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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: HEAVEN: Jan 2016 Book Discussion: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
This novel is a classic of detective fiction, one of the pillars of the genre. It also has the virtue of being a stand-alone Lord Peter Wimsey novel, which makes it a great portal not only into Lord Peter but into all of Sayers' work. I believe it was the first novel of hers that I ever read.
Because of its popularity it is very widely available indeed (you could seek for it in your local public library). But it is not yet out of copyright and so is not up on Gutenberg. If you need a paper copy and the library and local used book stores come up dry, I suggest Ebay or abe.books. You can certainly get a copy for less than retail price, probably for little more than the postage.
If this is agreeable to you, we can zip through it (it is a brisk read, not a dull page in it) and start discussing it in mid-month, around the 20th. Between now and then I may pop in here and post an interesting link or two. Sayers has a ton of fans (there's an entire society somewhere) and there's vast material available.
[ 24. March 2016, 09:22: Message edited by: Firenze ]
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Helen-Eva
Shipmate
# 15025
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Posted
Good choice - specially as a lot of the plot happens at New Year. In fact I've been thinking of the descriptions of the flooding as well travelling around Yorkshire recently.
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I thought the radio 3 announcer said "Weber" but it turned out to be Webern. Story of my life.
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Read it years ago, but will re-read in preparation for this!
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Books and things.
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
There was a question in the King William School's annual quiz relating to this book.
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Bibaculus
Shipmate
# 18528
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Posted
Odd. Just this morning this book popped into my head, and I thought 'It is ages since I read that. Should read it again.' I think it was because of the new year's peal.
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A jumped up pantry boy who never knew his place
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
(I really ought to wait to post this but I am sure to forget the point, so am doing it now, a nonspoilery thing to talk about.)
A good many of us have already read the book before. When and where did you first read it?
I was staying at the house of the aunt of my college roommate, over the Thanksgiving holiday. My parents being posted in Europe, my roommate kindly invited me to join the family for the vacation. In the guest room was a bookcase, which I immediately canvassed. And in the bookcase was a mass-market paperback edition of /The Nine Tailors. I believe it was the Ballantine edition, the one with a fetching illustration of a bell with a skull for the clapper. I was a much, much faster reader in those days, and I believe it only took me a couple hours to devour the novel whole. I was instantly hooked, and have been a Sayers fan to this day.
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Tree Bee
Ship's tiller girl
# 4033
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Posted
Downloaded to my iPad ( I haven't read it before).
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Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
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Posted
I re-read it a couple of years ago, so it's time to dust it off again. One of Sayer's best and I've read them all.
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'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
I love The Nine Tailors! I'm looking forward to the discussion.
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georgiaboy
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# 11294
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Posted
I began reading it again last night (New Year's Eve), as I do every year. I'll probably have it completely devoured by Sunday night.
One of my favorites of the Sayers' canon.
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You can't retire from a calling.
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The Intrepid Mrs S
Shipmate
# 17002
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Posted
I have the radio play (Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter, Peter Jones as Bunter) on my iPod. It's brilliant - but it does mean I know it pretty much word for word!
Mrs. S, a Sayers fan for 50 years ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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Prayer should be our first recourse, not our last resort
'Lord, please give us patience. NOW!'
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Sandemaniac
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# 12829
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Posted
It's near-compulsory reading if you are a ringer - there is one noticeable ringing howler in it, but twas needed for the plot...
It also introduced me to the existence of St Wendreda's in March, with its great angel roof.
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Over at Abe books, the gigantic used-book aggregator there's at least a couple dozen copies available for less than four dollars, including shipping. My systems show me American sellers, but there must be a way to make it show you sellers in your country.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
I'll try to participate, and get a library copy. Read it a long time ago, and liked it. IIRC, there was a BBC TV production of it for the Lord Peter Wimsey series, back in the '80s, maybe.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
I'm in, even though I have fallen at the first hurdle. I can't remember when I first read it - I think I discovered Dorothy Sayers when I was at university as I have a vague recollection of reading 'Five Red Herrings' whilst on holiday in Galloway (near the setting of the story). I probably read 'Nine Tailors' because it was by Dorothy Sayers, but I can't even remember which one of her books I read first!
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
The BBC version starred Ian Carmichael, who also did the audio version.
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
For UK books, just use abebooks.co.uk rather than .com.
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
There was a question in the King William School's annual quiz relating to this book.
Really. ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
*Arachnid scuttles off to check the questions*
Many thanks, Penny S.
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
I remember exactly when and where I first read Dorothy Sayers -- Gaudy Night, at sixteen, on my aunt's back porch. I read all four of the books with Harriet in them fairly quickly (obviously having to go back in time a bit after starting with GN) but it took me several years to get around to reading the Lord Peter novels that didn't have Harriet in them, and while I enjoyed them all, I've never reread any of those (I've reread all four of the Lord Peter/Harriet novels many, many times). So it will be interesting to go back to The Nine Tailors again -- I don't remember much about it.
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Books and things.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Every now and then I will post a fun link here, about the book. This will not only keep the topic more or less up in the lists, but supply more fodder for chat.
Here is a short essay by award winning fantasy writer Jo Walton. She is English, but now lives in Canada, and her novels are published in the US. She blogs extensively about literary subjects, frequently about her favorite books, of which this is one. No especial spoilers in it, but if you are sensitive about such things come back to it later.
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
OMG, read the comments and knit the socks!
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
There was a question in the King William School's annual quiz relating to this book.
Really.
*Arachnid scuttles off to check the questions*
Many thanks, Penny S.
It was a bit obvious, that one. I have not done many - though more than other years. Other years I've looked, thought "Oh my, life is too short", and not bothered.
While I was at my sister's, checking out something I thought came from "Have His Carcase", I noticed she had all the family collection, originally collected by me, and she offered to let me bring them away. But I, having too little space, refused, so "Nine Tailors" is sitting in Gloucestershire.
While looking for it as an ebook (£1.99, Waterstones), I came across someone's walk through the church, no longer in stock!
[ 03. January 2016, 21:47: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
Nine Tailors was the first Sayers mystery I read, after I stumbled across it on a library shelf when I was in college. My first exposure to Sayers was her translation of Dante, which I'd read as a very geeky high-schooler. I don't recall when I tumbled that the same writer was responsible for both.
I was fascinated by the descriptions of ringing, but I couldn't find anything about it, in the dark ages before the internet.
Brenda, thanks for the link to the Jo Walton article. It's convinced me to pick up a copy of Nine Tailors and reread it.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I *think* I started with Murder Must Advertise, but I can't remember, nor when I first read Dorothy Sayers.
(I started reading Agatha Christie at 7 or 8, because someone left Sparkling Cyanide around, and it was better than a cereal packet. I was allowed to read Sayers while I was still at school because I'd already read the children's section at the library, including all the fairy stories, which I read in desperation as I wasn't allowed to move on until I had. There wasn't a teen section at the time so aged about 12 I was allowed to choose from the crime section.)
I collected Nine Tailors and Hangman's Holiday in one hardback edition from second hand shops or jumble sales and bought some in paperback when they were reprinted in the late 70s (I was a teenager). There was a lovely fly agaric on the front of Strong Poison and a fish on the front of Five Red Herrings
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Curiosity, are you sure we are not long-severed twins? I too started on Christie (I think my first was The Pale Horse) and have a miscellany of Sayers novels picked up second hand.
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Helen-Eva
Shipmate
# 15025
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Posted
I also moved on to Agatha Christie (and PG Wodehouse) after exhausting children's books and shortly afterwards onto Sayers - my Dad had a good collection of 1930s murder mysteries. Margery Allingham was the third of the trinity. I can't remember what order I read the Sayers books in but I know I read Gaudy Night last as I kept saving it as I didn't want there not to be any more. I probably read it when I was about 14 and Dad was just deciding that I was going to Oxford.
When I read The Nine Tailors I particularly associated with the teenage girl whose mother is buried right at the start. I'm not sure what else I can say without risking a spoiler!!
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I thought the radio 3 announcer said "Weber" but it turned out to be Webern. Story of my life.
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
I think my first Dorothy L. Sayers was Strong Poison picked up on a rain-soaked holiday in Worthing nearly 40 years ago, closely followed by The Unpleasantness at the Bellona club. Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon are probably my favourites.
I think, however, it was probably some time before I followed up the Wimsey/Vane story, and read the three subsequent novels that complete the story. One of the things I like about Gaudy Night is the way that one finds in Harriet's treatment of one her characters echoes of what happens to Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers' writing.
Looking at the publication order, it's interesting that the novels people seem to like more come after Dorothy L. Sayers begins to delve more into Peter Wimsey's character via his relationship with Harriet Vane. (Five Red Herrings is an exception, avowedly being written to prove that she could write a proper puzzle story.) Both Murder must Advertise and Nine Tailors come after Have his Carcase.
(There's a helpful attempt a Wimsey chronology here with summaries of the stories further down. There are no spoilers (IMHO), and there is a section "Some Background on Lord Peter Wimsey" before them, but let the reader beware.)
Here's the passage about writing which I had in mind - Harriet Vane speaks first quote:
'Yes--he'd be interesting. But if I give Wilfrid all those violent and lifelike feelings, he'll throw the whole book out of balance.'
'You would have to abandon the jig-saw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change.'
'I'm afraid to try that, Peter. It might go too near the bone.'
'It might be the wisest thing you could do.'
'Write it out and get rid of it?'
'Yes.'
'I'll think about that. It would hurt like hell.'
'What would that matter, if it made a good book?'
She was taken aback, not by what he said, but by his saying it. She had never imagined that he regarded her work very seriously, and she had certainly not expected him to take this ruthless attitude about it. The protective male? He was being about as protective as a can-opener.
'You haven't yet,' he went on, 'written the book you could write if you tried. Probably you couldn't write it when you were too close to things. But you could do it now, if you had the— the— '
'The guts?'
'Exactly.'
'I don't think I could face it.'
'Yes, you could. And you'll get no peace till you do. I've been running away from myself for twenty years, and it doesn't work. What's the good of making mistakes if you don't use them? Have a shot. Start on Wilfrid.'
from Chapter 15 of Gaudy Night
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Pearl B4 Swine
Ship's Oyster-Shucker
# 11451
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Posted
Chick (JRTerrier) and I went up to bed early on New Year's Eve, not being partiers, or even stay-up-laters. I always read a good while, and having nothing fresh from the library, I rummaged through the old standards on my bedside table. There was Nine Tailors worn and beloved, so I blew off the dust and started reading. I hadn't given a thought to the way the book begins. What a delightful coincidence. Naturally, I'm re-reading the whole thing, and loving every page of it.
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Oinkster
"I do a good job and I know how to do this stuff" D. Trump (speaking of the POTUS job)
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
All of Sayers' non-Wimsey stuff is much less popular -- I like The Documents in the Case but many don't.
A series of books about the same characters very often drifts into character/romance issues -- it is difficult to keep on having world-shaking crises convincingly. (After a while one is forced to wonder why the bad guys do not have better death planet engineering and design.) This always leads to a break in the readership, as the fans divide. On one side is the people who liked the detective puzzles and cookie-cutter characterization, and on the other are the people who adore the new romantic/realistic direction. Lois Bujold faced this with her Vorkosigan series (space opera), which break along about volume 8 with a sudden left turn into romance issues. Boy, you probably heard the yelling.
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Bibaculus
Shipmate
# 18528
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Posted
Well I have dug out an old paperback of the Nine Tailors and made a start.
It is the only Sayers book I have ever read. the first one I tried to read was called Stridings Folly. I thought maybe I should give Dorothy L Sayers a go because of her Anglo-catholic views. Knowing nothing about her books, I selected one at random in a bookshop, the said Stridings Folley. i did not enjoy it and didn't finish it. Later, as I was a ringer, someone suggested giving The Nine Tailors, which I did enjoy, and expect to enjoy again.
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A jumped up pantry boy who never knew his place
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Yes BroJames, I've always thought that passage from Gaudy Night is very "meta" as we might say today ... it's Sayers describing, through Harriet and Peter's conversation, exactly the process she was going through with the LPW novels. I'm definitely in the category of readers who prefer the more fleshed-out, emotionally complex Lord Peter of the later, post-Harriet novels, and I'm generally only a mystery reader by accident -- there needs to be something else, a great setting or great characterization or a great love story -- to draw me in to a mystery novel.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
So do I. But there is a large contingent indeed who do not want that, and demand more stories cut from the exact same loaf. Which is how you wind up with dozens of Nero Wolfe novels, or Mills & Boone, or season after season of Murder She Wrote.
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HarryLime
Apprentice
# 18525
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Posted
I read and enjoyed this a few years ago, but it was slightly spoiled for me by a sense of pervasive snobbery: an aristocratic hero, patronising working-class characters. It seems to me this is a feature of a lot of classic English detective fiction. Josephine Tey is ruined for me by this trait. But then I am absurdly class-conscious. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Perhaps I should try the non-Wimsey Sayers novels.
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georgiaboy
Shipmate
# 11294
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Posted
HL, I think it very important to read Sayers' books with a full appreciation of when they happen. Otherwise, the class distinctions and prejudices can be quite off-putting. And, of course, this was real time to the author, who was writing contemporary, not historical, fiction.
It is interesting in reading the complete Sayers canon to notice how such things develop (along with Lord Peter's mannerisms). He is a far different person in Gaudy Night, for instance, that he is in Whose Body.
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You can't retire from a calling.
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HarryLime
Apprentice
# 18525
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Posted
I'm pleased to hear that Sayers's attitude towards class develops over time. I'm aware of the historical context, but she was writing at the same time as Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene, for example. I think it's possible to write an old-fashioned English detective story without snobbery. Edmund Crispin did that well.
Sayers does appeal to me, though, and I'll definitely give her another chance. To be fair, Josephine Tey is much worse, and I bracket Sayers with Tey because they seem to me to be similar.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
And Sayers (and her creation Wimsey) lived in a period of enormous change. Wimsey is on record ad being born in 1890 -- Sayers herself was born in 1893. She was writing contemporary fiction, about things that she knew about -- men coming back changed from the trenches, watching the world and the culture completely alter. A biography fo Wimsey.
The Nine Tailors has a large chunk of autobiography in it -- Sayers drew upon her girlhood with her clergyman father.
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HarryLime
Apprentice
# 18525
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Posted
The Nine Tailors is certainly an atmospheric and compelling novel and I enjoyed it despite the class issue.
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HarryLime:
I'm pleased to hear that Sayers's attitude towards class develops over time. I'm aware of the historical context, but she was writing at the same time as Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene, for example. I think it's possible to write an old-fashioned English detective story without snobbery. Edmund Crispin did that well.
Sayers does appeal to me, though, and I'll definitely give her another chance. To be fair, Josephine Tey is much worse, and I bracket Sayers with Tey because they seem to me to be similar.
Edmund Crispin whose work I like and greatly admire was nearly 30 years younger than Dorothy L Sayers and writes in and about a time when the class issue looks very different. His first Gervase Fen novel was published twenty years (and a world war) after Dorothy L Sayers' first. He largely avoids the class issue because most of his major characters are essentially middle class, often educated middle class. My impression is that class was a much more topical issue twenty years before, and of course Sayers has to tackle it head on having made her protagonist a lord. I'm not sure that Wimsey does patronise the working class characters he meets - he always seems to me to have been refreshingly free of that, but YMMV. Or did you mean Sayers patronises them?
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I felt patronised by her inclusion of Greek quotations without translation. It was like a verbal and quiet educated version of the sort of shouting lads do to proclaim that they own a space and others don't belong there. (Heard a bunch do it round the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells once, which was very much a dissonant experience. The shouting. Not the Greek.)
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Helen-Eva
Shipmate
# 15025
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I felt patronised by her inclusion of Greek quotations without translation. It was like a verbal and quiet educated version of the sort of shouting lads do to proclaim that they own a space and others don't belong there. (Heard a bunch do it round the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells once, which was very much a dissonant experience. The shouting. Not the Greek.)
It's the long passages of French that get most people. The Greek I can cope with on the grounds that it's only short quotes and you can skip them without worrying. Unlike in TS Eliot bother him.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Edmund Crispin is fun, but it is highly parodic and comic. Which is very different from Sayers.
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And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
Originally posted by HarryLime:
quote:
I think it's possible to write an old-fashioned English detective story without snobbery. Edmund Crispin did that well.
Anthony Gilbert, a contemporary of Sayers and a much more prolific detective story writer, clearly agreed with you! Her detective hero was the spiv-like Arthur Crook - the surname is no accident. Brilliant books, much better than either Sayers of Christie IMO.
Having said that, I enjoyed Sayers' books, including The Nine Tailors, and it'll be good to have an excuse to re-read it.
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I felt patronised by her inclusion of Greek quotations without translation. It was like a verbal and quiet educated version of the sort of shouting lads do to proclaim that they own a space and others don't belong there. (Heard a bunch do it round the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells once, which was very much a dissonant experience. The shouting. Not the Greek.)
This interests me, because I come at it from the opposite end. I don't see anything to suggest that it was done for motives of showing off--rather, that Peter and Harriet are both the kind of people who naturally swim in quotations, in various languages, and in odd allusions, academic injokes, and the like. To rob them of those elements of conversation is to alter their characters. It's perfectly legitimate to say "but I don't like those characters," but that's a different kind of thing from being patronized. (AFAIK neither Bunter nor Parker nor Freddy nor any of the non-academic types ever quote things in Greek etc., which is sensible because they are all decidedly not the kind of people who would know that stuff or care about it. And Uncle Paul only quotes French because he is a Francophile. But a patronizing author would have thrown in loads of Greek quotations etc. regardless of the current viewpoint characters.
The issue hits home with me, I'm afraid, for rather personal reasons. I meet a friend for coffee etc. every month or so, and as we are both widely read PhDs of the naughty type, our conversation would sound very like Peter and Harriet's to someone overhearing it. There are apt to be references to everything from bawdy Shakespeare to Augustine to Martin Luther and Hello Cthulhu. And none of it will be explained or translated, as after all, we are talking to each other, and we know what we mean! And half the fun of such a conversation is throwing out (slightly twisted) allusions like tennis balls to be smacked back, and watching the other person laugh her ass off when she catches the rather rude thing you have just not-quite-said about your boss by means of an allusion to Jonathan Swift.
But we would never talk this way when my husband or hers was taking part in the conversation, as it would be obviously rude to shut them out--just as they would be rude to speak solely in Vietnamese or to use esoteric IT injokes for everything.
We could, of course, ask Sayers to change the characters for the sake of accessibility; but to do that would be to change their essence, and as an author/creator she is within her rights to ignore us. As we are within our rights to say "too much work" or "boring," and refuse to buy the book.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I don't know if people are aware than a number of Wimsey sequels have been authorized -- they are written by Jill Walsh Paton -- there are 4 or 5 of them out. If you look into them (go to Goodreads or Amazon and read the reviews first -- opinions vary widely) the difference is palpable. Wimsey and Harriet no long quote with such ease and fluency; it definitely feels no longer like the natural character, but like something the author painfully researched and wedged in. I envision a spreadsheet the author is working from: no fewer than 1 quotation every other chapter, of which at least 1 per novel has to be in Latin, and one other being a theologian.
Only when you see it clumsily done do you realize how effortlessly easy Sayers made it look. That's the sign of the master.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Heh. Yes, I gave up on those after the first one, and a taste of the second. They did seem forced.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Helen-Eva:
It's the long passages of French that get most people. The Greek I can cope with on the grounds that it's only short quotes and you can skip them without worrying. Unlike in TS Eliot bother him.
I don't think there's anywhere where the French passages add more than a little colour to the story, though.
I've always assumed that Sayers would have assumed that her readership would speak French, and have at least a passing familiarity with the classics, because her readers would be educated people.
That's no longer a good assumption - these days it's quite possible to be educated and well-read without ever having studied latin, for example.
(I'd be interested to know how the French passages are treated in the French translations of her works. Do we have any francophone shipmates who have read her in French?)
[ 05. January 2016, 20:48: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
I rather like the way the Wimsey novels explore different setting and parts of society: East Anglia, Scotland, London, an advertising agency, a men's club and the House of Lords. Aspects of her own life are woven into them as well: experience as an advertising copy writer, as the spouse of a man damaged by the great war, at Oxford and as a teenage girl who wants to be a writer someday.
I do think "Have His Carcase" is sometimes too silly, and I have often wished for meticulously annotated editions, as I am not familiar with, for instance, Kai Lung.
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Helen-Eva:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I felt patronised by her inclusion of Greek quotations without translation. It was like a verbal and quiet educated version of the sort of shouting lads do to proclaim that they own a space and others don't belong there. (Heard a bunch do it round the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells once, which was very much a dissonant experience. The shouting. Not the Greek.)
It's the long passages of French that get most people. The Greek I can cope with on the grounds that it's only short quotes and you can skip them without worrying. Unlike in TS Eliot bother him.
I like the untranslated bits because it does feel authentic and like a compliment to the reader's intelligence -- but I will admit that when I first read Gaudy Night at 16 I wasn't sure whether Harriet had accepted or rejected Peter's proposal at the end (because it was in Latin) and there are passages (the sexy ones) in Busman's Honeymoon where I'm still not entirely sure what's going on because of all the French.
None of this detracts from my enjoyment of the books though. And I agree about the JPW sequels -- I've read them all and there are things I like about them, but it feels like actors playing Peter and Harriet, rather than actual Peter and Harriet.
I think there's something about the way Sayers writes that makes it uniquely difficult for another writer to pick up the characters and do new things with them. If you compare them to, for example, some of the better Sherlock Holmes "sequels" and "reboots" -- there've been lots of bad ones, but also some great ones (I'd put Laurie King's novels, and the current BBC Sherlock series, in the "great" category) where, despite all the changes, the character is still quite recognizably Conan Doyle's Sherlock. I think it's much harder to do this with Lord Peter et al, because Sayers' use of language -- the way the characters, especially LPW himself, actually speak -- is so integral to the characterization. And that's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to copy.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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