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lotesseCatching up on my writing-about-reading backlog!
I tore through Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon in September, and finished Thrones, Dominations a few weeks ago. I decided to start with books that had Harriet Vane in them, and then decide later if I wanted to read any of the others! I don't know, at the moment, if I shall read further.
Generally, reading Sayers at this point in my life was an interesting experience. I've spent so much time with her precedents and antecedents! Between The Scarlet Pimpernel, A.S. Byatt, Lois McMaster Bujold, et al., so many of my best-loved books play with these same locations, topoi, and character types.
(I also tend to read Frodo Baggins as a very Wimsey-ish figure, upper-class British sensitive person badly affected by the horrors of WWI, so there's a lot of built-up tenderness in me toward that type already.)
I was amused at the bit in Gaudy Night when Harriet Vane realizes that she's not previously paid attention to the character psychology in her murder mysteries, because I'm the exact opposite as a reader -- I'm no good at all at picking up on a body of clues presented, or at theorizing or deducing about the mystery, but I do love the social psychology! I was rapt in the opening chapters of Thrones, Dominations, when it was all family drama, and then the mystery showed up and I blanked for several pages all together. Put Harriet and me together, and you'd have a girl who could do it all, lol.
Harriet herself is excellent, exactly the sort of female pov character I like the best. The wish-fulfillment aspects of her story dovetail neatly with the ongoing insistence on keeping her real, grounded, and complex in the way she's able to give and take. I'm very glad to have finally met her, and not just her various literary descendants.
Have to admit myself somewhat bemused by the obvious line of rather parochial English pride apparent throughout -- that moment when Harriet reflects that she's "married England" in marrying Peter was absurd, and in the present moment rather distasteful.
But Gaudy Night really is something special. The combination of detective novel, women's college novel, and romance resolution is unique, and lets out unique and special parts of each of those genres to play freely together. It did something remarkable to take Lord Peter, already an established sort of protagonist and love interest, and insert him as a male scholar in a women's college novel! Shifting the territory of the romance to Harriet's turf lets the whole thing sing, in a way that I really needed to read about in September (getting remarried myself). It strikes me that a favorite thing that I like to read is novels that, while deeply concerned with the social ills of patriarchal marriage, also portray romantic relationships with the clear potential to rise above.
(And the integration of Bunter into the Vane/Wimsey relationship, and the respect given to Bunter/Wimsey as an important relationship, reminds me of the old rosiesamfrodo days in LotR slash fandom, in the best way <3 If I do read more books in this series, it'll be to follow up on the delightfully slashy hints about the Bunter/Wimsey backstory!)
I tore through Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon in September, and finished Thrones, Dominations a few weeks ago. I decided to start with books that had Harriet Vane in them, and then decide later if I wanted to read any of the others! I don't know, at the moment, if I shall read further.
Generally, reading Sayers at this point in my life was an interesting experience. I've spent so much time with her precedents and antecedents! Between The Scarlet Pimpernel, A.S. Byatt, Lois McMaster Bujold, et al., so many of my best-loved books play with these same locations, topoi, and character types.
(I also tend to read Frodo Baggins as a very Wimsey-ish figure, upper-class British sensitive person badly affected by the horrors of WWI, so there's a lot of built-up tenderness in me toward that type already.)
I was amused at the bit in Gaudy Night when Harriet Vane realizes that she's not previously paid attention to the character psychology in her murder mysteries, because I'm the exact opposite as a reader -- I'm no good at all at picking up on a body of clues presented, or at theorizing or deducing about the mystery, but I do love the social psychology! I was rapt in the opening chapters of Thrones, Dominations, when it was all family drama, and then the mystery showed up and I blanked for several pages all together. Put Harriet and me together, and you'd have a girl who could do it all, lol.
Harriet herself is excellent, exactly the sort of female pov character I like the best. The wish-fulfillment aspects of her story dovetail neatly with the ongoing insistence on keeping her real, grounded, and complex in the way she's able to give and take. I'm very glad to have finally met her, and not just her various literary descendants.
Have to admit myself somewhat bemused by the obvious line of rather parochial English pride apparent throughout -- that moment when Harriet reflects that she's "married England" in marrying Peter was absurd, and in the present moment rather distasteful.
But Gaudy Night really is something special. The combination of detective novel, women's college novel, and romance resolution is unique, and lets out unique and special parts of each of those genres to play freely together. It did something remarkable to take Lord Peter, already an established sort of protagonist and love interest, and insert him as a male scholar in a women's college novel! Shifting the territory of the romance to Harriet's turf lets the whole thing sing, in a way that I really needed to read about in September (getting remarried myself). It strikes me that a favorite thing that I like to read is novels that, while deeply concerned with the social ills of patriarchal marriage, also portray romantic relationships with the clear potential to rise above.
(And the integration of Bunter into the Vane/Wimsey relationship, and the respect given to Bunter/Wimsey as an important relationship, reminds me of the old rosiesamfrodo days in LotR slash fandom, in the best way <3 If I do read more books in this series, it'll be to follow up on the delightfully slashy hints about the Bunter/Wimsey backstory!)