Books, August 2010

*** Denise Mina – Deception
*** Willa Cather – Death Comes for the Archbishop

Deception is a sort of thriller/mystery, with a sometimes unlikeable and pathetic narrator, Lachlan. His wife has been convicted of murder, and as he tries to find evidence to exonerate her, he instead learns more and more about the deceptions that underlay his marriage. In the end, the book is more a psychological portrait, of Lachlan and of the relationship of these two people. I found it interesting for its story and characters, but also to the extent that anyone who’s been in a relationship can identify somewhat with what goes wrong in this one. Anyway, this was my first Denise Mina book, and though it’s apparently nontypical, I’m looking forward to reading more.

I don’t feel like I really “got” Death Comes for the Archbishop. It was good, and I found the character of Latour fairly interesting, but on the whole I didn’t find the book that compelling. I felt like there was a certain amount of distance maintained between the reader and the characters, partly because large portions of their lives were sort of skipped over. For example, for much of the book Latour wants to build a cathedral, and it seems like it may become part of his big life’s work, a major focus of the book. But then the book skips ahead a bit, the cathedral is casually mentioned as having been completed, and that’s the last we hear. I also kept wondering why Willa Cather wanted to tell the story of this guy and what I the reader was supposed to get out of it. Of course, sometimes one wants to tell the story of an ordinary person, but in most books I think there’s some core character trait or story that the author feels compelled to draw out and present to readers. In this book I kept wondering — why does Cather care, and why should I?