The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

By Dorothy Sayers
By Gad, it was such a relief to read this after “Let the Right One In”!! Yes, in Dorothy Sayers’ books there are actually characters that say “By Gad!”. If you already read Sayers books with gusto then you won’t need to read this review, unless you want to confirm your own righteousness. The Wimsey novels are kind of addictive and you just have to read them all. Unless, of course, you didn’t warm to Sayers’ detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, or if you find characters that say things like “By Gad!” deeply annoying. You might have guessed by now that I LOVE the Lord Wimsey novels. Admittedly, some are better than others – this is a strong one - but regardless I have yet to convince anyone else I know that these books are as fabulous as I think they are.

This novel begins with the death of General Fentiman, who is found in a chair by the fire at his club, the titular Bellona Club. Needless to say this shocks other club members, but it is supposed that he merely died of old age while reading the newspaper. Then it is discovered there are complications involving the will of his estranged sister, Lady Dormer, involving which of them died first. So our hero Wimsey is asked to investigate.

I thought I was reading a Wimsey novel I had previously overlooked, but I suspect I have read it before as I had strange premonitions about who did what that I couldn’t chalk up to simple cleverness. The nice thing about having a terrible memory for books you have read, though, is that you forget the words and phrasings, the small details, machinations, characterisations and convolutions of the plot, and so the pleasure of reading it for the second time is undiminished – augmented, even, as you can kid yourself that you must be cleverer than you really are because you think you know whodunnit.

Lord Peter Wimsey helped me through a rough patch once, so perhaps I am biased. Go on, give him a go – you know you want to! A word of advice, though – don’t start with The Five Red Herrings or Murder Must Advertise. These aren’t his best. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is classic Wimsey, though.

Rating: 9 out of 10

archy & mehitabel (2006)

By Don Marquis
A lovely little book that I squeezed in right at the end of the ‘thon. From what I understand, this semi-poetry used to appear as columns in an American newspaper, and is purportedly written by Archy the cockroach, a former poet reborn in a more lowly form. As Archy typed this verse by jumping up and down on the keys of a typewriter, there are no punctuation or capital letters. (He couldn’t reach the shift key).

This volume is a collection of Archy’s works, about his life as a poet-turned-cockroach (and emerging lobbyist for insect rights around the world) and about the life of Mehitabel, an alley cat who was actually Cleopatra in a former life. Mehitabel’s life motto is “toujours gai” (“always gay” - I checked with someone who knows) and also, quite often, “wotthehell”.

This books is funny and moving, particularly in the accounts of Mehitabel's adventures. (Maybe that is just because I am a cat person). Although he wrote many wiser and more profound words than this, I will leave you all with one of my favourite of Archy’s “certain maxims”:

The honey bee is sad and cross
And wicked as a weasel
And when she perches on you boss
She leaves a little measle

See you next Readathon!!!

Rating: 7 out of 10

The Eyre Affair (2003)

By Jasper Fforde
I thought this book was tops. It follows the adventures of our heroine, Thursday Next, who works for a special government agency that tracks down crimes against literature (eg forgeries, exceptionally bad productions of Shakespeare etc). Things get a bit weird when the villain, Acheron Hades (a truly villainous villain), steals the original copy of Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit and threatens to take out the hero and thus change the manuscript for ever – with the help of Thursday’s uncle’s new invention, the Prose Portal. (In the testing stages his wife gets trapped in one of Wordsworth’s poems – and it turns out Wordsworth’s a bit of a flirt). When this evil plan doesn’t work out quite as he intended, Hades decides to pick on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre instead.

Next’s world is one in which literature is much more popular with the masses than in ours – so much so that there is a copy of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works in every hotel room, along with the Bible and several other religious texts, and the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a frequent and serious topic of discussion. I liked the character of Thursday Next extremely (she’s a smart chick! Maybe not at genius level, but pretty good), and Acheron Hades was an excellent villain. I think I’ve found a new favourite author and will be looking for a hardback copy for my bookshelves.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (2003)

By P G Wodehouse
If you like books where people say “Ho!” and “Ha!” and even “What Ho!” a lot then I reckon you should try the adventures of the hapless man-about-town Bertie Wooster and his unflappable butler, Jeeves.

This is not my favourite Jeeves book so far but still very enjoyable. Bertie Wooster is interrupted in his reading of a thrilling new novel “The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish” by Rex West (I wish someone would write this novel) to attend to the problems of his Aunt Dahlia, who is trying to sell her woman’s literary magazine Milady’s Boudoir to some difficult house guests, without her husband discovering that she pawned her pearls to pay for its publication. As usual things go terribly wrong and Bertie gets himself engaged (accidentally) to a woman who would prefer him to read the works of T.S. Eliot and Auden. As usual, however, everyone is saved by Jeeves in the end.

I picked up a few good insults in this one – how does “inhuman gargoyle” grab you? Or “You ghastly sheepfaced fugitive from hell”? Or even “You revoting young piece of cheese”?
I should say, that although I love these books, I expect a lot of people won’t – my friend Tash can’t stand them.

NB Some of Rex West’s other thrilling titles include Murder in Mauve, The Case of the Poisoned Doughnut and Inspector Biffen Views the Body.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Lost in a Good Book (2003)

By Jasper Fforde
The second in the Thursday Next series, this book lives up to the high standards set by the first. Thursday finds herself somewhat of a celebrity after the events of The Eyre Affair, she is happily married and expecting a kiddywinkle in several months – but then things go a bit weird. Her husband is “eradicated” by the ChronoGuard and the evil Goliath Corporation, and she discovers that there is a police network that acts within works of fiction, that has decided to bring her up on charges for changing the ending of Jane Eyre. (The trial scene is particularly good – Thursday and her lawyer have the misfortune to draw the magistrate from Kafka’s The Castle to oversee her trial).

It’s great to discover a new favourite author. I am looking forward to the third book in the series, which is apparently due out any time now.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Tricky Business (2005)

By Dave Barry
Dave Barry is an American columnist who, I have to say, can be very, very funny. Some Australian papers carry his columns from time to time, you might have seen them around. He is also a mate of Carl Hiaasen, a fellow journalist-turned-novelist. This book is humorous and light, except for a few acts of extreme violence, but not quite as good as the Hiaasen’s I have read to date, nor as good as Janet Evanovich. It is better than R is for Ricochet, though.

The plot involves several parties, whose paths intertwine on board a small cruise ship that sails offshore every night so that everyone can gamble relatively legally. The ship is also being used to deliver drugs. This particular night there is a big storm, and some bad guys have a plan and quite a lot of guns. There is also a band, a barmaid and two retirees thrown into the mix. Barry also pokes some well-deserved fun at the inanity of news coverage, where, desperate to drum up a story about the storm, news reporters keep racing to the scene of apparent tragedies only to get killed themselves – thus, they create their own news.

If you could only read one more book before you died, this wouldn’t be it. (My personal choice would be Ulysses, because I know it would take me a really, really long time to finish). More the kind of book you’d read on a plane flight, except that you’d probably be more entertained by Carl Hiaasen.

Rating: 5 out of 10
It’s okay - if you never get around to reading it, it won't be the end of the world.

The Diary of a Nobody (2005)

By George and Weedon Grossmith
Well I have to say this book didn’t quite live up to Evelyn Waugh’s testimonial on the back cover: “The funniest book in the world”. Mind you, Waugh did write Brideshead Revisited, so he wasn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute kind of guy. Maybe he had lower standards when it came to humour than the rest of us. In fact, were Waugh still about today, I’d write him a terse but witty note and ask him to refund my purchase money. Not that it was a terrible book or anything, it was well-written, and somewhat amusing, but in a Mr Bean kind of way, or like the boss in “The Office”, in which the humour comes from people being made to look foolish – only in a much milder form.

The hero of the book, Mr Charles Pooter, is an ordinary and unassuming man and a well-drawn character, just not a particularly interesting one. He writes in the introduction as follows: I fail to see – because I do not happen to be a “Somebody” – why my diary should not be interesting. This book proves that interesting diary entries are entirely independent of the status of the diarist, fictional or not.

The book was originally published in Punch magazine, in serial form, and might have worked better this way – familiar friends, who’s modest adventures you could enjoy each week; not required to be astonishing or confounding. Interesting aside: both of the authors worked with Gilbert and Sullivan, of “The Pirates of Penzance” fame. There are no babies swapped at birth in this story though. One good thing, Pooter’s son is called Lupin, possibly a good name for a future son of mine, if my husband will stand for it – it might end up being the name for the cat.

Rating: 5 out of 10
A bit dull, really – probably only for extreme turn-of-the-century literature fans.

Basket Case (2005)

By Carl Hiaasen
I confess I picked up this novel out of thousands of others because it features a band called “Jimmy and the Slut Puppies” – such a great name for a band. The hero of our story, Jack Tagger, is an experienced journalist who pissed off the boss and so has been relegated to the obituaries desk. Jack now suffers from a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder about dying – he knows off-by-heart how old all the celebrities were when they died and he gets complete physicals every month because he’s worried he might die early like his Dad. However, once members of the Slut Puppies start dying, he has the opportunity to get back into real news stories once again – plus, he was quite a fan of the Slut Puppies way back when, so he would like to find out if justice is being served.

I liked this book a lot – the dialogue is good, it has some humour, it has some suspense, although the plot wasn’t as devious as it could have been – a bit too straightforward. It’s one of those “light and frothy” reads that’s good for beach holidays. I’ll read some more of Hiaasen’s books.

The only thing that really bugged me was Jack Tagger’s name, because it kept reminding me of “Taggart”, the television series, where “mairduh” is done so often and everyone is so very serious.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Not outstanding, but fun.

Nice Try (2003)

By Shane Maloney
I can’t really find much to say about this book. I very much enjoyed Maloney’s two previous books in this series, Stiff and The Brush Off. Nice Try is cut from the same cloth but somehow lacks the spark of the previous two. Our hero, David Wenham, I mean Murray Whelan, is still in the employ of Angelo Agnelli, Minister for Water Supply and the Arts, but is borrowed for a week by mates in the Melbourne Olympics Bid, Incorporated, to sort out some issues that could affect Melbourne’s chances for the 1996 Games - issues that include an Aboriginal activist and a semi-psychotic bodybuilder pumped up on steroids. Also, Whelan is on a health kick and feeling increasingly estranged from his son, Red, who lives in Sydney with his Mum, so there’s some personal stuff going on too. (Not a bad name, Red, only of course it’s short for Redmond and I’m not sure I could name potential future sons Redmond in case he copped flak at school for being named after the bloke that hung Ned Kelly). Whelan’s style of getting things done is still refreshing though – upfront, free of menace and table-thumping; he’s essentially a humble man who wants to get along with people, and that makes a nice change from a lot of crime fiction.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
A pleasant entertainment, but not much more.

Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2004)

By Alexander McCall Smith
Another one by McCall Smith, but featuring another of his characters, Professor Dr von Igelfeld, a German philologist (word freak) whose seminal work is entitled “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”. This collection of stories describes some of Igelfeld’s adventures with his two closest colleagues, Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer (a quote for my friend Detlev: “…to be called Detlev was a misfortune…”), and Professor Dr Dr Florainus Prinzel, all who work at the Institute of Romance Philology.

I became quite fond of Professor Dr von Igelfeld and his slightly aquiline nose by the end of the book; Igelfeld is proud, arrogant and a snob, but also socially hapless and fond of walks through the countryside and pleasant views. He also realises his failings every so often (particular with respect to the hapless Unterholzer) and tries to make some amends.

I’m starting to think of McCall Smith as a modern Wodehouse – a writer of gentle, entertaining stories about eccentric characters with peculiar names, which occasionally provoke emotion, sometimes cause the reader to laugh (or at least smile), and that function as “an entertainment” (the author describes his book on the cover as “A Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment”), rather than great literature. The world needs books like these, but I doubt they will end up on anyone’s Top 100 Books of All Time list – those seem to be reserved for heavier, worthier and more indigestible tomes.

A good holiday read – I’ll give Dr von Igelfeld another go.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Blandings Castle (2004)

By PG Wodehouse
Past MS-Readathon supporters of mine will already know that I am fond of Wodehouse, most famous for his “Jeeves” series. This book is a collection of short stories about several of Wodehouse’s regular characters, but particularly Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, an elderly and absent-minded gentleman who loves his gardens and his pigs and who really wishes that all of his relatives would leave him alone so he can potter in the garden undisturbed.

These stories are written in a gentler, slower, more flowery way than the “Jeeves” books; Wodehouse seems less interested in being hilarious. I warmed to Lord Emsworth after a while but didn’t find him as enjoyable as poor old Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, his eminently capable butler, and the other characters lacked the spice of Bertie’s various relatives and acquaintances. Possibly also Wodehouse gets a bit samey after a while; I got a bit bored.

Some good bits though – particularly the insults; Wodehouse is good on insults. I’ll include one other quote I particularly enjoyed to see if my sister is reading these reviews: Lord Emsworth has bought a new telescope, and he is enthusiastically trying it out on the turret of the West Wing. He is delighted about being able to see his cows so closely from so far away, but… “Presently the cow’s appeal began to wane. It was a fine cow, but, like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest”. Many would probably also accuse Wodehouse of this flaw.

Rating: 5 out of 10