Lenore’s Comments (group member since Aug 23, 2012)

Lenore’s comments from the Q&A with Laurie R. King group.

Anne wrote: "Besides that, we made it disjointed by taking discussions off in all directions. We have agreed on somethings, beginning with the important fact that Russell is no Mary Sue, and we have had to agre..."

A late addition to the Mary Sue discussion. While re-reading Justice Hall, I was reminded that, for all her scholarship and specialized training with Holmes, Russell is still intimidated by Phyllida -- clearly her intellectual and professional inferior -- just because Phyllida is elegantly dressed and made up and radiating upper classness. Surely no Mary Sue would be subject to such mundane psychological stresses!

Jennifer wrote: "Merrie wrote: "Laurie, you've been teasing us for years about that trip to Japan. When will we get that story?"

YES! I second this request!"

Well, those who follow Laurie's blog know that she took a trip to Japan this year. And we know that the next book is a Touchstone sequel. I think somewhere along the line -- I could definitely be wrong about this -- Laurie said something about the next Russell being set in Oxford. (I could have hallucinated this.) SO -- we can deduce that the Japan adventure will likely appear in 2014 or 2015. As a lawyer, I must advise you that this prediction comes with no warranties, express or implied. ;)

Sabrina,

Thank you so much for the link; that was fascinating. I had read somewhere and believed that Conan Doyle had just made up "baritsu," and I was pleased to discover that he merely misspelled it (or quite understandably followed a reporter's misspelling).

Henry wrote: "It just detracts from the story, to have a heroine that is both supergenius, can do almost anything that even most men can't do with their most strength, know martial arts, can outswim and outrun a top male athlete, and still be under 20."

LRK said she began the series with the question, What would Sherlock Holmes be like if he were a 20th century woman? Russell can do everything Holmes can do, but -- as far as I can determine -- nothing more. In fact, much of what she can do (observing soil types or martial arts, for two instances) she learned from Holmes (soil types) or at his direction (martial arts). None of this seems like super-genius to me; the whole point of the Sherlock Holmes stories was that he had above-average observational skills and had taught himself the other things necessary to make those skills into the profession of "consulting detective." Is it your position that Holmes is plausible, thus not a Mary Sue (or a "Gary Stu," as some put it when discussing men), but Russell is implausible and a Mary Sue, because she is a woman? In that case, my dear sir, you really are just a sexist. Or is it your position that Holmes, too, is implausible? In which case, why are you even reading either Conan Doyle or LRK? I'm not trying to be rude or overbearing here -- although I certainly apologize if I am coming off that way -- but I am totally unable to grasp your point.

Anne wrote: "Holmes . . . had to rescue her once to feel strong enough to marry her. Does this make sense? ..."

I cannot agree with you. It is indisputably true that many men (not sure I’d go so far as a plurality, but many) are intimidated by strong women. But Holmes is surely not among them. First, we know from “A Scandal in Bohemia” that he strongly admires Irene Adler, precisely because she could out-think him. Second, and more importantly, Russell is the way she is in large part because Holmes has trained her over a period of seven years. Yes, she is independent enough to be a partner rather than a lackey. But she is a partner because he trusts her. It strains credulity to think that Holmes feels threatened by the trusted partner he in large part created.

It seems far more likely to me, based on the evidence of the growing relationship in the books, that Holmes is worried about precisely the opposite. He wants to be sure that Russell would marry him fully of her own free, mature will – and cognizant of the issues created by the difference in their ages and by his long-time solo personality – rather than because she is used to him or needs him or wants to remain his partner in detecting. She herself is not sure until she has faced (for the few moments she thought him dead in the explosion) the possibility of life without him. He cannot marry her until he is sure she is strong enough to marry him.

The novella is available for download for 99 cents: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/21447...

"Two orange cats shot out and raced along the lawn and disappeared through the opening in the garden wall."

In joint pursuit of a common goal -- as Holmes would be with an apprentice who had the capacity to become a partner.

As you so frequently do, Sabrina, you have taken the words right out of my keyboard. ;-)

Shomeret wrote: "Could Mary Russell possibly identify with Reform Judaism?"

It is certainly possible that Russell identifies with Reform Judaism, but -- at least in my experience -- Reform Jews rarely observe any aspect of the dietary laws (even as moderately as does Russell) and are rarely sufficiently indoctrinated to pray and recite Psalms spontaneously in Hebrew. (Yes, I know she's a theologian, but test my theory: Ask the next few Reform Jews you meet, even rabbis, whether they spontaneously recite psalms and prayers in Hebrew in times of trouble.) I think it is much more likely that Russell is simply a highly educated traditional Jew who is not strictly observant, not an uncommon situation. (And, although I usually try to work up a Baker Street Irregular-type of explanation for incongruities in LRK's work, I fear the rabbit pie was just an accidental slip that made it past both LRK and her editor, as rabbit certainly is just as impermissible as pork.)

Tilda Swinton is nearly 52. Can she really look the part of a character in her late teens and early 20s?

Regan wrote: "...Frankly, knowing how their relationship ends up, I found this a bit creepy..."

I think that if you pay close attention to the time line, you will find the marriage significantly less creepy.

When they meet, Holmes is 54 and Russell is 15, an age difference of 39 years. At first he recognizes her as a child, and even occasionally calls her “child,” without irony. However, they met at a time when Holmes needed the kind of distraction that an apprentice could provide, and Russell needed someone whom she could trust and with whom she could be truly herself. Thus, as Russell says in BEEK,

I know that from that first day he tended to treat me more as a lad than as a girl and seemed in fact to solve any discomfort my sex might cause him by simply ignoring it: I was Russell, not some female . . . .

. . . My attitudes, my choice of clothing, even the shape of my body combined to protect him from having to acknowledge my nature. By the time I grew into womanhood, I was a part of his life, and it was too late for him to change.

It is clear that this state of affairs continues for almost three years, until Russell’s 18th birthday when, her hair done and attired for the first time in a gown, it seems first to occur to Holmes that she IS in fact a young woman.

But by the time Russell reaches 18, she is mostly away at Oxford. They do have a case together during August of Russell’s 18th year, the recovery of the kidnaped senator’s daughter, but they have to present themselves as a gypsy father and daughter, and so thrust themselves wholly into a role which, for security’s sake, they play to the hilt, even when alone together scouring a hillside for clues. Moreover, if Holmes has decided by this time that his interest in Russell is anything but platonic, it is clear that he has decided to keep it entirely to himself – that he must await the time when she is an adult. Nowadays, in the U.S. at least, we consider 18 to be adulthood, but in those days, in Anglophone countries, it was 21.

Russell returns to school right after the kidnaping case, and Holmes does not see her at all until the attempt on her life just before the beginning of the Christmas vacation. At that point they are fleeing for their lives, and there is no opportunity for anyone to have a sexual or romantic thought. For approximately a month, Russell is posing as a man and, as Holmes tells Ali, they must think of her as a man at all times to avoid exposing themselves. Even in the one instance that Holmes puts his arms around her, it is clear that he is soothing her, in her words, “like a frightened child.” She turns 20 during that escapade. She is then away from Holmes until the spring, after which she spends time in hospital and then at Holmes’ cottage recovering from a bullet wound. After her recovery they travel to France and Italy for six weeks, but the trauma of the discovery of Holmes’s son and his problems must certainly prevent Holmes from thinking of Russell as anything other than his now long-time assistant and confidant.

And then Russell returns to Oxford for another term, and they do not see each other again until the week preceding Russell’s 21st birthday. Russell IS an adult; in her own words in MREG, “a mature scholar.” And, as her friend Ronnie Beaconsfield points out, in the shortage of young men after WWI, many “surplus” women wed older men. Although the age difference between Russell and Holmes hasn’t changed, their ages have, and there is no sensible reason why Holmes should not realize that the person who has become his soul-mate is now of marriageable age. Nothing creepy about it.

Heck, my own father, who had both Rumanian and American law degrees and a Ph.D., read ancient Greek and Latin and spoke, to my knowledge, at least seven languages fluently, with smatterings of at least a couple of others. And while in his later years he was a short, round, sedentary man, in younger years he was a champion fencer and played tennis. And served in WWII and Korea, although not in direct combat conditions (which did not prevent him from being wounded by a sniper). Many people thought the world of him, but I don't think any of them -- even me -- thought of him as a genius.

Modern-day Americans think it rare to be multi-lingual, but I have met many Europeans, as well as well-traveled Asians, who are multi-lingual, and who consider that to be a commonplace and utilitarian skill, in addition to whatever it is they actually do for a living.

Zee wrote: "While my vote (as if) is still in the Alan Rickman camp (beyond HP, if you are curious try Love Actually or Bottle Shock or Something the Lord Made or any of his others..."

Or "Truly, Madly, Deeply," one of my favorites.

Julie wrote: "Russell's and Holmes treatment of Idir in Garment of Shadows might be a clue about children in their lives..."

Hey, no spoilers! (Please.) Some of us haven't got the book yet!

Kathy wrote: "I recognize that Emma Watson has grown up considerably, and probably is older than she looks, but she looks about 14. It seems like the Russell character is a young woman, but not as young as Emma..."

The Beekeeper's Apprentice opens: "I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes..."

I can't remember where, but LRK once said she had liked Michael Chabon's presentation of an aged Holmes in The Final Solution. I thought the aged Holmes there really seemed like the way ACD's (and LRK's) Holmes would be at an advanced age. I didn't like as much the aged Holmes in A Slight Trick Of The Mind.

Not sure why I feel obsessively compelled to demonstrate that Russell perceives herself as a practicing (although clearly not Orthodox) Jew, but here it is. I took the most examples from BEEK, as I have a copy to hand, but I think there are more examples than I have cited in the other books. I believe that one or two of the following incidents or statements might be discounted, but taken as a whole I think they demonstrate that Russell relates as a Jew:

BEEK:
• Holmes deduces that Russell reads and writes Hebrew
• she says, “I do not normally eat pork, but decided that this time I might make an exception”
• she chooses Israel: “Yisroel. . . .” (Not what an assimilated Jew would call it.)
• refers to Palestine as “birthplace of my people . . . whose only wealth lies in the children she had borne.”
• “the sense of Palestine as a refuge made me a Jew more than any one thing apart from the accident of my birth”
• recites Hebrew psalm upon seeing Jerusalem; and upon setting sail from Acre
• on the boat: “Twice I lit a candle and read to him from the little Hebrew Bible I had bought in the old bazaar in Jerusalem.”
• “It was a long, bitter winter after the warmth of Palestine. I read my Hebrew Bible, and I thought about Holofernes and the road to Jerusalem.”

OJER:
• reflects on the irony of her difficulty of keeping kosher (although she is not strictly so) in the Holy Land
• absolute fascination with Jerusalem
• places a prayer in the wall before she leaves

MREG:
• instructs her new house staff that she does not eat pork or shellfish or cream sauces with meat
• prays and recites Psalms in Hebrew in her captivity

LANG:
• places the mezuzah retrieved from her CA house on the door of the Sussex house

GOTH:
• prays in Hebrew when her plane and its pilot are shot

GARM:
• “I felt quite certain that my people—-Jewish: Wasn’t I Jewish?—-put the ring on the right hand.”

Actually, I just noticed that it HAS become a new discussion thread!

Holmes: Jeremy Irons!

Dot wrote: "I could see Anne Hathaway as Russell, and George Clooney as Holmes."

This could be a whole new discussion thread in itself. I enjoy the game but -- and I say this respectfully, realizing that it is entirely a matter of taste, in which reasonable minds can differ -- George Clooney and Anne Hathaway? Are you crazy? :-D