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selenakThe second detective novel J.K. Rowling wrote as Robert Galbraith; since she was outed as the author last time, it became known seven are planned all in all, as with the Harry Potter books. Since I like her main characters (Cormoran Strike, surly detective with a fondness for methodical record keeping, and his assistant Robin), I'm glad to hear that. All in all, I enjoyed their second outing, with some nitpicks.
The Silkworm of the title is a metaphor for writers, as the book itself tells us, because while Strike's last case took him into the world of supermodels, this one takes place among writers, agents, editors and publishers. Generally speaking, the fashion world seems to consist of nicer people. At one point, one of the main suspects - who is a great example of J.K.R. skewering a particular type of self satisfied male author, btw, tells our main character: "Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels."
There is, err, something to that, I suppose, though it's over the top and there's also comraderie and encouragement in the writing business. But the writers in this particular novel certainly aren't very pleasant people. There is the one whom Strike is hired to find since he's missing, and who turns out to be the main murder victim, Owen Quine, whose novels sound like pretentious porn dressed up with some symbolism, specializing in self pity and rage against everyone else, whose only redeeming trait seems to have been that he loved his handicapped daughter. Then there's the above mentioned self satisfied succesful jerk: think Richard Dawkins (complete with giving tv interviews on why women can't be as successful artists as men unless they're sterile, and that he'd been happier if he could have brought himself to have sex with his male friends instead of being forced by orientation to have it with women). And there's self publishing erotic fantasy writer Kath (another suspect) who also writes a blog full of spelling mistakes and OMG drama!. (It occured to me she should be posting on tumblr and that JKR shows she's not quite up to date on the internet, but then I recalled this novel is set a few years ago - at one point it's mentioned William and Kate just got engaged, which dates it at one particular point -, and so a blog is probably accurate.) Not that the rest of the publishing world fares much better, with the exception of an editor who seems to be the nicest person in the publishing industry, trying to see everyone else's pov (and who promptly ends up out of a job in the course of the novel). What all of this reminded me of was the way JKR described the fictional community in The Casual Vacancy; it's that type of biting mercilessness with just glimpses of humanity.
The other reminder of The Casual Vacancy was a political passage she didn't bother to disguise with fake names. Strike is watching the news when: Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, was announcing plans to slash 350 million pounds from the legal aid budget. Strike watched through his haze of tiredness as the florid, paunchy man told Parliament that he wished to 'discourage people from restoring to lawyers whenever they face a problem, and instead encourage them to consider more suitable methods of dispute resolution.' He meant, of course, that poor people ought to relinquish the services of the law.
...methinks the Daily Mail won't like that novel any more than Kenneth Clarke will.
That passage isn't just a random political statement, though. In the course of the novel, Strike's original client, Quine's wife Leonora who hired him to find her husband, becomes the police's main suspect for her husband's murder (he cheated on her, she didn't tell the police he'd gone missing, she had access to the place where his body is found), and Leonora of course can't afford a good lawyer. She's also one of the few sympathetic people among the novel's new characters - middleaged, blunt, and despite nothing in her life justifying this, an optimist.
So much for the case. The heart of the novel, though, is the relationship between Strike and Robin, and one of my few nitpicks would be that there isn't enough Robin until Quine turns out to be dead. But then she's as present as Strike is, and their scenes are mostly together. Robin wants to be more than a secretary/assistant, she thought Strike would train her to be a detective, and when early on he keeps giving her assistant only jobs, it frustrates her to no end. However, she does what you wish more people in novels would do and mid-novel tells him what makes her angry, with the result that air is cleared and partnership is declared. Otoh, her relationship with her fiance Matthew who is no more keen on her working for Strike than he was in the last novel is getting ever more strained. (This would be another nitpick, in that it's clear in this novel Matthew and Robin are headed towards a break but it doesn't happen yet, and I thought that JKR just should have gotten it over with in this novel instead of dragging it out.)
Speaking of future novels, there are some hints about Robin's past and the reason why she broke off university, which sound like build up for further exploration, but in this case I don't mind. On Strike's side, we meet his half brother Al (the only one of his father's other offsprings he has contact with), who is an endearing golden retriever type of person and thus makes it impossible for Strike to properly resent him, which is entertaining.
Other details:
- Strike having an amputated leg is something that the novel keeps using when appropriate (i.e. he can't run after someone for long, he can't drive a non-automatic car in the middle of winter - which is why it's a good thing Robin turns out to be an excellent driver) without making it his only trademark.
- There is a slightly hysterical trans character, but she's not the killer, nor does anything vicious happen to her (well, other than what happened to all the suspects, since Quine having written a roman a cléf containing awful caricatures of everyone he knows sets the plot going), and she does have a strong supportive friendship with another character, so while she's not very sympathetic, I don't think she's a caricature
- Strike's former fiancee Charlotte while still trying to play mindgames with him gets married (part of the mind game) during this novel; I'm pretty sure that means either Charlotte or the husband will end up as a murder suspect in a future novel.
The Silkworm of the title is a metaphor for writers, as the book itself tells us, because while Strike's last case took him into the world of supermodels, this one takes place among writers, agents, editors and publishers. Generally speaking, the fashion world seems to consist of nicer people. At one point, one of the main suspects - who is a great example of J.K.R. skewering a particular type of self satisfied male author, btw, tells our main character: "Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels."
There is, err, something to that, I suppose, though it's over the top and there's also comraderie and encouragement in the writing business. But the writers in this particular novel certainly aren't very pleasant people. There is the one whom Strike is hired to find since he's missing, and who turns out to be the main murder victim, Owen Quine, whose novels sound like pretentious porn dressed up with some symbolism, specializing in self pity and rage against everyone else, whose only redeeming trait seems to have been that he loved his handicapped daughter. Then there's the above mentioned self satisfied succesful jerk: think Richard Dawkins (complete with giving tv interviews on why women can't be as successful artists as men unless they're sterile, and that he'd been happier if he could have brought himself to have sex with his male friends instead of being forced by orientation to have it with women). And there's self publishing erotic fantasy writer Kath (another suspect) who also writes a blog full of spelling mistakes and OMG drama!. (It occured to me she should be posting on tumblr and that JKR shows she's not quite up to date on the internet, but then I recalled this novel is set a few years ago - at one point it's mentioned William and Kate just got engaged, which dates it at one particular point -, and so a blog is probably accurate.) Not that the rest of the publishing world fares much better, with the exception of an editor who seems to be the nicest person in the publishing industry, trying to see everyone else's pov (and who promptly ends up out of a job in the course of the novel). What all of this reminded me of was the way JKR described the fictional community in The Casual Vacancy; it's that type of biting mercilessness with just glimpses of humanity.
The other reminder of The Casual Vacancy was a political passage she didn't bother to disguise with fake names. Strike is watching the news when: Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, was announcing plans to slash 350 million pounds from the legal aid budget. Strike watched through his haze of tiredness as the florid, paunchy man told Parliament that he wished to 'discourage people from restoring to lawyers whenever they face a problem, and instead encourage them to consider more suitable methods of dispute resolution.' He meant, of course, that poor people ought to relinquish the services of the law.
...methinks the Daily Mail won't like that novel any more than Kenneth Clarke will.
That passage isn't just a random political statement, though. In the course of the novel, Strike's original client, Quine's wife Leonora who hired him to find her husband, becomes the police's main suspect for her husband's murder (he cheated on her, she didn't tell the police he'd gone missing, she had access to the place where his body is found), and Leonora of course can't afford a good lawyer. She's also one of the few sympathetic people among the novel's new characters - middleaged, blunt, and despite nothing in her life justifying this, an optimist.
So much for the case. The heart of the novel, though, is the relationship between Strike and Robin, and one of my few nitpicks would be that there isn't enough Robin until Quine turns out to be dead. But then she's as present as Strike is, and their scenes are mostly together. Robin wants to be more than a secretary/assistant, she thought Strike would train her to be a detective, and when early on he keeps giving her assistant only jobs, it frustrates her to no end. However, she does what you wish more people in novels would do and mid-novel tells him what makes her angry, with the result that air is cleared and partnership is declared. Otoh, her relationship with her fiance Matthew who is no more keen on her working for Strike than he was in the last novel is getting ever more strained. (This would be another nitpick, in that it's clear in this novel Matthew and Robin are headed towards a break but it doesn't happen yet, and I thought that JKR just should have gotten it over with in this novel instead of dragging it out.)
Speaking of future novels, there are some hints about Robin's past and the reason why she broke off university, which sound like build up for further exploration, but in this case I don't mind. On Strike's side, we meet his half brother Al (the only one of his father's other offsprings he has contact with), who is an endearing golden retriever type of person and thus makes it impossible for Strike to properly resent him, which is entertaining.
Other details:
- Strike having an amputated leg is something that the novel keeps using when appropriate (i.e. he can't run after someone for long, he can't drive a non-automatic car in the middle of winter - which is why it's a good thing Robin turns out to be an excellent driver) without making it his only trademark.
- There is a slightly hysterical trans character, but she's not the killer, nor does anything vicious happen to her (well, other than what happened to all the suspects, since Quine having written a roman a cléf containing awful caricatures of everyone he knows sets the plot going), and she does have a strong supportive friendship with another character, so while she's not very sympathetic, I don't think she's a caricature
- Strike's former fiancee Charlotte while still trying to play mindgames with him gets married (part of the mind game) during this novel; I'm pretty sure that means either Charlotte or the husband will end up as a murder suspect in a future novel.
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Date: 2014-06-28 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-29 04:15 am (UTC)