Christine Falls

The central mystery in this novel by Benjamin Black (John Banville) was not too hard to figure out. I am not usually good at these kinds of things, but here I knew the ending on page 62 (of 340), although there were more surprises in store that I did not foresee. The page cite is no spoiler. There is no "clue" there; it just became instantly clear to me then what was going on. The story is a good one, although a bit long-winded.

But what struck me more than anything in this book was the use of the verb "frown." As in: frown, frowned, frowning, frowningly (an adverb no less!). I wish I had a way to search the text for instances of "frown" and its variants; if there are fewer than 50 I would be shocked. I've noticed the overuse of this word in other writers from England and Ireland, for example William Nicholson (whom I admire). The problem is, "frown" is a lousy, vague verb, and using it repeatedly is lazy and ineffective and annoying to the reader. What is a frown? The first thing that comes to mind is a smile turned upside down, maybe with the lower lip pushed out. Surely the characters aren't making that exaggerated gesture. A subtle frown might be a clenching of the jaw, tightening of the mouth, or pursing of the lips; why not say that? A good writer should be able to find multiple ways of describing a character's discomfort. Instead, we have in Christine Falls a parade of frowns. It's just bad writing. One or two frowns in a book, sure; but dozens and dozens? It reminds me of Richard Price's Lush Life, to my mind a bad novel, in which he uses the formulation "he tilted his chin at (someone)" four times in the first 130 pages. (And besides, I don't even have a picture of what "tilting his chin" looks like; it's something made up parading as an idiom.)

I'll move on to book two of the Quirke series, but I hope it doesn't leave me frowning.

A Long Silence

A Long Silence is not technically the last Van der Valk mystery by Nicolas Freeling — there was one more, published in 1989, that resuscitated a detective that some readers were clamoring for — but it is the one in which Van der Valk is killed. That is no spoiler, at least for readers of my 1975 Penguin edition, which contains a memorial blurb on the back cover. Besides, there's the title. Freeling went on to create a French detective that some critics prefer to Van der Valk, and while I haven't read any of those, they would need to go a long way to match the humanity of the Dutch character. A Long Silence, like many in the series, isn't really a mystery as such; it is more an examination of human behavior. Like most good literary detectives, Van der Valk has seen a good deal, and like most good detective stories, including this one, justice is always provisional. Here, however, things are wrapped up with a tighter bow than some of the others, and that is a fitting sendoff for the commissaris.

Snow

I am not a fast reader, so John Banville's Snow falls onto the very short list of books that I have devoured in either a single sitting or in a day or two. It is hard to top the two adjectives used on a cover blurb to describe Banville's prose style: immaculate and penetrating. The similes strike home, the ear for dialogue is excellent, and the whole has a flowing simplicity that makes it very difficult to stop reading. Add to this a murdered priest in a Protestant country house in 1950s Ireland, and you have a winner.

The Royal Game

I first read Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game, along with Amok and Letter From an Unknown Woman, which are included in my Viking Press edition, probably 20 years ago. On re-reading, they remain impressive and perceptive psychological studies. The chess story of the title explores the brain's coping response to isolation; Amok is about flawed and obsessive behavior; and Letter might be the best thing I've read about unrequited love. Through all of the stories, Zweig is able to hook the reader and pull him along, seemingly effortlessly, to a richly satisfying conclusion.

Unquiet

There are parts of Linn Ullmann's fictional account of her adolescence and parents, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, that are effective in showing how two peculiar and talented people went about the task of  parenthood. Bergman was mostly absent, but by this account was no less a loving father, if sometimes cold. The sections about the father's decline and death are affecting and revealing. There is, however, in Unquiet a good deal of material written from the point of view of a girl that amounts to a retelling of ordinary childhood events with no real payoff. As in her previous novel, then, a certain flabbiness is unfortunately evident.

Our Malady

Subtitled "Lessons in Liberty From a Hospital Diary," Timothy Snyder's short book about nearly being killed by the commercial medicine system in the United States should be shocking. Unfortunately, for anyone who has had extensive contact with this system and its designed flaws that make a few rich and many sick, it will not be. Snyder's account of the differences between his first child being born (in Austria) and his second (in the United States) is particularly telling. In Austria his wife was kept in the maternity ward for 96 hours after delivery and provided with constant care and training. In America an algorithm demanded labor be induced and a Caesarean be performed despite the fact that the mother and unborn child were both in excellent health. Of course the fact that other countries have figured out how to provide a decent standard of care for all of their citizens will cut no ice in a nation whose policies are oriented almost exclusively toward enriching the wealthy, so despite the fact that Snyder ends his book with a call for change and a measure of hope I won't hold my breath.

Dreiser Looks at Russia

Theodore Dreiser went to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1927-28 on the condition that he could go where he wished and write about it afterward without restriction. His observations on Russian society, industry, art, food, and Communism are never less than interesting and reveal Dreiser to be, in the main, a skeptic of the Soviet experiment. This is mainly because the author believed that, as much as inequality and individual achievement might be artificially leveled, man as a species could not be permanently bent by a doctrine alien to his nature. That didn't stop Dreiser from hailing the generally improved working conditions and standard of living over czarist times, or from admiring the all-for-one spirit and lack of materialism he says he witnessed.

Cleanliness was a fixation with Dreiser, who was appalled by the smell and clothing of many of the Soviets he came across. He also had a hard time finding a decent hotel room with a proper toilet and working bath.

Dreiser kept a diary during his trip, which was edited and published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1996. Based on a small excerpt I read, it is a much richer account and includes many of his misgivings about the Soviet experiment. As the editors of the diary point out, Dreiser Looks at Russia didn't make much use of the diaries and often shows the author expounding on subjects about which he had little knowledge. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating account of a time, before the show trials and purges, when a disinterested observer could hope that something worthy might come out of Russia.