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Book report: Maisie Dobbs
Apr. 29th, 2007 09:09 pmToday I read Jacqueline Winspear's "Maisie Dobbs". Boy, was that a harrowing read. It was not a fun mystery novel in any sense. Very psychological. Well paced, by and large. Certainly well-written. Very different from other 20s set mystery novels I've read (especially those written in the 20s) in that it was focused on the war so directly.
I was very jarred by the transition from the opening story to the backstory at first, and then further puzzled by the way time flowed more easily back and forth between sections towards the end of the book, with no more of the blank-page-with-date demarkers that had been used at first.
As I think on it, I think that these differences - harsh separation of time, fluid separation of time - relate to the main character reclaiming her connection to a past whose memories were so painful that she had sort of severed them into two chunks with no connection. The date markers are a parallel to the "tissue paper barrier" that she discusses with her friend/mentor. Kinda cool. I gather it's quite a long series now, and given the darkness and isolation of the first book, I'm sorta puzzled as to how it will develop. I like the characters but it was such a painful book to read - I find social darkness more oppressive than individual darkness. Though Elizabeth George's first book in her series (A Great Deliverance) was pretty darned harrowing too. I think it's just that I find war so inexplicable. I have a very Brecht reaction to it. All those people being treated not as people, but as objects, markers. Horrible. Fortunately every single supporting cast member was a good natured, empathetic, sympathetic type of person - I think even one conniving supporting character would have tipped me over on this one to it being just too grim to read. As a war novel I suppose it's fairly light - I just wasn't expecting a war novel. Whoever responded to my fondness for, as I put it, "spunky girl detective stories" by recommending this author was smoking some serious Readers' Advisory Crack. Glad to have read the book, but overlap with the Lauren Henderson / Sparkle Hayter Tart Noir detective stories it definitely does not.
I was very jarred by the transition from the opening story to the backstory at first, and then further puzzled by the way time flowed more easily back and forth between sections towards the end of the book, with no more of the blank-page-with-date demarkers that had been used at first.
As I think on it, I think that these differences - harsh separation of time, fluid separation of time - relate to the main character reclaiming her connection to a past whose memories were so painful that she had sort of severed them into two chunks with no connection. The date markers are a parallel to the "tissue paper barrier" that she discusses with her friend/mentor. Kinda cool. I gather it's quite a long series now, and given the darkness and isolation of the first book, I'm sorta puzzled as to how it will develop. I like the characters but it was such a painful book to read - I find social darkness more oppressive than individual darkness. Though Elizabeth George's first book in her series (A Great Deliverance) was pretty darned harrowing too. I think it's just that I find war so inexplicable. I have a very Brecht reaction to it. All those people being treated not as people, but as objects, markers. Horrible. Fortunately every single supporting cast member was a good natured, empathetic, sympathetic type of person - I think even one conniving supporting character would have tipped me over on this one to it being just too grim to read. As a war novel I suppose it's fairly light - I just wasn't expecting a war novel. Whoever responded to my fondness for, as I put it, "spunky girl detective stories" by recommending this author was smoking some serious Readers' Advisory Crack. Glad to have read the book, but overlap with the Lauren Henderson / Sparkle Hayter Tart Noir detective stories it definitely does not.
