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selenakIn The SIlkworm, JKR went baroque and Jacobean with the murder of the case, and accordingly all chapters were headed by a John Webster (and friends) quote. In Career of Evil, where the backstory of Strike’s dead mother, the rock music groupie, is pretty important, the quotes came from Blue Öyster Cult lyrics. This time around, it’s Ibsen’s turn, and if you know your Scandinavian playwrights, you know, with a sinking heart, what this signifies - bad marriages (or bad love affairs) are a big theme of the tale. On the bright side, I hasten to add, the Strike/Robin partnership is in fine shape, both professionally and emotionally, after fallout from the last volume at the start of the novel. And since said partnership is the core of what makes this series of novels, that is the most important thing.
But to get my bad marriages/affairs nitpicks out first: I can appreciate thematic relevance, and JKR isn’t exactly subtle in this regard, even beyond the Ibsen quotes - in addition to Robin’s awful marriage with Matthew, and Strike’s toxic past 16-years-long relationship with Charlotte, as well as Strike’s current day emotional unavailability to the women he conducts his post-Charlotte affairs with, we get among the various suspects not one good marriage/affair but lots of rotten ones, in various dysfunctional ways. (BTW: none is physically abusive, which I add because the last novel featured not one but three suspects who were into that.) The problem here for me is that much I’m a sell for dysfunctional relationships if written compellingly, it needs to be done other than what JKR does with Robin/Matthew. Matthew was so boo-hissable from the get go that even with the backstory explanation from Career of Evil, it was bewildering that someone like Robin puts up with him for so long, and that only went worse from novel to novel. There are some narrative strings pulled to justify Robin not leaving him right at the start of this book after finding out he lied to her and deleted her phone history, and yes, in real life it happens all too often that people keep trying to maintain a miserable relationship far beyond beyond all their friends’ understanding, but in fiction, if you can’t write the relationship compelling, it’s just wearying beyond belief to see it dragged out. Of course everyone’s mileage differs, and I’m aware a lot of BSG watchers loathed Ellen Tigh and/or Saul Tigh, but the Tighs are actually one of my examples of how to do this topic right. Even before the show added first pathos (season 3) and then backstory to Ellen, back when she was mainly comic relief (s1 and early s2), I got a kick out of her, und thus had no trouble understanding why the Tighs did not split up (for good). Otoh, Matthew is just dull mediocrity personified, Robin keeps having the same conversations with him book after book, and when she at least leaves him for good two thirds into this novel, was way too late for this particular reader who still can’t understand why we had to put up with him for so long. This is, after all, fiction, not real life.
All of which, btw, doesn’t mean that various of the depictions of bad relationships didn’t ring true to me. “You can bloody hate someone and still wish they gave a shit about you, and hate yourself for wishing it” one of the suspects tells Robin, which is true for a great many of the novel’s cast, and struck me as a key quote. As for the case(s) of the novel which our investigative team has to crack, one starts when an off-his-meds homeless man shows up at their office and tells Strike about witnessing a murder as a child (which, because he’s clearly mentally ill, means he may or may not have imagined it), the other with a Tory politician, Jasper Chiswell, being blackmailed and in turn wanting to get dirt on his opponent. This provides the opportunity for Robin to go undercover not once but twice in very different roles, which mostly is great fun to read about, and for the author to do what she did in “Cuckoo’s Calling” for the fashion world and in “The Silkworm” for the literary industry, to go satirical about a certain milieu: politics, privileged Tory families and the radical left. The first two work out well (for example, Robin’s acid observation on what the various members of the (Tory) Chiswell clan think of as “poor”), but with the last, I feel it shows that JKR has been spending the last two years or so involved in an inner Labour dispute between Corbynists and, for lack of a better term, Social Democrats in the Labour party, and not on the pro-Corbyn side. Because if one of the supporting villains is a beardy charismatic guy having a cult like grip on his followers while he’s spouting pseudo Marxist clichés which include the occasional antisemitic remark, with an anti-Zionist poster prominently displayed in the locations where he holds a speech, it’s probably not out of this world to suspect someone might be fictionally venting. This unfortunately means the satire is less than successful, because in addition to everything else, the character in question is also a hypocrite, exploiting other people. Letting him have the courage of his convictions would have made for a far more interesting literary creation. (In this very novel, she does better with the actual murderer, who doesn’t have a red arrow saying “dislike this person” pointing at them all the time, and with some of the other supporting cast, including Chiswell’s daughter Izzy, who is clueless about privilege in the most breathtaking way without being malicious, or Chiswell’s political enemy Della who needs to come across as ambigous since what her motives are and how much she knows is one of the mysteries facing Strike and Robin.
This being said, the maybe Corbyn avatar is just a minor villain and doesn’t show up that often, especially in the second half of the novel. And, again, there is great teamwork. Given that the second novel features a major argument between our heroes and the third much plot interference, I can’t tell how how I relieved I was that in this one, after the early holding hack, they get along fine, and as in the first one you can see them bringing out each other’s strengths while having a great rapport, and share many a scene. Most importantly (to me), in the majority of said scenes, they’re comfortable with each other. In a novel which inflicts private drama on either otherwise, this is a much needed relief.
In conclusion: won’t be my favourite of the lot but I’ll probably reread it in some years, skipping over most of the stuff with SPOILER. And celebrate that SPOILER won’t plague us in future novels anymore.
But to get my bad marriages/affairs nitpicks out first: I can appreciate thematic relevance, and JKR isn’t exactly subtle in this regard, even beyond the Ibsen quotes - in addition to Robin’s awful marriage with Matthew, and Strike’s toxic past 16-years-long relationship with Charlotte, as well as Strike’s current day emotional unavailability to the women he conducts his post-Charlotte affairs with, we get among the various suspects not one good marriage/affair but lots of rotten ones, in various dysfunctional ways. (BTW: none is physically abusive, which I add because the last novel featured not one but three suspects who were into that.) The problem here for me is that much I’m a sell for dysfunctional relationships if written compellingly, it needs to be done other than what JKR does with Robin/Matthew. Matthew was so boo-hissable from the get go that even with the backstory explanation from Career of Evil, it was bewildering that someone like Robin puts up with him for so long, and that only went worse from novel to novel. There are some narrative strings pulled to justify Robin not leaving him right at the start of this book after finding out he lied to her and deleted her phone history, and yes, in real life it happens all too often that people keep trying to maintain a miserable relationship far beyond beyond all their friends’ understanding, but in fiction, if you can’t write the relationship compelling, it’s just wearying beyond belief to see it dragged out. Of course everyone’s mileage differs, and I’m aware a lot of BSG watchers loathed Ellen Tigh and/or Saul Tigh, but the Tighs are actually one of my examples of how to do this topic right. Even before the show added first pathos (season 3) and then backstory to Ellen, back when she was mainly comic relief (s1 and early s2), I got a kick out of her, und thus had no trouble understanding why the Tighs did not split up (for good). Otoh, Matthew is just dull mediocrity personified, Robin keeps having the same conversations with him book after book, and when she at least leaves him for good two thirds into this novel, was way too late for this particular reader who still can’t understand why we had to put up with him for so long. This is, after all, fiction, not real life.
All of which, btw, doesn’t mean that various of the depictions of bad relationships didn’t ring true to me. “You can bloody hate someone and still wish they gave a shit about you, and hate yourself for wishing it” one of the suspects tells Robin, which is true for a great many of the novel’s cast, and struck me as a key quote. As for the case(s) of the novel which our investigative team has to crack, one starts when an off-his-meds homeless man shows up at their office and tells Strike about witnessing a murder as a child (which, because he’s clearly mentally ill, means he may or may not have imagined it), the other with a Tory politician, Jasper Chiswell, being blackmailed and in turn wanting to get dirt on his opponent. This provides the opportunity for Robin to go undercover not once but twice in very different roles, which mostly is great fun to read about, and for the author to do what she did in “Cuckoo’s Calling” for the fashion world and in “The Silkworm” for the literary industry, to go satirical about a certain milieu: politics, privileged Tory families and the radical left. The first two work out well (for example, Robin’s acid observation on what the various members of the (Tory) Chiswell clan think of as “poor”), but with the last, I feel it shows that JKR has been spending the last two years or so involved in an inner Labour dispute between Corbynists and, for lack of a better term, Social Democrats in the Labour party, and not on the pro-Corbyn side. Because if one of the supporting villains is a beardy charismatic guy having a cult like grip on his followers while he’s spouting pseudo Marxist clichés which include the occasional antisemitic remark, with an anti-Zionist poster prominently displayed in the locations where he holds a speech, it’s probably not out of this world to suspect someone might be fictionally venting. This unfortunately means the satire is less than successful, because in addition to everything else, the character in question is also a hypocrite, exploiting other people. Letting him have the courage of his convictions would have made for a far more interesting literary creation. (In this very novel, she does better with the actual murderer, who doesn’t have a red arrow saying “dislike this person” pointing at them all the time, and with some of the other supporting cast, including Chiswell’s daughter Izzy, who is clueless about privilege in the most breathtaking way without being malicious, or Chiswell’s political enemy Della who needs to come across as ambigous since what her motives are and how much she knows is one of the mysteries facing Strike and Robin.
This being said, the maybe Corbyn avatar is just a minor villain and doesn’t show up that often, especially in the second half of the novel. And, again, there is great teamwork. Given that the second novel features a major argument between our heroes and the third much plot interference, I can’t tell how how I relieved I was that in this one, after the early holding hack, they get along fine, and as in the first one you can see them bringing out each other’s strengths while having a great rapport, and share many a scene. Most importantly (to me), in the majority of said scenes, they’re comfortable with each other. In a novel which inflicts private drama on either otherwise, this is a much needed relief.
In conclusion: won’t be my favourite of the lot but I’ll probably reread it in some years, skipping over most of the stuff with SPOILER. And celebrate that SPOILER won’t plague us in future novels anymore.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-22 05:47 pm (UTC)PJW
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 07:48 am (UTC)Re: simplification and being partisan in fiction. Now her first post HP novel, A Casual Vacancy is pretty much “Why I hate Thatcherism and its long term damages: The Novel” (one reason of many why the three part tv version was such a let down to me - the book is by no means perfect, but it has real anger and bite, and that’s all gone in the tv verison, the urgency drained in favor of some non offending coziness), and the various Thatcherite main characters are easily as unsympathetic - there’s just one redeemable person among them - than the minor maybe Corbyn inspired one in this novel is. I think the reason why this feels different is that Corbyn is not in power, plus Casual Vacancy’s points, say, about the damages to the NHS, or the utter indifference to poverty the “it’s their own fault” attitudes foster are of course making me furious as well, and I was glad to see it in a novel which because HP won its author a fandom across parties wasn’t just preaching to the converted; whereas all the infighting both in British Labour and in my own country feels dangerously counterproductive to me.
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Date: 2018-09-22 11:18 pm (UTC)I felt this was really Robin's book -- it was a delight seeing her be a private eye and acting out different roles, and getting affirmations from different people that Strike thinks she's the best. But you are right, Matthew is an absolute cipher and there's no real reason why she should keep staying with him out of inertia; they have nothing in common, they fight really easily, he kept stepping out on her apparently and he's not violent per se when she leaves, but it's very ugly. I liked the Tighs in BSG too -- they had the weight of history as an established couple along with emotional connections. We're told that Robin has been with Matthew since college and was her first love, and that's probably a big reason why she keeps hanging on, but it's really hard to feel.
OTOH I kind of loathed Strike. I don't like Charlotte as a character in these books, and I thought he treated Lorelei dreadfully -- he was kind of an utter stereotypical guy. Yeah she was being manipulative, but she also really did seem to care for him and that whole "well you know I never promised you anything baby" bit drives me nuts. He's got a definite cruel or at least callous streak. I wasn't that thrilled at how the half-(ethnicity) of the final villain kept being emphasized, either -- that was almost something out of Golden Age writing.
OTOH I was happy this was less grisly than Silkworm, and I just couldn't read Career of Evil //wimp I was just really happy Robin got out of his clutches and got a lot of great things to do and, like you said, she and Strike got comfortable together again. I am kind of dreading a setup of "once all obstacles were removed on both sides they felt that itself was an obstacle" cold feet thing, but anything is better than Matthew.
I totally missed Jimmy as a stealth Corbyn, LOL.
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Date: 2018-09-23 06:20 am (UTC)Otoh I’m not sure Strike’s most offputting moment in the novel for me was intentional, and that was his long patronising inner monologue about his sister Lucy, and how she reacted to their mess of a childhood by marrying someone conventional and hidng from danger, unlike Robin who faced danger despite having a stable childhood. It was just the type of “elevating heroine by putting down other woman via main character’s statement” I loathe. Not least because we’ve seen Lucy be nothing but sweet and concerned about Strike and hitting it off with Robin when they met in earlier books. Then again, “Lethal White” itself points out that Strike’s image of Lucy, where he lets her voice his inner self crtiticism, has nothing to do with the real Lucy, most blatantly when he thinks she’s calling him to chide him about his relationships and she’s calling because her son has appendicitis! Bascially, Strike: no clue about women when they’re not involved in a murder.
Jimmy as stealth Corbyn: I might be wrong about this, I haven’t seen anyone else remark on it, but reading it with JKR’s “Corbyn, Ugh” tweets in mind, I couldn’t help but suspect.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 05:37 pm (UTC)HA
YES
And even if one party (typically the dude) is insisting there's no emotional ties and no real intimacy and so on, just being together and sharing moments does create a bond. And he is expecting things from her! He's expecting her to approach it in the exact same way he is and deal with it emotionally the same way he does. Which I think is unreasonable for anybody. But it's also just such a stereotypical "distant man/clingy woman" thing I could scream.
When she said “I just want to feel like I couldn’t have been anyone, like I mattered”, it was devastating. Mind you, I’m sure it was meant to be. (See also Silkworm, where Strike gets an excellent “the reason you suck” speech which is briefly alluded to in this novel.)
Yeah, I think Strike is definitely meant to be flawed, and we're not meant to think his treatment of Lorelei is good or anything. But at the same time, he's the hero, and....do we spend the most time with him? It felt like he and Robin got about equal page time (I don't remember whether that happened in the earlier novels). He has moved on a long way from the big sulky guy in the first book. ....I was just still so annoyed by the setup, hah.
Not least because we’ve seen Lucy be nothing but sweet and concerned about Strike and hitting it off with Robin when they met in earlier books. Then again, “Lethal White” itself points out that Strike’s image of Lucy, where he lets her voice his inner self crtiticism, has nothing to do with the real Lucy, most blatantly when he thinks she’s calling him to chide him about his relationships and she’s calling because her son has appendicitis!
I did love how he was totally right there for her and the description of watching over the kid in the hospital, which totally jived with my recollections of what it's like watching someone you love in that situation. (I had to put my ereader down a couple of times, even.) I don't think he's an unreliable narrator exactly, but he's got a pretty fixed viewpoint of human nature and his place in the world. Robin really shakes that up (without being a MPDG type, which is great. She's like her own MPDG).
Bascially, Strike: no clue about women when they’re not involved in a murder.
HAH
YES
AGAIN
Jimmy as stealth Corbyn: I might be wrong about this, I haven’t seen anyone else remark on it, but reading it with JKR’s “Corbyn, Ugh” tweets in mind, I couldn’t help but suspect.
It totally fits! I have to admit, I was sort of like "Why is this guy getting so much screentime when he's not really that important," but if he's a satire, that helps explain it. And makes the portrait of Billy, the actual working-class guy who is screwed over by everyone and only wants to help even when he's in a psychotic daze, even more sympathetic. (When Strike told him he was a good witness, that was a great moment.)
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Date: 2018-09-25 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-26 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-27 08:52 pm (UTC)Off to the library....
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Date: 2018-11-11 01:10 pm (UTC)*eyeroll* Quite. This is actually something that she's done before, with the elder Barty Crouch in Goblet of Fire - although there I rather think it works. But maybe I just think that because I find that guy so eminently hateable.