Part Three I, II, III, IV, V, or "Robert Galbraith's 'Duplicity'"
Click to viewAll right, I'm a little unsure about this, but I've had a long talk with my doctor, and he's decided that I'm medically cleared to review J.K. Rowling books.
Wait....
MEANWHILE
MIKE: Are you sure? I mean, my ankle bothers me a little in the morning when I get up. What if reading J.K. Rowling books aggrivates that?
DR. TUBBY: Bark! You went back to work six months ago.
MIKE: Well, yeah... but I get paid to put up with that. Can I at least take more Vicodin while I do this?
DR. TUBBY: I prescribe two hot dogs! One for me, and also the last bite of the one you eat.
MIKE: Ugh... okay.
PART III: Robert Galbraith's "Duplicity".
It might be amusing if I tried to recap the first half the book from memory, but I'd rather just dive in and try to explain things as we go. As with Parts One and Two, this section opens with a quote from some sort of small-town governance handbook. I don't know if it's real or not, and I don't care. It cautions against a resolution with multiple subjects, since this creates confusion. Sort of like how this book is all about one major political crisis, but there's like nine hundred other conflicts going on at the same time. Ugh.
I. Paraminder Jawanda is locked in a desperate political battle against Howard Mollison, over the fate of some crappy neighborhood that blah blah blah. They're both on the town council, leading respective factions councillors. Or senators. I forget how they do it in Wherever-the-hell-it-is England. The drama of this book is that it's a small town, which means bitter enemies must coexist with each other in different aspects of life, since there's only like forty people in this town, and they bump into each other constantly.
For example, Parminder is the local doctor, and Howard is a morbidly obese sextegenarian. So even though she hates his guts, she's aslo requried to examine him carefully while he's nude. I bet that sounds fascinating, so let's check that out!
Hey, guess what it's gross and passive aggressive. What an unconventional approach for Rowling! I'm being sarcastic, you see. Howard's too much of a control freak to simply submit to a medical examination, so he spends the entire time reminding Doctor J that the Bellchapel Clinic is on the agenda at the town council later on. He also informs her that he's writing a piece for the local paper to represent his side of the Fields Debate. This is his reaction to the fact that Barry Fairbrother wrote an article representing the other side of that argument, and he sent it to the paper just before he dropped dead of a stroke. I think it was a stroke. He's dead either way. Barry had been the leader of the pro-Fields council members, but his death has left Parminder to take up his cause.
Okay, this whole crappy plot is starting to come back to me. Barry's death also created an open seat on the council, which is known as a "casual vacancy" in political jargon. If Howard Mollison plays his cards right, he can get a new guy elected who will back his side and break the stalemate. But I guess he's also hoping to contain whatever Barry wrote in his editorial. He asks Parminder if she has a copy of what he wrote, but no one has seen the article, since the paper hasn't printed it yet. I think Barry's been dead for like two weeks at this point, so I don't know what the hold up is. At any rate, Barry didn't share it with Parminder before he died, so Howard will have to write a counterpoint without it.
While this is going on, he takes off his shirt and hoists up his gut so Parminder can check out the rash on his waistline, which is all sore from scratching and chafing and I really don't want to discuss this further. Like every doctor ever, she takes his blood pressure and suggests he try to lose weight. Astonishingly, Howard is offended by this routine medical practice, and points out that he doesn't need to see a nutritionist because he runs a deli for a living. Okay. Now that I think about it, Ronald McDonanld looks pretty healthy for his age. Maybe you learn something when you sell food long enough. Parminder is concerned with his blood pressure, which is too high despite all the medication Howard is already taking for it. He doesn't seem too worried about this, and I'm really hoping this scene is designed to foreshadow Howard's untimely death. This is an interesting dilemma for Rowling, because the only thing she relishes more than killing characters is disappointing me, so it'll be interesting to see which impulse wins out.
Also, Catherine "Nana Cath" Weedon died. I forget it that already happened, or if this is new information. I'm pretty sure she was dying when she was introduced, but there you go.
II. "Wha' d'you wan'?" Oh, good, more cockney eye dialect! That was clearly wha' I wan', and I'm so grateful to have it.
Yeah, we're back to the Weedon family, now that the matriarch of the clan has died. Local junkie Terri Weedon is greeted by her sister, who informs her of their mother's death. Grandmother? I never knew for sure. I always figured there were fewer generations than what was presented. Like Krystal Weedon's little brother was actually her son or something like that.
Anyway, this is Terri's sister Cheryl, and another sister Danielle, is after Nana Cath's house. They agree to prevent Danielle from claiming the entire property for herself, although Danielle has resources like "a landline", and "knows how to fill out paperwork". So it's probably an uphill battle. Cheryl's husband once set a house on fire, though, so maybe they've got a decent chance. You never know how these inheritance battles will play out.
Terri really wants to use heroin to cope with her grandmother's death, but I guess she's fresh out. She feels bitter that Nana Cath cut ties with her years ago over her drug use. And yet, she was on very good terms with her other grandchildren, great-grandchildren, step-grandchildren.... everybody but Terri, I guess.
Turns out this whole section is some sort of Secret Origin of Terri Weedon. I should probably read these things in advance so I'll be more prepared. Did we need a Secret Origin of Terri Weedon? Is she that important to the book? I figured she was gonna die before it was over. Granted, I'm counting on a lot of characters to die soon, but Rowling already killed off Nana Cath and Barry Fairbrother. I was beginning to feel like I was on a roll.
Secret Origin of Terri Weedon: Her dad (Mikey) abused her as a kid, both physically and sexually. Nana Cath visited her in the hospital after her dad threw hot grease at her. Cath took her to her own home, where she was safe, but then her dad came and took her back, beating both women up in the process. Somewhere in all of this Terri's mom left the family, and her sisters moved in with their boyfriends, leaving Terri to face her father's abuse alone. Eventually she ran away at age thirteen, and presumably she got addicted to heroin and turned to prostitution. Rowling put a lot of this in parentheses for some reason.
Anyway, she goes to her pusher's place to get some heroin, but he's not in, and two girls pass by on the street and call her a whore. Fantastic.
Rowling is a Brilliant Writer: In the flashbacks, Terri recalls how she petted and hugged a horse during a school field trip. "I like horses", she told Nanna Cath once. Cath gave her a horse figurine. See? It's symbolic! Horse = Heroin! The guy at the field trip said that the horse wouldn't hurt her. Just like you're feelin' no pain on the sweet, sweet high of heroin! Also: "The smell had intoxicated her." See, the smell of a horse is like a metaphor for using heroin! It's genius no it is not.
III. Gavin and Mary meet to discuss insurance issues! I have to admit, I'm starting to miss the magic boarding school backdrop. Not that they ever did anything more exciting at the magic boarding school, but at least you could imagine a paining rolling its eyes in sympathy.
Gavin is a single lawyer, trapped in a loveless relationship with Kay, who has deluded herself into thinking she can totally make this work through pure force of will. Like everyone in the book, he is incredibly self-absorbed. It's been hinted that he might have some sort of romantic chemistry with the Widow Fairbrother. Mary is also self-absorbed to some extent, but her husband died and the insurance company won't pay out, so at least she has a right to be worried about herself.
Gavin and Kay had a big fight (again), this time over his conduct at the Mollison dinner party. I hate Gavin and Kay, or Gav-kay, as I like to call them in the imaginary tabloid I run in my head. There's never any character development. According to my Kindle I'm 51% of the way through this piece of crap book, and every update Rowling gives of their relationship status is just a repeat of what I already knew. Kay moved to Pagdford with her teenage daughter, and she feels this act alone entitles her to Gavin's undying devotion. Gavin was never worth her uprooting her life, and instead of making the best of her mistake, she browbeats him for her lack of judgement. Gavin could easily get out of the relationship by saying nothing and letting her anger proceed to the obvious conclusion. But he has no spine, and he's terrified that Kay will turn everyone in Pagford against him if he doesn't maintain the relationship. His ideal solution would be for her to just inexplicably vanish and go back to London where she came from, except that's not going to happen. I don't see why he doesn't just pack up and move to London himself, since he's a bachelor and has little to uproot. The point here is that nothing has changed since they were first introduced in the book. Rowling wants me to think that dinner party and the fight that followed was some sort of turning point, or at least and escalation, but it doesn't actually change anything. Kay is too afraid of being alone, and Gavin is too afraid of the fallout of a nasty breakup. I kind of hope he falls for Mary Fairbrother, because that's the only way to shift the equilibrium.
Anyway, Gavin shows up at Mary's place to find her in tears. Remember that time Andrew Price hacked the Pagford website and posted a message under Barry's inactive account? Andrew's intent was to use Barry as a way to anonymously discredit his father, but it looks like he's caused some collateral damage. Mary's seen it, and she thinks someone's playing a terrible prank at her expense.
Gavin pours Mary a drink to take her mind off "The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother". It's not that he's trying to get her toasted, he just wants to get out of the den full of Barry's mementos. Neither of them seriously believe Barry is haunting the Pagford City Council website, but Gavin feels really self-conscious getting so cozy with his dead buddy's widow. As for Mary, the idea of her husband campaigning for the Fields from the afterlife brings up the resentment she had before he died. She speculates that he's up in City Council Heaven, still thinking about Krystal Weedon first and his family second, because he figures his family has people to support them, while Krystal has no one. After all, he spent most of their anniversary writing that damn editorial about the Fields and Krystal Weedon and whatever else. Mary is sick of all the political nonsense, and she's sick of her husband's vacant council seat, and "The Ghost of Barry" reminds her of all of it. This is kind of a shock to Gavin, who always assumed the Fairbrother marriage was flawless. But here's Barry's wife to tell him "He gave everything to everybody. Except to me." Bam.
Huh, well they never do get around to the insurance matter. Mary invites him to stay for dinner, and he readily accepts. I guess this turned out better than I expected. The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother is rapidly becoming my favorite character.
TGOBF: BooooOOOOOOooooo!
MIKE: Oh, for the love of...
TGOBF: Pleeeeaaase! Tell my wife! Pleaaasse!
MIKE: Tell her what? Why can't you just haunt her and save a step? Or post it on the message board?
TGOBF: Tell her.... what I should have told her in liiiiiife! Tell her that... although I never said it directly....
MIKE: Yeah?
TGOBF: The truth is, I always meant to say it to her....
MIKE: Right...
TGOBF: Tell her.... to callllll the newspaaaaaper!
MIKE: What the hell?
TGOBF: Tell her to call the paper and let them know that the article I sent them was double spaaaaaaaaaced! I wasn't sure how they wanted it formatted, so I guessed!
MIKE: Get the hell out of here, Barry.
TGOBF: WooooOOOOOooooooooo!
IV. Let's check in with the Mollison Family, even though we sort of checked in with one of them already, and learned way more information than I really wanted to know. See, Catherine Weedon died yesterday! Maureen, Howard's business partner, heard the news from Doctor Jawanda's receptionist! Yeah, I heard about it, too, because I read about how Howard was there in the doctor's office when the receptionist was talking about it. Maybe Howard wasn't paying attention, or he knew he'd hear the full story from Maureen or his wife in any event. The point is that I read this part already, so I don't see why Rowling has to beat me over the head with it. She's dead. We don't need a reaction from every third character in the book. Even if we did, we already went through this same process with Barry's death. If you're so determined on this course, kill Howard and let's have every third character react to his death, and then repeat the cycle until there's no one left.
Seriously, how did anyone not recognize her when she wrote under a pen name? I'm not saying I would have caught her myself, but it seems to me that she can't help but re-establish information over and over again, as if her readers all have short-term amnesia or something. I took an eight month hiatus and I still remember who Cath Weedon is, and that she was dying, and she chewed out Dr. Jawanda in public not long before she croaked.
Danielle Fowler wants an investigation into Doctor J's culpability for Cath's death. Maybe I lost track somewhere, but I don't know that Doc actually caused anything bad to happen. The Mollisons are thrilled to see their rival scandalized like this, but I'm pretty sure Danielle is just blowing smoke. We'll see. And then we'll probably see a second and third time, as the Weedons and Mollisons separately react to each development as it happens.
Howard's wife Shirley is jealous that Maureen has scooped her on the juicy gossip (it's in the paper, though, so I don't see why either of them would have the inside track). She festers in the kitchen for a while, waiting for Maureen to stop hoggin' the gossip spotlight, but then she sees something important! I'm guessing it's something I already know about.
Samantha Mollison takes this moment to reinforce her spite for everything her in-laws stand for. She hates Shirley, she hates Howard, she resents Maureen for always hanging out with them. This is ironic, because she wonders why Maureen is always around even though Maureen might ask Samantha the same question. At least Maureen seems to enjoy Howard's company. Samantha imagines crushing the entire Mollison estate and chucking it into the sun. Let's just leave that sort of criticism to me, okay?
Yep, they just found out about the post from "The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother." Super. And of course we have to go over this story all over again, even though Mary just explained it all a few pages ago, and even though there was a whole part of the book depicting Andrew Price hacking the website and writing his screed in Barry's name. What really drives me nuts is that we're guarenteed at least one more round of this bullshit, because we need to have Simon Price respond to the allegations against him. Of course, Rowling could just cut to the chase, but no. No, she can't possibly do that. I want to crush this book and throw it into the sun.
Howard relates this information to Maureen and Samantha, and of course he drags it out, teasing the username attached the post as offensive. Samantha guesses "Big-Fat-Cock", which would be an excellent handle for a Casual Vacancy tumblr account, except it's 2013 and I'm pretty sure I'm the last man on Earth who still gives a shit about The Causal Vacancy. Once she hears the actual username, Samantha is genuinely offended, seeing as she rode in the ambulance with Barry as he died.
Miles Mollison wonders if this anonymous busybody might be out to sabotage his candidacy along with Price's, and Howard informs him that he received an anonymous letter the other day that claims Miles is unfit to replace Barry Fairbrother. I vaguely remember that letter being written, but I can't recall who sent it now. Howard thinks it's the same guy who vandalized the message board, since both messages reference Barry in a similar fashion. That's kind of dumb, since the election is for Barry's successor, so any commentary about any candidate would inevitably reference Barry in some way. Samantha suggests that the crank might have a completely separate agenda against Simon Price, but the others dismiss this. No, they're convinced that the pro-Fields faction is behind this smear campaign.
Samantha finds this ridiculous, since this is a family of nobodies in a small town of nobodies, acting like anything that goes on in their little fiefdom is anything resembling a major political scandal. The rest of them are convinced that only and insider could have hacked the website, and Samantha likens this situation to microorganisms living inside an insignificant drop of water. You'd think that when Rowling wrote this paragraph she would have stared at it for a minute, deleted her draft, and started over. I guess Samantha isn't her alter ego. I sort of wish she were.
"Consciously and defiantly", Samantha withdraws from the conversation and ignores them so she can fantasize about hot boys half her age. This is where I lose all sympathy for Samantha. She gets that the Mollisons are gum on the shoe of the world, but she's too self-important to notice that she herself is like a fragment of asphalt stuck to the gum on the shoe. If the Mollisons are puffed-up nobodies, that makes her even less. She dismisses their pointless conversation, but they don't even care if she listens or not, so what does that say about her? She hates them because if it distracts her from hating herself even more.
Samantha zones out for maybe minutes or hours, she isn't sure. Meanwhile, Shirley gets a call from Ruth Price. Everyone assumes it's about the post on the website about her husband, but it's not. Her son Andrew works at Howard's deli part time, and he's allergic to peanuts, so she called to ask if they could store an adrenaline needle in the deli's fridge as a precaution. Somewhat awkwardly, Shirley informs Ruth about the allegations on the website. So yeah, another friggin' round of this crap.
V. Who's ready for another friggin' round of this crap? Simon Price sure isn't!
All right, quick recap of the Price family. Simon's the abusive dad who steals and does under-the-table deals at his job at the printworks. Ruth works at the hospital, and she's simultaneously terrified and flattered by her husband's attention. Paul is their youngest son, and hasn't really been of much consquence, except that Simon frequently calls him "Pauline" and makes other emasculating comments towards him when he's upset. Finally, Andrew Price, the older son, despises Simon, and he's getting big enough and smart enough to do something about it. Earlier in the book, he hacked the Pagford website as the Ghost of Barry Fairbother. This wasn't just a prank to ruin his father's day. Andrew is terrified that if his father runs for public office, the entire family will be humiliated once the outside world finds out what a belligerent little turd Simon Price really is. So he risked sabotaging his dad anonymously rather than endure the slow torture of his doomed campaign.
The flaw in his plan is that Simon would have to find out about the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother eventually, and he would lash out at his wife and sons whether he knew Andrew was behind it or not. As we saw, Ruth finds out from Shirley Mollison, and after she looks up the site to see for herself, she mournfully passes the word along to her husband, figuring that it would be better than letting him find out for himself. Simon hits her twice, so I'd hate to find out what the worst case scenario was supposed to be. She admits that she mentioned their new computer to Shirley Mollison, even though he explicitly told her and boys to keep it a secret from everyone. Paul also mentioned it, and he's furious, even though neither of them told anyone it was stolen.
Andrew tries to defend his mother and takes some blows of his own. He gets a small measure of revenge by dodging a wild kick, and Simon breaks a toe on the fireplace. Well, good. I was kind of rooting for Andrew to take advantage of this opening, but instead, he reminds Simon that the message on the board also accuses him of other things besides stealing computers. That was the point, after all. Andrew went out of his way to include accusations that would be more easily traced back to Simon's co-workers, so Simon wouldn't blame his family. That's all well and good, but Simon was never Mr. Logic in the first place. Andrew should have known he was putting his brother and mother in harm's way with this stunt no matter what. The thing is, Simon would havee probably attacked them all in any event. Certainly, this was going to happen once he lost the election. My guess is Andrew went ahead with the Ghost of Barry message because he had nothing to lose. So be it, but he should have accepted that no amount of spin was going to curb his father's wrath.
Simon finally draws his own conclusion and blames everything on Shirley Mollison. Ruth leaked the computer to Shirley, Shirley is the admin on the website, and Shirley's son Miles is running against him. There's some holes in that theory, but I don't think he could bring himself to admit that his son is smart enough to be the culprit. Besides, this scandal may well cost Simon his job, and that's not exactly good news for Andrew, right?
Angrily, Simon goes into damage control mode and orders Andrew to unplug the computer and come with him. I assume they're gonna bury it in the woods to destroy the evidence? That might not be good enough, but Simon didn't get into this predicament by being smart.
And we're gonna shut it down for the day. The whole Ghost storyline seems to be the catalyst for the "war" I was promised in the publisher's description. Remember that? Well, the battle lines have been drawn for a long time, but this is the closest we've come to a first shot being fired. At the very least, it changes the dynamics a little. Simon Price hates the Mollisons, Gavin's bonding with Mary, and the Mollisons think their established opponents are racheting up their conflict. Swell, except the friggin' book is more than half over. Sheesh.
NEXT: People continue to react to the ghost, and I become annoyed.