Review: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
Book Review: The Final Solution: A Story of Detection by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon and the Sherlock connections just keep coming. :)
Thanks very much to the lovely splix for bringing this little gem of a book to my attention!
[Review and inevitable connection to Sherlock]
This novel features an aged Sherlock Holmes-well, the novel never actually says his name, it just calls him “the old man,” but it’s pretty obvious it’s either him or someone exactly like him. He’s watching the street outside his window one day when he sees a little boy with an African parrot on his shoulder walk by. It turns out the boy is mute, and the parrot only speaks in strings of German numbers. Naturally, his curiosity is aroused, and pretty soon a birdnapping and murder are involved.
Although the mystery here is pretty intriguing and saddening with all the hints of the mistreatment of Jews (I mean, have a look at that title), it’s the characterizations that really stole my heart, particularly of Holmes and Linus, the little boy.
I kind of just want to quote every description of Holmes in the novel, but it’s a rather short book, so I might give too much away. What touched me most were the oblique references to Holmes’ past, including two or three little hints at his friendship with Watson (and what I think, on page 127, is a reference to their first post-Reichenbach meeting in which Watson would have “a flicker of anxiety in the eyes, even of doubt” that Holmes was alive).
It does make me sad, though, because while Holmes has his bees, that seems to be all he has. No mention of any friends or companions (except a family whose daughter comes over occasionally to look after him, but he pays them in honey). While he’s still remembered as a legend, his life seems to be a basically lonely and unhappy one, waiting for the end while his body and, worse, his mind start to break down. This is why I find it so hard to read retirement fics in Sherlock fandom: I can’t stand the idea of either Sherlock or John ever having to live without the other, regardless of whether they’re involved sexually or not. Because I worry that this is what would happen.
More than anything, though, I think in this novel Chabon gets at the heart of Sherlock Holmes and his life philosophy. From page 129:
The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings-the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life.
When I read that, all I could think of was the character comparison Ivyblossom wrote about Irene vs. Sherlock-“Sherlock…strives to prevent innocent victimhood…, not to participate in it. Irene choses to participate in chaos while Sherlock always choses to turn chaos back into order.” It’s such a great insight because I usually think of Sherlock being all chaotic, and he is, but he’s always using that chaos to straighten out some real-world problem that will help directly people, whether or not he wants to admit it.
I think that’s the answer to Mycroft’s question to John of why Sherlock is a detective instead of a scientist or a philosopher. Because in his heart, Sherlock has this…oh, how was it mkhey put it? Ah yes: “John, like the audience, is hoping it means that Sherlock is desperate for human closeness, is applying all that mental machinery to understanding human nature.”
Chabon seems to agree. I just wish that Watson could have been there with Holmes in his retirement to see it.
Michael Chabon and the Sherlock connections just keep coming. :)
Thanks very much to the lovely splix for bringing this little gem of a book to my attention!
[Review and inevitable connection to Sherlock]
This novel features an aged Sherlock Holmes-well, the novel never actually says his name, it just calls him “the old man,” but it’s pretty obvious it’s either him or someone exactly like him. He’s watching the street outside his window one day when he sees a little boy with an African parrot on his shoulder walk by. It turns out the boy is mute, and the parrot only speaks in strings of German numbers. Naturally, his curiosity is aroused, and pretty soon a birdnapping and murder are involved.
Although the mystery here is pretty intriguing and saddening with all the hints of the mistreatment of Jews (I mean, have a look at that title), it’s the characterizations that really stole my heart, particularly of Holmes and Linus, the little boy.
I kind of just want to quote every description of Holmes in the novel, but it’s a rather short book, so I might give too much away. What touched me most were the oblique references to Holmes’ past, including two or three little hints at his friendship with Watson (and what I think, on page 127, is a reference to their first post-Reichenbach meeting in which Watson would have “a flicker of anxiety in the eyes, even of doubt” that Holmes was alive).
It does make me sad, though, because while Holmes has his bees, that seems to be all he has. No mention of any friends or companions (except a family whose daughter comes over occasionally to look after him, but he pays them in honey). While he’s still remembered as a legend, his life seems to be a basically lonely and unhappy one, waiting for the end while his body and, worse, his mind start to break down. This is why I find it so hard to read retirement fics in Sherlock fandom: I can’t stand the idea of either Sherlock or John ever having to live without the other, regardless of whether they’re involved sexually or not. Because I worry that this is what would happen.
More than anything, though, I think in this novel Chabon gets at the heart of Sherlock Holmes and his life philosophy. From page 129:
The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings-the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life.
When I read that, all I could think of was the character comparison Ivyblossom wrote about Irene vs. Sherlock-“Sherlock…strives to prevent innocent victimhood…, not to participate in it. Irene choses to participate in chaos while Sherlock always choses to turn chaos back into order.” It’s such a great insight because I usually think of Sherlock being all chaotic, and he is, but he’s always using that chaos to straighten out some real-world problem that will help directly people, whether or not he wants to admit it.
I think that’s the answer to Mycroft’s question to John of why Sherlock is a detective instead of a scientist or a philosopher. Because in his heart, Sherlock has this…oh, how was it mkhey put it? Ah yes: “John, like the audience, is hoping it means that Sherlock is desperate for human closeness, is applying all that mental machinery to understanding human nature.”
Chabon seems to agree. I just wish that Watson could have been there with Holmes in his retirement to see it.