When I'm Between Books
Two Very Different English Authors
By Marc Berlin
My search for something to read ended when I settled on two unorthodox mysteries: Case Histories and Original Sin by two very different English writers: Kate Atkinson and P.D. James, respectively.
Case Histories by Atkinson has the bones of a mystery – i.e., crimes are committed which a detective is hired to solve – but the flesh or writing style is that of the modern literary novel where style rules and the delights of reading are found in presentation and not necessarily content. The crimes in Case Histories (and there are many) are lurid and commonplace: an axe to the head of a spouse, a knife to the throat of a young woman, sexual abuse of a minor, and the disappearance of a child are some of the cases that the much put upon detective is called upon to explore. The reader is always one step ahead of the detective as we learn the history of each crime and the curious, sometime deft and other times forced, ways in which each is related to the other. The interesting aspect of the book is not the crime or the personalities of the criminals and victims but rather the wonderfully breezy style that permeates the whole and is so at variance with the subject matter. The violence and sex that permeates the text are viewed with the kind of detachment that one brings to the microscopic viewing of squirming, single-celled organisms in a petri dish. If you enjoy a consistent, albeit unpleasant, worldview and a fresh sense of word play Case Histories may be just the tonic you need after the predictable whodunit.
Predictable would also be a misnomer if applied to a P.D James novel. Although well accepted by the mystery reading community, the traditional mystery in Baroness James' hands becomes not just a whodunit but also a how-dunit and why-dunit. The odd and compelling detachment that defined Case Histories is nowhere evident in Original Sin. Instead, every character is minutely and sympathetically examined, first from the inside via interior monologues and then from the outside as each character reflects on the personalities of the others. Victims and victimizers are given the same scrupulous attention. In Original Sin, England's oldest independent publisher, comfortably ensconced in a Venetian villa overlooking the Thames River, is suddenly plagued by a series of annoying practical jokes that culminates in a suicide. Next comes a murder and another possible suicide and, since we now know that everyone has a motive, how and why become essential for learning who. A P.D. James mystery is a traditionally written character study a la E.M Forster or W. Somerset Maugham but with murder not plot determining its overall shape. And what's wrong with that?
By Marc Berlin
My search for something to read ended when I settled on two unorthodox mysteries: Case Histories and Original Sin by two very different English writers: Kate Atkinson and P.D. James, respectively.
Case Histories by Atkinson has the bones of a mystery – i.e., crimes are committed which a detective is hired to solve – but the flesh or writing style is that of the modern literary novel where style rules and the delights of reading are found in presentation and not necessarily content. The crimes in Case Histories (and there are many) are lurid and commonplace: an axe to the head of a spouse, a knife to the throat of a young woman, sexual abuse of a minor, and the disappearance of a child are some of the cases that the much put upon detective is called upon to explore. The reader is always one step ahead of the detective as we learn the history of each crime and the curious, sometime deft and other times forced, ways in which each is related to the other. The interesting aspect of the book is not the crime or the personalities of the criminals and victims but rather the wonderfully breezy style that permeates the whole and is so at variance with the subject matter. The violence and sex that permeates the text are viewed with the kind of detachment that one brings to the microscopic viewing of squirming, single-celled organisms in a petri dish. If you enjoy a consistent, albeit unpleasant, worldview and a fresh sense of word play Case Histories may be just the tonic you need after the predictable whodunit.
Predictable would also be a misnomer if applied to a P.D James novel. Although well accepted by the mystery reading community, the traditional mystery in Baroness James' hands becomes not just a whodunit but also a how-dunit and why-dunit. The odd and compelling detachment that defined Case Histories is nowhere evident in Original Sin. Instead, every character is minutely and sympathetically examined, first from the inside via interior monologues and then from the outside as each character reflects on the personalities of the others. Victims and victimizers are given the same scrupulous attention. In Original Sin, England's oldest independent publisher, comfortably ensconced in a Venetian villa overlooking the Thames River, is suddenly plagued by a series of annoying practical jokes that culminates in a suicide. Next comes a murder and another possible suicide and, since we now know that everyone has a motive, how and why become essential for learning who. A P.D. James mystery is a traditionally written character study a la E.M Forster or W. Somerset Maugham but with murder not plot determining its overall shape. And what's wrong with that?
posted by BookMarc's at 2:21 PM
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