onsdag 30 maj 2012

The game's afoot... again

I'm fairly lucky with my "alternative to Strindberg" reading at the moment. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, a sequel to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson that has the stamp of approval of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate, started a bit slow but soon picked up and proved to be an enjoyable read.  The author is faithful to the personalities of the dynamic duo, and Lestrade gets an unusually good press, which is nice. Clearly I'm not the only one with a soft spot for this put-upon policeman (that he was played by weaselly-in-a-cute-way Colin Jeavons in the classic Jeremy Brett TV series helps). The other characters are sharply portrayed as well; the sinister Inspector Harriman, for instance, makes an excellent baddie. I was too worried about the fix Holmes had got himself into to be able to enjoy Harriman's baddiedom completely, however - which is a compliment coming from me, easily distracted as I am whenever there's an accomplished villain on the scene. Speaking of villains, Moriarty makes a guest appearance and is satisfactorily professorial. Holmes and Watson hurtle from one colourful venue to the next in the quest for the truth - an elegant town-house, a children's charity, an opium den, Holloway Prison, an exotic fair... Most things you expect from a crime caper set in Victorian times you will find in The House of Silk.

And this is, in one way, also the main fault of the novel. It surprised me that one of its Big Reveals has in fact been mentioned often in articles published in connection with the book's publication. Horowitz himself has made no secret of it. Why? Maybe it's because the activities of the "House of Silk" don't come as much of a surprise anyway to someone familiar with the Victorian Crime genre. If, by chance, you reach the dénouement without warning of what it will be about, your reaction is more likely to be a jaded "what, again?" rather than a shocked "no, really?". As I mentioned when I grumbled over Mr Timothy, I grow weary of all the "oooh, aren't those Victorians horrid?" hand-wringing of modern novels set in Victorian London. Yes, horrible things happened in Victorian days - as they do in our modern days, let's not forget, though often so far away from our everyday lives that we feel comfortable with pointing a finger at the long-dead instead - but not everywhere, all the time. Also, it seems unlikely that just about every establishment figure, especially if he has a title or is part of the government, should be knee-deep in filthy secrets. Could we maybe give the Victorian Establishment a break, once in a while? There were quite a lot of decent Victorians about who were genuinely concerned about combatting social ills and not the least bit twisted. And I'm guessing a fair proportion of them were Lords and Sirs.

If my criticism sounds a bit woolly, it's because I don't want to give too much away. I liked Horowitz's novel and would recommend it to fans of Holmes and Victorian Crime generally - and if you're not wise to what "The House of Silk" is when you read it, so much the better. Those in the know need not be put off, though - there are more surprises in store when Holmes winds up the case.

torsdag 24 maj 2012

Half-way through...

It feels like a bit of a come-down, this - to go from writing about Donna Tartt to making the obvious point that we risk being beaten in the Eurovision Song Contest by a gang of babuschkas. But what can I do? The week hasn't exactly been full of cultural highlights. And the things I have read/watched, I'm still in the middle of. Some bitty thoughts, then, on the week's events:

Less than half-way through the Eurovision Song Contest: Of course, there is a lot you can be sneering about in connection with this contest: most of all its package which always appears to be the same, irrespective of host country. There seems to be no way around the moment when two or three presenters holler "Hello Europe!" and then engage in leaden banter in more or less accented English. I always thought the script-writers were the ones at fault, but the blame must be shared by the presenters themselves who, as often as not, read their lines rather than say them and have no sense of timing whatsoever. I could see one of the first jokes in the first semi-final coming from miles off, but I was prepared to chuckle good-naturedly over it. But the exaggerated pause before the punch line and unenthusiastic delivery prevented me from doing even that. "You can see we're in for an evening of hilarity", the Swedish commentator quipped drily. While on the subject of timing, the vote-gathering - which mercifully we only get in the final - tends to be the very worst part of the show. We're in for thirty-six variations of the following dialogue:

HOST: Hello Moscow/Paris/Stockholm/wherever!
COUNTRY PRESENTER [Gushingly, after a pause]: Hello X! Thank you for an amazing show! You guys are marvellous!
HOST [Smiling rigidly]: Thank you. [Somewhat sharply, after another pause] May we have your votes, please?
COUNTRY PRESENTER [A bit put out, because he/she had the votes ready all the time, but was waiting for some kind of cue]: Of course. Here are the results of the Y vote...

I know it must be difficult to keep the voting going smoothly - but surely, after all these years, there must be some kind of trick? And then, these latest years, the contest has started to adopt bewildering "mottos". Last year in Germany it was something about heartbeats. This year it's "Light your fire". Er... wait, you mean we should light our own fires? In front of the telly?

One should go easy on the sneering, though. The songs are often not half-bad, and most importantly, sneerers never prosper in Eurovision. It's one thing I love about this contest. It stands up for what it is, and if you don't like it you don't have to watch, or participate. If you do participate, don't expect people to find an arrogant approach hip and admirable. Almost each year, the Brits complain bitterly about not getting more votes. Well, what do they expect? The British comments on Eurovision I've read tend to be a mixture of vitriol and patronising head-patting, as if they were witnessing a distant tribe's picturesque but faintly disturbing sacrificial rites. My guess is that this has caused them no end of damage over the years - that and the admittedly unfairly high expectations we have of British pop groups. Each year, we hope for the new Beatles to turn up.

The reason I think the Russian little old ladies will beat us, in spite of the song not being great and the ladies not being the world's best singers, is the Granny Factor - it's hard not to go "awww" when one beaming babuschka wields a baking-plate of cookies (or maybe wholesome Russian bread). Importantly, though, the number also has a ring of sincerity. Kooky numbers which are engineered to make fun of the whole show are soon weeded out, but if you are sincere, a certain amount of kookiness goes down well with European voters.

I still hope a really good singer will win, though - we're not picking Europe's cuddliest grannies, after all. What about our Loreen and her soaring refrain, now wouldn't she be a worthy winner? Oh, did I mention that Swedes take Eurovision very, very seriously?

Half-way through The Mystery of Edwin Drood (the TV adaptation): Very promising, this, and much closer to its source than the Great Expectations adaptation was. The worst parts of Rosa's pert speeches have been wisely cut, and Tamzin Merchant who plays her makes her as charming as she can. Not quite charming enough for one to understand the amount of male interest she receives, though, but this is Dickens's fault. It would be more understandable if everyone went off the deep end about Edwin. The arrogant youth is played by Freddie Fox, who is strikingly good-looking. Are luminously pretty Dickens heroes becoming a trend? Pip (Douglas Booth) in Great Expectations was such a looker that some reviewers ungallantly complained he unbalanced the narrative by outshining Estella. I'm not sure I should approve of this trend, villain-lover that I am, but I'm prepared to be magnanimous. After all, a Dickens hero is unlikely ever to be the brainiest person in the book, so maybe some kind of compensation is due.

To return to the Mystery, Matthew Rhys is a convincingly torn Jasper, sometimes reeling around tormentedly, sometimes spinning plots with a hard little smile. I was pleased to see he was quite a match for the feral child Deputy (a bit softened in the adaptation, but still a stranger to Dogderish charm). The series is excellently cast all the way: I was particularly impressed by Rory Kinnear as a Reverend Crisparkle whose ears you really didn't feel any urge to box.

More (hooray!) than half-way through The Son of a Servant: Did you ever feel bereft because you are not the trusted friend of a genius? Read Strindberg and you'll feel better. Continuously borrowing money while bombarding his pals with callow salon-radical "sceptical" ideas, he must have been a trying man to spend much time with. When a friend complains of the peasant girls at a country gathering and hankers after the fine ladies in the city, Strindberg's alter ego finds him appallingly snobbish. When the alter ego himself feels ashamed for having briefly loved a simple country girl, he invents a whole questionable evolutionary theory to prove to himself that his shame is quite natural - he compares himself with a thoroughbred stallion who won't mate with a farm mare. Say what? You can never be sure, of course, when Strindberg's tongue is in his cheek as regards the musings of his younger self, but one thing is clear: it's not often enough. Only 130 pages to go.

torsdag 17 maj 2012

Greek tragedy (in Vermont)

When I started Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, I was afraid I’d caught the over-analysing bug. This was clearly the kind of book you should lose yourself into, yet instead of simply accepting the emotions triggered by reading it, I kept marvelling at how skilfully Tartt manipulates the readers to react in a certain way. The opening of the book makes clear what will happen at the climax: a student will be killed, and his closest group of friends, the narrator among them, will be responsible. “Right”, I thought before I had come far, “I can see where this is leading. Poor boy, desperate to hang with the cool kids, plays along when they gang up on the runt of the litter, who is less fascinating, less old-world-charming (a mere banker’s boy) and less academic  than the rest of  his set. And that’s reason enough to kill him, I suppose. Huh.” I’m afraid school has left me suspicious of hangers-on who want to belong at any price, and the book’s hero (or anti-hero) Richard Papen falls neatly into this category.

It turns out, thankfully, not to be as simple as I thought, but still my inner book-reviewer noted with admiration how Tartt led me down a path I had initially been very reluctant to go. Whenever Richard is not with his charmed circle of friends, his life is suitably dismal: his childhood and early youth are dull and grisly, and a freezing winter spent in Vermont without friends or a bean is memorably appalling. In contrast, when Richard is accepted into the select group of students studying Greek at the university of Hampden in Vermont, the reader feels almost as relieved as he is. Idyllic autumn days lie ahead, complete with a ramshackle, atmospheric country house where the Greek set repair to at weekends. Richard is saved from his winter ordeal by the group’s ring-leader, who interestingly enough is neither the dandy nor the frat boy (the future victim) but a serious-minded swot, which gives his actions – which he persuades his friends to join in – a false air of sanity and reasonableness. Add to this the eminent murderability of the frat boy, Bunny, whose reaction when his pals get into a fix is to become increasingly unpredictable and annoying in an almost Raffles-like manner. And yet Richard insists that Bunny’s friends kept a lingering affection for  him until the end, and we’re not allowed to hate him completely. Yes, my inner reviewer conceded, very cleverly done.

By the end, though, I finally abandoned the over-analysing in favour of a stricken “Gosh, this is just so sad”, and the final scene, which didn’t even concern my own favourite mis-behaving Greek student, almost made me cry. In a way, I regretted that I hadn’t been able to lose myself in the idyllic pre-murder scenes more, but if I had I would probably have been even more shaken by the end, and a few days of working and light-hearted Regency Romance-reading wouldn’t have been enough to restore my spirits.              

What did I expect? What book ever contains the message “we killed this guy and then we lived happily ever after”? Even the most hard-bitten author – Zola, say – will generally not let anyone get away with murder. If the cops don’t get you, the Furies certainly will (and Richard & Co. are studying Greek, after all). Things might have turned out even worse for the young killers, I suppose – but still, it’s really, really sad.

One prerequisite for understanding Richard and caring about what happens in The Secret History has to be that you find at least one of his friends as fascinating as he does. Though I can certainly see the point of the swot, Henry, and to a lesser degree of the aloof twins, my favourite was surprisingly enough the dandified Francis. Then again, maybe that’s not very surprising. I may not care for dandies usually, but otherwise Francis ticks a great number of my boxes – he’s pale, thin, red-headed, enjoyably waspish and unashamedly self-centred. Gay, though, so presumably not sensitive to female admiration. After making his acquaintance soonish after the smooth poisoner in Dark Angels, I begin to understand the single girl’s lament: “It’s always the cute ones”.

tisdag 8 maj 2012

Measuring up to Downton

Looks like the BBC and I've made the same mistake - that is to expect that a series which should rightly be judged on its own merits could in some way compare with Downton Abbey. In the Beeb's case, they axed the new series of Upstairs Downstairs, allegedly because its ratings were less than half of those for Downton Abbey. I'm yet to find out if they did the right thing as I haven't watched the latest Upstairs Downstairs episodes - and admittedly, I have grave doubts that it will work without Eileen Atkins's eccentric upper-class bohemian. Here's the rub, though. Those "poor ratings" amounted to 4.45 million viewers. That's half the population of Sweden! I know there are tons more people living in Great Britain, but still - we're talking millions here. Just because Downton Abbey drew 10.5 million viewers, does that necessarily make 4.45 million bad? "Only" 400.000 watched The Killing (no, I haven't seen it, and yes, the sweater looks kinda nice on pictures - shame it obviously doesn't machine-wash), but no-one is calling that a flop.

I can see the problem, though. Upstairs Downstairs was meant to cater to exactly the same crowd as Downton, and yet not even half of them tuned in, even when there's ages to go to the next Downton series. Let's face it, though, the Thirties and the Second World War are not the ideal setting for a comfy costume drama in the family saga vein (you could argue the First World War isn't either, but we didn't see that much of it in Downton anyway). In view of that, 4.45 million is a pretty good showing.

My own "looking for the new Downton" mistake lay in hoping that a drama about the Titanic would somehow not be depressing and involve a lot of deaths just because Julian Fellowes scripted it. After all, he managed to keep First World War casualties at an acceptable level in Downton Abbey. But then that series wasn't called, say, World War One. In the case of the Titanic, depicting the horror and heartache of a famous shipwreck comes first, and keeping the costume drama punters happy comes a very poor second. True, the first three episodes featured as many romances as any schmaltzy love-on-a-cruiser film, but what's the point when it all ends in death and destruction? As so often with disaster scenarios, there are a lot of scenes where you find yourself groaning "just get in the boat, you fool". Frankly, it's hard to care about characters who whine "I'm not leaving without you", and treat a sinking ship as if it were a train station platform where you have all the time in the world to look lovingly into each other's eyes, while there are other luckless passengers who don't even get within waving distance of a lifeboat. Not leaving? Fine. Get out of the way and drown.

The series is the bleaker for not having an epilogue telling us something about what happened to the surviving characters afterwards. There's a good Swedish word for the kind of winding-down scenes at the end that almost every drama benefits from having - eftersnack, meaning approximately "after-the-event-natter". Here, there is no after-the-event-nattering at all, one of the consequences being that I'm still not one hundred percent certain about who lived and who died. It's clear enough in most cases, I suppose - but did the stoker make it, for instance?

In spite of smuggling in a sort-of-decent-toff (who's no patch on the Earl of Grantham if you ask me), it's clear Fellowes wanted to make something completely different than Downton Abbey. If you're fascinated with the Titatic disaster, this is the series for you (you'll also get your prejudices pandered to in some cases - I absolutely refuse to believe the "it will upset the ladies" line got a second airing after the too-few-lifeboats-blunder, especially in connection with locking Italian waiters in and leaving them to drown). If you're a Downton Abbey fan - give it a miss and keep waiting.