Elizabeth's review

Lord Peter : The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories
by Dorothy L. Sayers

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/782047.Lord_Peter_The_Complete_Lord_Peter_Wimsey_Stories?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Lord Peter : The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178297965m/782047.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/782047.Lord_Peter_The_Complete_Lord_Peter_Wimsey_Stories?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Lord Peter : The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8734.Dorothy_L_Sayers">Dorothy L. Sayers</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32519859?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars I read this for an on-line book group called <a target="_blank" href="http://reading_wimsey.livejournal.com">"Reading Wimsey" over on LiveJournal</a>. I've read a lot of rubbish this summer, and it was such a blissful relief to sink back into Sayers's easy, elegant prose. Sayers's short stories are very different from her novels--she really seizes the opportunity to explore different points-of-view, outrageously improbable situational constructions, her various personal fascinations (wine, printed ephemera, crosswords, etc.). (I bought my copy of this book in 1987 and I appear to have managed to struggle successfully through one entire corner of the crossword. My own marginal annotation of several years later says, "How the bloody hell did I even get this far." ALTHOUGH, I am now able to supply the word "QUAGGA" to Bunter's final query, as my children and I are very familiar with a stuffed example of said animal in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.)
 
 There are certain tiny details that I just adore about Sayers's writing. The way the "little pool of crimson fire like a miniature sunset," mentioned so casually in a short story in 1928, turns up again nearly ten years later on Harriet Vane's finger in Busman's Honeymoon. The way Peter is convinced that the Death Coach can't be real because his horse doesn't shy at it but she DOES shy at Dead Man's Post... it's a given that the supernatural does exist, it just doesn't exist in relation to Burdock. (And what a looooong and rambling story that is. There's a MAP. There's the implication that Peter is in the country as a convalscent. I think she's so good at background!) My favorite story is the last in this collection, "Talboys," which I appreciate so much more now that I have children and houseguests and a career than I did as a happy-go-lucky 22-year-old grad student:
 
 "You may, by taking your husband into your own room and accommodating the two elder boys in his dressing-room, squeeze in an extra person who, like Miss Quirk, has been wished upon you; but it is scarcely possible to run after her all day to see that she is not getting into mischief. This is more particularly the case if you are a novelist by profession, and if, moreover, your idea of a hppy holiday is to dispose as completely and briskly as possible of children, book, servants, and visitor, so as to snatch all the available moments for playing the fool with a congenial, but admittedly distracting, husband."
 
 I also find that I am mind-melding Harriet Vane with Anne Morrow Lindbergh in this story, which amuses me, since AML has replaced HV as my role model over the last ten years (most of my role models have been fictional).
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/717971?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Elizabeth's review
rating:

bookshelves: reading-wimsey
status: Read in January, 1987, read count: 3?

** spoiler alert ** I read this for an on-line book group called "Reading Wimsey" over on LiveJournal. I've read a lot of rubbish this summer, and it was such a blissful relief to sink back into Sayers's easy, elegant prose. Sayers's short stories are very different from her novels--she really seizes the opportunity to explore different points-of-view, outrageously improbable situational constructions, her various personal fascinations (wine, printed ephemera, crosswords, etc.). (I bought my copy of this book in 1987 and I appear to have managed to struggle successfully through one entire corner of the crossword. My own marginal annotation of several years later says, "How the bloody hell did I even get this far." ALTHOUGH, I am now able to supply the word "QUAGGA" to Bunter's final query, as my children and I are very familiar with a stuffed example of said animal in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.)

T...more I read this for an on-line book group called "Reading Wimsey" over on LiveJournal. I've read a lot of rubbish this summer, and it was such a blissful relief to sink back into Sayers's easy, elegant prose. Sayers's short stories are very different from her novels--she really seizes the opportunity to explore different points-of-view, outrageously improbable situational constructions, her various personal fascinations (wine, printed ephemera, crosswords, etc.). (I bought my copy of this book in 1987 and I appear to have managed to struggle successfully through one entire corner of the crossword. My own marginal annotation of several years later says, "How the bloody hell did I even get this far." ALTHOUGH, I am now able to supply the word "QUAGGA" to Bunter's final query, as my children and I are very familiar with a stuffed example of said animal in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.)

There are certain tiny details that I just adore about Sayers's writing. The way the "little pool of crimson fire like a miniature sunset," mentioned so casually in a short story in 1928, turns up again nearly ten years later on Harriet Vane's finger in Busman's Honeymoon. The way Peter is convinced that the Death Coach can't be real because his horse doesn't shy at it but she DOES shy at Dead Man's Post... it's a given that the supernatural does exist, it just doesn't exist in relation to Burdock. (And what a looooong and rambling story that is. There's a MAP. There's the implication that Peter is in the country as a convalscent. I think she's so good at background!) My favorite story is the last in this collection, "Talboys," which I appreciate so much more now that I have children and houseguests and a career than I did as a happy-go-lucky 22-year-old grad student:

"You may, by taking your husband into your own room and accommodating the two elder boys in his dressing-room, squeeze in an extra person who, like Miss Quirk, has been wished upon you; but it is scarcely possible to run after her all day to see that she is not getting into mischief. This is more particularly the case if you are a novelist by profession, and if, moreover, your idea of a hppy holiday is to dispose as completely and briskly as possible of children, book, servants, and visitor, so as to snatch all the available moments for playing the fool with a congenial, but admittedly distracting, husband."

I also find that I am mind-melding Harriet Vane with Anne Morrow Lindbergh in this story, which amuses me, since AML has replaced HV as my role model over the last ten years (most of my role models have been fictional)....less

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message 1: by Suzi

09/20/2008 09:56AM

Oh, this review made me laugh so much! I should look up all of my collections of DS stories. I'll always love how Harriet learns to write real, screwed-up characters (as opposed to relying on plot) even as DS manipulates her into falling for PW. What irony! Seriously now, do you think HV would EVER have gone for PW? I have my doubts. But I do love the books and the short stories even more.

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message 2: by Elizabeth (last edited 09/22/2008 07:01PM)

09/20/2008 02:52PM

Murder Must Advertise has always been my very favorite mystery. ***spoiler alert****I can always picture Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey on the cricket field getting hit (nothing makes a man see red faster than being smote sharply in the funny bone) and starting to play well. That book alone always made me understand how anyone could fall for him. The puzzle one in the stories was probably my favorite (I think I've worn out a few copies.)

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message 3: by Elizabeth

09/23/2008 04:28AM

Oh, I have no doubts about Harriet falling for Peter. I swear to you that the tempered steel beneath the giddy mask, I swear by EXPERIENCE, is irresistible.

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message 4: by Mina

10/14/2008 07:18AM

i love, love, love sayers's novels but have only read a smattering of her short stories - obviously this must be remedied!

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