راز مزرعه چهار آبگیر

by Jean Webster, لیدا صدرالعلمایی (Translator)

جین وبستر را همه با شاهکار جهانی‌اش «بابا لنگ دراز» می‌شناسند، اما او کتاب‌های درخشان دیگری هم دارد. راز مزرعه‌ی چهارآبگیر تنها اثر وبستر در ژانر وحشت است؛
وکیل دعاوی که به توصیه‌ی پزشکش برای فرار از فشار عصبی و شلوغی به مزرعه‌ی عمویش می‌رود، با حوادث و ماجراهایی مواجه می‌شود که به‌شدت او را درگیر می‌کنند و او تلاش می‌کند راز اتفاق‌های پیش آمده را کشف کند؛
در بخشی از کتاب می‌خوانیم:؛
پزشک قانونی را پیدا کردیم و داستان را برایش گفتیم. او برای کلانتر در مرکز بخش‌داری کینزبورگ پیغام فرستاد. یک دکتر هم خبر کردیم و همراه با سه چهار نفر شاهد به سمت غار راه افتادیم. خبر این اتفاق مثل آتش همه جا پخش شد. نیمی از شهر موری همراه ما راه افتادند. پزشک قانونی با زور مانع ورودشان شد. دو مرد را در ورودی غار مستقر کرد تا مانع ورود جمعیت به داخل غار شود. ترجیح می‌دادم بیرون منتظر بمانم اما احساس می‌کردم بخاطر رادنور وظیفه دارم آن‌جا حاضر باشم. هرکشفی در محل جرم صورت می‌گرفت می‌خواستم اولین کسی باشم که از آن خبردار می‌شود؛
راز مزرعه‌ی چهار آبگیر را لیدا صدرالعلمایی ترجمه کرده است، با بیانی ساده و شیوا و کاملا وفادار به اصل متن؛
این کتاب از سوی نشر به‌نگار روانه‌ی بازار شده است؛

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Ebooks

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Jean Webster (pseudonym for Alice Jane Chandler Webster) was an American writer and author of many books including Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy. Her most well-known books feature lively and likeable young female protagonists who come of age intellectually, morally, and socially, but with enough humor, snappy dialogue, and gently biting social commentary to make her books palatable and enjoyable to contemporary readers.

Reviews

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this author is best known for her work 'Daddy Long Legs', it was truly nice to read something a bit different from her.
This is a good old fashioned murder mystery, complete with ghosts and all, and it would definitely keep the reader at the edge of their seat!!!

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mystery involving "haints" and suspicious characters, set in the south (Virginia?) during Victorian times. A different genre from the four other Webster books I've read in which humor was the main ingredient. Daddy Long Legs remains my favorite. Read through DailyLit.com.

[Reem Eisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn’t very impressed with the book

[Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should think of a clever shelf name for books like this and The Red House Mystery – something like "they wrote mysteries too??" Except Goodreads would delete the question marks. Jean Webster is better known for Daddy Long-legs, which I loved when younger and was a little disappointed in when older.

Take the amount of disappointment I felt in Daddy Long-legs, multiply it by about thirty, and sprinkle generously with shock and horror, and that's how The Four-Pools Mystery left me.

There is mystery; there are ghosts; there is the cocky city boy swanning in to solve the mystery… there is rampant unchecked racism. "If you have ever had anything to do with negroes, you can know the state our servants are in." At least in that sentence the less pejorative "negroes" was used. That is not the case, half the time. "Sho's yuh bohn, Marse Cunnel; it's de libbin' truf I's tellin' yuh. Dat ha'nt has fotched dat chicken right outen de oven, an' it's vanished in de air." Sho 'nuf. "One of them shambled forward….The creature was bare-footed and wore a faded suit of linsey-woolsey" … okay, that's enough. No – one more: "When he was in good humor, he was kindness itself to the darkies". Wait, one more: "…With an oath he cuffed the fellow back to a state of coherence". Guess the skin tones of the cuffing and the cuff-ee. But that's okay, apparently, because "In the first place it comes natural to < "n-word" redacted > to be whipped and they don't mind it." Well, that's sho 'nuf fortunate considering Southern plantation history.

Context: The book was written in and apparently set in 1908. That doesn't make it a palatable read over 100 years later. Political correctness is one (not always good) thing; this is several others.

One review comments that this is the South from the point of view of someone who had never been there; it seems like in general Ms. Webster was writing about things she didn't know much about. Someone tells the visitor, "There are half a dozen colts in the pasture just spoiling to be broken in; you may try your hand at that, sir." Has the young person ever trained a horse? Ever? This does not seem wise to me. Apparently he doesn't take the suggestion to try breaking any of the colts (yay for the colts), because he is still bored, and expresses a wish to go hunting. But "spring on a big river plantation is a busy season". It's also a season when you can't – or shouldn't – do a lot of hunting.

I have little memory of the mystery and its solution. The most memorable aspect of the story is the prejudice and language. Not fun, and not recommended.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il mistero di Four Pools di Jean Webster,
tradotto da Miriam Chiaromonte per Caravaggio Editore è un giallo pubblicato in forma anonima nel 1908 e il suo protagonista, Terry Patten, è
un po' considerato l'erede di Sherlock Holmes.
Sicuramente c'è un po' di Sherlock in questo romanzo giallo ma io ci ho visto anche un po' di favola, fornita di tanto di morale e insegnamento sul finale.
Bravissima Miriam che è riuscita egregiamente, secondo me, a confrontarsi con un testo non semplice
da tradurre per le particolari descrizioni e terminologie razziste dell'epoca, che la stessa Webster adotta per
denunciare il modo in cui l'etnia bianca trattava gli afroamericani.
Un testo che mi ha costretta a riflettere sull'incidenza delle nostre azioni sul nostro stesso destino e che vi consiglio assolutamente.

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 2 out of 5]

The mystery has some clever twists.

Note that there are attitudes expressed here regarding race which were not unusual for the time. It needs to be read with that in mind and do not reflect attitudes I hold. It is mentioned by one character that [African-Americans] don't mind being whipped. That is abhorrent. Racial comments are made and the attitude is present but it is not present on every page. I wouldn't be able to read it if it was. In fact, one character comments, "[African-Americans] are human beings and have feelings like us." I wasn't sure if the author would present any counter racist statements because of the time this was written.

[Kimia Kalhori · Rating 5 out of 5]

"راز مزرعه چهار آبگیر"
کتابی که شاید اگر نویسنده ش جین وبستر نبود ، هرگز بخاطر طرح جلد و یا حتی اسمش حاضر به خواندش‌ نمیشدم ، اما عمیقا از اینکه از قفسه انتخابش کردم و خواندم خوشحالم؛
یک داستان جنایی زیبا و سراسر معما که مرا به وجد آورد و در عین حال قلم بسیار زیبای جین وبستر در نوشتنش؛
01:23~28/4/01   

[Laura]

Free download available at : http://DailyLit.com/books/four-pools-...

Thanks to Catherine Mustread for this tip.

[mairiachi · Rating 3 out of 5]

None of the spoilers will actually spoil the story. I just don't want them to take up space. They're all snippets from the book (which I read here http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21264/...), so if you don't care, just skip past them.

Terry is a really fun character. If I were a guy, he would be goals. He is definitely the younger of the two main characters, and he's willing to put himself out there, go all out when he goes in disguise or on a trail, some crazy adventure - a spontaneous reporter 🙌 we need more of these days. (Also wow where hasn't he been because this guy is going places.)
Later he had received a more theoretical training in the University of New York, but I think it was his early education which stuck by him longest, and which, in the end, was probably the more useful of the two. Armed with this equipment, it was inevitable that he should develop into a star reporter. Not only did he write his news in an entertaining form, but he first made the news he wrote about. When any sensational crime had been committed which puzzled the police, Terry had an annoying way of solving the mystery himself, and publishing the full particulars in the Post-Dispatch with the glory blatantly attributed to "our reporter." The paper was fully aware that Terence K. Patten was an acquisition to its staff. It had sent him on various commissions to various entertaining quarters of the globe, and in the course of his duty he had encountered experiences. One is forced to admit that he was not always fastidious as to the rôle he played. He had cruised about the Mediterranean as assistant cook on a millionaire's yacht, and had listened to secrets between meals. He had wandered about the country with a monkey and a hand-organ in search of a peddler he suspected of a crime. He had helped along a revolution in South America, and had gone up in a captive war balloon which had broken loose and floated off.

The narrator, Albert Crosby, is the older, more plodding of the two (30 years old). He's serious most of the time but has funny ways of looking at things that make his seriousness...well, not so serious. He writes in a lighthearted way I didn't quite expect.
I got into the way of lying awake, puzzling over the details, when I should have been sleeping, and that is the sort of work which finishes a man. By the middle of April, when the strain was over, I was as near being a nervous wreck as an ordinarily healthy chap can get.

And together they make up a great team, probably because they have a fantastic friendship.
We frequently had lunch together; or breakfast, in his case. His day commenced about noon and lasted till three in the morning. "Well, Terry, what's the news at the morgue today?" I would inquire as we settled ourselves at the table. And Terry would rattle off the details of the latest murder mystery with a cheerfully matter-of-fact air that would have been disgusting had it not been so funny.

Their friendship is great, their characters are great, the writing is great, the story is great...you couldn't really ask for more unless you didn't like the book and then I guess there is a lot you could ask for. Terry is a great guy, kind of flippant sometimes, but only when it's necessary to him (which is a lot of times), and the other guy is fun because he takes Terry along, and almost drives him to do it. And his commentary is part of what keeps the story clever and fun to read. And I can't tell if I like Terry because I agree with him most of the time or because he's funny. Either way, great character.
At this stage my doctor stepped in and ordered a rest in some quiet place out of reach of the New York papers; he suggested a fishing expedition to Cape Cod. I apathetically fell in with the idea, and invited Terry to join me. But he jeered at the notion of finding either pleasure or profit in any such trip. It was too far from the center of crime to contain any interest for Terry.
"Heavens, man! I'd as lief spend a vacation in the middle of the Sahara Desert."
"Oh, the fishing would keep things going," I said.
"Fishing! We'd die of ennui before we had a bite. I'd be murdering you at the end of the first week just for some excitement. If you need a rest—and you are rather seedy—forget all about this Patterson business and plunge into something new. The best rest in the world is a counter-irritant."
This was Terry all over; he himself was utterly devoid of nerves, and he could not appreciate the part they played in a man of normal make-up.
...later on...
Terry had been in the house not quite two hours, and I am sure that a third person, looking on, would have picked me out for the stranger. Terry's way of being at home in any surroundings was absolutely inimitable. Had he ever had occasion to visit Windsor Castle I am sure that he would have set about immediately making King Edward feel at home.

And then there's also Rad. He's, like...rad.
His welcome was frank and cordial and I liked him from the first. He asked after my health with an amused twinkle in his eyes. Nervous prostration evidently struck him as humorously as it did Terry.

One thing I didn't like about this book, the same thing I didn't like about Tom Sawyer and Robinson Crusoe (other than RC's boringness), was the racist stuff that at the time wasn't racist but it is now and today it's totally unacceptable and it's uncomfortable to read about. Like, yes I know that they used the n word just like we would use the word "grass" to describe the stuff on our lawn, but I still have a hard time reading it bc today it's such a rude term, like if you called your dog the b word or you said the word "bloody" in the UK :P because here it's not a bad term, it's just descriptive but in the UK it's swearing. So I get that at the time it wasn't derogatory, but that doesn't mean I have an easy breezy lemon squeezy time reading the phrases. I'm trying to read it as if oh these are just servants, all different skintones and backgrounds, and I'm trying to pretend they don't use the n word. But it's a lot harder than I expected. So be forewarned that if this isn't your cup of tea, then don't read it. At least it's authentic, I can say that...

Another thing I had a hard time with was how long she took before she introduced Albert's name. I had no idea how old the narrator was or what his name was and it made it hard to picture in my head - I was thinking someone with grey hair, slightly old voice and slower than the young guys, and then I find out he's only, like, five years older than some of the "young guys"! It was a little bit difficult. But okay.

Just a summary of what I did and didn't like about the book:

Pros
- characters were likeable. engaging, and some were funny
- plot was well-developed
- fast-paced enough, once you got into it
- reactions and emotions were accurate enough
- setting seemed legit for its time and place
- everyone more or less lives happily ever after
- interesting story and murder

Cons
- plot was too predictable
- murderer felt random, like she changed her mind halfway thru the book
- coverup was confusing, not satisfying, and didn't really get explained (what their reason was, why they cared whether he was charged with murder, etc.)
- Terry solved it too quickly, in comparison with Albert who took 6 days and got nowhere
-​ it took forever to finally give us information about the narrator (how old he was and what his name was), hard to imagine when you don't even know what he looks like or is supposed to sound like
- moved slowish until the last three ch, or so​
- set in plantation time so their ideas were sometimes hard to get behind
- ending was disappointing (spoiler: let the murderer go, who turns around and gets killed...2yrs later, I believe, but not because justice was dealt, just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time [lynch mob], which was really unsatisfying)
- I wanted to see a main character be guilty, somebody I knew throughout the book, not some nobody mentioned once in a chapter and never again (and only mentioned because it's an example of the Colonel's mood, temper, and attitude towards certain people, so it wasn't even like it moved the plot forward)
- there was no motive other than a grudge which is a stupid reason for murdering someone, no matter how humiliating an experience it was (if someone beat me up, I wouldn't be out for his blood, I would just beat him up or get someone else to do it)

Overall, three stars. Maybe 2.5, but I really liked Terry.

[Cinnamon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish. Could not finish. In fact, could not even get past forty pages, it’s so racist. Yes, it’s old, but there’s no need to bother with this, there are literally tons of other books one could be reading instead. Stick to Daddy Long Legs and Dear Enemy to not tarnish your image of Jean Webster.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thinnish plot, with insulting references and attitudes toward non-white characters. In fairness, the author does use one of the characters to make some "corrective" statements later in the book, but it's not near enough to salvage the book. Pass.

[Faye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is often fresh and well thought out. Though this book is not politically correct by today's standards, it still treats the subject of race with a respectful sensitivity. All in all, a satisfying mystery read for the summer!

[Joanne Drinnan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It a bad story (but dated), it's a pity it was read by an illiterate octogenarian!

[Leonardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

They were so racist back then, damn. The story was ok.

[Emily M · Rating 1 out of 5]

The racist language was true to the time written (1908) but was just too offensive for me to push through.

[Samane · Rating 3 out of 5]

خدا را شکر که زن ها جرم های زیادی مرتکب نمی شوند! هیچ وقت با اطمینان نمی شه حدس زد چی تو فکرشون بوده. فکر و عملشون زمین تا آسمون با هم فرق داره.

[Bettie]

http://www.readcentral.com/book/Jean-...

[Samantha Glasser]

Read this book for free through Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21264/...

[J. Boo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This attempt at a Southern gothic mystery failed to convince me that the author had ever travelled south of the Mason-Dixon line. Webster was a fine comic authoress -- read something else of hers.

[Florencia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am such a fan of Daddy Long Legs that I had to give it a try. Disappoininting

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun read, and sure kept me guessing. I read it on Project Gutenberg.