P13 End of chapter 1. Oh, I do like Lively. Already we’ve got three strong point-of-view characters. First there’s Charlotte the elderly woman we start with who’s been mugged; then her daughter Rose, another strong female character, and finally Marian who shares my habit of redecorating spaces when bored. Though Marian is a decorator, so knows what she’s talking about. Rose and Marian are both middle aged.
And we also got just a bit of Rose’s employer His Lordship or Henry.
P22 Chapter 2. Henry is rather more important here. His forgetting his notes and making a mess of his lecture -- in particular forgetting names -- is clearly Lively making something out of the inability to remember names she spoke of in her other book. The thing is, forgetting the name Pitt is not something that only comes up in a lecture. Surely he would have realized this problem before and had some experience with dealing with it -- I know I have. It’s a bloody nuisance but you can make light of it and either use others to help prompt you or failing that, kill time until the name comes to you. What’s even worse is when you completely lose your train of thought. But again, this is not that unusual. Of course Lively is making the most of this because it is so annoying for academics in particular.
P24 And we get just a dash of Thomas Hobbs.
I am attempting to apply both Stoicism and Roombaism to the crises in this novel. It’s an interesting exercise. So far the crises have been: Charlotte getting injured in a mugging -- you move on and deal with the PT; Stella learning her husband is having an affair -- for him, you can make an argument for moving on to a less difficult relationship, for her there doesn’t seem to be either a Stoic or Roombic option; Henry’s disastrous lecture should lead to either a new approach to doing these things or an avoidance of the situation. I kind of think Roombaism wins this comparison.
p30 “...Henry is in fact out of touch with the eighteenth century. He stopped thinking much about it a number of years ago, he has not kept up with new publications. The eighteenth century has moved on, leaving him behind. History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion. Henry is well aware of this, and aware that the eighteenth century has disappeared over the horizon so far as he is concerned, reconstructed, reinterpreted.”
It is interesting to see how Lively pulls things from her own life into her novel. The bit about traveling on London buses (I didn’t quote) is from her own experience, this bit about history is thanks to her late husband. But I take issue with Henry’s being so removed from his subject. Lively was around 78 when she wrote this interesting observation about the 18th century “moving on.” She continues to process her reality. As much as I dis-esteem academics, I have a hard time believing they don’t continue to think about their subjects -- just as I occasionally come upon a novel thought while rehashing either philosophy or history. (Just confirmed that Lord Peters is 76.)
P86 Chapter Six - As with Martha Grimes, I’m wondering if Lively starts with a plan or just lets the characters lead her forward. I assume Anton’s having been an accountant will come to something. I assume things will go in surprising directions, rather than calming down, since the point of this novel is how a random event can lead to changes. It’s the old butterfly effect again. Unless I’m wrong about that, Butterfly Effect might have been a better title. (I had forgotten that she mentions the Butterfly Effect at the very beginning.)
Lively has much more experience with the nobility than I do, but one of the things I actually like about them is that they tend not to care what others think, since they are born to their status. Lord Peters’s discomfort here seems middle class to me. I’m probably wrong.
P99 Chapter Seven - I’m never in Starbucks because I hate their process for serving iced tea, but I was there today when I read this chapter, which is largely set in a Starbucks. This is an interesting Starbucks simply because it faces a busy bus stop -- just off Market and across the street from the Bank Cafe (always closed on weekends, but now doubly closed for remodeling of Peet’s.) Here you see waves of FOB-looking Chinese and tourists. Three or four busy bus lines stop here. Sitting where I am in the window, it’s hard to notice what the people are doing in the Starbucks. Currently there’s a guy standing in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of the doors who seems to have misplaced his last brain cell.
A nearly spherical man just climbed slowly off a bus and paused mid-sidewalk to light up a cigarette. Probably he juggles machetes as a hobby.
P101 Chapter Eight - I love where she’s going with Lord Peters. “A certain awful appeal. The voice, the manner, everything. You’d be sticking your neck out a mile, putting him on. People would love him or hate him. A provocation. Risky -- oh, yes. But just might be a winner.” Delia, a very minor character is considering put him on TV. Without wanting to insult Lord Peters, this could also have been said about Trump at the beginning. And I love Marian’s disbelief that Delia is agreeing to even the one show. (I’m sorry he didn’t have a little success in TV.)
P105 Now this is interesting, here is Lord Peters working up the script for his pilot, “ ‘I myself have a soft spot for what is known as the Cleopatra’s nose theory of history -- the proposal that had the nose of Cleopatra been an inch longer the fortunes of Rome would have been different. A reductio ad absurdum, perhaps, but a reference to random causality that makes a lot of sense when we think about the erratic sequence of events that we call history. And we find that we home in on the catalysts -- the intervention of those seminal figures who will direct events. Caesar himself. Charlemagne. Napoleon. Hitler. If... this person or that... had not existed, how differently could things have turned out?’...”
This is the historical twist on the butterfly effect. So another alternate title, Cleopatra’s Nose.
And this passage continues, “... ‘A decision is made in one place, and far away a thousand will die. There’s an analogy, I understand, with a process that interests the physicists -- chaos theory. The proposition that apparently random phenomena have underlying order -- a very small perturbation can make things happen differently from the way they would have happened if the small disturbance had not been there. A butterfly in the Amazon forest flaps its wings and provokes a tornado in Texas.’ ”
P142 Chapter Eleven - Jeremy is interesting about the way he likes to lead life flying by the seat of his pants. I had to do something vaguely similar during my freelancing days, but I was never comfortable with it. I’ve always preferred something more routine and dependable. And I agree with Lively that this seems consistent with a man also being unfaithful to his wife. Though I also agree with Marion that Stella should know him well enough to be able to deal with this by now.
I’m reading this at the Peet’s near Uber and they are playing hits from the ‘60s that are not the usual hits from the ‘60s. Songs that I know from the first bar or two though I haven’t heard them for decades. Some maybe since the ‘60s. And this reminds me that, as I noticed before with Lively, there’s little to nothing about music in this novel. Curious.
P154 “...Story, yes, indeed, but the fascination of story is what it can do. Henry James can tell it through the eyes of a child, and make you, the reader, observe the adult chicanery and betrayals of which the child is unaware. Charlotte needed to remind herself of the sleight of hand whereby this is done...” I haven’t read James but this makes me think of a favorite part of The Diary of Adrian Mole, when his mother is having an affair and he is oblivious.
My Bank Cafe is still under-construction -- taking longer than expected -- so I’m at the neighboring Starbucks again with hot tea, having given up on their idiotic iced tea, and have discovered an advantage to this location. Here one may enjoy, like a cat, the afternoon sun coming in the front window. If the sun ever hits the Bank Cafe windows it would be in the morning. Glare not so good for using the computer, but great light for reading and, after the gym this morning, it’s nice to absorb some UV rays.
P174 Chapter Fourteen - This is quite wonderful really, Jeremy and Stella’s secret romance. I don’t exactly like Jeremy but you have to admire him a bit.
P202 Chapter Sixteen - How does one forget one has a million pounds in equity? This comes into the story like a Victorian bequest, but really! Are things so different in England that... Oh! Never-mind. Just realized that without income a bank would be unlikely to give her any sort of loan even with all that equity.
Finished. Marion came out the best here. Jeremy and Stella did fine. Henry and Mark did well. Charlotte came out a bit worse for the wear. Rose and Anton had the best story though without the dramatic, romantic ending. Gerry dodged a bullet without ever knowing.
