Friday, January 4, 2013
Bright Young People
The Kardashians are not original. Before they infected our tabloids there were Studio 54 denizens who were famous by proxy and before that fur-and-diamond wearing socialites and social climbers. Even they weren't the first superstars who were famous for being famous. Nearly 100 years ago, British newspapers breathlessly followed the exploits - real and imagined - of the Bright Young People. A strange mix of the titled, the noveau riche, and pretenders to both titles, they flitted from party to manor house to elaborate practical joke, entrancing the public and (in some cases) horrifying staid parents. DJ Taylor engagingly catalogs the parties and scandals, but was perhaps a bit too even-handed in applying attention to the range of characters. Perhaps that's because Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell were on the edge of the group, and the Mitford sisters (save Diana) were too young to fully participate in the social whirl. Elizabeth Ponsoby and Brenda Dean Paul, on the other hand, staggered from party to scandal to salacious exploit, and they feature more prominently in Taylor's book than the truly accomplished members of their generation. In a way it's comforting to see how prominent they were and contrast that with how obscure they now are. It gives me hope that in a dozen years or so, the "reality" TV starlets who infect the magazine covers I see while buying groceries will have faded in to blessed obscurity.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The Knife Man
How could I have never heard of John Hunter? The father of modern surgery, mentor to the founders of Pennsylvania Hospital and to Edward Jenner, and the inspiration for Dr. Doolittle? He was a truly remarkable man, and yet even as someone who considers herself fairly aware of scientific pioneers, I had no idea who he was. Then again, I've spent the past decade working a few blocks from the Mutter Museum and I still haven't managed to walk over there.
Surgeons are currently considered the top of the medical ladder, so it's easy to forget that only 300 years ago, the reverse was true. Surgery in the pre-germ-theory, pre-anesthetic days was understandably a matter of last resort, and surgeons were only a few steps removed from the days when amputating limbs or excising tumors was a sideline for your neighborhood barber. Doctors of every type had only a general knowledge of anatomy due to restrictions on dissection, and it was Hunter's skill with dissection that led to his groundbreaking work.
John Hunter was born in Scotland in 1728, the youngest member of a large family. He didn't learn to read until he was about 10 (Moore suspects that he was dyslexic), and was generally considered unpromising when he moved to London at age 20 to serve as an assistant to his older brother, William. A society doctor and medical lecturer, William needed someone to handle the less appealing parts of his job, and John proved to have a real talent for dissection. More than that, he was wiling to steal bodies when necessary and combined a deep intellectual curiosity with meticulous note-taking, leading to major advances in medical treatment. He was also willing to experiment on himself, notably by *not* operating on his ruptured Achilles tendon (theorizing that with rest and primitive physical therapy it would heal on its own) and by infecting himself with gonorrhea and syphilis in an attempt to determine whether they were two different diseases or two stages of the same disease (I suggest that the more squeamish among you skip that chapter).
Hunter's professional interests leaked into his personal life. He was happily married to a minor poet from a higher social rank but had a long engagement because of the financial precariousness of his early career. After they married, Anne carried on salons while John brought specimens and cadavers in through the back entrance (this house apparently inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to give Doctor Jekyll a similar residence) and operated a menagerie of exotic wild animals. Hunter was also short-tempered and a poor money manager; when he died of an apparent stroke while arguing with a student, he was deeply in debt and his carefully collected specimens had to be sold. Many of them now reside in a museum operated by the Royal College of Physicians - a museum which is at the top of my list of places to visit during my next trip to London.
Surgeons are currently considered the top of the medical ladder, so it's easy to forget that only 300 years ago, the reverse was true. Surgery in the pre-germ-theory, pre-anesthetic days was understandably a matter of last resort, and surgeons were only a few steps removed from the days when amputating limbs or excising tumors was a sideline for your neighborhood barber. Doctors of every type had only a general knowledge of anatomy due to restrictions on dissection, and it was Hunter's skill with dissection that led to his groundbreaking work.
John Hunter was born in Scotland in 1728, the youngest member of a large family. He didn't learn to read until he was about 10 (Moore suspects that he was dyslexic), and was generally considered unpromising when he moved to London at age 20 to serve as an assistant to his older brother, William. A society doctor and medical lecturer, William needed someone to handle the less appealing parts of his job, and John proved to have a real talent for dissection. More than that, he was wiling to steal bodies when necessary and combined a deep intellectual curiosity with meticulous note-taking, leading to major advances in medical treatment. He was also willing to experiment on himself, notably by *not* operating on his ruptured Achilles tendon (theorizing that with rest and primitive physical therapy it would heal on its own) and by infecting himself with gonorrhea and syphilis in an attempt to determine whether they were two different diseases or two stages of the same disease (I suggest that the more squeamish among you skip that chapter).
Hunter's professional interests leaked into his personal life. He was happily married to a minor poet from a higher social rank but had a long engagement because of the financial precariousness of his early career. After they married, Anne carried on salons while John brought specimens and cadavers in through the back entrance (this house apparently inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to give Doctor Jekyll a similar residence) and operated a menagerie of exotic wild animals. Hunter was also short-tempered and a poor money manager; when he died of an apparent stroke while arguing with a student, he was deeply in debt and his carefully collected specimens had to be sold. Many of them now reside in a museum operated by the Royal College of Physicians - a museum which is at the top of my list of places to visit during my next trip to London.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Dispensation of Death
I think Michael Jecks changed editors with Dispensation of Death. It's a much more tightly plotted and cleanly paced book than his last several Sir Baldwin novels. Or maybe he just realized he didn't need a subplot to get his novel past the 450-page line. He's still keeping Baldwin and Simon away from their Devon homes, but at least he allows them to work as a team.
Baldwin and Simon have travelled to London; Baldwin to serve in Parliament and Simon at the request of the Bishop of Exeter. They are thrust into a court in disarray - Edward II has essentially imprisoned his Queen Isabella with his niece (and his lover's wife) Eleanor as her de facto jailer. Soon, a masked attacker kills one of her ladies in waiting and a known assassin's mutilated body is found behind Edward's throne. Baldwin and Simon set out to solve both murders, despite Sir Hugh le Despenser's disguised threat to reveal Baldwin's history as a Knight Templar and the King's disinterest in solving the original crime once Hugh is himself targeted by an assassin. Jecks effectively uses shifting POV to move the story along and neatly interlaces the plot threads, ending with a slight twist. For the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to reading the next Sir Baldwin mystery. I just hope that I'm not disappointed - the final page implies that his next adventure will be in France, and the knight's last overseas trip when the series started to decline.
Baldwin and Simon have travelled to London; Baldwin to serve in Parliament and Simon at the request of the Bishop of Exeter. They are thrust into a court in disarray - Edward II has essentially imprisoned his Queen Isabella with his niece (and his lover's wife) Eleanor as her de facto jailer. Soon, a masked attacker kills one of her ladies in waiting and a known assassin's mutilated body is found behind Edward's throne. Baldwin and Simon set out to solve both murders, despite Sir Hugh le Despenser's disguised threat to reveal Baldwin's history as a Knight Templar and the King's disinterest in solving the original crime once Hugh is himself targeted by an assassin. Jecks effectively uses shifting POV to move the story along and neatly interlaces the plot threads, ending with a slight twist. For the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to reading the next Sir Baldwin mystery. I just hope that I'm not disappointed - the final page implies that his next adventure will be in France, and the knight's last overseas trip when the series started to decline.
Monday, October 1, 2012
The Young Elizabeth
I'm fascinated by Elizabeth I, but her biographies, no matter how well written, can be slightly exhausting. She was born into intrigue and chaos, alternately neglected and used as a political pawn, formed and and ruled a nascent empire, and then allowed her kingdom to slide back into intrigue and chaos as she crept towards death without clarifying her line of succession. Alison Plowden avoided this problem by ending her biography with Elizabeth's coronation. The Young Elizabeth shows how Gloriana developed from such an unpromising childhood.
The shorthand tale of Henry VIII is of a brutish man who cast off wives for frivolous reasons. The truth, of course, is more complicated. He and Catherine of Aragon had a companionable marriage, but only one surviving child, and England had not yet successfully been ruled by a Queen Regnant. He fell in love - or in lust - with the sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, strong-willed Anne Boleyn. Her charms led to a crisis of conscience (or so he told himself), telling him that his marriage to Catherine was cursed because it was adulterous for him to have married his late brother's wife, and he began the long political chess match that eventually led to the formation of the Anglican Church. He married Anne, and when the disappointing birth of Princess Elizabeth was not followed by the birth of a prince, Anne's imperious ways meant that she had no one to help her when she was accused of adultery and treason and beheaded by a French swordsman.
Elizabeth was not quite three years old when her mother died, and if not exactly left to fend for herself, not exactly lavished with attention, either. She, like her father and siblings, was highly intelligent and benefited from the best education available to a Renaissance royal. By her teens, she was fluent in several languages, an accomplished horsewoman, and a talented and enthusiastic musician - in other words, ideally suited to be the bride in an alliance-cementing marriage.
The short reigns of both her younger brother and older sister made marriage negotiations difficult and her marketability questionable, particularly with the shifting religious lines in 16th Century Europe. Henry VIII, despite the break with Rome, died as a self-identified Catholic whose widow nearly missed being tried for treason over her Protestant beliefs. Edward VI, naturally a rather priggish boy, had been raised as strong and narrow-minded a Protestant as his eldest sister Mary had become a Catholic in the years she clung to her discarded mother and her faith. Elizabeth's beliefs were apparently a more moderate form of Protestantism and her years in exile and captivity may have allowed her to develop the political compromise which was the Anglican Church. Those years also taught her to be wary, trusting no one in a world where her stepmother's husband could nearly ruin her reputation with a few ill-advised games - and then suggest that he marry her after Katherine Parr died in childbirth. Eleven years spent wondering whether she would be married off in an internal or international alliance, or simply beheaded on trumped-up charges like her mother could have destroyed her. Instead, they forged the intellect that turned an almost forgotten girl into Gloriana - the first great Queen Regnant in Europe.
The shorthand tale of Henry VIII is of a brutish man who cast off wives for frivolous reasons. The truth, of course, is more complicated. He and Catherine of Aragon had a companionable marriage, but only one surviving child, and England had not yet successfully been ruled by a Queen Regnant. He fell in love - or in lust - with the sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, strong-willed Anne Boleyn. Her charms led to a crisis of conscience (or so he told himself), telling him that his marriage to Catherine was cursed because it was adulterous for him to have married his late brother's wife, and he began the long political chess match that eventually led to the formation of the Anglican Church. He married Anne, and when the disappointing birth of Princess Elizabeth was not followed by the birth of a prince, Anne's imperious ways meant that she had no one to help her when she was accused of adultery and treason and beheaded by a French swordsman.
Elizabeth was not quite three years old when her mother died, and if not exactly left to fend for herself, not exactly lavished with attention, either. She, like her father and siblings, was highly intelligent and benefited from the best education available to a Renaissance royal. By her teens, she was fluent in several languages, an accomplished horsewoman, and a talented and enthusiastic musician - in other words, ideally suited to be the bride in an alliance-cementing marriage.
The short reigns of both her younger brother and older sister made marriage negotiations difficult and her marketability questionable, particularly with the shifting religious lines in 16th Century Europe. Henry VIII, despite the break with Rome, died as a self-identified Catholic whose widow nearly missed being tried for treason over her Protestant beliefs. Edward VI, naturally a rather priggish boy, had been raised as strong and narrow-minded a Protestant as his eldest sister Mary had become a Catholic in the years she clung to her discarded mother and her faith. Elizabeth's beliefs were apparently a more moderate form of Protestantism and her years in exile and captivity may have allowed her to develop the political compromise which was the Anglican Church. Those years also taught her to be wary, trusting no one in a world where her stepmother's husband could nearly ruin her reputation with a few ill-advised games - and then suggest that he marry her after Katherine Parr died in childbirth. Eleven years spent wondering whether she would be married off in an internal or international alliance, or simply beheaded on trumped-up charges like her mother could have destroyed her. Instead, they forged the intellect that turned an almost forgotten girl into Gloriana - the first great Queen Regnant in Europe.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The Accidental Billionaires
I'm probably the exception, but I thought that the weakest part of The Social Network was the dialog. With the exception of Andrew Garfield's Eduardo Savarin and Rashida Jones's lawyer, everyone sounded the same. I chalked that up to their otherness - Jones appeared in framing scenes rather than the main story, and Garfield's natural accent is English rather than American. Whatever the reason, this distinctiveness made me find Savarin more sympathetic than the rest of the young men involved in the founding of Facebook.
Savarin does not come across quite as well in the source material. He was Ben Mezrich's main source for The Accidental Billionaires, and serves as the narrator as well. Saverin met Mark Zuckerberg at a fraternity event and they bonded over the pathetic nature of the party. A few months later Zuckerberg created The Facebook - a database combining photo databases from the Harvard dorms, crashed the university's system, and altered how we keep in touch. He's the brains - Savarin is the money. An econ major who'd used a weather algorithm to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the commodes market, he's not really up on the technical aspects of Facebook, but he has the cash to bankroll the startup and the business savvy to start the legal battle against the Winklevoss twins who'd asked Zuckerberg to develop a similar database for them.
That division of labor seemed to work until the semester ended and they ended up on opposite coasts. Savarin had an internship in New York, and even though he gave it up before lunch on his first day, he remained there, soliciting investors. Zuckerberg took the company to Silicon Valley, where he met Napster founder Sean Parker and immersed himself in programming, with breaks for raucous parties and occasional meetings with angel investors. Saverin felt squeezed out, withdrew his funding, and another lawsuit began.
The Accidental Billionaires is largely a synthesis of he said/he said transcripts. Mezerich examined court filings and interviewed some of the participants - but not Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps this is why Zuckerberg appears more sympathetic than his compatriots. He's a cypher, but at least he's not a jerk. Saverin talks about him, but never seems to know what is (former) friend actually thinks, and compared to Saverin's social-climbing, money-hungry insecurity and the Winklevoss twins' entitled arrogance, the almost personality-free programmer wins Mr. Congeniality by default. He's a geek, but unlike the thin-skinned Olympic athletes and the socially awkward financier, he's comfortable with who he is.
Saverin is a striver, who seems more focused on status (and joining one of Harvard's exclusive clubs) and has the sort of misogynistic streak that comes from ignorance rather than hatred of women. His offhand comments about unattractive female classmates and "Asian girlfriends" are rather distasteful, and not the sort of comments I remember my geeky college classmates making (although, to be fair, they might not make them in front of an actual girl). His final scenes are rather pathetic, showing an almost unimaginably wealthy 20-something, trading on his fame to pick up "hot Asian girls" and his membership in the Phoenix club to impress students at his alma mater. Zuckerberg seems to have remained so uninterested in his image that he still dresses like a 15-year-old, but maintained a long term relationship with the former classmate he married the week she graduated from medical school and Facebook went public. I doubt he's a saint, and he might even be a jerk, but if you take money out of the equation, he still won. And I wonder if that bothers Saverin even more than having his Facebook shares diluted.
Savarin does not come across quite as well in the source material. He was Ben Mezrich's main source for The Accidental Billionaires, and serves as the narrator as well. Saverin met Mark Zuckerberg at a fraternity event and they bonded over the pathetic nature of the party. A few months later Zuckerberg created The Facebook - a database combining photo databases from the Harvard dorms, crashed the university's system, and altered how we keep in touch. He's the brains - Savarin is the money. An econ major who'd used a weather algorithm to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the commodes market, he's not really up on the technical aspects of Facebook, but he has the cash to bankroll the startup and the business savvy to start the legal battle against the Winklevoss twins who'd asked Zuckerberg to develop a similar database for them.
That division of labor seemed to work until the semester ended and they ended up on opposite coasts. Savarin had an internship in New York, and even though he gave it up before lunch on his first day, he remained there, soliciting investors. Zuckerberg took the company to Silicon Valley, where he met Napster founder Sean Parker and immersed himself in programming, with breaks for raucous parties and occasional meetings with angel investors. Saverin felt squeezed out, withdrew his funding, and another lawsuit began.
The Accidental Billionaires is largely a synthesis of he said/he said transcripts. Mezerich examined court filings and interviewed some of the participants - but not Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps this is why Zuckerberg appears more sympathetic than his compatriots. He's a cypher, but at least he's not a jerk. Saverin talks about him, but never seems to know what is (former) friend actually thinks, and compared to Saverin's social-climbing, money-hungry insecurity and the Winklevoss twins' entitled arrogance, the almost personality-free programmer wins Mr. Congeniality by default. He's a geek, but unlike the thin-skinned Olympic athletes and the socially awkward financier, he's comfortable with who he is.
Saverin is a striver, who seems more focused on status (and joining one of Harvard's exclusive clubs) and has the sort of misogynistic streak that comes from ignorance rather than hatred of women. His offhand comments about unattractive female classmates and "Asian girlfriends" are rather distasteful, and not the sort of comments I remember my geeky college classmates making (although, to be fair, they might not make them in front of an actual girl). His final scenes are rather pathetic, showing an almost unimaginably wealthy 20-something, trading on his fame to pick up "hot Asian girls" and his membership in the Phoenix club to impress students at his alma mater. Zuckerberg seems to have remained so uninterested in his image that he still dresses like a 15-year-old, but maintained a long term relationship with the former classmate he married the week she graduated from medical school and Facebook went public. I doubt he's a saint, and he might even be a jerk, but if you take money out of the equation, he still won. And I wonder if that bothers Saverin even more than having his Facebook shares diluted.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Elephants Can Remember
Agatha Christie was over 80 when she wrote her last two books, and Dame Agatha had clearly lost her touch. I remember reading Postern of Fate (her final novel) on vacation when I was 16, and thinking that it just didn't add up. In 2009, a pair of Toronto academics analyzed several of her books, and determined that by the time she wrote her penultimate book, Elephants Can Remember, she may have been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. The authors also suspect that Christie may have realized that something was wrong.
Elephants Can Remember is a murder in retrospect, but one in which the past is shrouded in fog. A domineering middle-aged woman confronts Ariadne Oliver after a literary luncheon and asks about the parents of one of Mrs. Oliver's goddaughters. Did Celia Ravenscroft's mother murder her husband and then commit suicide, or was it the other way around? Mrs. Oliver can barely remember Celia - she's one of a dozen or more godchildren - but she's more troubled by the fact that she's forgotten the death of her friend, Celia's mother. She consults with Hercule Poirot, and the two decide to "hunt elephants" with Mrs. Oliver hunting down former hairdressers, maids and nannies and Poirot interviewing retired policemen and Swiss au pairs. The answer is the sort of twist more worthy of an afternoon soap opera than a canonical mystery writer, but she supports the conclusion and ties it up reasonably well. The rest of the novel, though, is a bit messy - a few characters appear and disappear without warning, the past scenes are indistinctly written, and while Christie has clearly set the book in 1971, it's a 1971 set barely fifteen years after the glory years of the British Empire.
Ian Lancashire, one of the Toronto researchers, saw a kind of heroism in Elephants Can Remember, and I agree. Her avatar can't seem to remember where she put things and people who were important to her twenty years ago may as well not exist (although she has very clear memories of her own early childhood). Mrs. Oliver fights the fog, though, and learns what truly happened to Celia's parents. It's almost as if her creator were fighting to escape the mist which may have been clouding her formerly sharp mind.
Elephants Can Remember is a murder in retrospect, but one in which the past is shrouded in fog. A domineering middle-aged woman confronts Ariadne Oliver after a literary luncheon and asks about the parents of one of Mrs. Oliver's goddaughters. Did Celia Ravenscroft's mother murder her husband and then commit suicide, or was it the other way around? Mrs. Oliver can barely remember Celia - she's one of a dozen or more godchildren - but she's more troubled by the fact that she's forgotten the death of her friend, Celia's mother. She consults with Hercule Poirot, and the two decide to "hunt elephants" with Mrs. Oliver hunting down former hairdressers, maids and nannies and Poirot interviewing retired policemen and Swiss au pairs. The answer is the sort of twist more worthy of an afternoon soap opera than a canonical mystery writer, but she supports the conclusion and ties it up reasonably well. The rest of the novel, though, is a bit messy - a few characters appear and disappear without warning, the past scenes are indistinctly written, and while Christie has clearly set the book in 1971, it's a 1971 set barely fifteen years after the glory years of the British Empire.
Ian Lancashire, one of the Toronto researchers, saw a kind of heroism in Elephants Can Remember, and I agree. Her avatar can't seem to remember where she put things and people who were important to her twenty years ago may as well not exist (although she has very clear memories of her own early childhood). Mrs. Oliver fights the fog, though, and learns what truly happened to Celia's parents. It's almost as if her creator were fighting to escape the mist which may have been clouding her formerly sharp mind.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
The Hound of the Baskervilles
I'm a bad mystery fan. I've read very few of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I don't think it's been a conscious decision, although I found The Hound of the Baskervilles more creepy than compelling when I read it in 8th grade English, but I don't remember being particularly enthralled by the few stories I read in a college class on mystery fiction either. I have been impressed with Sherlock, though (and not just because of Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones, fantastic though they may be), so when my classic literature group chose The Hound of the Baskervilles, I was ready to give it another chance.
Arthur Conan Doyle became bored with Sherlock Holmes and famously killed him off in "The Final Problem." A decade later, in response to public desire and probably financial considerations, he brought him back. The Hound of the Baskervilles was Holmes first novel after his return and Doyle, apparently still bored with his creation, sends him off to hide in a cave for most of the investigation. As for the rest of the story...well, I enjoyed it more than when I was 13, but not by much. The plot is a bit contrived; I'm not fond of Victorian prose; and when Holmes explains how he solved the mystery, I felt that Doyle held back some of the information needed for the audience to reach those conclusions. I'd much rather watch "The Baskerville Hounds" - the early scene where a nicotine-withdrawing Sherlock orders a witness to blow smoke in his face alone is more entertaining than the original source.
Arthur Conan Doyle became bored with Sherlock Holmes and famously killed him off in "The Final Problem." A decade later, in response to public desire and probably financial considerations, he brought him back. The Hound of the Baskervilles was Holmes first novel after his return and Doyle, apparently still bored with his creation, sends him off to hide in a cave for most of the investigation. As for the rest of the story...well, I enjoyed it more than when I was 13, but not by much. The plot is a bit contrived; I'm not fond of Victorian prose; and when Holmes explains how he solved the mystery, I felt that Doyle held back some of the information needed for the audience to reach those conclusions. I'd much rather watch "The Baskerville Hounds" - the early scene where a nicotine-withdrawing Sherlock orders a witness to blow smoke in his face alone is more entertaining than the original source.
In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food
I really wanted to enjoy In the Devil's Garden, but after a promising start, it disappointed me. It has an intriguing premise - the examination of the seven deadly sins as they relate to food preferences and taboos. Lust was interesting, with an aside into why apples eventually became identified with the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (a combination of the suggestive image of the seed sac and political battles between two branches of primitive Christianity). I also enjoyed gluttony, which was probably an easy chapter for Stewart Lee Allen to write. Pride had some good points, such as how dinner invitations set and keep the social order, but Allen's less than compelling writing style began to wear on me. Sloth and (surprisingly) greed seemed to be catch-all chapters, where Allen threw in bits of information he'd uncovered but didn't know how to present. I expected more from blasphemy, but Allen explored cannibalism rather than religious taboos and seemed to be stretching to fit his examples into his thesis. Finally, I just didn't buy his arguments on anger. Among other things, he claimed that sports fans eat crunchy snacks because those snacks are violent. As a sports fan who is not exactly adverse to said snacks, I have to say that sometimes a chip is just a chip. Or a way to get the dip into your mouth without using utensils.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
A Poisoned Season
I've read the second and third books in Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily Ashton series out of order, and I wish I hadn't - not because A Fatal Waltz built directly upon A Poisoned Season but because the latter was a much more tightly plotted novel. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed in A Fatal Waltz, and if it weren't for my slight obsession with reading in order (and the fact that I'd already bought the rest of the series), I might have just abandoned Lady Ashton.
The titular season is the London social season - an exhausting and expensive whirlwind during which the rich and the well-born try to save the estate or buy some class through an appropriate marriage. Emily has recently come out of mourning for her late husband and is attempting to navigate the season on her own terms, accepting only those invitations that interest her and not being maneuvered by her mother into another marriage with a near-stranger.
Alexander introduces four threads which unravel Emily's plans. A man claiming to be the son of Louis XVI arrives in London, charming the ton and becoming the main prize of the season's marriage market. Soon after, someone poisons an acquaintance of Emily's. As she investigates his death, Emily finds that she is being stalked and that someone has begun to spread scandalous rumors about her. Alexander ties the four threads together quite neatly, and in an unexpected way - she didn't quite "get" me, but I didn't guess the identity of the murderer until a few pages before Alexander revealed the killer's identity. Alexander also gives her supporting characters - Emily's suitor Colin Hargraves, her childhood friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, her bluestocking American friend Margaret, and Frenchwoman of a certain age Cecile - enough depth that their romantic entanglements and exposition scenes add to rather than detract from the mystery.
The titular season is the London social season - an exhausting and expensive whirlwind during which the rich and the well-born try to save the estate or buy some class through an appropriate marriage. Emily has recently come out of mourning for her late husband and is attempting to navigate the season on her own terms, accepting only those invitations that interest her and not being maneuvered by her mother into another marriage with a near-stranger.
Alexander introduces four threads which unravel Emily's plans. A man claiming to be the son of Louis XVI arrives in London, charming the ton and becoming the main prize of the season's marriage market. Soon after, someone poisons an acquaintance of Emily's. As she investigates his death, Emily finds that she is being stalked and that someone has begun to spread scandalous rumors about her. Alexander ties the four threads together quite neatly, and in an unexpected way - she didn't quite "get" me, but I didn't guess the identity of the murderer until a few pages before Alexander revealed the killer's identity. Alexander also gives her supporting characters - Emily's suitor Colin Hargraves, her childhood friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, her bluestocking American friend Margaret, and Frenchwoman of a certain age Cecile - enough depth that their romantic entanglements and exposition scenes add to rather than detract from the mystery.
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