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The Nightingale Gallery
I finished The Nightingale Gallery, and have mixed feelings.
(Actually, I finished it in February; I typed up a rough version of this entry on February 15th but forgot to come back for editing and unlocking until today, oops.)
As a book with a historical setting, I felt at times like it was trying to get a shock reaction, rather than merely dress the set (the author is a big subscriber to the "in the past everything was FILTHY and DISGUSTING and GROSS at all times!" view of history). The first chapter features 4 or 5 mentions of human excrement, in case the reader didn't catch it the last time or might have momentarily forgotten. Our primary detective is Athelstan, a friar doing penance by assisting the lord coroner in investigations. The second half of the crime-solving duo is the lord coroner, a fat drunk continually gorging, drinking, farting, and vomiting, or having sex with his much younger wife who seems to adore him for reasons left to imagination, as we never get her viewpoint on anything.
I enjoyed reading about the difficulties maintaining the church building, the little interpersonal dramas over who gets the role of Mary in the upcoming play, and the various people - from Cecily the prostitute whom Athelstan pays to clean to give her an honest living, to Benedicta the widow whom Athelstan struggles with attraction toward - who make up Athelstan's regular daily life (outside of, and sometimes in conflict with, mystery solving). More of that, please? I want to know whether the painter was able to re-capitate poor headless John's headless audience, and whether he's a better or worse painter than the last one, and what Benedicta and Cecily and the plasterer and everyone think of it!
What I could have done with less of was homophobia. There are not one, not two, but four 'sodomites' in this novel for the main characters to sneer at, and none of them really needed to be there. One of them was an excuse for a couple sleeping in separate rooms, which is something, I suppose, but could have been achieved by other means. The others had even less plot-relevant reason to be characterised as gay men who disgust everyone around them.
As a mystery novel... Well, first I probably should note that I don't aggressively attempt to solve mysteries when reading them; I make guesses and draw conclusions as clues appear, the same as I do with any other kind of plot, but no more. With that in mind: as a mystery, this one felt very light on clues. It's an extreme stretch to get from what we're given (a character who physically could have done it, and an object that was moved) to the complex murder method of the resolution. Nor does the titular nightingale gallery play any significant role, which felt odd to me!
I might pick up the second book from the library, just to see if the proportion of things I like increases, but I don't think I'll be devoting more of my limited bookshelf space to collecting them.
(Actually, I finished it in February; I typed up a rough version of this entry on February 15th but forgot to come back for editing and unlocking until today, oops.)
As a book with a historical setting, I felt at times like it was trying to get a shock reaction, rather than merely dress the set (the author is a big subscriber to the "in the past everything was FILTHY and DISGUSTING and GROSS at all times!" view of history). The first chapter features 4 or 5 mentions of human excrement, in case the reader didn't catch it the last time or might have momentarily forgotten. Our primary detective is Athelstan, a friar doing penance by assisting the lord coroner in investigations. The second half of the crime-solving duo is the lord coroner, a fat drunk continually gorging, drinking, farting, and vomiting, or having sex with his much younger wife who seems to adore him for reasons left to imagination, as we never get her viewpoint on anything.
I enjoyed reading about the difficulties maintaining the church building, the little interpersonal dramas over who gets the role of Mary in the upcoming play, and the various people - from Cecily the prostitute whom Athelstan pays to clean to give her an honest living, to Benedicta the widow whom Athelstan struggles with attraction toward - who make up Athelstan's regular daily life (outside of, and sometimes in conflict with, mystery solving). More of that, please? I want to know whether the painter was able to re-capitate poor headless John's headless audience, and whether he's a better or worse painter than the last one, and what Benedicta and Cecily and the plasterer and everyone think of it!
What I could have done with less of was homophobia. There are not one, not two, but four 'sodomites' in this novel for the main characters to sneer at, and none of them really needed to be there. One of them was an excuse for a couple sleeping in separate rooms, which is something, I suppose, but could have been achieved by other means. The others had even less plot-relevant reason to be characterised as gay men who disgust everyone around them.
As a mystery novel... Well, first I probably should note that I don't aggressively attempt to solve mysteries when reading them; I make guesses and draw conclusions as clues appear, the same as I do with any other kind of plot, but no more. With that in mind: as a mystery, this one felt very light on clues. It's an extreme stretch to get from what we're given (a character who physically could have done it, and an object that was moved) to the complex murder method of the resolution. Nor does the titular nightingale gallery play any significant role, which felt odd to me!
I might pick up the second book from the library, just to see if the proportion of things I like increases, but I don't think I'll be devoting more of my limited bookshelf space to collecting them.