Prime Suspect, Blue Lightning

This is one of those multiple point-of-view novels, and the murder victim keeps slipping in and out of view. Damn! Who could the murderer be? The cook who was just fired by the murder victim? The birder who lives for his annual trip to Fair Isle? The older husband tired of his wife’s many infidelities?

Self has ruled out the dysfunctional sixteen-year-old stepdaughter, Perez and his fiancée, and Perez’s parents.

Jane, the cook, is so creepy! She’s been snooping in everyone’s rooms, opening laptops, rifling through drawers, etc. All from a desire to be helpful to the investigation. There is something she isn’t saying! And she is entirely too envious of others. And she’s manipulative. She’s as eager for attention as everybody else, but since she’s old and self-effacing, this fact is not immediately evident.

The Jane point of view, pp. 137 – 138:

• Mary arrived just as Jane reached the lobby. She’d brought Perez’s fiancée with her. Jane thought Perez and this Englishman made a strange couple; Perez was so straight and silent, very Shetland despite the dark hair and olive skin, and Fran so full of energy and questions, stylish in a bohemian sort of way.

Self thinks it’s JANE! But since it’s only halfway, it’s probably not Jane.

Stay tuned.

The Opinion of a Character on Mail-Order Brides

Whoa whoa whoa whoa

A character in an Ann Cleeves novel considers the possibility of MAIL-ORDER BRIDES.

Self was dreading seeing the name of her native country on the page, but it was some other Southeast-Asian country, NOT the Philippines.

Some of his mates had gone to Thailand to find a bride, and at one time Dougie had been tempted to go down that route. He imagined a small, pretty woman, mild-mannered and grateful to be in the UK. He would be her hero: after all, he would have rescued her from poverty, perhaps from a life on the streets. She would provide companionship, laugh at his jokes, come birding with him. There would be sex. Regular sex. But his acquaintances’ Thai brides turned out to be strong and forceful women. They laughed at their men and made their lives a misery.

Blue Lightning, p. 51

The Fatalism (Spoilers If You’ve Never Read BLUE LIGHTNING)

The past few days, self has been completely intent on her reading. She read through Anne Cleeves’ Cold Earth, finishing the back half in one afternoon. Then she started in on Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, and read for two straight days, barely moving a muscle, just cherry-picking through it for the chapters with battles. And now she is reading Blue Lightning, the fourth book in Anne Cleeves’ Shetland series. And though at first she was confused because there is a character named Jane (and there is also a character named Jane in Cold Earth), they are two completely different Janes.

Then a reviewer — no, several reviewers — on goodreads gave away the ending. So now she’s in a hurry to finish. Which is a crying shame, because this is a very good book.

Anyhoo, Fran’s alive in this one. Jimmy Perez has brought her to Fair Isle to meet his parents. And self likes Jimmy Perez’s parents, a lot. And then, of all things, on the night of his engagement party, someone is murdered. And without even stopping to think about how this is very bad ju-ju for his future life, Perez just goes into action (guess it’s instinct) and starts interviewing possible suspects, which includes of course the partner of the murder victim. Self finds it really interesting how the suspect, an older man, describes the trajectory of his life:

I loved her, you know, from the moment I first met her. She was a bright postgraduate student then. I knew it was madness but there was nothing I could do to stop it. My wife and I were happy, settled, and I wrecked all that, in a clear-sighted, self-destructive series of actions that alienated my children and my friends.

Blue Lightning, p. 49

How inexpressibly tragic!

Stay tuned.

First Monday of February, 2022: COLD EARTH, p. 247

Can self say just how much she is enjoying Ann Cleeves? She never read the woman before, never watched the TV show either, and here she is starting with # 17 (aargh, TYPO: It’s Book # 7, not Book # 17) in Cleeves’ Shetland series.

There’s just enough backstory to have her intrigued: Jimmy Perez and his sad life, the Hays and their okay maybe a tad dysfunctional marriage, the two Hays boys, Andy and Michael.

And always there is mention of the oil. The oil. The oil!

And the weather, of course. Not huge mentions, of course. Just sentences here and there to remind you that weather is wet and it is usually cold.

• They walked to the solicitors’ office along Commercial Street. Everywhere people were talking about the weather and turning their faces towards the sun.

This is one mystery where the whodunnit isn’t important. There’s a standard mystery woman, seen with different men, etc etc One of the happily married men will turn out to have slept with her, and that will provide the motive. Standard detective stuff.

She really likes the main character, Jimmy Perez. And his boss, Willow. There’s a little bit of angst brewing there. Perez idolizes his dead fiancée, Willow thinks she wants to start a family, etc

Stay tuned.

Contempt

And, doesn’t this just take the cake? The lone miner who doesn’t take to drink after the mine closes, but who continues to work industriously at any part-time job he can find, then secrets his wages in a kitty under his bed, is the object of the worst contempt. He has no family, he doesn’t drink, so what is he saving all that money for?

Life is like this, and not just in Glasgow.

LEEK, p. 196

SPOILER ALERT but since it seems quite a lot of you have read Shuggie Bain then just a re-cap of the one precious call Leek makes to his sister Catherine, who moved with her husband to South Africa.

(Self almost wished he was calling the Art Academy to say, Sorry it’s taken me two years, but I accept your acceptance!)

“Catherine, it’s me, it’s Leek . . . I’m sorry. It’s Mammy’s phone. Yes. She’s here actually, she’s standing right next to me.” He looked Agnes up and down suspiciously. There was a pause. Agnes could hear Catherine raise her voice in agitation. “Don’t worry, I never. I promised you I wouldn’t. Do you like South Africa?” There was a pause. “Oh, he’s fine. Nearly died up the Pit but he’s fine. Still a bit funny. You know, funny funny.” There was laughter on the other end . . . “Right, anyway, Catherine, is Donald there? No, I wasn’t checking. It’s just, I’ve got some bad news. It’s just, well, Granny is dead.”

Leek reminds self of another stoic kid, Niall in du Maurier’s The Parasites. And that novel almost destroyed self.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Wullie Campbell, What a Prince

Wullie Campbell (Agnes’s dad) returns from the war to find a strange baby in his house, and a high-end pram.

Ah!

• “the baby’s pink arms reached out to him, like it knew and trusted the deep well of goodness from which Wullie Campbell had sprung.”

His wife:

• “She had never let Mr. Kilfeather kiss her, she felt she had to tell him that.”

Wullie takes the strange baby out in the pram. Neighbors hear him whistling all the way down the street!

Self rushed all her errands today (even forgave that young Asian woman in the bright blue compact who cut into her lane and gave her the most WICKED side eye — you can bet self leaned on the horn, the loudest bleeaaaeat she could manage. It’s amazing how rude some people can be) just so she could grab her book and read further about Wullie Campbell and the strange baby and the high-end pram and Mr. Kilfeather.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Beginning IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS, by Tim O’Brien

The recommendation is six years old, from a print-out she took home with her during her 2012 residency in Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers. We six writers in June 2012 did a lot of sharing of our favorite books. Someone decided to type them up. Self took the list home, and promptly lost it. She found it again, just a month ago, stuck in the back of a drawer of her writing desk in Redwood City. There, on p. 3, were two books by Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods.

Self began with The Things They Carried. She read it decades ago, taught it to classes. It’s held up. She liked most of the stories.

She decided not to do too much advance research on In the Lake of the Woods. She assumed it was another book about Vietnam.

She loves that O’Brien begins with descriptions of the lake. The lake is in his short stories, too — there is such a lyricism to his descriptions of it. She loves that In the Lake of the Woods is about a wounded candidate, a man who’s lost an election by a landslide.

Also, she loves (so far) the mystery.

• Anthony L. (Tony) Carbo: Show me a politician, I’ll show you an unhappy childhood.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Four Weeks In Hawthornden, Scotland, June 2012

The benefactress Drue Heinz passed away recently, and there was outpouring of sadness from all Hawthornden alums. The impact she had on writers around the world was amazing.

June 2012, self availed of one of Ms. Heinz’s enduring legacies: the Hawthornden Retreat for Writers, near Edinburgh (40 minutes by public bus from). Four wonderful weeks, with five other writers: Allison Amend, Richard Lemm, Jenny Lewis, Marylee McDonald, and Joan McGavin.

One of us volunteered to write down every book recommendation, every movie recommendation, every poem recommendation, every television series recommendation and every short story recommendation. Self completely forgot about this list, until today.

She’s going through her house in Redwood City, inch by inch. At the back of a drawer, she pulled out this list. She didn’t have time to look at it in Redwood City, which must be why she brought it with her to Mendocino. Here are some of the book recommendations (The list is three pages long, double-sided. Self has no time)

FANTASY

• Guy Gavriel Kay: The Fionavar Tapestry

MEMOIR

• John Steinbeck: Travels with Charlie

NONFICTION

• Jim Rosenberger: High Steel

NOVELS

• Bhira Backhaus: Under the Lemon Trees
• John Banville: Doctor Copernicus
• Andrea Barrett: The Voyage of the Narwhal
• Joseph Boyden: Three Day Road
• Michael Byers: Percival’s Planet
  
• Sarah Shun-lien Bynum: The Ms. Hempel Chronicles
• Michael Crummey: Galore
• Richard Flanagan: Wanting and Death of a River Guide
• Katherine Govier: Angel Walk
  
• Eleanor Henderson: Ten Thousand Saints
• Guy Gavriel Kay: Under Heaven
• Larry McMurtry: Hud
• Howard Norman: The Bird Artist
• Marge Piercy: Gone to Soldiers
• John Steffler: The Afterlife of George Cartwright
• Elizabeth Strout: Abide With Me and Olive Kitteridge
• Rosemary Sutcliffe: The Eagle of the Ninth
• Adam Thorpe: Ulverton
• Sigrid Undset: Kristin Lavransdatter

NOVELLAS

• Josh Weil: The New Valley (3 novellas)

POETRY

• Tamar Yoseloff: The City With Horns

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

• Andrea Barrett: Ship Fever
• Evgenia Citkowitz (Hawthornden Alum): Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella
• Michael Faber: The Apple: Crimson Petal Stories and The Fahrenheit Twins
  
• Tim O’Brien: Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried, The Lake in the Woods
• Tobias Wolff: In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

#amwriting: A Story Begun in Hawthornden

Just to show you how mind-numbingly slow her mind is, there are stories she’s begun five, even 10 years ago, whose words sit in her MacBook, languishing.

Five years ago, while self was in Hawthornden, she met two British poets: Joan McGavin and Jenny Lewis.

After dinner, while we all gathered in the parlor, these two would talk. And if self did nothing in that whole month she was there (June 2012) except listen to the stories, she would count that month well spent.

She also remembers visiting the National Museum in Edinburgh, and seeing there a figure of Dolly the Sheep. And dreaming of a giant Dolly the Sheep looking in through the manor windows.

Dolly the Sheep was the first successfully cloned sheep. She was born on 5 July 1996 and died on 14 February 2003.

Self was channeling sheep apparently because she even began writing a Dolly the Sheep story, which began:

• The ghost of Dolly the Sheep, and three dun-polled cows.

Hawthornden was the place where self worked on editing Magellan’s Mirror for J Journal. And that is quite a fantastical story (The Philippines populated by a race of giants).

Then she began going to Ireland and started writing dystopia.

Goal for today: Finish that Dolly the Sheep story!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.