Book Reviews: In a Lonely Place, Hughes; The Wicked Boy, Summerscale; Edward III, Shakeaspeare

[juushika]

Title: In a Lonely Place
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Published: New York Review of Books, 2017 (1947)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 205
Total Page Count: 249,820
Text Number: 801
Read Because: borrowed from my father, who picked it up because of this NPR segment
Review: A grifter tempts fate when he reconnects with an old friend turned detective. This is reminiscent of its noir contemporaries (I'm reminded of Highsmith and Cain, but only because they're the authors with which I'm most familiar): contemplations on class; a stylized voice that sets introspective, slow sections against tense, elevated action; a dark but indulgent tone. The antihero protagonist is engaging and confrontational, especially alongside the book's feminist themes: Hughes's challenges the reader's instinct to sympathize with the protagonist and, with it, his misogyny. The gendered violence is never depicted on page, and the female characters defy the limitations of their genre roles. The building tension set against the reader's disavowal of the protagonist is unexpectedly refined. This has held up well, and Megan Abbott's afterward is succinct and productive.


Title: The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
Author: Kate Summerscale
Published: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 250,205
Text Number: 802
Read Because: reviewed here by truepenny, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In London 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes murdered his mother; then, for ten days, Robert, his 12-year-old brother Nattie, and an unwitting family friend lived in the house with the corpse decaying in a locked room upstairs. This has some tedious sections (including, perhaps ironically, the murder and its immediate aftermath) which are unaided by Summerscale's precise, exhaustive research and the cultural and anecdotal details that flesh out the historical setting. But it pays for itself in Summerscale's compassionate, complex reading of the case, specifically of Robert's motives and emotions, in the crime and its baffling immediate aftermath, but also during the trial and into adulthood. (One almost wishes for more: a comparison between historical and modern moral panics over popular media is the obvious oversight.) Her refusal of simple answers makes for compelling arguments which are firmly rooted in, but not limited by, historical context—and she still manages to inhabit that morbid, escapist ten-day interlude which makes this case so engaging.

In the ten days that Robert and Nattie shared the house with their mother's corpse, reality was provisional for them; time was suspended. For as long as no adult knew about the murder, it had not happened. The boys continued to play: in the yard, at the park, in the parlour, in the street. They inhabited a make-believe world, in which Emily Coombes might be ‘all right'; she might be 'kept'; she might even come back, as John Fox warned, to chastise her sons for making too much noise in the yard. The brothers tacitly agreed not to speak of the killing, and they chose the trusting, kindly Fox to sanction their pact. In this dreamlike moment, their lives had not yet been transformed, and their mother's had not ended. As Nattie had said to his brother on 8 July—in awe, in horror, in simple disbelief—'You ain't done it.'

The lawyers at the Old Bailey were presenting the court with opposing narratives: the prosecution told of a boy who was all head and no heart, a callous killer, while the defense depicted a boy whose reason had been utterly overthrown by his crazed emotions. There was no room for a story in which Robert was both scheming and desperate, ruthless and lost, in which he both knew and did not know what he had done and why he had done it.

#context: in 1895 London a 13-year-old boy murdered his potentially-abusive mother #he & his 12-y-o brother & unwitting family friend then lived in the house with the body (locked in an upstairs bedroom) for 10 days #until it was discovered by a visiting family member #this book has some tedious sections (weirdly enough including the murder & immediate aftermath) #but it pays for its tedium in Summerscale's compassionate & complex readings of Robert's mindset & motivations #especially here! that atmosphere—the dissociation-cum-escapism that at the time seemed the most inexplicable & horrific part of the crime #but which is so compelling and upon reflection also sympathetic: children wishing away reality and consequences #and it worked—for a little while


Title: Edward III
Author: William Shakespeare
Published: 1596
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 250,305
Text Number: 803
Read Because: co-read with my mother
Review: This is relatively unremarkable. The interactions between King Edward and the Countess of Salisbury are unsettling and intense (and I swear this was my favorite part even before I read theories about which sections Shakespeare authored); in the second half, the best is Prince Edward's dynamic, substantial character arc. But the two halves are disconnected and, however impressive it may be to condense such a long time period into a single sequence, the series of battles is routine and uninspired. Like Henry VI Part 1: there are seeds of potential, but it lacks the robust, cogent meeting of themes/language/characters which makes Shakespeare's better plays successful.