spoko’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2021)

spoko’s comments from the EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club group.

Great review of the book. First sentence is a spoiler, if that matters to you.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...

I agree with the criticism about the dictaphone. It’s a bit of a contrivance for the story, and I’m not sure anyone would have confused that with Ackroyd’s actual voice. It’s not as though they’d never heard any sort of sound recording, I’m sure, and they’d have recognized it as such.

On the other hand, I hadn’t realized until now just how weighted this line is: “It was just 10 minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone.” I remember being confused as to why he would wonder such a thing, but of course in retrospect it’s obvious. Such a delicious little teaser Christie throws at us there.

I second Pillars of the Earth and Wolf Hall.

I second The Martian.

I second A Room of One's Own.

Andi wrote: “The Major was my favorite character.”

The Major was my #1 suspect, until he got engaged to Flora.

I find that I try to solve these things from a meta level—rather than actually look at the clues, I tend to look at how the author is presenting them, and see where they might be leaving gaps. There were repeated mentions that Blunt was walking around outside, not far from the window, during the time in question, and there didn’t seem to be much examination of that fact. So I kind of thought that might turn out to be critical.

But once he & Flora got engaged, I knew that either she had to be an accomplice, or he had to be innocent. I couldn’t see Christie punishing an innocent character by having them get engaged to the murderer. This is the kind of meta-clue that you can’t rely on with more modern writers. Post–Hays-code, we’ve gotten pretty comfortable seeing innocent characters get punished.

As far as the actual culprit, I flirted with that idea a few times briefly, but I didn’t really expect it. Funnily, I did ask myself a couple of times why the doctor was narrating this—why Christie didn’t just bring Hastings back, rather than introduce a character who served the same purpose but wasn’t actually him. That’s obvious in retrospect.

I nominate Sula by Toni Morrison. Pub. 1973, 174 p.

Shaneka wrote: “It has been a long time since I’ve read along so I am really excited to join you all! I started listening to this as an audiobook a few years ago. Midway read the description and it said it was a s...”

How frustrating. Abridged versions should require a big red stamp across the cover image, the way movies show CONFIDENTIAL government files. Not to mention an audio heads-up from the reader or introducer themselves.

Renata wrote: “I’ll be reading this one too. I’m not a big fan of cozy mysteries, but this one is intriguing me. I wonder why it’s so popular?”

I’ll be curious what you think. I’m nearly finished with it, and for me it doesn’t really stand out from the genre. I don’t mind them, but I don’t read a lot of them. So I’ve enjoyed it.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: “That is ok, except that many of these disgruntled readers believe the denigration of women in a book reflects the author’s opinion as well.”

I haven’t seen anyone in this conversation suggest that.

Personally, with these kinds of questions I’m never as interested in intent as I am in effect. Baldwin may have intended any number of things, and knowing him, he probably intended more than one simultaneously. But the effect is a pretty harsh, dehumanized depiction of women—especially in the person of the novel’s must fully developed female character. I don’t think it serves the purpose of “showing how women suffer under societal pressures” so much as it’s simply an ugly depiction of a woman.

TKO reads wrote: “Though there were many comments and thoughts that were derogatory towards women...”

I agree—and that bothered me quite a bit. Especially when he’s back together with his fiancée, of course. This bit, in particular:

“David, please let me be a woman. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll wear my hair long, I’ll give up cigarettes, I’ll throw away the books.” She tried to smile; my heart turned over. “Just let me be a woman, take me. It’s what I want. It’s all I want. I don’t care about anything else.”

I mean, I get that it’s supposed to be a moment of desperation, and we’re seeing her at her extreme. But the fact that that is the form it took? Ick.

Also, I’m obviously an outlier, and maybe it’s just me all by my lonesome, but I don’t think the writing is at all good in this book. I’m a huge Baldwin fan, and a big part of that is his mastery of language. And at the level of the language, I suppose this writing is all right. But when it came to reading it, I kept being jarred out of the story by his ham-fisted attempts to shoehorn so many abstract ideas & brilliant insights into some of these paragraphs. Especially in the first person, it really didn’t work for me. I love Baldwin’s non-fiction, and I especially love his ability to consider things from multiple perspectives. But trying to have this character voice all those perspectives, often accompanied by illuminating metaphors, was just too much.

I second Rebecca and A Gentleman in Moscow.

I second The Time Machine, The Maltese Falcon and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

I second Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I second The Underground Railroad and A Study in Scarlet.

I second Project Hail Mary, The Namesake, and Kindred.

I nominate Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (684 p., 53k ratings).

I nominate The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.

I second The Martian.

I second Go Tell It on the Mountain.

I’m joining. I’m a fan of Baldwin, and this is one I haven’t yet read. Plus it’s short, so it was an easy commitment to make. 😀