pie and books: the finer things in life
1) Today I baked a pie, very very loosely based on one of Yotam Ottolenghi's recipes for a roasted vegetable tart. Said tart, while delicious-sounding, uses lots of flavors I associate with late summer and autumn, like sweet potato and roasted bell peppers, and I wanted springlike veggies. So I used spinach and arugula, artichoke hearts, and chives as well as the onion, garlic, feta, and ricotta called for in the original recipe. It turned out quite nice, especially the pastry (I used Paul Hollywood's shortcrust recipe), though unfortunately I didn't entirely think through the consequences of substituting very mild ingredients for strongly-flavored ones. So, yes, a little bit bland, but not bad. I want to make it again, with its original ingredients, in September or thereabouts. Anyway, I feel a sense of satisfaction at having achieved Proper Cooking--as I define it for myself--for the first time in ages.
I have a little steak thawing in the refrigerator for tomorrow, and I also intend to make an Amalfi-style potato salad from one of Marcella Hazan's cookbooks: small boiled potatoes dressed with anchovies, garlic, capers, and olives. This combines several of my current favorite things, so I'm looking forward to it.
2) I've finished my binge read of (almost) all of Dick Francis's novels. . I stopped with Under Orders, the last book before Francis started co-writing with his son.
Decider, 1993
Main character: Lee Morris, architect and father of many
Morris gets drawn into the affairs of the repellent family of his mother's first husband, who jointly own a racecourse that some want to sell to developers. It's very much about family relationships, including Morris's own marriage and his improbably well-behaved brood of sons. Morris and the kids are likeable, but like several of Francis's novels from around this period, there's a strong and icky background element of crimes against women. It's also relatively downbeat, which I wouldn't have minded had it not been for the aforesaid crimes against women. There are interesting elements, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it.
Wild Horses, 1994
Main character: Thomas Lyon, film director
Lyon is making a film loosely based on a novel loosely based on a real-life mysterious death, and the survivors emphatically want the film to be stopped. I disliked this book a lot; Lyon is so self-absorbed and unsympathetic to the distress of people who don't want their most painful memories turned into a Hollywood film (and also to the writer of the novel, who although personally sleazy created what sounds like a subtle and nuanced story, which the film is not) that I wouldn't have minded if the baddies had managed to knock him off. An extra thumbs down for the creepy romance subplot, in which the 30-year-old Lyon decides he's probably going to marry the innocent 18 year old girl he hires as a secretary. (And I'm not automatically against even large age differences in pairings; it was just that everything about their interactions maximized the creep factor.) Plus, this turns out to be another book with sexually-motivated violence against women.
Come to Grief, 1995
Main character: Sid Halley
The best of the Sid Halley novels, which I think are overall the best of Francis's work. Come to Grief has an unusual structure, beginning during the trial of the man--one of Sid's best friends--that Sid reluctantly came to believe was guilty of an atrocious crime, and then turning to a long flashback in which we see how Sid put the case together. Sid is still melacholy, stoic, slashily devoted to his ex-father-in-law, and struggling to fully come to terms with his disability, but there's also a nice, slow sense of character development.
(Trigger warning [ROT13]: navzny unez.)
To the Hilt, 1996, is the next book in the series but the first one I read; it's a rather wonderfully strange book in which Francis accidentally (?) wrote a m/m romcom.
10 Lb Penalty, 1997
Main character: Ben Juliard, amateur jockey and politician's son
Another rather odd book. It's about politics without having any politics--never a mention of Juliard Sr.'s political beliefs or even his party--and about solving a mystery without having much plot. Those aspects are frustrating, and I can't say it's a good book, but the counterbalance, for me, is that Francis seems for the first time to have written a queer protagonist, perhaps without meaning to and certainly without admitting it. There's no het romance plot for Ben Juliard, although virtually all of Francis's young unmarried heroes get one, and we never see him notice a woman sexually. When Ben does briefly mention his romances, he uses vague and gender-neutral language (and specifically mentions AIDS as a deterrent to promiscuity--I don't think most young straight men in the 1990s were very concerned about their risk of HIV infection). In addition, and this may be a bug or a feature depending on your taste, there's noticeable UST between Ben and his father (who did not raise him; they've barely met until Ben is 17), to the point that a tabloid journalist alleges that they're not father and son at all, but rather that Ben is a rent boy. To combat this, they produce Ben's birth certificate etc., but continue to sleep in the same bedroom for no apparent reason. As you do.
Field of 13, 1998
A collection of short stories, none of them much good. Francis's taste for morality tales is too much in evidence.
Second Wind, 1999
Main character: Perry Stuart, TV meteorologist
Such a hot mess that I don't think I can summarize the plot, which involves hurricanes, obviously shady rich people towards whom the hero shows not the slightest caution, international political issues Francis doesn't seem to know how to handle, and an over-reliance on coincidence and the hero behaving like a fool. And an implausible herd of cows.
Shattered, 2000
Main character: Gerard Logan, glassblower
Um, the glassblowing stuff was cool? I wish there'd been more glassblowing. One of the things I like about Francis's novels is, oddly enough, the info-dumps; it's fun learning about other people's interesting jobs. But the plot--the hero is given a videotape by a jockey friend, who promptly dies, and then lots of baddies want the videotape--strains plausibility a lot. So does Logan's go-it-alone-and-don't-call-the-cops mentality, especially given that his girlfriend is a police officer.
Under Orders, 2006
This is the first book Francis wrote after his wife Mary's death, and it feels a lot different from what came before. There's a sense of ending, of Sid's story being wrapped neatly up (he starts the book with a serious girlfriend, for example, and is married to her at the end, and we learn that he's also been moving as much as possible to safer sorts of investigations). Unfortunately some of this comes at the expense of things I loved in previous books, especially Sid's ex-father-in-law Charles Roland (Rowland in this book) and their relationship. Charles undergoes character assassination here; he's presented as a doddering old drunk, and while his and Sid's relationship is still deeply affectionate (there's a nice moment when Sid, finding that his girlfriend and Charles get along great, feels jealous because Charles is his and he doesn't want to share), a kind of handing-over happens, with Sid's girlfriend Marina getting the role of emotional support that Charles always had earlier. There's also the awkward issue, which Francis doesn't satisfactorily address, of the fact that Sid's enemies now have a good reason to attack Marina instead of Sid; it's dismissed, at Marina's insistence, as a risk of getting punched in the face (which does happen in the book, but that's a trivialization of the dangers we know--from real life and Sid's previous history--that she would face.) Anyway, for Marina to be a satisfactory substitute for Charles, even leaving out my own particular attachment to Sid/Charles, she needs some character development. She gets very little except to be brave when required and motherly at random moments, the latter apparently just because she's a woman.
The plot's okay, if a bit loose, but the characterization problems make me sad because Sid and Charles are my favorites. There's a later Sid Halley novel, written by Felix Francis after Dick Francis's death, that I'm not going to read. In fact I mostly want to un-remember Under Orders and pretend that Sid's story ended with Come to Grief.
As you can see, the late Dick Francis novels aren't as much to my taste as the early and middle ones. His weaknesses--shallow characterization, reliance on formula plots--show up more, and when he tries to break the formulas he's often unsuccessful. And some of what I admired about earlier Francis, such as his inclusion of women characters with independence and careers, isn't as impressive in the 1990s and beyond. As always, my standards for mystery writing are set by Ruth Rendell and Reginald Hill, both of whom (Hill especially) remained relatively progressive in a changing world. Over the years they learned to write a variety of women characters with personality and agency, to think about racism, to depict how homophobia affects people. Francis, by contrast, seems to have stopped on what was good liberal tolerance ca. 1970 and never gone any further.
Which is a bit of a downer note to end on. I'm certainly not sorry I read the books. They got me through a rough patch of illness and feeling blue, I like some of them very much, and they're almost all good reads at the time, regardless of what you think of them afterwards.
ETA: To the person who left a comment and then deleted it: I hope your deletion wasn't because you felt unwelcome! I didn't answer your comment because I've been struggling a lot lately with super-low energy levels, which means there are a lot of comments I don't get around to answering. But people are always welcome to comment on my posts!
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
I have a little steak thawing in the refrigerator for tomorrow, and I also intend to make an Amalfi-style potato salad from one of Marcella Hazan's cookbooks: small boiled potatoes dressed with anchovies, garlic, capers, and olives. This combines several of my current favorite things, so I'm looking forward to it.
2) I've finished my binge read of (almost) all of Dick Francis's novels. . I stopped with Under Orders, the last book before Francis started co-writing with his son.
Decider, 1993
Main character: Lee Morris, architect and father of many
Morris gets drawn into the affairs of the repellent family of his mother's first husband, who jointly own a racecourse that some want to sell to developers. It's very much about family relationships, including Morris's own marriage and his improbably well-behaved brood of sons. Morris and the kids are likeable, but like several of Francis's novels from around this period, there's a strong and icky background element of crimes against women. It's also relatively downbeat, which I wouldn't have minded had it not been for the aforesaid crimes against women. There are interesting elements, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it.
Wild Horses, 1994
Main character: Thomas Lyon, film director
Lyon is making a film loosely based on a novel loosely based on a real-life mysterious death, and the survivors emphatically want the film to be stopped. I disliked this book a lot; Lyon is so self-absorbed and unsympathetic to the distress of people who don't want their most painful memories turned into a Hollywood film (and also to the writer of the novel, who although personally sleazy created what sounds like a subtle and nuanced story, which the film is not) that I wouldn't have minded if the baddies had managed to knock him off. An extra thumbs down for the creepy romance subplot, in which the 30-year-old Lyon decides he's probably going to marry the innocent 18 year old girl he hires as a secretary. (And I'm not automatically against even large age differences in pairings; it was just that everything about their interactions maximized the creep factor.) Plus, this turns out to be another book with sexually-motivated violence against women.
Come to Grief, 1995
Main character: Sid Halley
The best of the Sid Halley novels, which I think are overall the best of Francis's work. Come to Grief has an unusual structure, beginning during the trial of the man--one of Sid's best friends--that Sid reluctantly came to believe was guilty of an atrocious crime, and then turning to a long flashback in which we see how Sid put the case together. Sid is still melacholy, stoic, slashily devoted to his ex-father-in-law, and struggling to fully come to terms with his disability, but there's also a nice, slow sense of character development.
(Trigger warning [ROT13]: navzny unez.)
To the Hilt, 1996, is the next book in the series but the first one I read; it's a rather wonderfully strange book in which Francis accidentally (?) wrote a m/m romcom.
10 Lb Penalty, 1997
Main character: Ben Juliard, amateur jockey and politician's son
Another rather odd book. It's about politics without having any politics--never a mention of Juliard Sr.'s political beliefs or even his party--and about solving a mystery without having much plot. Those aspects are frustrating, and I can't say it's a good book, but the counterbalance, for me, is that Francis seems for the first time to have written a queer protagonist, perhaps without meaning to and certainly without admitting it. There's no het romance plot for Ben Juliard, although virtually all of Francis's young unmarried heroes get one, and we never see him notice a woman sexually. When Ben does briefly mention his romances, he uses vague and gender-neutral language (and specifically mentions AIDS as a deterrent to promiscuity--I don't think most young straight men in the 1990s were very concerned about their risk of HIV infection). In addition, and this may be a bug or a feature depending on your taste, there's noticeable UST between Ben and his father (who did not raise him; they've barely met until Ben is 17), to the point that a tabloid journalist alleges that they're not father and son at all, but rather that Ben is a rent boy. To combat this, they produce Ben's birth certificate etc., but continue to sleep in the same bedroom for no apparent reason. As you do.
Field of 13, 1998
A collection of short stories, none of them much good. Francis's taste for morality tales is too much in evidence.
Second Wind, 1999
Main character: Perry Stuart, TV meteorologist
Such a hot mess that I don't think I can summarize the plot, which involves hurricanes, obviously shady rich people towards whom the hero shows not the slightest caution, international political issues Francis doesn't seem to know how to handle, and an over-reliance on coincidence and the hero behaving like a fool. And an implausible herd of cows.
Shattered, 2000
Main character: Gerard Logan, glassblower
Um, the glassblowing stuff was cool? I wish there'd been more glassblowing. One of the things I like about Francis's novels is, oddly enough, the info-dumps; it's fun learning about other people's interesting jobs. But the plot--the hero is given a videotape by a jockey friend, who promptly dies, and then lots of baddies want the videotape--strains plausibility a lot. So does Logan's go-it-alone-and-don't-call-the-cops mentality, especially given that his girlfriend is a police officer.
Under Orders, 2006
This is the first book Francis wrote after his wife Mary's death, and it feels a lot different from what came before. There's a sense of ending, of Sid's story being wrapped neatly up (he starts the book with a serious girlfriend, for example, and is married to her at the end, and we learn that he's also been moving as much as possible to safer sorts of investigations). Unfortunately some of this comes at the expense of things I loved in previous books, especially Sid's ex-father-in-law Charles Roland (Rowland in this book) and their relationship. Charles undergoes character assassination here; he's presented as a doddering old drunk, and while his and Sid's relationship is still deeply affectionate (there's a nice moment when Sid, finding that his girlfriend and Charles get along great, feels jealous because Charles is his and he doesn't want to share), a kind of handing-over happens, with Sid's girlfriend Marina getting the role of emotional support that Charles always had earlier. There's also the awkward issue, which Francis doesn't satisfactorily address, of the fact that Sid's enemies now have a good reason to attack Marina instead of Sid; it's dismissed, at Marina's insistence, as a risk of getting punched in the face (which does happen in the book, but that's a trivialization of the dangers we know--from real life and Sid's previous history--that she would face.) Anyway, for Marina to be a satisfactory substitute for Charles, even leaving out my own particular attachment to Sid/Charles, she needs some character development. She gets very little except to be brave when required and motherly at random moments, the latter apparently just because she's a woman.
The plot's okay, if a bit loose, but the characterization problems make me sad because Sid and Charles are my favorites. There's a later Sid Halley novel, written by Felix Francis after Dick Francis's death, that I'm not going to read. In fact I mostly want to un-remember Under Orders and pretend that Sid's story ended with Come to Grief.
As you can see, the late Dick Francis novels aren't as much to my taste as the early and middle ones. His weaknesses--shallow characterization, reliance on formula plots--show up more, and when he tries to break the formulas he's often unsuccessful. And some of what I admired about earlier Francis, such as his inclusion of women characters with independence and careers, isn't as impressive in the 1990s and beyond. As always, my standards for mystery writing are set by Ruth Rendell and Reginald Hill, both of whom (Hill especially) remained relatively progressive in a changing world. Over the years they learned to write a variety of women characters with personality and agency, to think about racism, to depict how homophobia affects people. Francis, by contrast, seems to have stopped on what was good liberal tolerance ca. 1970 and never gone any further.
Which is a bit of a downer note to end on. I'm certainly not sorry I read the books. They got me through a rough patch of illness and feeling blue, I like some of them very much, and they're almost all good reads at the time, regardless of what you think of them afterwards.
ETA: To the person who left a comment and then deleted it: I hope your deletion wasn't because you felt unwelcome! I didn't answer your comment because I've been struggling a lot lately with super-low energy levels, which means there are a lot of comments I don't get around to answering. But people are always welcome to comment on my posts!
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.