Prozac was going to wipe out an entire art form, Anna was sure of it.
# 103: Liberty Falling by Nevada Barr:At eight the next morning, when Kevin docked the Liberty IV, Anna was waiting. Staggering into morning in rumpled evening clothes, shoes in hand, she looked a classic wastrel. Perversely, she didn't mind the knowing winks and sly comments. If one couldn't actually have had a wild night on the town, it was pleasant to know others still believed one had the stamina for it.
Synopsis: In the seventh installment of the Anna Pigeon mystery series, Anna's beloved sister Molly is in the ICU, drawing Anna back to NYC, where professional courtesy allows her to bunk on Ellis Island and roam around the Statue of Liberty. Then the bodies start showing up.
Anna Pigeon isn't aging gracefully. But this is more because Anna does absolutely nothing gracefully than any aversion to age on her part. She's a grouch and a hermit, ("Were you horrible?" Patsy asked, having known Anna many years. "Mean or poking or anything?") someone more comfortable resolutely alone than having to cope with company, selfish and socially inept to boot. Basically, she's my heroine.
In Liberty Falling, all those things come home to roost as not only is beloved older sister Molly in intensive care, but Anna finds herself sitting vigil at Molly's bedside with her ex-boyfriend, FBI agent Frederick Stanton...who has spent the past two years in love with Molly.
Awkward.
And while the three of them do indeed need to take some quality time to work out the miasma of issues going on there, Anna barely has the time or patience to do her part, what with being amorously pursued by Molly's thoracic surgeon, finding bodies all over the Statue of Liberty and unwinding from all of the above by exploring the ruins of Ellis Island's historic hospital buildings. Oh, and there are ghosts.
I'd put off reading this installment of the series for like, a year, simply because I really like the national park placeporn* in the series, which had so far taken place far far away from any city, in the deserted corners of the country where I love tromping and camping around. It's escapism at its finest. So knowing that this book takes place in NYC did not in any way endear it to me, or make me rush to read it. I don't know why I read it now, except maybe that I'm kind of up to my ears in regionalism right now, what with all the damn snow.
Anyway, the point is: it works.
Anna's just the same; she can't abide the city, but her coping mechanism is to find the abandoned and deserted places in it, the crumbling, decaying hospital buildings that are half-reclaimed by nature, vines creeping in at all the windows, trees growing in hallways, rats and pigeons nesting in the rooms. And it's absolutely beautiful. Just stunningly rendered.
The counterpoint between Anna's explorations, her investigation and her vigil at Molly's bedside creates a neat triangle that Barr handles expertly. Anna pings between the three like a pinball, constantly in motion, zipping between the city and the islands, between confronting her own inadequacy in family matters and her abiding need to stay true to herself and her insatiable curiosity, both about places and bodies falling from great heights. It's a structure that could have very easily gone astray in less skilled hands but instead New York comes off as intriguing, its cramped energy something to marvel at, hopefully from the stern of a ferry headed off across the water.
She left an apologetic message on Dr. Madison's phone machine, changed into her bear cub pajamas, accepted a glass of her own wine and folded down on the sofa with a heaping plate of spaghetti left over from Patsy's dinner. A far superior evening to dining at Windows on the World with the double burden of having to be pleasant and attractive simultaneously.
So for fans of the series and newcomers alike, I think it's a great book, and one of the few entries in the series that doesn't either a) spoil one of the other books or b) depend heavily on the series backstory for plot, so it would make for a great standalone.
But with a heroine as fun as Anna, why not read the whole thing?
*Recently, I figured out that placeporn should more properly be called "Regionalism". But let's face it: if you had a choice between taking an English class called "Hot Throbbing Placeporn" and "The Rise of Regionalism in the 19th Century", which would you choose?**
**Those of you who chose both, y'all are completely doomed. See you in grad school.
Synopsis: In the seventh installment of the Anna Pigeon mystery series, Anna's beloved sister Molly is in the ICU, drawing Anna back to NYC, where professional courtesy allows her to bunk on Ellis Island and roam around the Statue of Liberty. Then the bodies start showing up.
Anna Pigeon isn't aging gracefully. But this is more because Anna does absolutely nothing gracefully than any aversion to age on her part. She's a grouch and a hermit, ("Were you horrible?" Patsy asked, having known Anna many years. "Mean or poking or anything?") someone more comfortable resolutely alone than having to cope with company, selfish and socially inept to boot. Basically, she's my heroine.
In Liberty Falling, all those things come home to roost as not only is beloved older sister Molly in intensive care, but Anna finds herself sitting vigil at Molly's bedside with her ex-boyfriend, FBI agent Frederick Stanton...who has spent the past two years in love with Molly.
Awkward.
And while the three of them do indeed need to take some quality time to work out the miasma of issues going on there, Anna barely has the time or patience to do her part, what with being amorously pursued by Molly's thoracic surgeon, finding bodies all over the Statue of Liberty and unwinding from all of the above by exploring the ruins of Ellis Island's historic hospital buildings. Oh, and there are ghosts.
I'd put off reading this installment of the series for like, a year, simply because I really like the national park placeporn* in the series, which had so far taken place far far away from any city, in the deserted corners of the country where I love tromping and camping around. It's escapism at its finest. So knowing that this book takes place in NYC did not in any way endear it to me, or make me rush to read it. I don't know why I read it now, except maybe that I'm kind of up to my ears in regionalism right now, what with all the damn snow.
Anyway, the point is: it works.
Anna's just the same; she can't abide the city, but her coping mechanism is to find the abandoned and deserted places in it, the crumbling, decaying hospital buildings that are half-reclaimed by nature, vines creeping in at all the windows, trees growing in hallways, rats and pigeons nesting in the rooms. And it's absolutely beautiful. Just stunningly rendered.
The counterpoint between Anna's explorations, her investigation and her vigil at Molly's bedside creates a neat triangle that Barr handles expertly. Anna pings between the three like a pinball, constantly in motion, zipping between the city and the islands, between confronting her own inadequacy in family matters and her abiding need to stay true to herself and her insatiable curiosity, both about places and bodies falling from great heights. It's a structure that could have very easily gone astray in less skilled hands but instead New York comes off as intriguing, its cramped energy something to marvel at, hopefully from the stern of a ferry headed off across the water.
She left an apologetic message on Dr. Madison's phone machine, changed into her bear cub pajamas, accepted a glass of her own wine and folded down on the sofa with a heaping plate of spaghetti left over from Patsy's dinner. A far superior evening to dining at Windows on the World with the double burden of having to be pleasant and attractive simultaneously.
So for fans of the series and newcomers alike, I think it's a great book, and one of the few entries in the series that doesn't either a) spoil one of the other books or b) depend heavily on the series backstory for plot, so it would make for a great standalone.
But with a heroine as fun as Anna, why not read the whole thing?
*Recently, I figured out that placeporn should more properly be called "Regionalism". But let's face it: if you had a choice between taking an English class called "Hot Throbbing Placeporn" and "The Rise of Regionalism in the 19th Century", which would you choose?**
**Those of you who chose both, y'all are completely doomed. See you in grad school.