Skip to main content

The Secret, Book and Scone Society

Cozy mystery with a "women are superior creatures" underpinning. The four women have all had their struggles, which we will learn about one-by-one, but they all remain/emerge wiser, kinder, smarter, etc. than the men in the novel, most of whom are corrupt, narrow-minded, unfeeling and potentially violent. (Nora's encounter with the paramedic-hunk is the exception, though it occurs to me that he may be the murderer.)

Even Estelle, who uses sex to get what she wants, is portrayed positively.  The men are comically manipulated by her curves.  In one scene, she goes skinny-dipping with a married man but is rescued by her buddies before she actually has sex with the guy.

Nora, our main character, is told by her female friends that she is beautiful despite her scars. No male says this to Nora because males are just too crass to see beyond surface beauty. 

I hope I'm wrong and the book is more nuanced. If not, then this author is a one-and-done writer for me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY  Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of.  Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family.   Mom:  husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm.   Conversations together:   Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy.  Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house.  (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree.  Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example.  Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done.   Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May--Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery, Book 1 Lots that I liked.  Crime novel that is also historical fiction.  Fowler gives insight into London during the blitz.  Danger from street cars, some looting during blackout, stiff upper lip British still going to theaters, etc.  Fowler also takes reader backstage into the workings of a theater.  I learned a lot about the physical complexity of a major theater--production is a tremendous production.  I liked both the main characters.  Bryant, the eccentric loner who thinks out of the box. May, the more traditional "bright" guy, who is able to appreciate Bryant and help by keeping him in the real world, a little. Plot revolves around murders committed while cast rehearses and then performs Offenbach's scandalous version of Orpheus and Eurydice.  The murders are on the gruesome-detail side given the general British coolness of the rest of the text.  Spoiler coming.  The denouement wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sorcerer, Movie 2.5 stars

Roy Scheider, based on Wages of Fear. Scheider is involved in a robbery in USA.  He robs a church connected to the mob--the mob puts out a contract to kill him.  He flees to Nicaragua.  Poor, miserable . . . and a contract killer shows up.  He takes his chance--driving a cargo of plastic explosives over a mountain to put out an oil well fire. His would-be killer, though a series of events, becomes his co-driver.  The other truck has a Frenchman involved in a financial scheme who has had to flee France. He, too, needs money to get out of the miserable little town. Driving the trucks is the focus of last half of movie.  Explosion at every turn is possible.  Frenchman and his co-driver blow up when wheel comes off.  Scheider's co-driver killed by bandits (Scheider and he have become respectful of one another.) Scheider carries the explosives in. He will get 40,000 pesos.  He's about to fly out of the little town, with some hope, when a car...
Post a Comment
Read more