Monday, February 28, 2005
An Excellent Mystery?
How often does a book include its own review in the title? I can think of Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, and few others. So Ellis Peters sets up some high expectations when she calls one of the Brother Cadfael books An Excellent Mystery.
She does, in fact, violate some well-established rules, although they are the rules of her own books. For example, there is no suspect who is the more suitable but less favored suitor of the woman at the center, as there is in well more than half of the other books.
Unfortunately, the subterfuge is for naught, since I realized well before the deductive monk what had happened to the girl (supposed murdered, since she disappeared three years earlier, around the same time that the mysteriously mute and delicate monk showed up).
Well, I never read these books for the mysteries. I like the settings, I like Cadfael himself and the readers (I actually listen to the books), and I enjoy the details of life in a medieval cloister that reverberates with the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. All that is in place, and if the mystery is no mystery, that is no suprise. But is isn't exactly excellent, either.
dmh
She does, in fact, violate some well-established rules, although they are the rules of her own books. For example, there is no suspect who is the more suitable but less favored suitor of the woman at the center, as there is in well more than half of the other books.
Unfortunately, the subterfuge is for naught, since I realized well before the deductive monk what had happened to the girl (supposed murdered, since she disappeared three years earlier, around the same time that the mysteriously mute and delicate monk showed up).
Well, I never read these books for the mysteries. I like the settings, I like Cadfael himself and the readers (I actually listen to the books), and I enjoy the details of life in a medieval cloister that reverberates with the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. All that is in place, and if the mystery is no mystery, that is no suprise. But is isn't exactly excellent, either.
dmh
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Winter reading
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was a member of Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to Antarctica. You know the one -- Scott got to the South Pole a month after Amundsen and died on the return trek. Cherry-Garrard (Cherry to everyone but his mother) obviously wasn't one of those who died, since he managed to write The Worst Journey in the World about the expedition. He was part of the support crew that staged Scott on the way out, and he was also part of the crew that found Scott's body -- and those of two of his companions -- the next spring.
And yet his title does not refer to Scott's trek. The worst journey was Cherry's own trek, during the Antarctic winter, to get emperor penguin eggs. It was a three-man trek, with no support depots or any chance of rescue, across unknown (and ultimately very difficult) terrain, under what were then the lowest temperatures anyone had ever recorded. They hauled all the supplies they would need for the six-week trip. No ponies, no dogs, and of course no snowmobiles or anything like that. They got frostbite, and blisters came up, and the liquid in the blisters froze. It took an hour, each night, to thaw out the sleeping bags enough to get into them. As he says, there are some experiences when you start to think of death as a friendly presence.
He does not make himself out a hero for having done this, though. There is ample praise for his companions, but Cherry is modest about everything but his own devotion to science. They really thought they would learn something valuable about embryology and evolution if they got those eggs, and so they went out for them. This is his justification for the whole expedition and the deaths of Scott and his four companions: that they were out there for science. Unlike Amundsen, who led a bare-bones chase to the pole, arriving with one other man, Scott collected geological samples along the way, and set up a base for two years to do research. And it's true that they brought back a great deal of new information, not only about how to survive in those conditions but about weather patterns and the formation of ice and geology and so on.
Yet the strongest memory one takes away from the book, aside from a persistent chill, is that of Cherry himself. He does not place himself at the center of the book, but he is its voice, and he is a young man of few accomplishments and a modesty consistent with that, struggling through godawful conditions with glasses constantly fogged or iced over (he was the only one on the expedition with glasses), full of praise for all the others, and thoroughly admirable and likeable.
dmh
And yet his title does not refer to Scott's trek. The worst journey was Cherry's own trek, during the Antarctic winter, to get emperor penguin eggs. It was a three-man trek, with no support depots or any chance of rescue, across unknown (and ultimately very difficult) terrain, under what were then the lowest temperatures anyone had ever recorded. They hauled all the supplies they would need for the six-week trip. No ponies, no dogs, and of course no snowmobiles or anything like that. They got frostbite, and blisters came up, and the liquid in the blisters froze. It took an hour, each night, to thaw out the sleeping bags enough to get into them. As he says, there are some experiences when you start to think of death as a friendly presence.
He does not make himself out a hero for having done this, though. There is ample praise for his companions, but Cherry is modest about everything but his own devotion to science. They really thought they would learn something valuable about embryology and evolution if they got those eggs, and so they went out for them. This is his justification for the whole expedition and the deaths of Scott and his four companions: that they were out there for science. Unlike Amundsen, who led a bare-bones chase to the pole, arriving with one other man, Scott collected geological samples along the way, and set up a base for two years to do research. And it's true that they brought back a great deal of new information, not only about how to survive in those conditions but about weather patterns and the formation of ice and geology and so on.
Yet the strongest memory one takes away from the book, aside from a persistent chill, is that of Cherry himself. He does not place himself at the center of the book, but he is its voice, and he is a young man of few accomplishments and a modesty consistent with that, struggling through godawful conditions with glasses constantly fogged or iced over (he was the only one on the expedition with glasses), full of praise for all the others, and thoroughly admirable and likeable.
dmh
