Reading Wednesday
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. A murder mystery set in modern-day Norfolk, England. Ruth is single, overweight, nearing forty, and lives alone with her two cats - all of which is extremely horrifying to her religious parents, though Ruth herself couldn't give a fuck. She's also a professor of forensic archaeology, and is called in by the police to investigate the discovery of a child's skeleton in a nearby bog. The skeleton turns out to be two thousand years old, which is unfortunate in the mind of Detective Nelson, who'd hoped to solve a ten-year-old cold case concerning a missing child. When another young girl disappears, Ruth and Nelson team up to investigate if the two cases are linked, and what clues might be hidden in a series of anonymous letters about archaeology and pagan beliefs.
I was super excited for this book, because bog bodies + murder mystery is basically what I want to be reading all the time. Alas, the execution was not what I was looking for.
It's not terrible; Griffiths is particularly good at describing a landscape, and the windy, barren (fictional) Saltmarsh, haunted by the cries of birds and the smell of the sea, is a fantastic creation. I also found Ruth herself an extremely likeable character; the scene where she turns down her ex-boyfriend because she'd rather be alone than with someone she only has a vague fondness for made me very happy. And as a mystery, The Crossing Places works perfectly well. I didn't guess who the killer was until the reveal, though mostly because every single character seemed suspicious.
No, what bothered me was the archaeology. Which actually surprised me! I'm not generally picky about the accuracy of fictional portrayals of archaeology; I can watch Indiana Jones with a content heart. And yet, the archaeology in The Crossing Places drove me crazy. I think because Griffiths was so clearly trying to be accurate, while actually being, uh... extremely dubious (they find a well-preserved bog body in 2010, and the excavation is finished after a weekend and didn't even make the local news? people are stashing two thousand year old gold artifacts in their houses? a tiny, community-college type university has an entire department of archaeology complete with PhD students?). Oddly, the police work is equally full of mistakes (random consultants can just take home letters from serial killers - not photocopies or scans, but the actual, original letters?). There was also an attempt to draw a meaningful parallel between the bog bodies of the Iron Age and the modern killer that just wasn't informed enough or insightful enough to work.
In short, a book that just wasn't successful. However, it's the first in a series, and I think I might go ahead and give the sequels a try? My copy of The Crossing Places included the first few chapters of Book #2 in the back, and they already seem to be much improved, archaeology-wise. If Griffiths realized that she needed to do more research after finishing this one, I can hardly criticize her for that.
The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen. A retelling of the Chinese classic 'Dream of the Red Chamber' with more focus on the female characters and with a style more in line with modern tastes (that is, not being 2,500 pages long and with an actual ending). The story in set in mid-1700s Beijing, in the women's quarters of a rich and influential household, and focuses on four of the younger members of the Jia family:
- Daiyu, an orphaned teenager who was raised in the south in a poorer branch of the family; she's sent to join the main household in Beijing where she's not always prepared for the level of opulence and politicking expected of her. She's naive, idealistic, and earnest, which quickly leads to her falling in love with main character #2, Baoyu.
- The heir of the Jia family, Baoyu is hugely spoiled: a handsome, charming, intelligent young man who's never been forced to actually work at anything. He refuses to study for the Imperial Exams and get a job, despite the family's need for both his future income and influence. For most of his life, it's been expected that he would marry main character #3, Baocai.
- Baocai is not as beautiful as Daiyu, and she has a reputation for being cold and stiff, but underneath her outer poise she's insecure, worried about her good-for-nothing brother, and uncertain of how to deal with Daiyu stealing Baoyu's affection, despite her early friendship with Daiyu.
- Finally there's Xifeng, who married into the family. She's smart, organized, good with money, and keeps the entire household running, but she can't get pregnant, leading her husband to desert her and turn her best friend into his new concubine.
I haven't read the original 'Dream of the Red Chamber', so I can't comment on how true this version is to the original. The writing here is nothing special - if anything, frequently too blunt and plain - but the story is engaging, with frequent twists and turns, and nice shift from individual personalities to larger cultural trends. I also quite liked Chen's new take on the ending; I can't imagine it's how the original planned to wrap up, but it worked for me.
Overall, I can't say that The Red Chamber does anything to stand out from the rest of the extremely large genre of historical fiction/women's lit, but hey, at least now I'm somewhat closer to having read one of global classics of literature that I've always meant to get around to. This entry was originally posted at https://brigdh.dreamwidth.org/591599.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I was super excited for this book, because bog bodies + murder mystery is basically what I want to be reading all the time. Alas, the execution was not what I was looking for.
It's not terrible; Griffiths is particularly good at describing a landscape, and the windy, barren (fictional) Saltmarsh, haunted by the cries of birds and the smell of the sea, is a fantastic creation. I also found Ruth herself an extremely likeable character; the scene where she turns down her ex-boyfriend because she'd rather be alone than with someone she only has a vague fondness for made me very happy. And as a mystery, The Crossing Places works perfectly well. I didn't guess who the killer was until the reveal, though mostly because every single character seemed suspicious.
No, what bothered me was the archaeology. Which actually surprised me! I'm not generally picky about the accuracy of fictional portrayals of archaeology; I can watch Indiana Jones with a content heart. And yet, the archaeology in The Crossing Places drove me crazy. I think because Griffiths was so clearly trying to be accurate, while actually being, uh... extremely dubious (they find a well-preserved bog body in 2010, and the excavation is finished after a weekend and didn't even make the local news? people are stashing two thousand year old gold artifacts in their houses? a tiny, community-college type university has an entire department of archaeology complete with PhD students?). Oddly, the police work is equally full of mistakes (random consultants can just take home letters from serial killers - not photocopies or scans, but the actual, original letters?). There was also an attempt to draw a meaningful parallel between the bog bodies of the Iron Age and the modern killer that just wasn't informed enough or insightful enough to work.
In short, a book that just wasn't successful. However, it's the first in a series, and I think I might go ahead and give the sequels a try? My copy of The Crossing Places included the first few chapters of Book #2 in the back, and they already seem to be much improved, archaeology-wise. If Griffiths realized that she needed to do more research after finishing this one, I can hardly criticize her for that.
The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen. A retelling of the Chinese classic 'Dream of the Red Chamber' with more focus on the female characters and with a style more in line with modern tastes (that is, not being 2,500 pages long and with an actual ending). The story in set in mid-1700s Beijing, in the women's quarters of a rich and influential household, and focuses on four of the younger members of the Jia family:
- Daiyu, an orphaned teenager who was raised in the south in a poorer branch of the family; she's sent to join the main household in Beijing where she's not always prepared for the level of opulence and politicking expected of her. She's naive, idealistic, and earnest, which quickly leads to her falling in love with main character #2, Baoyu.
- The heir of the Jia family, Baoyu is hugely spoiled: a handsome, charming, intelligent young man who's never been forced to actually work at anything. He refuses to study for the Imperial Exams and get a job, despite the family's need for both his future income and influence. For most of his life, it's been expected that he would marry main character #3, Baocai.
- Baocai is not as beautiful as Daiyu, and she has a reputation for being cold and stiff, but underneath her outer poise she's insecure, worried about her good-for-nothing brother, and uncertain of how to deal with Daiyu stealing Baoyu's affection, despite her early friendship with Daiyu.
- Finally there's Xifeng, who married into the family. She's smart, organized, good with money, and keeps the entire household running, but she can't get pregnant, leading her husband to desert her and turn her best friend into his new concubine.
I haven't read the original 'Dream of the Red Chamber', so I can't comment on how true this version is to the original. The writing here is nothing special - if anything, frequently too blunt and plain - but the story is engaging, with frequent twists and turns, and nice shift from individual personalities to larger cultural trends. I also quite liked Chen's new take on the ending; I can't imagine it's how the original planned to wrap up, but it worked for me.
Overall, I can't say that The Red Chamber does anything to stand out from the rest of the extremely large genre of historical fiction/women's lit, but hey, at least now I'm somewhat closer to having read one of global classics of literature that I've always meant to get around to. This entry was originally posted at https://brigdh.dreamwidth.org/591599.html. Please comment there using OpenID.