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Feb. 17th, 2015 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe other two-in-one book that Powell's yielded me was an Elisabeth Sanxay Holding double feature, Who's Afraid/Widow's Mite, in a printing from 1953 with AMAZING pulpy covers. Resistance was futile.
That said, these are not my favorite Holdings. Who's Afraid? has some solid qualities, but it doesn't hold together very well. Our protagonist Susie Alban is a nice young girl who's just taken a job as a traveling saleswoman, and is sitting on the train thinking about how much fun it would be if someone were to fall madly and improbably in love with her when suddenly she meets three possibly-sinister men! all of whom profess in short order to be madly and improbably in love with her! We also know from the narration, repeatedly, that ONE OF THEM wants to KILL HER! (Because of a misunderstanding.)
We spend several chapters in the murderer's head being taunted by how anonymous he is, which is the kind of authorial trick that usually feels a bit contrived to me and also feels so here, especially when most of the ~possibly sinister behavior~ of the red herrings can't really be explained except by the author feeling like she wanted them to go on being red herrings.
That said, while none of the male characters make any sense whatsoever, this does have Holding's trademark interesting and complex women developing unlikely sympathies with each other, and Susie's ongoing struggle to balance her desire for independence and adventure with her qualms about trying to sell beauty and charm via mail-order course are the most interesting parts of the book.
Widow's Mite, on the other hand, is a book that knows perfectly well what it's doing, and what it's doing is pointing out that people lying to the police in mystery novels is STUPID and she WISHES THEY WOULDN'T. Our heroine, Tilly, is an impoverished widow with a young son who's relying on her husband's unpleasant and depressing but rich cousins to get her through the summer. Then one of the cousins turns up dead! After Tilly hands her a sleeping pill!
TILLY'S WOULD-BE LOVE INTEREST: Allow me to mansplain to you about how characters in mysteries should not lie to the police.
TILLY: Ummmmm how about if I just ... lie to the police by omission ...? I DON'T KNOW telling the truth seems stressful. :(
TILLY'S WOULD-BE LOVE INTEREST: Allow me to mansplain to you about how lying to the police was a stupid thing to do.
THE POLICE: Hey, Tilly's would-be love interest, what about that cyanide in your house that you totally lied to us about?
TILLY: WHAT.
TILLY'S WOULD-BE LOVE INTEREST: Ummmmmmm well OK yes I will admit telling the police the truth did seem at the time kind of stressful. >.>
TILLY: oh my god.
There are some really interesting and disturbing undercurrents running through the book -- especially Tilly's attempts to protect her son from trauma, which seem likely to potentially lead to more trauma than if she never tried to protect him at all -- and the ending (like the ending of Who's Afraid, actually) has a thin veneer of romance on the surface that's unsettling in what I'm 99% sure is a really deliberate way. On the other hand, Tilly is more isolated from other sympathetic women than pretty much any of Holding's other female characters, which makes me kind of sad. Also, this year is just a bad year for me to buy into Holding's premise of "NO SERIOUSLY YOU IDIOT CHARACTERS JUST TELL THE POLICE THE TRUTH AND EVERYTHING WILL PROBABLY BE FINE" (although, I mean, I grant that if you're in a noir it's probably good advice, but maybe not so much in the real world.)
That said, these are not my favorite Holdings. Who's Afraid? has some solid qualities, but it doesn't hold together very well. Our protagonist Susie Alban is a nice young girl who's just taken a job as a traveling saleswoman, and is sitting on the train thinking about how much fun it would be if someone were to fall madly and improbably in love with her when suddenly she meets three possibly-sinister men! all of whom profess in short order to be madly and improbably in love with her! We also know from the narration, repeatedly, that ONE OF THEM wants to KILL HER! (Because of a misunderstanding.)
We spend several chapters in the murderer's head being taunted by how anonymous he is, which is the kind of authorial trick that usually feels a bit contrived to me and also feels so here, especially when most of the ~possibly sinister behavior~ of the red herrings can't really be explained except by the author feeling like she wanted them to go on being red herrings.
That said, while none of the male characters make any sense whatsoever, this does have Holding's trademark interesting and complex women developing unlikely sympathies with each other, and Susie's ongoing struggle to balance her desire for independence and adventure with her qualms about trying to sell beauty and charm via mail-order course are the most interesting parts of the book.
Widow's Mite, on the other hand, is a book that knows perfectly well what it's doing, and what it's doing is pointing out that people lying to the police in mystery novels is STUPID and she WISHES THEY WOULDN'T. Our heroine, Tilly, is an impoverished widow with a young son who's relying on her husband's unpleasant and depressing but rich cousins to get her through the summer. Then one of the cousins turns up dead! After Tilly hands her a sleeping pill!
TILLY'S WOULD-BE LOVE INTEREST: Allow me to mansplain to you about how characters in mysteries should not lie to the police.
TILLY: Ummmmm how about if I just ... lie to the police by omission ...? I DON'T KNOW telling the truth seems stressful. :(
TILLY'S WOULD-BE LOVE INTEREST: Allow me to mansplain to you about how lying to the police was a stupid thing to do.
THE POLICE: Hey, Tilly's would-be love interest, what about that cyanide in your house that you totally lied to us about?
TILLY: WHAT.
TILLY'S WOULD-BE LOVE INTEREST: Ummmmmmm well OK yes I will admit telling the police the truth did seem at the time kind of stressful. >.>
TILLY: oh my god.
There are some really interesting and disturbing undercurrents running through the book -- especially Tilly's attempts to protect her son from trauma, which seem likely to potentially lead to more trauma than if she never tried to protect him at all -- and the ending (like the ending of Who's Afraid, actually) has a thin veneer of romance on the surface that's unsettling in what I'm 99% sure is a really deliberate way. On the other hand, Tilly is more isolated from other sympathetic women than pretty much any of Holding's other female characters, which makes me kind of sad. Also, this year is just a bad year for me to buy into Holding's premise of "NO SERIOUSLY YOU IDIOT CHARACTERS JUST TELL THE POLICE THE TRUTH AND EVERYTHING WILL PROBABLY BE FINE" (although, I mean, I grant that if you're in a noir it's probably good advice, but maybe not so much in the real world.)
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Date: 2015-10-10 10:54 pm (UTC)Does this mean that people start talking to Lieutenant Levy? How does he cope?
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Date: 2015-10-11 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-11 04:17 pm (UTC)To be fair, while being the cop nobody talks to may be a thing that happens in real life for many good reasons, being the cop nobody talks to because otherwise the suspense plots wouldn't work out has got to grate on a person after a while.