maegabby

Tedious

Revisado: 07-01-24

Painful and important subject but the story is quite predictable, the dialogue painfully inept; the main character has to be one of the most incompetent policewomen in fiction!

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Addictive & fascinating story, great narrator

Revisado: 03-24-24

This novel will hook you from the start: it combines film noir atmospherics with a moving coming-of-age story. Lois Saunders felt crushed by her loveless marriage and besides has always been an outsider, a young woman with a suspect background of new money and ethnicity in a wealthy WASP stronghold. We meet Lois as the novel opens on her train ride to the Golden Yarrow, a glamorous Nevada divorce ranch where six weeks of residency will qualify you for a divorce in 1951 America, when women have few rights.

Lois has taken the plunge and abandoned her insulated life but comes to realize that all she has before her after the divorce is the prospect of going back to live in her father's house. At the Golden Yarrow, though, she meets a new guest — Greer is enigmatic and fascinating and a bit dangerous, and through her Lois begins to see herself in a new light. The novel builds to a crisis where Lois is forced to ask, how far will she go to create a new life for herself?

Beaird's prose is powerful and poetic: the story builds slowly and dramatically to a very satisfying conclusion. Bailey Carr is the perfect narrator!

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An Absolute Delight

Revisado: 01-29-24

You know when you discover a book that puts you in a great mood because it's so witty and fun and original that you try not to listen all in one gulp but it's hard to help yourself? — Alice B. Toklas Is Missing is that book.

Archambeau writes with the heart of a lover, and his immersion in the brilliant chaos of arts and politics that was Jazz-age Paris make this novel a joy. We follow the journey of Ida, a young Midwestern painter who strives to find her identity as a woman and an artist, and with her we meet a fascinating cast of characters on their way to becoming the most famous creative names of the era. (You also discover some fun tidbits about these writers and artists: for example, T.S. Eliot was
a cheese fanatic!)

The plot launches with the shocking disappearance of Alice, Gertrude Stein's lover and hostess of Stein's arts salon. Ida's feckless husband Teddy claims to be a detective and promises Stein he will find Alice — but soon he vanishes as well, and Ida is left to pursue the deepening mystery with the help of American poet Tom Eliot. From the headquarters of the Surrealists to the bookstore Shakespeare & Company to the catacombs under Paris, they search for answers and help uncover a terrifying plot that goes far beyond the disappearance of one woman.

These explorations come to a very satisfying conclusion, but with this wonderful setting and cast of characters, here's hoping that a sequel comes out soon. I'm looking forward to more encounters with artists, to Ida progressing in her career and romance, and to seeing what happens next to the book's cads, villains and nogoodniks (looking at you, Teddy!)

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Such a disappointment

Revisado: 11-29-23

Plodding, tedious, implausible – this is one hapless group of detectives, and Matthew Venn is such a mope! There are some nice scenes with his husband, but overall his whole backstory of having been part of a fundamentalist church does little to enliven this predictable and badly plotted novel. Maybe the TV show will paper over the faults.

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Such a disappointment

Revisado: 07-11-23

There are the elements of a fun mystery series here, but this plot is beyond preposterous, dialogue is stiff and predictable, and the only reason I kept listening was to see how things resolved...which was to be generous, implausibly. Many better options out there for stories with old people solving crimes! The narrator was doing her best with the material.

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Brilliant Book: Problem with Adaptation

Revisado: 03-10-18

What did you like best about A Perfect Spy? What did you like least?

Perfect Spy found the Perfect Cast....alas, the same cannot be said for this adaptation to a BBC radio play. There are some terrific moments — but for those of us who cherish this work and have read it many times, it's baffling that the adapter omits absolutely key moments and LeCarre descriptions and dialogue, words that are essential to understanding Pym and why he does what he does. Why? If you haven't read the book you will enjoy this harrowing tale of betrayal, it just doesn't give you that deep resonance of the book itself, which as LeCarre says, contains a great deal of autobiography regarding the relationship of Pym and his larger-than-life conman father.

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