Carl Deuker -- Books, Movies, TV

I'm going to go back and do some rereading on my Kindle.  The chapters are broken into "Then" and "Now."  THEN being our main character's childhood with "Charlie," her best friend forever who is now dead.  NOW concerns her failing relationship with her husband, Dan, and her memories of Charlie.  I was listening (Audible whispersync), and THEN is not completely separate from NOW in my mind.

Quite a complicated plot.  The murderer is a surgeon and scientist, Dr. Julian Freke.  He believes that conscience is utter nonsense.  He murders Reuben Levy because Levy bested him in love years earlier, but also to prove his point about conscience. Wimsey somehow sees the whole picture and solves the crime.  I'm not sure I get it yet.  It goes something like this:  Freke, a dissector of bodies for his occupation, comes upon a vagrant who looks something like Levy.  This man dies of a broken neck.  Freke then kills Levy by breaking his neck with a poker.  Freke substitutes Levy for the vagrant.  A team of dissectors work on him and then bury him.  Great . . . except Freke has an extra body . . . the vagrant.  Here's where it gets interesting.  Rather than just disposing of the body somehow, Freke makes the man look as much like Levy as possible, transports it across a rooftop, and deposits it in the bathtub of a neighbor.  This causes the police no end of confusion, which I gu

Like  Saoirse Ronan  very much--she's a terrific actress.  This one could have been better with more realistic writing.  Our high school senior is far too wise for her years, especially considering the fact that her mother is angry and mean--for no particular reason.  Ending scene is a call from college after a stupid drunken night:  Mom, I love you. I love Sacramento.  Not earned by anything in the movie.  Hard to see why the girl would ever want to see Mom again, let alone be so emotional so soon. Writer has a love/hate relationship with Sacramento.

All tumbling down on Melmotte. Trollope ahead of his time in a number of ways. Marie Melmotte stands up to her father, sees through the "bride sweepstakes" game of which she is a part, insists (unsuccessfully) that she should be able to marry for love.  Paul Montague, who has jilted his American widow, is angry that Hetta doesn't immediately see the whole thing his way. Trollope's comment:  one wonders how he would feel if it were all reversed, if Hetta had a widower whom she'd promised to marry and had jilted just a few weeks earlier. Melmotte wins his seat in parliament, but he has forged Dolly Longstaffe's signature on a property deed and is on the verge of financial ruin.  Marie won't sign back to him property he put in her name as a hedge against his own ruin. Excellent

Felix continues to be a thorough cad.  Melmotte is a more subtle version of the Broderick Crawford character in Born Yesterday.  He also has many similarities to Trump. Bluster when confronted by doubters, confusing financial transactions, political positions that are as fixed as jello.  He is now running for office, and his wealth and power give him a chance to win even though he has no qualifications. Very lively, interesting book.

It occurs to me that P.G. Wodehouse and Trollope have a lot in common. Trollope is adept at describing the sons of Lords and Barons and their ennui, their drinking, their lack of respect for parents, their lack of ambition, their gambling, etc.   Wodehouse attacks them full on, Trollope is more sly. Nidderdale, Miles Grendall, Felix--all completely useless.

Again, I wonder if I could read this straight through without listening to some parts.  The narration is wonderful, so the boring stuff is okay. Sir Felix is half-heartedly wooing Marie Melmotte.  He's concerned the $ might not actually be there.  (A scoundrel can sense a scoundrel.) Roger pursues Henrietta. Montague is caught up with Melmotte, suspects the whole thing is a fraud, is profiting, is nervous.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Back from funeral of Anne's father. He died on February 10, 2018. Sir Felix Cadbury continues to be a thorough cad. He can barely work up the energy to tell Marie Melmotte that he loves her, but she is still willing to marry him and enrich him.  He needs to talk to her father, which he puts off.  He then goes off to Ruby, a local girl with whom he is trifling.  She is madly in love with him, though.  Roger sees through it all, but cannot stop Felix from being himself, from disgracing the family, bankrupting his mother and sister, etc.  Excellent

Anne's father's funeral is Tuesday, November 13, 2018 I picked this book as a good trip and "funeral" book.  Calm and long. This is a reread of one of my favorite books.  Just settling in. We've got the mysterious rich financier from . . . his plain daughter . . . his Bohemian-Jewish wife.  And we've got the widowed writer with her solid daughter and her spendthrift son who, naturally, is after the daughter of the financier. Money, character, intrigue--Trollope is wonderful.

What a terrific book! A double murder mystery, and lots of interesting and unobtrusive observations on the merits of literature and popular fiction and the distinction between the two. Since I write YA books, my take on the literature/fiction distinction goes about like this. Just like Horowitz's main character--a writer who wants to be considered part of the pantheon of greats but isn't--I started writing wanting to be a "great." But there's that thing called talent, and I just don't have a great work of literature in me. But I did discover along the way that I could write a book that at least some 14 year-old readers think is great. This is why I never say to students: "You can be anything you want to be." Much more sensible to say: "Figure out what you're pretty good at, work at that, and become as great in that area as your talents allow." Anyway, I'm in total awe of how Horowitz handles this amazingly intricate double plot,

So now the mystery is about our writer.  Did he finish the final chapters of Magpie Murders? If so, where are they?  Did he commit suicide?  If not, who murdered him. Really a delight.  There is a description of the fictional author getting a headache trying to keep track of all the clues and red herrings.  I'm guessing that's non-fiction.