The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster: Metafiction Mysteries

Everyone knows that stories are imaginary. Whatever effect they might have on us, we know they are not true, even when they tell us truths more important than the ones we can find elsewhere. ("The Locked Room")

More than ten years ago I received a big box of 24 Penguin Deluxe Classics as a prize from the publisher. As of this year I still had four still unread so I added The New York Trilogy to my TBR Pile Challenge list. I brought it with me, appropriately, to a recent trip to New York, but this book was not what I expected at all. This is an odd book, and I don't even know if I can describe it accurately.

It's a collection of three novellas, originally published in 1985 and 19867. Each of the protagonists is either a private investigator, or someone who becomes caught up in an investigation. Ostensibly they are all detective novels, but they're hardly the mystery/detective fiction of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.They all begin as traditional detective novels, but it quickly becomes apparent that they're all much more than that, as the narrators begin to question what they're doing and the nature of their existence within the investigations. 

In the first novella, "City of Glass" a mystery writer named Quinn who is between projects gets a series of mysterious phone calls for a "Paul Auster," asking for help. Out of boredom and curiosity, he decides to impersonate Auster and ends up taking on a case and descends into a Kafka-esque spiral. 

The second novella is titled "Ghosts," in which a private investigator named Blue is hired by the mysterious White to follow a man named Black and monitor him 24 hours a day. Eventually he starts to wonder who is observing who and what it all means. (All the characters are named after colors, shades of Reservoir Dogs.)

The final novella of the trilogy, "The Locked Room" is the story of a nameless young writer contacted by the beautiful wife of his childhood friend Fanshawe, who seems to have disappeared, leaving behind boxes crammed with his writings. She asks the narrator to fulfill her missing husband's request to try and get his writing published and he becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to his old friend while becoming more involved with the wife. 

I really liked these novellas but they were so much more than I expected. Instead of the hard-boiled detectives of the mid-century, the protagonists all begin to question their own existence and sometimes their own reality. They're all actually interconnected and it took me quite a while to figure out how they were related, other than being set in New York. (I had put the book down for a couple of weeks before the first and second novellas so that definitely made it harder.)

They're also quite different from writing style of the traditional detective novel. There are so many insightful and beautiful quotes adding little sticky notes so I wouldn't forget them. Some favorites: 

New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized he had no intention of ever leaving it again. (City of Glass)

For the first time in his experience of writing reports, he discovers that words do not necessarily work, that it is possible for them to obscure the things they are trying to say. (Ghosts)

He feels like a man who has been condemned to sit in a room and go on reading a book for the rest of his life. This is strange enough -- to be only half alive at best, seeing the world only through words, living only through the lives of others. But if the book were an interesting one, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. He could get caught up in the story, so to speak, and little by little begin to forget himself. But this book offers him nothing. There is no story, no plot, no action -- nothing but a man sitting alone in a room and writing a book. (Ghosts)

Stories happen only to those who are able to tell them, someone once said. In the same way, perhaps, experiences present themselves only to those who are able to have them. (The Locked Room)

A man does not spend his time hiding from the world without making sure to cover his tracks. (The Locked Room)

We all want to be told stories, and we listen to them in the same way we did when we were young. We imagine the real story inside the words, and to do this we substitute ourselves for the person in the story, pretending that we can understand him because we understand ourselves. This is a deception. We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself. (The Locked Room)

That's a lot of quotes but they're all so good that I couldn't cut a single one. I'm not a huge fan of post-modern or meta-fiction but I can't stop thinking about this book. It did have some sexist tropes that I could have done without but I understand why Penguin added it to their Classics list, despite being published in the 1980s. If I had a mystery book group I would absolutely recommend this because there is a LOT in here to discuss. I'm not even sure I understand the ending. 

This is my third book for the TBR Pile Challenge and I'm really glad that it inspired me to finally read this novel. 

Over-the-Top Victorian Melodrama by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Since I started seriously exploring Victorian literature, I've made some unexpectedly delightful discoveries. One of my favorite surprises was Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a Victorian writer who is best known for her Victorian sensation fiction. Author of more than 80 novels, she's best known for Lady Audley's Secret, which I read several years ago for the RIP Readalong. When I saw that the library had her debut novel available as an e-book, I couldn't wait to download it. 

First published in 1860 as Three Times Dead, Braddon reworked the novel and republished it in 1864 as The Trail of the Serpent. Basically, there are three intertwining plots. The first is the fate of Richard Marwood, a somewhat ne'er-do-well scamp who is trying to turn his life around, and is mistakenly accused of the brutal murder of his wealthy uncle. Following a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, he's sentenced to life in an asylum, while a sympathetic deaf police detective tries to prove his innocence and catch the real killer.

The second plot involves a psychopathic schoolteacher named Jabez North, who was fished out of the river as an orphaned baby. He believes he deserves better than working as a teacher in a second-rate boarding school and is merciless and diabolical. 

The final plot is a wealthy Spanish heiress, Valerie de Cevennes, who lives in Paris and is secretly married to a star opera singer. A manipulative adventurer named Raymond de Marolles manipulates and blackmails Valerie, forcing her to become his wife and control her fortune. Eventually, all the threads tie up together into one super-dramatic plot.  There are swoons and fevers and poisonings and dopplegangers, and of course, lots of Big Secrets and dramatic reveals. 

If this sounds really over top and melodramatic, well, it is. There's a lot of swooning and mustache-twirling, and I wouldn't call any of the characters well-developed. It's not so much a mystery of who the criminal is, but really how they did it and more importantly, will they get away with it? 

Nevertheless, the plot is really great and it's a fun, fast read. It's one of the earliest British detective novels, published a full eight years (in its first incarnation) than The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. And it always pleases me to realize that women authors in the 19th century were just as prolific as some of the men (which then leads me to wonder why the male authors are studied as canon, yet many of the works by women have fallen out of print and are largely forgotten). This is the Victorian equivalent of a vacation read and I really enjoyed it.

I'm counting this as my 400+ pages novel for the Victorian Reading Challenge and as my Classic by a Woman author for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

Armadale by Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins is really well known for his early detective novels, and his Victorian sensation stories.  His most famous novels are The Moonstone and The Woman in White, but he was quite a prolific author. Two of the books I added to my Classics Club list are from his lesser-known works; I read and enjoyed No Name just a couple of months ago, so I was eager to read Armadale. 

The plot of this novel is really hard to sum up quickly. For convoluted reasons, there are two men who are named Allan Armadale, as were both their fathers. The story begins with the father of one of the men making a long deathbed confession as his toddler son plays nearby. After his father's death, this Armadale takes the name of Ozias Midwinter, after a foster father (which is very convenient for the plot, since it makes them easier to tell them apart.) When he comes of age, he learns his father's terrible secret, which involves the father of the other Allan Armadale. Due to the miraculous coincidences of the Victorian sensation novels, Midwinter has by chance befriended the other Armadale, and come to love him as a brother. He is horrified and vows never to reveal the secret to his dear friend. Unfortunately, there is one other person in the world who knows the secret -- a villainous woman named Lydia Gwilt, who decides to use this secret to her advantage.

There are few women in literature who I believe were created with such villany as Lydia Gwilt. She is a temptress, a schemer, a manipulator, and an all-around Jezebel. She makes Scarlet O'Hara look like a pushover in comparison. Seriously, if I had to make a list of Top Ten Literary Villains, she would be on it, and probably at or near the top of the list. Overall, there really aren't any positive female characters in this book, now that I think about it. Most of the men are pretty awful too.

Overall, I did enjoy this book, but it took me an awfully long time to finish it -- almost a month, compared to a relatively short ten-day read for No Name. It started out pretty well, but the middle really dragged for me. I think I got really annoyed with both Armadales and their relationship with Miss Gwilt -- they were such pushovers for a pretty face. Most of the men in this book were just putty in her hands; also, there's a young ingenue named Miss Milroy that was straight out of Dickens, she was so annoying. I was rather surprised after reading about the strong female characters in No Name. 

Also, I found the ending of the book to be overly dramatic and rather convoluted, as well as rather predictable; overall, not my favorite by Wilkie Collins, but not a terrible read. I still want to read Basil and some of Collins' other works. And has anyone else read something by Wilkie Collins? I've read four of his novels so far. Which do you recommend?

I'd planned originally to count this as my 19th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge. Some of Wilkie Collins' works definitely qualify to count as Detective Fiction (especially The Moonstone and The Woman in White), but I wasn't sure about this one. However, this book involves a lot of private investigating, plus they do mention Scotland Yard, so I've decided this will count as my Classic Detective Fiction.

Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

So -- just back from vacation, where I did actually have time to get some reading done, what with long flights, layovers, and jet lag.  I can hardly go on a vacation without a big fat Victorian novel, and this time I read Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the queen of the Victorian sensation novel.

Set in the 1850s, this is the story of the Aurora Floyd, who is young, spoiled, and rich.  Her father is a wealthy banker who fell in love late in life with -- gasp! -- a beautiful actress from a poor family.  Knowing a good thing when she saw it, Eliza Prodder married rich Archibald Floyd, nearly 20 years her senior.  However, they seemed genuinely happy despite all the sneering from the rich neighbors, but sadly, Eliza died in childbirth after just a year of marriage, leaving behind the eponymous Aurora Floyd and her doting but bereaved father.

Fast-forward seventeen years -- Aurora is beautiful, spoiled and used to getting her own way.  After some naughty behavior, she's shipped off to school in France.  She returns home to Kent after a year, looking poorly.  There are hints of some secrets -- is she being secretly blackmailed?  However, Aurora perks up eventually and is joined by her sweet cousin Lucy as a companion during the Season of balls during which all young ladies are essentially on the marriage market.  Two potential suitors stand out -- Talbot Bulstrode, the proud heir of a long line of aristocrats who is short in cash; and John Mellish, a blustering but lovable Yorkshire squire.  Both fall in love with Aurora, and at first it seems like Bulstrode is the lucky winner, though Lucy is secretly in love with him and pining away.

However, there's trouble in paradise.  A few months after their engagement, Talbot learns from a cousin that Aurora ran away from school and was MIA.  Suspicious, he confronts her, but she refuses to reveal her secret, and he breaks off the engagement.  Eventually, she marries Mellish, who promises never to ask her secrets and love her and trust her no matter what.  Of course, this promise comes back to haunt him when a handsome groom named James Conyers comes to work for her husband.  His appearance throws everything into turmoil, and that's when the book really gets rolling.

This book had a lot of great elements to it -- a strong heroine with flashing dark eyes, two men competing for her hand in marriage, blackmail, scandal, gossip, a detective -- it's a classic Victorian sensation novel.  A couple of years ago, I read Lady Audley's Secret by the same author, and loved it.  It's the second book I've read by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  Aurora Floyd has a lot of the same themes, but I felt liked it dragged a little in comparison.  There's an omniscient narrator that editorializes a bit too much for my taste.  I did find some of the plot points pretty obvious, and the author definitely depends on the deus ex machina as a too-convenient plot savior more than once.  Overall, though, I'm accepting this book as a product of its time -- Mary Elizabeth Braddon was pretty groundbreaking as a Victorian author, not just as a woman author.  She wrote more than 80 novels, which is impressive for any author, during any time period.  Most of them are out of print but a lot of them are available for free on Gutenberg.org.

I'm counting this as my Classic by a Woman Author for The Back to the Classics Challenge, and this also counts for the Reading England Challenge.

The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green

This is my final book for the Back to the Classics Challenge!  I can't believe I took so long to finish it.  I  think I took so long to get to this category (mystery/suspense/thriller) because I had a hard time deciding which book to read.  The only book I own that qualifies is The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens.  I kept putting it off (I've gone off Dickens somewhat this year in favor of Trollope) but I finally got an audio copy from the library, and I just couldn't get into it.  (I'm not sure if it was the reader, or if it's because the main character kept referring to the girl he loves as Pussy.)

Instead, I decided to look for another author.  I thought about Agatha Christie, but I honestly think I've read every single one of her mysteries, except for the Tommy and Tuppence stories.  I was searching online for other classic mysteries and I discovered The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green, an early mystery published in 1878, a full nine years before Sherlock Holmes, and by a woman!  Naturally, I was intrigued.

Here's the setup:  Mr. Raymond (we never learn his first name), is the junior partner of a New York law firm.  One day, he is alone in the office, when a very agitated young man informs him that Mr. Leavenworth, a longtime client of the firm, has been found shot and killed in the library of his home.  In the absence of the other partners, Mr. Raymond agrees to go to the home and do whatever he can to help, and is therefore drawn into the mystery.  The body was found in a room locked from the outside, and a servant girl is missing.  Suspicion immediately falls upon Mr. Leavenworth's two beautiful nieces, cousins whom he adopted when their parents died years ago. Mary, the younger of the two, was Mr. Leavenworth's intended heir, but Mr. Raymond is immediately smitten with the other niece, Eleanor.

However, the evidence is rather bad for the two cousins.  There are scraps of burned paper found in the grate, a missing key, and most damning, the fact that Eleanor knew how to fire the very same pistol used to shoot her uncle.  Mr. Raymond is so convinced of the ladies' innocence that he begins working with Mr. Ebeneezer Gryce, a private detective, to get to the truth of the matter.

I was really hoping that this would be an amazing discovery for me, a brilliant book that nobody reads anymore.  But sadly, it was a really slow read for a mystery.  It's rather wordy and melodramatic, almost a cross between a mystery and a Victorian sensation novel.  There's not a lot of motivation or character development.  For example, it seems that Mr. Leavenworth chose Mary heir to his fortune when she was a child, simply because she was a blonde!  And Raymond mentions over and over that the two cousins are beautiful and charming, but that's pretty much it for their descriptions.  Most of the characters are fairly flat.  The most interesting characters were Mr. Gryce and his assistant, the mysterious "Q" who is a master of disguise.

However, I'm probably judging it too harshly by modern standards.  For its time, it was most likely groundbreaking.  It was very popular and Anna Katherine Green wrote a total of more than 40 books, including eight other books about Mr. Gryce.  She was one of the first to write a series of novels about a detective, and also wrote about female detectives.  It's not among the best detective stories I've ever read, but I think it's worth reading simply for its historical value.

Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice Leblanc

What is it about mysteries that makes them such perfect summertime reading?  I was looking for a fun, quick read for the holiday weekend, and I put Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief into my carryon bag.  I could not have chosen a better book -- short stories are perfect vacation reads, especially when traveling (since one is so often interrupted by those pesky airport and in-flight announcements); also, this book had the added advantage of being on the TBR shelf and a book translated from French, so I can use it for the Paris in July event.

So.  Arsene Lupin is a dashing, debonair gentleman thief -- he steals from the rich (but doesn't give to the poor); first published in 1907, he's a bit like the French version of Sherlock Holmes -- but if Sherlock were the criminal mastermind, instead of the detective.

Arsene Lupin himself is a mix of James Bond, Robin Hood, and Hercule Poirot.  He's suave and sophisticated, the ladies all swoon over him, and he's so brilliant that he always outsmarts the police, especially his nemesis, the detective Ganimard.

This edition includes thirteen short stories, all of which were delightful, if not always strictly believable.  Lupin is a brilliant master of disguise, despite the fact that his photograph is published in newspapers, he's able to fool even the police; he always manages to escape the worst situations; and he's so brilliant he can steal the unstealable, and break into any building, no matter how impenetrable and well-guarded.  He can also solve the crimes of other perpetrators.  In short, he's rather over the top, but the stories are light-hearted and full of witty banter, so it's hard to take them too seriously and judge them too harshly. They're a really fun alternative to Sherlock Holmes, plus they're French, so what is not to like?

Bleak House Readalong, Week 8

This is my second reading of Bleak House, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it.  I can't help it.  I know, it's kind of a nineteenth-century soap opera.  It's melodramatic, and there are far too many coincidences, but I still love it.  It's kind of like a Victorian version of Lost, but without the island and the smoke monster. There's lots of characters whose lives end up mysteriously interconnected. . and they were on an island. . . and there was a lot of smoke in Victorian England. . . so I guess it's a lot like Lost!  (But without the plane crash.  Hey, what about a steampunk version of Bleak House?  Maybe a mashup?)

But I digress.  Sometimes I've fallen behind in the reading/posting, and for this, I apologize.  As far as a plot summary goes, if I describe too much at this point, it would spoil it.  I'll just say the action has really moved along here -- one of our characters is on a major downward spiral, one is in serious trouble, one is dead, and others are suspected of the crime.  Inspector Bucket, one of my favorite characters, had been introduced previously, but now he's really involved in the story.  He's one of the first detectives in English literature, if not THE first, which is pretty cool.  He may have been inspired in part by an actual detective in Victorian history, Mr. Whicher.

I have to admit that I've never actually read the print version of the book the entire way through -- it's so long, and I have so much else to read, that I've combined the audio and print versions.  I'm fortunate that my library has the Naxos audiobook version, narrated by Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher, and I think it's just wonderful.  Both of them are such great readers, and can do so many voices so well.  I'm always amazed when a male reader does a distinctive female voice, and vice versa.  With both of these excellent readers, I'm able to tell instantly when Ms. Gallagher is doing Mr. Jarndyce, or Mr. Vholes, or when Mr. Barrett is reading Lady Dedlock's part.  There are more than 40 characters in Bleak House (seriously, I once made a list!) and to be able to so many parts so well is real talent.   The right reader can make or break an audiobook -- I am quite sure that the audio of Wuthering Heights may have been what ruined it for me.

Alun Armstrong as Mr. Bucket

And as I've said repeatedly, I think the BBC miniseries adaptation of Bleak House is just fantastic.  Yes, they had to cut a few characters, and condense things a bit -- they've made a thousand page book into an eight-hour miniseries, so a few things had to go.  The series is quite faithful and really captures the essence of the story, if not every single detail.  I honestly can't say whether I liked the book or the series better, they're both just wonderful.

I still have more than 200 pages to go, with a lot of unanswered questions -- who is the murderer?  Will everyone learn Lady Dedlock's deep secret?  Will the Jarndyce case EVER be settled in Chancery Court?  And will Esther find true love?  And will someone finally smack Harold Skimpole upside the head?  See, I told you it was a Victorian soap opera -- stay tuned for the next episode.

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

I've been a mystery lover since my mom took me to see Murder on the Orient Express, which is still one of my all-time favorite movies. (This should have scarred me for life, as I was only eight, but oddly enough it didn't.  And I showed it to my girls when they were eight and twelve.  Didn't hurt them any either)  Anyway, this started my love affair with Christie -- I've read everyone one of her mysteries, including the plays and short stories.

For this Classics Circuit, I decided to branch out, and at first I was  disappointed.  Maybe Christie has spoiled me for other authors.  First, on a librarian friend's recommendation, I tried The Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr, supposedly the quintessential locked room mystery, but I was totally bored with it.  I switched to Dorothy Sayers, whom I've never read, and decided to start with her first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Whose Body?   Again, I just couldn't get excited about it -- Lord Peter seemed so contrived and unreal.  Neither of these authors was able to get me hooked like Christie.

Finally, I returned to this side of the pond, and picked up Rex Stout's Fer-de-Lance, the first mystery starring the enigmatic Nero Wolfe and his narrator sidekick, Archie Goodwin.  First published in 1935, this classic Depression-era mystery is complete with hardboiled private eyes, roadsters, dames, and snappy dialogue.  It's a bit like a cross between a cozy mystery and a Sam Spade classic detective story -- genius Nero Wolfe never leaves his beautiful apartment, filled with his beloved orchids, so his intrepid helper Archie does all the leg work and provides all the clever asides and quips.

As entertaining as this book was, I will admit it started out a little slowly.   The first third of the book consist of setting the story, but the reader doesn't get that much background about Archie or Nero, and  we don't even meet the primary suspects until more than 100 pages had passed.  Even then, it's not so much a whodunit as a "how did they do it?"  Unlike Agatha Christie or many other authors, there was no great "aha!" moment, in which the clever detective decides which of the many suspects was the culprit.  There are some surprises and an interesting little twist at the end, but it's very unlike many of the British cozies I've read.

I think the great appeal of this book was the character of Archie.  Nero himself doesn't get a lot of exposure -- he's a recluse, an eccentric genius who never leaves the house and has a strict schedule.  Archie and his snappy dialogue, and the 1930s setting are the real appeal of this book, in my humble opinion.   Here's one of my favorite paragraphs from the book:

If I ever kill anybody I'm pretty sure it will be a woman. I've seen a lot of stubborn men, a lot of men who knew something I wanted to know and didn't intend to tell me, and in a quite a few cases I couldn't make him tell no matter what I tried; but in spite of how stubborn they were they always stayed human.  They always gave me a feeling that if only I hit on the right lever I could pry it out of them.  But I've seen women that not only wouldn't turn loose; you knew damn well they wouldn't.  They can get a look on their faces that would drive you crazy, and I think some of them do it on purpose.  The look on a man's face says that he'll die before he'll tell you, and you think you may bust that up; a woman's look says that she would just as soon tell you as not, only she isn't going to.


I can just imagine Humphrey Bogart or someone of that era delivering Archie's lines.  It almost makes me wish I lived back then, just so I could hear if people really talked like that.  Great stuff!

I have found that with mystery series the first one isn't usually the best.  Fer-de-Lance is pretty good, though I didn't find it a real page turner.  I may give Nero Wolfe another try to see if the later books are an improvement.  It was worth exploring though -- if you're looking for a change from classic British detective fiction it's a lot of fun.