Two authors are publishing mystery series about fin de siecle Vienna, Frank Tallis, whose amateur detective is a psychoanalyst, and J Sydney Jones, whose books feature a lawyer, Karl Werthen, and the historical Hans Gross, one of the first modern forensic experts. Both series are excellent and my favorite is usually the one that has most recently had a book published.
So right now Jones' Karl Werthen series is uppermost as a fifth mystery is about to be released in July called A Matter of Breeding. Meanwhile I have re-read this fourth book, The Keeper of Hands.
The book begins with Felix Salten arriving at Werthen's weekend retreat in the Vienna Woods to ask the lawyer on behalf of his friend, Josephone Mutzenbacher, a famous brothel keeper, to look into the murder of one of her girls, Mitzi.
Salten, best known to us today as the author of the childrens book, Bambi, was, in 1901, an acerbic theater critic for a Vienna newspaper and busy writing the biography of Frau Mutzenbacher. The book was published anonymously but Jones presents Salten as the likely author. From Hungary and born Siegmund Salzmann, Salten is a member of the avant garde Jung Wien. One of the things I enjoy in these mysteries is that Werthen crosses paths with many of the dozens of famous artists and politicians and scientists who lived and flourished in Vienna at the turn of the 19th century.
Werthen agrees to take on the search for the murderer of Mitzi which the police are pretty much ignoring because of the girl's profession and the death of an important political figure at about the same time. When Werthen and Gross discover the two knew one another the significance of Mitzi's murder begins to interest other people besides her friends and the lawyer.
As is appropriate in a book taking place in old Vienna the characters pause frequently, as all Viennese citizens did, for a traditional country meal or a visit to one of the city's ancient coffee houses for a drink and a pastry, usually featuring whipped cream, schlagsahne. I can almost taste it.
Aside from Fun with Dick and Jane I haven't spent any time with easy readers. So I had not read Amelia Bedelia, a book with a title that I find irresistible. And it seemed like it was time to rectify that.
Amelia is a housekeeper who has been hired by the wealthy Mrs Rogers. As soon as Amelia arrives her employer drives away with her husband leaving a list of things to do. Dust the furniture, draw the drapes, trim the fat on the steak in the fridge.
Before she does any of this Amelia decided to make a lemon-meringue pie. Then she gets Mrs Rogers' dusting powder from the bathroom and sifts dust onto the furniture. She gets out a pad of paper and draws the drapes. She finds the sewing basket and sews some ribbon and flower trim on the steak.
Amelia is a bit literal.
When they arrive home the Rogers aren't pleased with Amelia's progress with the list. But there is a delicious smell wafting from the kitchen . . .
The book is by Peggy Parish and illustrated by Fritz Siebel. It's 64 pages long and was published in 1963.
A few weeks ago my friend, Karla, sent me a link to a youtube lecture in the TED series by Susan Cain, the author of Quiet. Her talk was about Cain's life as a young bibliophile and her attempt to change herself to fit into a career in corporate law when what she wanted to do was to work alone, doing research, writing, talking to experts one on one, and writing some more. Instead she was spending her life in meetings and giving lectures to groups of people (ironically, something like the lecture she was giving to TED.)
Karla sent me the link because, like Cain, I'm an introvert. I deeply dislike parties and usually prefer to be alone or with Wilhelm or a friend. (Karla and I used to walk together every morning and that was my idea of perfect socializing.) I discovered Cain had written this book, Quiet, and discovered there is much more to her theory and a great deal of research that backs her up.
Cain's plea for more respect for introverts in schools and workplaces is heartfelt, if falling on deaf ears. Our schools, which tried the "open classroom" some 30-40 years ago and ran from it with a headache because of the resulting dysfunctional noise and chaos, is doing it again. The typical classroom has pods of 4 to 7 desks where students are expected to study and solve problems together. Workplaces have pretty much done away with offices in favor of cubicles and the number of meetings is increasing as are techniques like large group brainstorming.
Problem is studies have shown repeatedly that these things don't work compared with individuals given time to think. Introverts work best alone and in quiet and undisturbed. Think of Steve Wozniak inventing the Apple computer alone at his desk after hours at Hewlett Packard. Think of Charles Darwin devising his theories on long walks and refusing any and all dinner invitations. And Dr Seuss - Theodor Geisel - writing The Cat in the Hat and Horton Hears a Who - alone in his studio.
She points out that the housing bubble and the Wall Street crash of 2008 was a demonstration of how introverts, who are more sensitive, more observant, and in many cases wiser than extroverts, were ignored and overlooked for promotion during the years of taking risks and overextending, years when the extroverts were able to say, year after year, "Look! This is perfectly safe! We made megabucks again this year!" and the introvert's suggestion that it couldn't last forever was swept away.
Quietis still on the hard cover best-seller list two years after it was published, at around #15 these days. This is because it is so well written and so crammed with information. Cain has interviewed some of the most interesting introverts in the scientific and financial community. And because she has organized her book with such skill and imagination. Highly recommended.
Penelope Lively's 2011 novel, How It All Began, is an extended demonstration of the idea that no man is an island. It begins with a butterfly flapping its wings, so to speak, when ageing Charlotte Rainsford is mugged on a London street. Because of the present-tense, you-are-there way the novel begins the reader is encouraged, despite changes of point of view and the use of past tense throughout the rest of the story, to consider everything that ensues from Charlotte's point of view:
The pavement rises up and hits her. Slams into her face, drives the lower rim of her glasses into her cheek. She is laid out there, prone. What is this? Voices are chattering above her; people are concerned. Of course.
Bag.
She says, “My bag.”
A face is alongside hers. Woman. Nice woman. “There’s an ambulance on the way, my dear. You’ll be fine. Just keep still till they come.”
Charlotte has broken her hip. Her daughter, Rose, takes a few days off her job as a PA to a historian to help out and brings her mother to live with her and her husband until she is well enough to go back to her own apartment. The historian, Henry, calls on his niece, Marion, to help out while Rose is gone and when she leaves a text for her married lover to explain his wife accidentally sees it. Trouble ensues.
Going stir crazy at Rose's house, Charlotte resumes teaching English as a second language by inviting one of the adult learners to come to Rose's house for lessons. Anton is an accountant who needs to speak better English in order to get a white collar job. He is now working construction with relatives, other immigrants from an unnamed European country.
Rose decides to help him shop for his mother, and they become friends. Charlotte has come to know Rose's husband better and begins to understand him.
Meanwhile the historian, without Rose's help, gets himself into a fix, forgetting what he is talking about at an important lecture. He decides he has to put his name before the public and regain his waning reputation and he manages to talk a TV producer into making one of those history documentaries with the old man visiting significant 18th century locations.
And Marion, an interior decorator who has just taken on an important and wealthy client, is becoming irritated with her lover, Jeremy Dalton, and getting ready to break off their affair. He has left his wife who is a basket case.
So many people's lives upset in so many ways, so many changes necessitated, so much distress and, yes, satisfaction. But this is not tragedy. It's an insightful, slow-moving tale of the repercussions from one not that unusual event. Lively ends her book with the characters beginning to sort out their lives and make decisions about their future.
The stories so capriciously triggered because something happened to Charlotte in the street one day. But of course this is not the end of the story, the stories. An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, and a point has been made. But time does not end, and stories march in step with time. Equally chaos theory does not assume an ending; the ripple effect goes on, and on. These stories do not end, but they spin away from one another, each on its own course.
Nonetheless, in the last chapter the author tells us where each of these major characters is in his or her journey - who marries whom, which marriage breaks up, who no longer sees the people they have met in the course of this story, how Charlotte fares back home alone.
And what of the mugger? The catalyst, he or she who set everything off, who sent them all on their way.
The delinquent -- fourteen years old, male, as it happens, despite equal opportunities -- was himself set upon almost immediately by a hostile gang and relieved of the 67.27, which were distributed among the gang membership and disposed of within the hour. The delinquent was much annoyed at his loss, but recovered within a day or two; so it goes. Beyond him, unknown and of no interest, he had left Charlotte on her crutches, the embattled Daltons, Henry in his humiliation, Marion, Rose, Anton . . . Demonstrating that no man is an island, even a fourteen-year-old with behavioral problems.