![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Literary version of a genre novel
Things in Jars: A Novel by Jess Kidd (Amazon affiliate link)
I read a library copy of this book in fits and starts over the last week while traveling and conference-attending and whatnot. And this is a few jumbled thoughts, rather than a review.
Overall I liked it, but I didn't love it. I wanted to, and had it been a genre novel with the tropes and narrative you'd expect to find in one, I'd have finished it then turned to Amazon to hunt down news of the sequel, and perhaps pre-order it. As it was I got to the end, pleasantly surprised that the ending wasn't the 100% downer that I'd been expecting (because in Literature happy endings are oft considered childish), closed the book and thought "I wish this had been a tropier, cheesier story."
Tropes I love: Bridie Devine is an eccentric woman investigator (ding!) of Mysterious Things (ding!) in mid-19th century England. (ding!) She's surrounded by a cast of oddball friends and companions. (ding!) The sidekick/love interest is the ghost of a prizefighter (ding!) who knows her, but she can't quite place him (ding!), and since he's a ghost and can't interact with anyone but or or touch anything at all, there's an insurmountable barrier (ding!).
You put that into a potboiler and make it a series with a long-running "how will they overcome" and I'm lapping that shit up with a spoon. You put it into a Literary Novel, so therefore I know that things will not resolve 100% happily, and you create a distance between me and the book that prevents me from diving into it. The appearance of the ghost—he's real enough as he gives her information she can't know otherwise, I think...I think—is tied up with Bridie smoking a special blend of tobacco from the avuncular apothecary mentioned above, so I'm sure there's a Message about that, and in the end he fades and she begins to turn her attentions to the police detective who's fond of her (said Message probably something about turning from the possible and the past to the real and the present). YES that's a subplot and not the main plot, but it's illustrative of the whole thing.
I'm not sure what else to say, really. The chapters are punctuated with stories told to the not-really-human child by her kidnapper, illustrating how the woman turned to crime and how her story is, in the end, tied up with Bridie's, and with flashback chapters to Bridie's childhood that reveal who she is and how she came to be in her position, and how the person (who in a genre novel would be the Big Bad but is mostly a Side Bad here) got tangled up in her life.
The connection in the past between Bridie and the prizefighter's ghost is eventually revealed, in a short flashback chapter where he's basically the boy equivalent of a manic pixie dream girl who shows up when she's a child and plays with her, then vanishes as their ship comes into dock in England, but I preferred my original theory (made because I forgot the date on the prizefighter's tombstone), that he was the dude killed in a tavern brawl when she was a child: she'd tried to save him and a doctor saw her talent and knowledge and took her in. Since the prizefighter was also killed in a tavern brawl, I assumed he was that guy and thus instrumental on setting her on the path she's on, but nope, the grave date doesn't let that happen. So instead it's Symbolism and it annoys me, rather than illuminating me. Blah. If this were a genre book, I'd have liked it so much more. (It probably says something about me that I was much more invested in this subplot than the actual plot of the book: Bridie investigating the disappearance of a mysterious child.)
edit: Here's an example of the prose, grabbed from the Amazon sample (since I've turned the book back in). It's early on, right after Bridie has met Ruby Doyle, prizefighter and ghost. The rhythm is like this throughout the book, which does sort of mean that the voice is the same from whatever point of view, since the narrator is omniscient.
edit edit: I just realized why I'm so obsessed with this sideplot, rather than the actual plot... in a genre novel, that would be the overarching plot of the series—along with the Side Bad here, who would turn out to be the series Big Bad—stringing you along with the question of how they'll get together, rather than the actual plots of the various cases that get taken on, which would mostly be excuses for the main cast to get up to Shenanigans of one sort or another.
Yeah, while I liked this book, that's the book I'd really rather read.
Things in Jars: A Novel by Jess Kidd (Amazon affiliate link)
I read a library copy of this book in fits and starts over the last week while traveling and conference-attending and whatnot. And this is a few jumbled thoughts, rather than a review.
In this “miraculous and thrilling” (Diane Setterfield, #1 New York Times bestselling author) mystery for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Book of Speculation, Victorian London comes to life as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child.On the surface this sounds like one of a slew of recent historical fantasy/paranormal genre novels, but it's actually firmly stuck over in the magical realism side of capital-L Literature, as the subtitle "A Novel" wants you to know. I'd forgotten that when I started—it had sat on my phone for a couple of weeks and the library email reminding me it was due in a few days alerted me of its existence—so the sudden realization that it was in omniscient POV instead of tight third was a bit of whiplash. But once I realized that, the lyricism of the prose drew me on through the story, while at the same time keeping a distance between me and the characters.
Bridie Devine—flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery.
Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems.
Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a stunning, “richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history” (Booklist, starred review) that explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.
Overall I liked it, but I didn't love it. I wanted to, and had it been a genre novel with the tropes and narrative you'd expect to find in one, I'd have finished it then turned to Amazon to hunt down news of the sequel, and perhaps pre-order it. As it was I got to the end, pleasantly surprised that the ending wasn't the 100% downer that I'd been expecting (because in Literature happy endings are oft considered childish), closed the book and thought "I wish this had been a tropier, cheesier story."
Tropes I love: Bridie Devine is an eccentric woman investigator (ding!) of Mysterious Things (ding!) in mid-19th century England. (ding!) She's surrounded by a cast of oddball friends and companions. (ding!) The sidekick/love interest is the ghost of a prizefighter (ding!) who knows her, but she can't quite place him (ding!), and since he's a ghost and can't interact with anyone but or or touch anything at all, there's an insurmountable barrier (ding!).
You put that into a potboiler and make it a series with a long-running "how will they overcome" and I'm lapping that shit up with a spoon. You put it into a Literary Novel, so therefore I know that things will not resolve 100% happily, and you create a distance between me and the book that prevents me from diving into it. The appearance of the ghost—he's real enough as he gives her information she can't know otherwise, I think...I think—is tied up with Bridie smoking a special blend of tobacco from the avuncular apothecary mentioned above, so I'm sure there's a Message about that, and in the end he fades and she begins to turn her attentions to the police detective who's fond of her (said Message probably something about turning from the possible and the past to the real and the present). YES that's a subplot and not the main plot, but it's illustrative of the whole thing.
I'm not sure what else to say, really. The chapters are punctuated with stories told to the not-really-human child by her kidnapper, illustrating how the woman turned to crime and how her story is, in the end, tied up with Bridie's, and with flashback chapters to Bridie's childhood that reveal who she is and how she came to be in her position, and how the person (who in a genre novel would be the Big Bad but is mostly a Side Bad here) got tangled up in her life.
The connection in the past between Bridie and the prizefighter's ghost is eventually revealed, in a short flashback chapter where he's basically the boy equivalent of a manic pixie dream girl who shows up when she's a child and plays with her, then vanishes as their ship comes into dock in England, but I preferred my original theory (made because I forgot the date on the prizefighter's tombstone), that he was the dude killed in a tavern brawl when she was a child: she'd tried to save him and a doctor saw her talent and knowledge and took her in. Since the prizefighter was also killed in a tavern brawl, I assumed he was that guy and thus instrumental on setting her on the path she's on, but nope, the grave date doesn't let that happen. So instead it's Symbolism and it annoys me, rather than illuminating me. Blah. If this were a genre book, I'd have liked it so much more. (It probably says something about me that I was much more invested in this subplot than the actual plot of the book: Bridie investigating the disappearance of a mysterious child.)
edit: Here's an example of the prose, grabbed from the Amazon sample (since I've turned the book back in). It's early on, right after Bridie has met Ruby Doyle, prizefighter and ghost. The rhythm is like this throughout the book, which does sort of mean that the voice is the same from whatever point of view, since the narrator is omniscient.
"I'll wait for you, Bridget," calls the dead man. "I'll just be having a smoke for meself."
Ruby Doyle watches her walk away. God love her, she hasn't changed. She's still captain of herself, you can see that; chin up, shoulders back, a level green-eyed gaze. You'll look away before she does. She has done well for herself, with the voice and the clothes and the bearing of her. If it were not for that irresistible scowl and that unmistakable hair, would he have recognized her? But then, the heart always knows those long-ago loved, even when new liveries confuse the eye and new songs confound the ear. Does Ruby know the stories that surround her? That she was an Irish street-rat rescued from the rookery by a gentleman surgeon who held her to be (ah now, this is a stretcher!) as the orphaned daughter of a great Dublin doctor. That despite her respectable appearance (it is rumored among low company), she wears a dagger strapped to her thigh and keeps poisonous darts in her boot heels. That she speaks as she finds, judges no woman or man better or worse than her, feels deeply the blows dealt to others and can hold both her drink and a tune. Ruby Doyle meanders back to his favorite spot, to muse on all he knows and all he doesn't know about Bridie Devine, lighting his pipe with the fierce blue flame of the afterlife.
edit edit: I just realized why I'm so obsessed with this sideplot, rather than the actual plot... in a genre novel, that would be the overarching plot of the series—along with the Side Bad here, who would turn out to be the series Big Bad—stringing you along with the question of how they'll get together, rather than the actual plots of the various cases that get taken on, which would mostly be excuses for the main cast to get up to Shenanigans of one sort or another.
Yeah, while I liked this book, that's the book I'd really rather read.
Things in Jars: A Novel by Jess Kidd (Amazon affiliate link)
no subject