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Another lovely book review thanks to Mini Book Expo:

“The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: A murder and the undoing of a great Victorian detective,” by Kate Summerscale, published by Raincoast Books, 2008.

This is a fantastic piece of historical nonfiction that reads as grippingly as any murder mystery of the more fictional variety. Summerscale is an excellent researcher as well as an excellent writer, and I can’t think of a single weakness in the way this came together.

It’s 1860, and the body of a three-year-old child is found stuffed down an outdoor lavatory. His throat has been cut, and his chest stabbed, and he appears to have been suffocated as well. The killer must be someone known to the victim and his family — someone from the nearby village, or one of the help, or even one of the family. This horrible killing quickly becomes a national obsession. While the local police fumble evidence (accidentally or with help?) citizens from across the country write in to newspapers with their favourite theories, and the Metropolitan Police sends in their best detective to help.

The role of plainclothes detective is a new one, and one that’s not regarded fondly by the upper class British at this time. It’s shocking that someone could be authorized (and paid!) to spy upon citizens who have done nothing wrong. It’s even more shocking, of course, when one of these working-class, little-better-than-a-criminal-himself detectives enters a respectable home to interfere with its private workings and accuse a teenage girl of murdering her brother. Detective-Inspecter Jonathan Whicher is certain that the killer is Constance Kent, sixteen years old and half-sister to the victim. (After her mother died–and was rumoured to be insane in the years before–her father remarried the governess and had several more children.)

Unfortunately for Whicher, there just wasn’t enough evidence to convict Constance, and what with popular suspicion falling upon the boy’s governess, she went free and the crime went unsolved for years. Whicher’s career suffered, as did the reputation of the detectives in general.

Detective fiction did pretty well, on the other hand. Authors like Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens found lots of material for their stories in this new method of crime-solving. Summerscale traces nearly the entire history of the genre back to this and a few other famous cases in the mid-nineteenth-century.

And by the end of the volume some more light is shed on the murderer, the motive, and the way all of these lives played out after the tragedy.

As I mentioned, this book is excellently written, compelling, and thoroughly researched. One is given no reason to doubt Summerscale’s theories and conclusions. A good deal of context is given to put the murder itself in the proper time and place, and this never seems to bog down. No detail is irrelevant. The quotations from contemporary literature are perfect for shedding light on public opinion towards crime and detection.

While there are very few footnotes in the text itself, the voluminous research to support the work is indicated in an extensive Notes section. The reference material also includes a bibliography, an index, maps, and a list of characters (which I must admit I referred to frequently.) Incidentally, the binding and printing are of a pretty good quality, and I’m fond of the subtly hyper-sensational cover image.

All of which may pale beside the fact that this is a fun read. I got through much of it in airports (true of so many things I read, unfortunately) and it was more than sufficient to help me forget my surroundings. Goes quickly and is thoroughly enjoyable.

Book: “Flight of the Hummingbird: A Parable for the Environment,” Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, with Wangari Maathai and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Greystone, 2008. Another lovely free book through Mini Book Expo for Bloggers.

The story “Flight of the Hummingbird” itself is very short, and the entire contents can be viewed as an animated short film. It tells the story of a forest fire, that all of the animals flee, except for one hummingbird who attempts to quench it one drop of water at a time. While it appears that she can’t have much impact on the entire situation, the attitude “I am doing what I can” is the only one by which anything can be accomplished.

The artwork for this volume is beautiful. Again, samples can be seen in the animation, but Yahgulanaas’ style is just perfect, and I’d definitely look for more of his work. The book itself is small and the printing and binding are of high quality.

The real content, of course, is in the “additional matter,” with a foreword by Wangari Maathai and an afterword by the Dalai Lama. Again, these are very short writings, but they pack in the essential message.

A pleasure to read, and I’ll shortly be passing it along to others.

Compositions is a collection of short essays on a variety of topics connected to the subjects of writing, poetry, the publishing industry, and the creative process. The chapters are short (most ranging a little over ten pages) and in some cases only loosely connected.

My main complaint with this book is the lack of coherence: there is little sense that these individual essays are written for the same audience, or with any intent to be gathered together. Some are well-structured and effective, and some wander like a first draft or journal-writing exercise.

Wakan admits to this in the first paragraph of the Foreword:

The essay allows me to meander. It allows me to stop here and there to consider more deeply some vantage point. The essay encourages me to adventure down some side road that may, or may not, rejoin the main. If it doesn’t, I often find myself in a mess of brambles through which I have to scramble in order to get back to the theme.

All of which may be a wonderful way to write, but it is slightly less rewarding for the reader.

That being said, many of the individual essays are clever and interesting. I enjoyed the Foreword and first chapter on creativity, the chapters on writing poetry on demand, detective stories, and on dedications, particularly. Far less impressive was the chapter on copyright, which should have required much more research. (In my view, it’s not a subject which benefits particularly from generalities and glossing-over.)

I would be remiss not to mention the poems and excerpts from other writings generously sprinkled throughout this volume. In each case, they make a point where plain old explanatory prose cannot, whether it’s about some facet of the world, or the nature of poetry itself. Wakan is, I think, best as a poet, and it’s the sparsely distributed poetry in this book that makes it a pleasure to read.

(volume obtained through the fantastic Mini Book Expo for Bloggers. Author: Naomi Beth Wakan. Publisher: Wolsak & Wynn.)

This is a review I wrote for <u>Anathem</u>, by Neal Stephenson, for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group.

Fantastic book. Just fantastic. I’m going to try to write a review that’s very low in spoilers, in that I’m not going to give away anything about how it ends; on the other hand I experienced a certain joy in entering this book with absolutely no foreknowledge of its contents. You might enjoy that, too.

The setting is a world called Arbre, similar to Earth in many ways; its people are human, even though its culture has gone in a different direction. In this world, there has been an enforced separation between science and technology, between theory and practice. (This is to keep technology from developing faster than culture can acclimate, though details are scarce there had been disasters far in the past that inspired this separation.)

The theors live in monastic communities, with their own system of governance independent from the outside world. The flow of information is highly restricted: some groups allow communication once a year, others once every thousand years. Little heed is paid to the rise and fall of politics and religions outside the walls.

Things begin to change drastically when an anomaly is spotted in the sky. Brilliant minds from around the world are brought together in protection of the planet. Adventure ensues.

But that’s not the point of the book, really. The plot is filled out by hundreds of dialogues and thought experiments and wonderful big ideas. Everything is pseudonymous, but can be recognized as a treatment of the big ideas of Earth. (After all, truth is truth, no matter which universe you live in … ) At no point does it come across as forced. The characters spend their lives studying their world with no tools but their own minds; the story offers a glimpse into that way of life.

And, astoundingly, there is an ending. Very few loose ends remain, except for of course one thing which is clearly necessary to be left unresolved.

I never once stopped enjoying myself while reading. I forced myself to take breaks, so that it wouldn’t be gone too quickly. I think it’ll take a bit of time and distance to determine if I liked it better than The Baroque Cycle, but it’s certainly up there as possibly the best thing Stephenson’s written.

Thank you, Early Reviews program