ABFED #9 -and- #10 ...workin' overtime, people
So, it's hard to believe, considering my track record (10 books in 25 days, while impressive, does not come anywhere close to the one-per-day it's supposed to), but I have indeed read /two/ books from the list since I last posted. They are (drumroll please) Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse, and The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. Quite the difference, you say. What disparate genres, you think - an off-the-wall farce starring Jeeves and Wooster, and an Hercule Poirot mystery - couldn't be further apart. Ah, my friends, but I beg to differ. These two novels, unlikely as it seems, are ridiculously similar in narrative device, if not in atmosphere. Both novels feature a wide cast of quirky, eccentric individuals more or less trapped together in the same physical location. Both novels have a central problem (or problems) to be solved, and both feature a mastermind who kindly, ruthlessly manipulates those around him to reach a desired effect. Granted, in Joy in the Morning the mastermind is Jeeves, and the problems are: that Bertie Wooster has accidentally gotten himself engaged (again) to a woman he most certainly does not want to marry, that two of his friends who /do/ want to get married need to wrangle permission from the woman's guardian, and that this guardian, Bertie's uncle-by-marriage, needs to set up a secret meeting with an American businessman to hammer out the details of a pending deal. Oh, and Uncle Percy's son is being a bother, and Bertie's fiancee's ex-fiance is threatening to throw Bertie in jail...okay, so there are lots of problems. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, there is only one major problem, but when I say major...the matriarch of a quite-powerful family is murdered one night, and all of the members of the household are under suspicion. Enter Hercule Poirot. Much simpler, no?
There are some interesting author-related differences between the books: Joy in the Morning is one of the later Jeeves-and-Wooster novels, and it shows. For one, neither character is actually mentioned in the title, which implies a level of confidence in the author that people will pick up the book and a take a look at it even if it isn't blatantly J&W. The various characters, while introduced sufficiently in the book, clearly have made prior appearances; the hijinks gotten into by Bernie Wooster are casually mentioned here and there, though not annoyingly or artificially. On the other hand, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie's first mystery novel. It is so good and so polished that this is almost hard to believe; there are so many twists and turns in the novel that I was thoroughly confused as to the actual culprit; almost everyone was suspected, either explicitly or implicitly, at some point in the novel. The narrator, an old friend of the family and of Poirot, is an aspiring detective, but jumps to so many conclusions and prejudges so many people that I quickly stopped believing anything he said. Well, not everything...he did faithfully recount what he saw and discovered, but the conclusions he draws from what he sees, and even what Poirot tells him point-blank, are so absurd that I immediately started to try and draw my own conclusions. I should probably add, for the purposes of full disclosure, that I was as wrong as Hastings, the poor, harried narrator.
Anyway, what is striking about the two books when compared is that, despite their differences in tone and genre, they are remarkably similar for their central intellectual characters, and the ingenuity of the authors that they more or less subtly underline. I'm a confirmed admirer of Wodehouse and his novels, J&W or not (see the ABFED entry on Picadilly Jim), and I think I will definitely need to move Agatha Christie somewhat higher on my list - if this was her first novel, the rest are sure to impress.
There are some interesting author-related differences between the books: Joy in the Morning is one of the later Jeeves-and-Wooster novels, and it shows. For one, neither character is actually mentioned in the title, which implies a level of confidence in the author that people will pick up the book and a take a look at it even if it isn't blatantly J&W. The various characters, while introduced sufficiently in the book, clearly have made prior appearances; the hijinks gotten into by Bernie Wooster are casually mentioned here and there, though not annoyingly or artificially. On the other hand, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie's first mystery novel. It is so good and so polished that this is almost hard to believe; there are so many twists and turns in the novel that I was thoroughly confused as to the actual culprit; almost everyone was suspected, either explicitly or implicitly, at some point in the novel. The narrator, an old friend of the family and of Poirot, is an aspiring detective, but jumps to so many conclusions and prejudges so many people that I quickly stopped believing anything he said. Well, not everything...he did faithfully recount what he saw and discovered, but the conclusions he draws from what he sees, and even what Poirot tells him point-blank, are so absurd that I immediately started to try and draw my own conclusions. I should probably add, for the purposes of full disclosure, that I was as wrong as Hastings, the poor, harried narrator.
Anyway, what is striking about the two books when compared is that, despite their differences in tone and genre, they are remarkably similar for their central intellectual characters, and the ingenuity of the authors that they more or less subtly underline. I'm a confirmed admirer of Wodehouse and his novels, J&W or not (see the ABFED entry on Picadilly Jim), and I think I will definitely need to move Agatha Christie somewhat higher on my list - if this was her first novel, the rest are sure to impress.