Warm and Fuzzy

Remarkably Bright Creatures is a warm and fuzzy mystery. Contradiction in terms, you say?  Not if you’re Shelby Van Pelt and can pull it off. I enjoyed the book because it’s warm and fuzzy, it’s witty, original and quirky. I also enjoyed it because its main protagonist is a 70- year-old woman. There are very few books, movies or series about people over 70. Remarkably Bright Creatures is one of the very few. Besides, it treats its protagonist with respect, without stereotyping or pidgeon-holing her.

Tova Sullivan, 70, has recently lost her husband of over 45 years. The couple’s only son, Erik, disappeared about thirty years ago when he was eighteen, and was never found. The police concluded that he had committed suicide, although his parents disagreed because he was a happy and thriving teenager.

At this stage in her life Tova works a part-time job at nights as the cleaner of an aquarium in Sowell Bay. Although her friends try their best to convince her not to, – she doesn’t need the money, and she’s too old to be on her feet and do physical labor – Tova likes to keep busy. It takes her mind off her loneliness, grief and obsession with the mystery of her son’s disappearance.

At her job she befriends Marcellus, the remarkably bright Pacific octopus, who is an expert at escaping his tank, wandering around the aquarium and collecting coins, earrings and other objects visitors drop in the halls. Marcellus understands human speech, is observant and notices and figures out a lot of things that humans don’t, or can’t be bothered to.

The second storyline is about Cameron, a thirty-year-old ne’er-do-well, whom his mother abandoned when he was 9, and who’s never met his father. Although remarkably bright in some ways, Cameron can never hold down a job or a relationship. He travels from his native California to Sowell Bay in search of his father. When Tova injures her foot, Cameron is hired as the night cleaner and meets Marcellus.

Some chapters are narrated by Marcellus, the most lovable and smart character of the book, who has keen observations about humans and their weird behaviour.

“Humans are the only species who subvert truth for their own entertainment. They call them jokes. Sometimes puns.”

“Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”

Shelby Van Pelt adds a number of other characters to the mix. Among them are Tova’s gossiping friends, the store owner who has a crush on Tova, Cameron’s love interests and his aunt who raised him. All characters are lovable and kind, and Van Pelt does a great job portraying both their capabilities and idiosyncrasies convincingly. The tone is humorous and light, and the mystery leads the reader by the nose.

Through casual conversations and remarks, gradual revelations are made about the past, but the main catalyst and hero of the day is Marcellus, who despite his limited physical abilities is able to help his friend. “Secrets are everywhere. Some humans are crammed full of them. How do they not explode? It seems to be a hallmark of the human species: abysmal communication skills.”

Although unrealistic and far-fetched in some respects, Remarkably Bright Creatures truthfully portrays the issues the elderly face in the final stages of their lives. But despite its serious themes it is an entertaining, funny and feel-good page-turner and a pleasure to read.

Interesting but Manipulative

Big Lies in a Small Town is an expertly crafted novel by an experienced author, who in some respects takes her reader for a ride.

New York Times best-selling author Diane Chamberlain weaves her yarn around two characters in two timelines. Anna Dale is a young artist who is commissioned with painting a mural for the Edenton post office in 1940s in North Carolina. She’s a young, female, forward thinking art-school graduate who is an outsider in a more conservative, old-fashioned, racist town. As such, despite some people supporting her, she is met with quite a bit of resistance from the Edenton locals.

The mural never makes it to the post office. Both it and Anna disappear under mysterious circumstances.

Fast forward to June 2018, when Morgan Christopher, an art student is in prison for a three-year term for DUI. She gets a surprise visit from two middle-aged black women she doesn’t know. One of them, Lisa Williams, is the daughter of a recently deceased artist whom Morgan admires. The other woman is Lisa’s attorney. They offer to get Morgan released under parole, if she agrees to restore an old and soiled mural which Lisa’s dad owned. The restoration must be completed by August 5^th, so it can be hung in the foyer of a new gallery Lisa’s father wished to open on that date.

The offer is spelled out in Lisa’s dad, Jesse Jameson Williams’s will, as a condition of part of Lisa’s considerable inheritance.

Morgan is sure this is a mistake. She hasn’t even graduated from art school, she’s never been good at her studies, she’s never done art restoration and she never met Lisa’s dad, her favorite artist. But the attorney reads her the will, and convinces Morgan that she is indeed the person J. J. Williams chose to restore the mural.

The chapters alternate between 1940 and 2018 and the story of these two young female artists, full of challenges, unravels. The premise is filled with questions: what became of Anna Dale in Edenton? How did she disappear? What happened to her mural?

Why did J.J. Williams choose Morgan Christopher, who’s not qualified, whom he’d never met, to restore his mural? Can she really restore the mural in such a short time, without knowing the first thing about art restoration? Why did he choose that arbitrary date to open his gallery on, and why did he want that specific mural hung in the foyer?

Answers to a myriad of questions start appearing, but painfully slowly. Diane Chamberlain throws the reader a few crumbs in each chapter. However, she takes so long to do it that the reader sometimes feels like giving up reading. She mixes tidbits of revelations with a heavy dose of a prolonged development of a romantic relationship between Morgan and the curator of the gallery, and a totally unnecessary sprained ankle in one storyline, and the details of Anna’s friendship with her landlady’s daughter in the other. When there’s no other credible way of giving fragments of information regarding the myriad of unknown facts, Chamberlain brandishes a diary from an unexpected source, just at the right time, which fills in some of the blanks.

Overall the story is interesting, the characters likeable, and the writing proficient. But the narrative depends on coincidences, sends you off on wild-goose chases, and is generally arbitrary and manipulative. It underestimates the reader’s intelligence and left this reader with the feeling of being cunningly led by the nose.

Holy Plot!

Tim Mason’s The Darwin Affair, a whirlwind murder mystery set in Victorian England, is imaginative, entertaining and dramatic. It’s written almost like a screenplay for a movie: short scenes cut abruptly to the next ones, creating non-stop action and suspense.

The story is about Inspector Detective Charles Field of the London Metropolitan Police, who while investigating an apparent assassination attempt on Queen Victoria, comes across a number of strange disappearances and murders. No one in the police force sees any connections among these incidents except Fields, who has an uphill battle on his hands. He risks life and limb to solve this complicated mystery.

The plot is super-busy and full of twists and surprises. It’s also full of body parts and variously fashioned rapid-fire murders. A number of innocent young boys get killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Throats are slashed, bodies thrown into river, corkscrews stuck into thighs, ears cut off… Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of violence, but these are so over the top that they don’t bother you the way realistic portrayals of crime do.

The book is also crowded with fictional and historic characters. Tim Mason’s love of Dickens is obvious in the character department.

In true Dickensian fashion, he has poor, orphaned and helpless children, turned petty or serious criminals. He has flamboyant types from a witch complete with huge facial warts to a super-tall villain with indelible piercing eyes to a whole company of body-snatchers. He gives his characters names like Button, Mary Do-Not and Blinky.

The lineup of his famous, historically based characters includes Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Carl Marx and many others. It took Mason four years to complete the novel, partly because of all the research he had to do to include historical characters and events in the story.

But all is not blood and gore in The Darwin Affair.

There is humour in the depiction of characters and relationships. The relationship between Mrs. Field and Bessie, her housekeeper, is hilarious. Not only is Bessie incompetent and lazy, she is also entitled and capricious. Mrs. Field has to regularly turn a blind eye to Bessie’s shortcomings and spend her time placating her, when she throws her regular tantrums.

The way Detective Field is treated at the court is also very funny. The queen’s entourage is obsessed with appearances and decorum. And both the queen and prince Albert want their privacy. So Field, who is neither well dressed, nor familiar with the court proceedings is a nuisance to them. While he is risking his life, being beaten and shot at to protect the queen, every time he requests an audience with her, he is met with exclamations like “You can’t go in like that!” because he has blood on his face or mud on his pants. And when he finally gets through, he is met with rolling eyes and exasperation because he’s not wanted.

There’s the portrayal of deep-seated classism. Field is always made to feel inferior, not only to the royalty, but also those in the higher ranks in the police. Carl Marx’s words don’t help him either.

And there’s a good dollop of tenderness and humanity. Victoria is portrayed as being sincerely in love with Albert. Although Field and his wife comically call each other Mr. Field and Mrs. Field, even when they’re alone with each other, there’s a deep affection between them that comes across in the way they treat each other. Blinky’s protestations of fondness and devotion to Tom are both heart-melting and funny.

Although the logic behind some actions of some characters is not clear, the plot advances at such break-neck speed that the reader forgets about its seeming inconsistencies.

I listened to audiobook of The Darwin Affair, and I would be remiss not to mention Derek Perkins’s superb narration complete with accents, intonations and voice changes for children, women and men.

The Darwin Affair is creative, witty and enjoyable.