The Wisdom of Father Brown

Better late than never! I read this short story collection about a month ago, and mentioned it a little on my blog, but I never got around to doing an actual write-up.

This was my first experience with Father Brown, and Chesterton for that matter. The collection starts off with a great story, "The Absence of Mr. Glass" that basically mocks Holmes-style detective fiction. It opens with Dr. Orion Hood, "an eminent criminologist," in his study. His study is described in great detail, and every sentence reinforces Dr. Hood's extreme orderliness. I thought you guys would appreciate this passage:

Poetry was there: the left-hand corner of the room was lined with as complete a set of English classics as the right hand could show of English and foreign physiologists. But if one took a volume of Chaucer or Shelley from that rank, its absence irritated the mind like a gap in a man's front teeth. One could not say the books were never read; probably they were, but there was a sense of their being chained to ther places, like the Bibles in the old churches.

Then, into this eminent Doctor's day, "there shumbled into the room a shapeless little figure, which seemed to find its own hat and umbrella as unmanageable as a mass of luggage. The umbrella was a black and prosaic bundle long past repair; the hat was a broad-curved black hat, clerical but not common in England; the man was the very embodiment of all that is homely and helpless." Needless to say, this is our erstwhile hero Father Brown. The two go on to try to solve a mystery; a boarder who has fallen in love with the landlady's daughter has been found tied up in his room, with everything in disarray. Meanwhile, before this the landlady overheard the boarder arguing with a mysterious Mr. Glass, who seems to come from the sea. Whatever is going on? As Dr. Hood provides his thoroughly scientific and rational answer, Father Brown seems to be trying not to laugh. And eventually he sees through the heart of the matter.

There are twelve stories, and my other favourites was "The Perishing of the Pendragons," which deals with an old family curse that keeps causing Pendragons to be shipwrecked. It's difficult to choose however-all but one of the stories were perfect gems! Throughout the collection, Father Brown is traveling: we see him in Scarborough, Italy, Paris, London, Chicago, Devonshire, Cornwall, Essex, and Germany. I don't know if that's usual of Father Brown stories, but I found the constant change of scenery quite refreshing! I do wish I could have gotten to know Father Brown a bit better, though...there isn't much character development in this collection.

I did alude to one story that I did not like at all: "The God of Gongs." It's the ninth story, so I was quite used to Chesterton's style, when all of a sudden this story appeared and through everything out of joint. It got very muddled very quickly, and Father Brown got in a violent altercation (which is quite unlike him), and it talks a lot about "negros," (and a much nastier n-word) and uses adjectives like "insolent" when referring to them. In fact, Father Brown's friend says, "Sometimes...I'm not surprised that they lynch them." The 'solution' is very confusing and talks about Voodoo, and I'm still quite annoyed that such a racist, garbage-y story is in the middle of an otherwise perfect collection. I realise the book was published in 1913, but it just didn't seem to fit any of the other stories. Oh well!

Other than that one story, I highly, highly recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys mystery stories. I know I'll be searching out the other Father Brown stories!

Second Book Up!

I read May Sarton's The Small Room a little bit ago, and now I've posted my thoughts up on my blog. Let me just say that I found her a very powerful writer! It's awesome: so far, I've found two incredible women authors through this challenge. I used to always read more men than women; this is helping to balance that out!

I'm not sure what I'll read this month: I still have some Walter Scott, G.K. Chesterton, and Sarah Orne Jewett on my list. I guess it'll depend on what mood I'm in. :)

Thoughts up on The Last September

I finally got around to talking about The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen! I absolutely loved this one, and I think everyone who hasn't read Bowen should at least look into her. :) See lots of passages from the book, and a little about my thoughts here.

The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

I'm about fifty pages into The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen, and so far I'm absolutely loving it! It rather reminds me of an interwar Jane Austen so far, and it also evokes Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding. I think I may have a new favourite author on my hands. :)

The reason I'm posting now is that I just had to share the great preface in my edition (a 1964 Knopf hardcover I bookmooched). She discusses writing the book, and she just seems so graceful and classy. I'd like to share some of her thoughts on writing. While I'm not a writer, these seemed full of insight.

One may perceive that, generally, in the novel the characters are held in the same orbit by some sort of situation which sets, as it were, a trap-some central device, devilmen, search or passion. My own solution, however, was a more childish one: again in The Last September, as in The Hotel, I used the device of grouping my men and women actually under the same roof, and of keeping them thus located, whether by choice or chance, for such time as the story should need to run its course. The Italian resort hotel of my first venture was, for the second, replaced by the Irish country house. I recognise that I am, and was bound to be, a writer intensely subject to scence and time: both do more than figure, they play their parts in my plots. The approaching close of the visitors' winter season adds edge to the little drama of The Hotel. The Last September, even more, takes its pitch from that lovely, too mortal month which gives the novel its name.

The writer is like the swimmer caught by an undertow; he is borne by it back to those scenes of his own life most steeped in subjective experience which he did not know of. Sensation accumulates where it is least sought; meaning flows in, retrospectively, where we were blind to any. One is captured by the mysterious, the imperious hauntedness of a pariod not understood in its own time.

I was very much struck by her observations on being young. I turned twenty-one in April, and I feel as if she put her finger on where I am right now. It's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one!

In "real" life, my early girhood in the County Cork, in the house which is the "Danielstown" of the story was, though accented from time to time by aspiration, passing romance or pleasure, mainly a period of impatience, frivolity, lassitude or boredome. I endlessly asked myself what I should be, and when? The young (who are, ironically, so much envied) do all, I suspect, face those patches of barren worry.

When one is young, years are longer; each one one has lived seems dynamic and fraught with a conquest. In most lives (and mine conformed to the shape) the years between twnety and twenty-eight are often important, decisive ones.

Eva's Preliminary List

So, after looking at all the authors and realising that way too many sounded interesting, I decided on a new criteria: there must be a copy available in the US on bookmooch. This quickly narrowed the field (after all, these books are unpopular ;)) and I ended up with...

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
The Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
The Small Room by May Sarton
A Book or Two by Walter Scott

I feel quite proud of the list, since it manages to achieve several of my general reading goals: read more women, read more short stories, read more classics. Yay! Plus, they all sound great. I am facing a huge dilemma re: which Walter Scott to choose. So many sound so good to me; I can't believe I've never read any Scott before! Of course, someone (can't remember who just now) is planning a one-author challenge for early next year, so Scott could play nicely into this.

Can't wait to see everyone else's lists up! Imani has requested that we use tags to keep everything organised, so I went ahead and made a 'reading lists' tag.

Cross posted (with some changes) at A Striped Armchair.