Helpful Score: 2
Rima Lansill is invited to visit the godmother she hardly knows after the death of Rima's father--the last member of her family. Goodmother, Addison Early, is a well-know author of mystery stories. Wit's End, Addison's home, holds as many questions as does Addison herself--all of which Rima strives to puzzle through. Fiction and fact are blurred. Well written. Keeps the reader engrossed.
Well, I am sure swimming against the tide of opinion on this one, but I LOVED this clever, thoughtful. touching and brilliantly written book.
I should say that, some, if not all, of its problems for haters may be that it has been appallingly handled by its publishers, who clearly had no idea how to make it work in the "let's bash this square peg into a round hold" playbook that passes for book marketing these days. Poor cover art, a lacklustre title and cover blurbs that are about a completely different Karen Joy Fowler book mean that at least 50% of the readers who pick this up are getting something completely different that they were led to expect. (It could have been worse -- the UK title, "The Case of the Imaginary Detective," make it sound like a lightly novelized Clue scenario, or an upmarket Nancy Drew for adults...)
In my case, fortunately, the "something different" was pure, unadulterated delight.
Why do I love this book? It is beautifully written. Fowler demonstrates an effortless mastery of every aspect of the craft, from word and sentence level, right through to the Big Ticket items, the pacing and structure of the narrative. Characters are sketched in surely and sympathetically. I feel I have known these people, all my life, whether we're talking about major characters like poor lost "adult orphan" Rima, or slightly scary Addison Early (a clever blend of authors who inspire cult-ish fan followings, like Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling), or the walk-on parts, up to and including the two dachshunds, Berkeley and Stanford. The quasi-omniscient narrative voice is pitch-perfect, and sometimes laugh out loud funny.
I love this book because it works on two levels. The first is the meta-level: this is a book about writing, and authorship. Everyone in this book is writing something, whether it's novels, blogs, fanfic, newspaper columns, Wikipeida entries, websites, college term papers, ransom letters or old fashioned snail mail. I don't think I have ever seen it presented so clearly, and so well, that, in these crazy times we live in, everyone is an author. Everyone in the book thinks that he or she has control of the narrative (just ponder that on the meta-level for a second ...), and is the hero of his/her own story. But if everyone is an author, and we can all, literally, "write our own adventure," where does that leave old-fashioned storytelling, and the old-fashioned story tellers like A.B Early, K.J. Fowler, Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling?
But it also works on the level of character, the personal level. The deaths, one by one, of her mother, brother and father leave Rima, at the tender age of 29, an "orphan," struggling to find herself (or re-invent herself -- again, another sort of authorship), and those struggles feel very real and true, and beautifully rendered, to me. But perhaps I should confess that nine years ago, when I was a bit older than 29, I found myself in Rima's position, when my only, younger brother suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. Suddenly, no Mom (since 1996), no Dad (since 2003) ... and no one to phone me on our long-deceased grandmother's birthday (just to rub it in that he remembered, and I never did). No one to remember squeezing ourselves into the tiny "way back" of our Dad's VW, and the time the heat got stuck on HI, and we almost died of heatstroke. No one to reassure me that the beagle who chewed up all our Mom's shoes was really found a wonderful new home, on a farm upstate, no matter what anyone else says ...
So, yeah, it worked on the personal level for me. You can only find out if it works for you, if you try it ...
I should say that, some, if not all, of its problems for haters may be that it has been appallingly handled by its publishers, who clearly had no idea how to make it work in the "let's bash this square peg into a round hold" playbook that passes for book marketing these days. Poor cover art, a lacklustre title and cover blurbs that are about a completely different Karen Joy Fowler book mean that at least 50% of the readers who pick this up are getting something completely different that they were led to expect. (It could have been worse -- the UK title, "The Case of the Imaginary Detective," make it sound like a lightly novelized Clue scenario, or an upmarket Nancy Drew for adults...)
In my case, fortunately, the "something different" was pure, unadulterated delight.
Why do I love this book? It is beautifully written. Fowler demonstrates an effortless mastery of every aspect of the craft, from word and sentence level, right through to the Big Ticket items, the pacing and structure of the narrative. Characters are sketched in surely and sympathetically. I feel I have known these people, all my life, whether we're talking about major characters like poor lost "adult orphan" Rima, or slightly scary Addison Early (a clever blend of authors who inspire cult-ish fan followings, like Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling), or the walk-on parts, up to and including the two dachshunds, Berkeley and Stanford. The quasi-omniscient narrative voice is pitch-perfect, and sometimes laugh out loud funny.
I love this book because it works on two levels. The first is the meta-level: this is a book about writing, and authorship. Everyone in this book is writing something, whether it's novels, blogs, fanfic, newspaper columns, Wikipeida entries, websites, college term papers, ransom letters or old fashioned snail mail. I don't think I have ever seen it presented so clearly, and so well, that, in these crazy times we live in, everyone is an author. Everyone in the book thinks that he or she has control of the narrative (just ponder that on the meta-level for a second ...), and is the hero of his/her own story. But if everyone is an author, and we can all, literally, "write our own adventure," where does that leave old-fashioned storytelling, and the old-fashioned story tellers like A.B Early, K.J. Fowler, Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling?
But it also works on the level of character, the personal level. The deaths, one by one, of her mother, brother and father leave Rima, at the tender age of 29, an "orphan," struggling to find herself (or re-invent herself -- again, another sort of authorship), and those struggles feel very real and true, and beautifully rendered, to me. But perhaps I should confess that nine years ago, when I was a bit older than 29, I found myself in Rima's position, when my only, younger brother suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. Suddenly, no Mom (since 1996), no Dad (since 2003) ... and no one to phone me on our long-deceased grandmother's birthday (just to rub it in that he remembered, and I never did). No one to remember squeezing ourselves into the tiny "way back" of our Dad's VW, and the time the heat got stuck on HI, and we almost died of heatstroke. No one to reassure me that the beagle who chewed up all our Mom's shoes was really found a wonderful new home, on a farm upstate, no matter what anyone else says ...
So, yeah, it worked on the personal level for me. You can only find out if it works for you, if you try it ...
