Observations by Gaslight: Stories from the World of Sherlock Holmes by Lyndsay Faye

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Faye uses the now near-standard Sherlockian premise of a box of papers tucked away and newly discovered that contain new tales of the Great Detective.  The twist this time is that, instead of a trove of Watson’s writings, this collection has been written by a number of people who knew Holmes and give their own impressions of the man as they relate their tales.  This has the novelty of presenting several different views of Holmes all under the same cover.  Most of the stories are told by minor characters from the canon: Irene Adler, Wiggins of the Baker Street Irregulars, Mrs. Hudson, etc.

I was very much taken with this collection. The stories have a very strong sense of place, that place being the London of the Victorian era. There’s elegance and grime, fog and chill. The stories are in some ways character studies of their narrators, with Holmes playing a greater or lesser role depending on the individual.  In “The Song of a Want,” for example, a young solicitor named Wiggins looks back on his days eking out a living with his best friend Meggie. Cold, starving, and always in danger, Wiggins meets an extraordinary man who comes to their rescue.  An irate Inspector Lestrade grouses and grumbles but when a young woman entreats his aid to look for her missing sister, he may just have to get a little help from a vexing, know-it-all consulting detective. Of course, a certain Irene Adler makes an appearance as well. . . .

The writing is excellent, and I enjoyed seeing Holmes through the perception of a number of different people, not just the admiring Watson.  I confess some pastiches of Doyle’s work have left me unsatisfied, either being too worshipful or clichéd, but these six stories seemed fresh and alive to me.

Faye has written several historical novels, including a Sherlock Holmes, but also a series set in New York City in the mid-1800s. She is also the author of Jane Steele, a darkly humorous take on Jane Eyre. Faye has been nominated for several awards, including an Edgar.

Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch

Reviewed by Kristin

Peter Grant has seen some weird stuff in his time with the police. When Peter first started as a probationary constable, he worried that he would be stuck in some dead-end job processing reports where the most danger facing him would be from paper cuts. But when Peter interviews an eyewitness one night who turns out to be a ghost, he comes to the attention of Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who has a vested interest in all things supernatural. After all, in addition to his decades with the London Metropolitan Police, Nightingale is the last wizard in England. Someone has to deal with the weird stuff.*

The series begins with Rivers of London. Peter is partnered with Lesley May, also a probationary constable, and the two have some truly strange adventures as they await their permanent assignments. When Peter is assigned to work with Inspector Nightingale, he discovers much about the otherworldly aspects of London. The rivers have personalities, or possibly something…more. Evil hides behind innocuous faces, ready to spring forth and consume the innocent.

Peter’s family background has prepared him for the unusual, with a black mother from Sierra Leone and a British white jazz musician father. The family ties are tight, but Peter does his best to go about his business while constantly running into aunties or cousins. The crowd of family acquaintances is immense, which Peter accepts stoically. Sometimes those connections come in handy, after all.

Ben Aaronovitch has an interesting writing background; he wrote for Doctor Who and several publications with varying degrees of quality. After a spell, he ended up working as a bookseller, where he was inspired to create his own original characters, and thus Peter Grant was born. Over the course of the series, Aaronovitch has developed a wide cast of characters and even the smaller personas often pop back up in subsequent books. The characters came to life even more vividly for me as I have listened to some of these titles as audiobooks narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.

I anxiously await Amongst Our Weapons coming out this April, as Peter has some rather interesting events happening in his personal life, and I expect the magical challenges of his job will continue as well. The weird stuff too.

The series includes:

1. Rivers of London aka Midnight Riot (2011)

2. Moon Over Soho (2011)

3. Whispers Under Ground (2012)

4. Broken Homes (2013)

5. Foxglove Summer (2014)

5.5. The Furthest Station (novella) (2017)

6. The Hanging Tree (2016)

7. Lies Sleeping (2018)

7.5. The October Man (novella) (2019)

8. False Value (2020)

9. Amongst Our Weapons (April 2022)

   Tales from the Folly (short stories) (2020)

   What Abigail Did That Summer (short stories) (2021)

 

* Yes, I keep mentioning the “weird stuff,” but Peter does keep commenting on the unusual amount of “weird ____” that happens, making my phrase more fitting for a PG-rated bookblog.

 

A Gift From Bob Film

 

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

 James Bowen was an addict in the streets of London, busking and selling copies of The Big Issue, a paper which helps those who are down and out earn money to support themselves as a way out of poverty.  James was barely scraping by when he encountered an injured orange cat.  He took the cat to a charity vet for medical attention, spending the last of his money to do so.  When he recovered, the cat—now called Bob—attached himself to James and went out with him to the streets every day.  James credits Bob with giving him the incentive to get clean.

Publicity about the unlikely duo attracted a book publisher and soon A Street Cat Named Bob appeared and was a best seller.  That book was followed by others, including A Gift from Bob, The World According to Bob, and The Little Book of Bob.

The Cinderella story continued with a movie starring Luke Treadaway as James in A Street Cat Named Bob which included some scenes with the real Bob.  

Now we have a sequel film, A Gift from Bob, which arrived just in time for your holiday viewing pleasure.  When the film opens, we see James enjoying the benefits of his new status as author but a chance encounter with a street performer being harassed causes James to remember his last Christmas on the streets.  Out of money to pay his bills, he is struggling and not at all interested in the seasonal spirit. His friend Bea tries to bring some holiday cheer in the form of a Christmas tree to be decorated with notes of what to be thankful for, but James isn’t in the mood.

Things only get worse when someone reports him as being unfit to keep Bob, causing the local animal services to launch an investigation. Even Bea loses the spirit when the charity she work for is burgled, and all the gifts and food stolen.

As with almost any holiday film, the outcome can be guessed but the happiness is in the journey.  It’s a sweet, feel good film with some lovely performances.  Bob the cat—yes, the real Bob—appears in the film quite a bit with just a few “stunt cats” filling in at times.

Sadly, some months after the film was completed, Bob passed away.  The movie is dedicated to his memory.

The library owns copies of both movies and the books.  Reviews of the books have appeared at the Bookblog here and here.

If you’re looking for a new Christmas film to brighten the holidays, give A Gift from Bob a try!

Reviews of the books are here:

A Street Cat Named Bob

The World According to Bob 

A Gift From Bob 

Nevermore: Death Becomes Them, People of the Abyss, And the Mountains Echoed, The Outsider

 

Reported by Garry

 

Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious by Alix Strauss is an in-depth look at the deaths of several well-known figures. Subjects in this book include Kurt Cobain, Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Dorothy Dandridge, and many more. Our reader thought the book was a fun look at a terrible subject, and recommends it for anyone looking for more information about how and why these people took their own lives—and their deaths—into their own hands.

 

The People of the Abyss by Jack London is the American author’s personal account of his experiences in the East End of London. London (the author,that is) went undercover for several weeks in 1902—sleeping on the street, in workhouses, and boarding with a poor family to research the deplorable conditions of the London slums. For generations, the East End had been notorious for deep poverty, overcrowding, and associated social problems. Pointing out that half of the children born in the East End at the turn of the century died before their 5^th birthday, our reviewer said that this book was at once the best book of social commentary that she had read, and also the worst, in that it was the most depressing. This book is now considered a classic piece of investigative journalism, and is highly recommended by our reader.

 

And The Mountains Echoed, first published in 2013, is the third novel by the bestselling author of the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini. Nine interwoven stories revolve around the relationship between Afghani brother and sister Abdullah and Pari, and the lives of those around them. Spanning three continents and stretching from the early 1950s into the 2010s, this deeply personal story explores the interconnectedness of family and what we do for and to those we love. Our reader very highly recommends this multi-award winning, bestselling book.

 

Our next Nevermore member says that The Outsider by Stephen King is guaranteed to make your skin crawl. In Flint City, Ohio, an eleven-year-old boy has been sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. Eyewitness testimony, fingerprints, and DNA all shockingly point to Terry Maitland, one of the town’s most outstanding citizens. However, Maitland also has an iron-clad alibi placing him at a distant location at the time of the murder. How could both those things be true? Who actually committed the murder? Our reader liked the way that this book personifies evil as a real, tangible person, not simply “a thing that goes bump in the night,” finding this book to be an excellent and extremely creepy read.

 

Also Mentioned:

 

Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler as told to Joseph B. Egan

Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 2^nd Edition edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Falling by T.J. Newman

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Secret Sisters by Joy Callaway

That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay

Fatal Intent by Tammy Euliano

Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth by Tony Hiss

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

1984 (Graphic Novel Version) by George Orwell

The Best Of Me by David Sedaris

Martita, I Remember You by Sandra Cisneros

I Couldn’t Love You More by Esther Freud

Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

A librarian friend and I exchange books on a regular basis, since we like a lot of the same authors though sometimes we each find the other’s selections to be a bit dubious. Such was the case when I opened the latest box from her and found the first four books in the Enola Holmes series.  While I have no qualms about picking up a Young Adult or children’s book to read*, I have been a little burned out on Sherlock Holmes. After all, there seems to be no end to the books, TV shows, and movies featuring the character.  Some of these are quite good, but there are just so many of them.  So. Very. Many.

As it turned out, I needed to read a YA book for Book Bingo so I decided Enola would do.  She was handy and the book looked short.

The premise is that the Holmes boys (Mycroft and Sherlock) have a much younger sister back at the family estate in the care of their mother, their father having passed away sometime previous to the start of the story.  Their mother is a staunch Suffragist with radical notions about women being able to make their own choices and to fend for themselves if need be, so Enola has been brought up to know all sorts of strange things, such as how to ride a bicycle, how to break codes, and how to think for herself.  She is less well trained in, say, needlepoint or cookery.

As the story opens, Enola discovers that her mother has disappeared.  There is no note, no explanation. When the next morning comes and there is still no word, Enola travels to town to make enquiries and to send telegrams to her brothers, advising them of the situation.

They turn up promptly, shocked at Enola’s lack of ladylike qualities and propose to rectify that by sending her off to boarding school while they track down the errant Lady Holmes. Enola in turn knows enough about boarding schools to be horrified, but they refuse to listen to her and go about the preparations.

So Enola takes to her heels and runs away.

She must be clever enough not only to make her own way in the world, but to evade her brothers—including the one who is the world-famous detective—and to find what has become of her mother.

I was surprised at how much I liked this book.  In fact, I read the other three in quick succession and then checked out the last two from our children’s library. While each book has its own mystery to solve, they form one long story arc.

Enola is clever, brave, and ingenious, every bit a match for her brothers.  She is young and makes some of the mistakes of youth but she is extremely resourceful.  She is also a caring, decent girl who wants to help others. It was delightful to see her grow and become more confident as the books progressed.

I also found I enjoyed seeing Sherlock from a fresh perspective, that of brother and (somewhat stodgy) gentleman. To his credit, he does gradually re-examine some of his prejudices over the course of the series in a way that is believable and doesn’t necessarily contradict the original tales.

One of the things I liked was Springer’s honest description of the London of the day and the status of women.  While we tend to picture it as filled with well-dressed, well-fed genteel folk, Enola is very aware of the dire poverty and degradation that lurks at every turn.  Some of the descriptions were hard to read, even though Springer doesn’t linger there. The rosy view of women then as being all afternoon teas and beautiful dresses doesn’t take into account the reality of many social and economic barriers, not to mention corsets.  (If you laughed at the latter, you won’t when you finish the series.)

Fun, thoughtful, empowering, and informative, these are marvelous adventures. I was sorry to finish the last one even as I was aching to find out what happened.  To my delight, I found that Springer has finally written another in the series, so I will be watching for Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche to come out in August 31.

In the meantime, I will also try to watch the Netflix adaptation of the series starring Millie Bobby Brown as Enola and Henry Cavill as Sherlock.

The series is better read in order:

The Case of the Missing Marquess

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady

The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets

The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan

The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline

The Case of the Gypsy Goodbye

 

 

*I sometimes find that YA and children’s books are more committed to telling a good story than adult books which sometimes pad the prose to the point that I wonder if the author is paid by the word.