships have changed with the Internet. I liked the setting and I thought the character of Addison was interesting, but the rest (plot, other characters, themes) was flat and confusing for me. I kept waiting for it to get good, but except for a few highlights, I was disappointed. Not nearly as good as The Jane Austen Book Club (which I didn't completely l...more
To my surprise, I immensely enjoyed listening to this book, though the pace was very slow and the story was very confusing. Rima is in her late twenties, and is not in a good place psychologically as she has recently lost her brother to a road traffic accident, who was her only living relative as their parents were already dead. She comes to stay with her godmother Alison, a well known crime fiction writer under a pseudonym, who is slightly eccentric. There is a livein housekeeper, Tilda, who ha...more
This book had a few problems for me. The writing of any given individual paragraph or scene wasn't bad, but it was missing something.
It's a book about grief, and loss, and who a person is, and how others percieve them, including what happens on internet social networking sites. This is made more complicated by adding the question about how this relates to fictional characters, and who owns those fictional characters. For example, the main character's father was a newspaper colunist and wrote co...more
It's a book about grief, and loss, and who a person is, and how others percieve them, including what happens on internet social networking sites. This is made more complicated by adding the question about how this relates to fictional characters, and who owns those fictional characters. For example, the main character's father was a newspaper colunist and wrote co...more
If—like me and most other sane adults—you grew out of reading about mysteries that involve dollhouses when you were, like, eleven, then this will really annoy you.
Fowler also wrote The Jane Austen Book Club, which I never read just because it had the words “book club” in the title, and that just seems like marketing rather than storytelling. Anyhow, that one was a bestseller, which means exactly nothing because Stephenie Meyer could wallpaper her house with the pages of her bestsellers and can’t...more
Fowler also wrote The Jane Austen Book Club, which I never read just because it had the words “book club” in the title, and that just seems like marketing rather than storytelling. Anyhow, that one was a bestseller, which means exactly nothing because Stephenie Meyer could wallpaper her house with the pages of her bestsellers and can’t...more
Not quite a mystery, not quite magical realism...Rima is depressed after the last of her family dies, and moves in with a reclusive yet famous mystery author, her godmother. She eventually comes to term with her family's lives (more so than their deaths) and is able to move on. Quirky supporting cast, including the dogwalker and the housekeeper and the town of Santa Cruz, helps keep the story lively. It probably won't age all that well, with 00s politics, wikipedia wars, and LotR trivia, but for...more
Now this is a really fun book for the modern, Net-savvy reader. I don't think I've ever heard fanfiction discussed more accurately in a book before (or ever discussed period!), and I love the varying attitudes on it from the author to the rabid fangirl to the innocent net surfer who accidentally stumbles onto a slashy one--SO much fun!
I read in a professional review somewhere that this book feels "up to the minute fresh," and that is really an excellent way to put it. Blogging, forums, Dubbya's...more
I read in a professional review somewhere that this book feels "up to the minute fresh," and that is really an excellent way to put it. Blogging, forums, Dubbya's...more
The dead brother riffs: "Oliver would have been 26 if he'd lived. Rima felt an instant dislike for Martin who got to be 26 years old and probably didn't even appreciate it. It was such an unfair feeling that having it made her sneeze again. "Bless you," Addison said, which Rima didn't deserve; it only added to her guilt." p.35
"Instead, in the moments between people's knocking on the door, she said that her father's death, being what it was and pretty awful all by itself, had reminded her of Oliv...more
"Instead, in the moments between people's knocking on the door, she said that her father's death, being what it was and pretty awful all by itself, had reminded her of Oliv...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| NYTtimes review | 1 | 18 | May 17, 2008 05:48am |
I was born in Bloomington, Indiana. I was due on Valentine's Day but arrived a week early; my mother blamed this on a really exciting IU basketball game. My father was a psychologist at the University, but not that kind of psychologist. He studied animal behavior, and especially learning. He ran rats through mazes. My mother was a polio survivor, a schoolteacher, and a pioneer in the co-operative...more
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Jul 22, 2009 08:12am