Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I've read all of them!
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 55
Over the nine books in the Maisie Dobbs series, there are times when I want to cheer Maisie on (she can make such big breakthroughs!) and times when I want to shake her and tell her to get over herself (she can be so dense sometimes!). In most of this book, I felt like shaking Maisie, but towards the end, I think I may have started to cheer for her a little bit.
In Elegy for Eddie, Maisie has to figure out if a suspicious death (which turns into a series of suspicious deaths) in a printing establishment in her old stomping grounds on the east end is a murder or just an accident. Along the way, Maisie gains some insight into the large conflicts on the horizon (the novel takes place in 1933, and instead of hearkening back to WWI, like most of her the previous novels in the series, this one is definitely setting up for the conflicts of WWII).
The story of Eddie is almost incidental to Maisie's navel gazing in this novel. The mysteries often mirror the psychological drama Maisie endures, and I guess that's true in this story, since Maisie discovers that both she and Eddie (the dead guy, who had developmental delays) "walked a narrow path" in life, meaning that they are uncomfortable with change. Maisie also comes to realize that she can't fix everything that goes wrong in other people's lives just because she has the money to do it, which I think is an important lesson for her, because she spent so much of the last book micromanaging everyone with her newfound wealth.
I'm always curious about the degree that the author's worldview influences characters. For example, I married young and have had a very fulfilling family life, so my life experience has taught me that marriage and family are desirable objectives. It seemed in previous novels that Winspear might be steering Maisie toward marriage and family before her biological clock (which never ticks audibly) would run out. But in this novel, James is such a ninny-- he was so sweet in the previous books, and while I'm all for real, complicated love with real, complicated people, it seems apparent that Winspear doesn't seem to be steering Maisie and James down the path of marriage and kids sliding down the banisters at the Dower House. I wonder how much of this is Winspear's own life experience-- does she think that it would be inconceivable for a woman to balance a fulfilling career and a family in the 1930s? If anyone could do it, Maisie could, it just seems that she might not want to.
3 comments:
Team Stratton!
I am #66 on the library waiting list. Sheesh.
Seriously, Maisie still hasn't committed? I thought this book would feature a wedding!
I have been waiting for you to read this book! I wen to hear Jacqueline Winspeare speak the day the book came out and she signed my copy - eek!!! After I took the book home and read it I so wanted the chance to talk to her again. I would have screamed - what are you doing? Does Maisie want to end up old and single and alone? When she has a man who adores her? Clearly Winspeare depicts marriage and family as a hindrance in this novel - even including the story of Doreen who seems to represent (poorly) domesticity. Ugh. I was so frustrated. And the mystery is pretty flat. She based that story off a true story of a man her father had known. I think she was a little too sentimental about the story and character of Eddie to write a decent plot. It kind of went nowhere. I was so looking forward to this book and am so sad at the direction she is going with the characters. Can a person not follow their dreams and get married? Okay sorry. I have just been dying to talk to someone about this book.
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