A Demon in My View – Ruth Rendell

This novel begins with a murder of a woman in a dark cellar – but it turns out that she’s a window display dummy. The man who strangles her holds to the belief that the dummy is a real, living woman, and his experience (which he regularly repeats) gives him an erotic thrill. Clearly, we’re dealing with a full-fledged psychopath. To the outside world Arthur is an odd bird, a fifty year old bachelor, very picky and prickly. He has no friends, but he holds a job and functions well enough. It turns out that the dummy in the cellar is a useful substitute for real women; Arthur has strangled two of them in the past. But using real victims poses the danger of being caught, and he’s quite satisfied with his substitute when the urge possesses him. Another intriguing aspect is that Arthur dresses the dummy in the type of clothes the woman who raised him – Auntie Gracie – wore. But all this amounts to a premise – Rendell doesn’t have a novel. So she introduces another character by the name of Anthony who moves into a flat in the same building as Arthur. Anthony’s problem is his love for Helen – he wants her to leave her husband, but she’s unsure of what to do (a matter that held little interest for me). Rendell’s tying together of these two narrative strands hinges on the fact that both Arthur and Anthony have the same last name. Anthony winds up unintentionally disrupting Arthur’s world. As complications proliferate – and letters between Anthony and Helen play a big role – my interest steadily declined, and the climax comes across as awkward and contrived. Rendell is a good writer, but she couldn’t follow up on that premise. Also, the book has a major gap. Though Auntie keeps popping up in Arthur’s mind, these memories seem innocuous; we’re never given insight as to what effect the woman had on him. Rendell received acclaim as a writer of psychological murder mysteries, so why did she leave out the psychology?

The Box Garden – Carol Shields

I enjoyed much of this novel because I liked the main character. We’re in Charleen’s mind, and I found her thoughts interesting. Not much was happening, but that was OK because her life is on hold, she’s treading water. One complication is introduced: she has to take a trip to attend her seventy-year-old mother’s wedding. The woman had recently had a breast removed, and Charlene can’t imagine her getting married. For one thing – the major thing – she’s an extremely negative personality, always had been. Even a comment about the nice weather gets a response that serves to deny the niceness. Charleen doesn’t hate her mother, but she doesn’t love her. I couldn’t understand how anyone could love this woman. So the whole marriage business was a bit shaky. Still, Charleen is accompanied by her boyfriend, and her sister arrives with her husband. These people I liked, the conversations between them had a nice flow. I was still on board – and then Shields manages to blow it. Maybe she felt the novel needed some drama. But what it didn’t need was melodrama (the kidnaping of her son by a possible psychotic). Suddenly we’re in a mystery thriller and are supposed to tie in some stuff from the beginning of the book to the present situation. This turn of events – and shift of tone – just didn’t work. When the dust settled and everybody was safe and content, I was still disgruntled. A good character is a terrible thing to waste.

A Is for Alibi – Sue Grafton

This is the first in a series of crime novels that Grafton continued up to the letter Y (her death intervened). Their considerable success was dependent to a large degree on whether the reader liked the private investigator, Kinsey Millhorne. I can’t say I liked her all that much. So I was left with a writing style (quite nice) and a plot (not good). The plot of mysteries is almost always the weak point. For starters, an alibi plays no role in the story. The main issue is M (for Motive), but it turns out that murders take place to cover a minor embezzlement. Then there are too many characters, too many complications. And there’s a lack of logic; when someone borrows a friend’s car to kill a woman, doesn’t this person have to account for the smashed fender? Especially since the police are looking for a black car with a smashed fender? All these flaws started to pile up and move me into the I’m-simply-turning-pages mode. The ending was predictable in that it employs the time-honored “ruse” of having an unlikely person wind up being the culprit. Grafton is similar to Ross Macdonald in her ability to effectively sketch in characters and locales, but his Lew Archer remained a shadowy figure. Kinsey is very much in your face. We even get what was, for me, a too graphic look at her sex life. So, to sum up, I won’t be moving on to B (for Burglar).

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
This 2015 best seller is narrated by three women; they recount events that had recently taken place or are currently happening. So we’re in their minds, seeing things from their perspectives. One of the women will be murdered. By whom? In this mystery Hawkins’ major bit of deception involves an affair that the murdered woman is having; Megan never uses the man’s name when writing about their meetings, nor does she give us enough information to identify him (in fact, we’re misled as to who he is). Though I read all 400 pages to find out who-dun-it, the experience became burdensome. Things were too drawn out, and the accumulation of loose ends wore me down. As did the plethora of psychological problems the women display. Rachel is the worst of the lot (and, since she’s an alcoholic who has black-out periods, her account of events is unreliable). The lives of all three women are dominated by men they find both sexually attractive and threatening. I felt little empathy for Hawkins’ characters, and this is partly due to how she keeps the intensity level unrelentingly high; what is needed is a fresh breath of normalcy. Also, as I neared the end, I realized that I wasn’t reading about adults. All the characters think and act like emotionally unstable children. They cry a lot, they fall apart, they think in platitudes. Because their impulse control is nil, they have affairs and commit murder (“See what you made me do?”). And they can’t stay off their devices; the novel is full of texting and emailing and voice messages.

A High Wind in Jamaica – Richard Hughes
I had attempted to read this novel twice before, but never got far. Since people I respect consider it to be a masterpiece, and I recently (at a used book sale) picked up a pristine copy in a Time Reading Program edition (which usually published excellent stuff), I again embarked, with determination, on Hughes’ story of children captured by pirates. I made it all to the way to the end, so am now qualified to give my opinion: the book is an elaborate bore. It’s overly rich in language but shallow in character and plot. Only Emily is given much attention, and she’s a mishmash of neurotic odds and ends. All others – her brothers and sisters, the captain and mate – are merely sketched in. As for plot, I got the sense that Hughes was scouring his mind for what outlandish happening to toss next into his disorderly procession of events. Admirers of High Wind tout the realism of its portrayal of children; Hughes backs that viewpoint in his Introduction, in which he claims that he was trying to portray them “realistically” and “lovingly.” But realism and love are totally absent from these pages. Real children recognize their vulnerability; they’re easily frightened and emotionally dependent on adults; they need stability. Hughes’ “wild things” never experience such feelings. The parents they leave behind are quickly forgotten, and when John dies his brother and sisters immediately erase him from their thoughts, as if he never existed. Instead of love, Hughes indulges in scenes in which people and animals are callously victimized. I agree with detractors such as Andre Gide, who could see no reason why the book had ever been written.

Various Miracles – Carol Shields
I counted twenty-one titles in this 183 page collection, which means that Shields keeps it short – as short as three pages. These aren’t stories; they’re evocations, in which the author tries to capture an emotion. She begins with an odd premise; from there she gives us fragments of experiences, or jumps back and forth in time, or starts with one character and then moves to another. I read these pieces over a long period of time, and looking at them again, to write this review, I find that I can’t remember their content; there wasn’t enough substance to hold onto. What I do remember is that, when I was in the act of reading, occasionally a connection was made: I experienced (to varying degrees) the emotion that Shields was trying to evoke. In some, I also recall, no emotion registered. The last story, which I read recently, was longer and more traditional than most. It begins with a stranger asking a couple to cash a personal check (they’re all Americans on vacation in Europe); they do him the favor, not knowing if they would ever be repaid. But a check arrives at the address they gave the man, and from then on, for over twenty years, they receive Christmas cards from him and his wife; each card contains a note about their lives, which seem to be idyllic. Meanwhile we follow the marriage of Robert and Lila, which doesn’t go so smoothly. One is left with a somewhat resigned “What is love all about, anyway?” feeling. In working with evocations Shields is taking a risk as a writer – the terrain is fragile and largely untrodden – so her successes are a unique accomplishment. Try these. If nothing else, you can admire the immaculate prose.

Jakob Von Gunten - Robert Walser (German)
The book doesn’t have a plot. The detailed scrutiny of people adds up to nothing because they aren’t doing anything, going anywhere; it’s navel-gazing. Also, the main character was too elusive to pin down – he’s this, he’s that, he’s nothing at all. This aimless ambiguity is not true to life, and so it comes across as youthful affectation.

McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon - Joseph Mitchell
The author is a good writer of prose, but these sketches were originally published as pieces for The New Yorker, and some are better than others. When he’s in top form Mitchell is observant and entertaining and able to capture a person and a place in depth. I also liked his feeling for the downtrodden – that they have a story worth telling. Possibly “Hit on the Head with a Cow” is my favorite. The problem is that many of the pieces are uninspired; Mitchell is writing to get something out for the next issue of the magazine. So is it worth reading the whole book? I decided not to continue. Too often Mitchell comes across as disinterested and tired – which may be why he stopped writing altogether.

Marcel Proust - Edmund White
One of those pleasantly short Penguin Lives. I stopped reading halfway through. Proust displayed no qualities or values of interest to me. Just another social climbing little fop whose chief ambition was to be part of the French aristocracy. Also, White (predictably) lays the homosexuality on heavy, in a gossipy way. Maybe Proust’s existence was redeemed by Remembrance. But I’ve dipped into that book and found it to reflect his faults as a man.

Unless - Carol Shields
Shields wrote this with a death sentence hanging over her (cancer). I sometimes detected her pushing words along, creating nice, orderly scenes; a workmanlike but mechanical pushing. Which is sad; she was trying to go on when other thoughts, worries impinged. Yet she does write about what matters to her. The trouble for me is that I couldn’t sympathize with her idea of what matters; she’s saying that woman are powerless. But, as a writer, Carol Shields’ success came easily to her. And woman, today, simply are not powerless. It’s an issue without relevance.