2007 Edgar Nominee: The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard

The Pale Blue Eye

By Louis Bayard

 

     The Pale Blue Eye was a nominee for the 2007 Edgar for best mystery novel as selected by The Mystery Writers of America.  Louis Bayard has constructed a magnificent tribute to the master himself, Edgar Allan Poe, the great American author who is regarded as the inventor of the detective story. 

    This novel is set in 1831 at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  A cadet is found suspended from a tree by a noose.  It appears to be a suicide, but some of the circumstances don’t add up.  Shortly after the body is brought to the hospital for autopsy it is desecrated.  Someone brutally removes the heart from the corpse.  The purpose of this act is as baffling to the authorities as the death itself and puts the suicide hypothesis in severe doubt.  The commandant calls in retired New York City detective Augustus Landor to investigate.  Confidentiality is stressed as Landor accepts the challenge of solving the crime.  An odd, older cadet comes to Landor’s attention and he enlists this cadet as a spy of sorts, a mole to acquire inside information from within the Academy.  The older cadet is none other than Edgar Allen Poe.  Poe is an eccentric, sleeping little, disobeying rules at every opportunity and channeling poetry from his dead mother.  He is convinced that these poems hold clues to the identity of the killer.  The sense of urgency to solve the crime is heightened when yet another cadet dies and his heart is stolen as well.  The investigation focuses on the family Dr. Marquis, the Academy physician.  The doctor’s son Artemus is an upper classman and a close friend of the first victim.  Mrs. Marquis is a peculiar woman prone to disabling headaches and inappropriate bizarre behavior.  The centerpiece of this dysfunctional family is Miss Lea Marquis, a not quite beautiful spinster.  At the age of 23 she no longer is viewed as a potential spouse for the younger cadets, but she does catch the eye of Cadet Poe.  Poe has a habit of including poetry with the reports he prepares on his clandestine research for Landor.  One of these works speaks of “the pale blue eye” which happens to match the eye color of Miss Lea.   The motive for these crimes remains as much a mystery as the identity of the killer, but the removal of the hearts makes Landor assume that there may be a Satanic cult at work.  Indeed, some of Poe’s information supports that hypothesis.  The book moves along through this interplay between Landor and Poe, the case against the Marquis building with each page.  Suspicion shifts from one Marquis family member to another and eventually falls even on Cadet Poe.  The ending is totally unanticipated and surprising, although in retrospect, completely believable.  There are clues to the mystery’s solution, although there are an equal number of distracters from the actual perpetrator as well.  The construction of this story is very clever indeed and I, for one, never saw the true ending coming.

     The Pale Blue Eye is a monument to Edgar Allen Poe.  Not only is he a key character in the plot, but the story itself pays homage to the greatest Poe traditions.  It is told in the first person by Detective Landor.  This is the same perspective which Poe uses in most of his stories.  The story is very dark with a lot of the action occurring at night, much like Poe’s.  Louis Bayard uses the same sorts of imagery as Poe to set tone.   The drum beats of the morning cadet assembly casts a sense of foreboding and is reminiscent of the heartbeat in “The Tell Tale Heart”.  There is a scene towards the end of the book where the author creates a fatal cascade of ice which evokes the final fiery scene from “The Fall of the House of Usher”.  Poe uses dangerous and frightening water in stories such as “Silence – A Fable” or in the novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Bayard uses the turbulent Hudson River in the climactic gripping conclusion to this novel.   Indeed the subject matter here, ruthless and barbaric murders without clear motive, is reminiscent of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”.  Imbibing of excess alcohol is a problem for Mr. Landor, as it was for this fictional and the real-life Edgar Allan Poe.    

     This is a historical novel of the first order.   The writing is comparable to the best prose of Poe himself.  The descriptions and details are meticulous and create vivid visual images for the reader.  The first person perspective makes the reader become almost part of the story.  Landor addresses the reader directly in several passages.  You are led from one area of suspicion to another and yet the resolution of the plot at the end is as shocking and surprising as it is tragic.   

     The author has carefully researched the history of West Point.  The characters, including Colonel Thayer and Commandant Hitchcock, are historically correct.  Edgar Allan Poe was, indeed, a cadet at West Point in 1831.  He enlisted there shortly after his foster mother passed away and was dismissed after only one year.  The murders are pure fiction.

Book Review: Field Gray by Philip Kerr

Field Gray

By Philip Kerr

     This novel has been nominated by The Mystery Writers of America for the prestigious Edgar Award for best mystery novel of 2011.   While the book is good, I think calling this a mystery is somewhat of a stretch.  Field Gray is really a political thriller in the mold of John Le Carre or Robert Ludlum.  The main character is Bernie Gunther, a Berlin police detective turned private eye who joined the SS 1940 even though he never joined the National Socialist Party and didn’t consider himself a Nazi.  We meet Bernie in 1954 in Cuba.  He is working for the mobster Meyer Lansky and is captured by the U.S. Navy while taking a boat to Honduras.

     Bernie is interrogated by the F.B.I. at Guantanamo and then by the C.I.A. at a secret facility in New York state.  It is known that Gunther is a war criminal and a fugitive from justice, but the questions center around his relationship with a pre-war German communist named Erich Mielke.  Gunther and Mielke both served in Hitler’s SS in Berlin and on the Western Front.  By 1954 Mielke has become the commander of the East German secret police. 

     Gunther is transferred to Germany’s Landsberg Prison and he is held in the same cell which housed Adolf Hitler.   While at Landsberg, French and American agents try to pry information from Gunther.  He deftly plays one intelligence service against another.  The story is told in flashback style with chapters containing the interrogations alternating with Gunther’s remembrances of his various war time experiences.  These included fighting Russians on the Western Front, suffering as a Russian P.O.W. and serving as an intelligence officer in France.  These discontinuous time sequences are distracting at best and more confusing than seems necessary.

     Somewhere along the line a plot is hatched with the C.I.A. to deliver Mielke to the Americans in exchange for Gunther‘s freedom.  The conclusion involves more double and triple crossing activities.

The plot of this book is very difficult to follow.  There are no “good guys” and “bad guys” in this story (perhaps one explanation for the title), just a cadre of morally ambiguous folks looking after their own best self-interests.   I didn’t find this book as entertaining as Le Carre and almost gave up on it on several occasions.  I was glad that I read to the conclusion, however, because the ending almost makes the mental exercise of trying to follow the circuitous plot worth it.

Stop and Hear the Music

June, 2007

(Blogger Note: There has been renewed interest in this story recently with frequent postings about it on Facebook.  This was written in early June, 2007 and was published in the "LAMLight" (the physician newsletter of The Lynchburg Academy of Medicine ) that same month.  To put this in historical perspective, I wrote this about one month after the mass murder at Virginia Tech and about two weeks before my own emergency open heart surgery.)

Stop and Hear the Music

            “The Washington Post” commissioned a very interesting experiment which they conducted in January of this year.  The newspaper hired Joshua Bell, a world renowned violinist to perform unannounced and incognito at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station at rush hour.  Mr. Bell showed up at 7:51 A.M. without fan fair in jeans and a t-shirt, took out his $3.5 million dollar 1713 Stradivari violin and began a 45 minute virtuoso performance of extremely technically difficult music.  The selections included Bach’s “Chaconne”, a 14 minute musical progression repeated in dozens of variations, considered to be one of the most difficult violin pieces to master.  The entire 45 minute experiment was recorded by a hidden camera.  Almost 1100 people passed Mr. Bell by, heads down, intent on catching their train.  Two people stopped to listen.  One, a young lady, recognized Mr. Bell.  She had just paid $150 to see his performance in Boston.  One man noticed the performance and checked his cell phone, realizing that he had three minutes to spare.  He stopped and listened for those three minutes.  Various people put spare change in Mr. Bell’s open Stradivari case.  He collected almost $40 (including $20 from the person who recognized him). 

            The purpose of this experiment was to see if everyday people would recognize artistic brilliance out of context.  The conclusion from this event was no, they don’t.  Mr. Bell, who apparently is occasionally criticized for his showmanship onstage, stated: “It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah….ignoring me.”    I would disagree with their conclusions of this experiment.  I think people would recognize brilliance, and maybe even appreciate the wonders and mystery of life itself, if only they took the time to do so!

One woman is seen on the tape tugging her small son through the station.  The child obviously wanted to stop, but they did not stop.  Later, the Mom was quoted: “There was a musician and my son was intrigued.  He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time.  I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement.”  The man who stopped for three minutes of Bach’s “Chaconne” was quoted thus: “Whatever it was, it made me feel at peace.”  Those two quotes sum up for me the true conclusions of this disturbing experiment.

The pace of life in 21^st Century America is such that we don’t allow ourselves time to appreciate the finer things, the most important things: companionship, relationships, our feelings, the arts, nature.  We are so driven by schedules, productivity, consumption and general “busy-ness” that we let the truly mystical, magical and yes, peaceful experiences pass us by.

This message became even more clear on April 16 when we were all bludgeoned with the horrible news accounts from Blacksburg.  The communal sense of loss and shared grief is almost beyond comprehension.  In the midst of all of this I couldn’t help but be touched by the one father who related to Wolf Blitzer that his family had driven to Blacksburg from Northern Virginia the Saturday before the shootings to see their daughter perform in an international dance festival.  Those two days with their daughter and the pride and love that they showed her by being there for those performances took on such huge importance when she became one of the 33 fatalities on Monday.  We just don’t know what’s around the next corner.

It’s time to drop everything and be there for our children when they need us.  It’s time to make time for our spouses, our extended families and friends.  It’s time take that extra minute with a patient to listen to their frustrations and calm their fears.  It’s time to stop and hear the music.

(Note: The entire account of this event was published in the “The Washington Post Magazine” on Sunday April 8, 2007.  The article, written by Gene Weingarten, is available on washingtonpost.com at:        http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html)

Book Review: Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Lost Memory of Skin

By Russell Banks

(Blogger Note: This review was published in the February, 2012 edition of "LAMLight," the physician newsletter of the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine )

“Human identity is the most fragile thing that we have, and it's often only found in moments of truth.”

-          Alan Rudolph

“Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

-          Mark Twain

Russell Banks has written a provocative new novel regarding a very contemporary problem:  people ostracized by society and forced into a nomadic existence because of their status as registered sex offenders.  In the first section of the book we are introduced to The Kid, a twenty two year old young man living under a freeway exit ramp in a fictional city which closely resembles the author’s home city of Miami, Florida.  The Kid has experienced a very troubled childhood and adolescence living with his promiscuous single mother.  He became addicted to internet pornography as a child and was discharged from the U.S. Army for distributing DVDs of his favorite adult film star to his fellow soldiers.  The Kid lives under the ramp in a tent with his self-described “only friend”, a pet Iguana named Iggy (named for punk rocker “Iggy Pop”).  He buses tables at a South Beach restaurant until he is fired for insubordination.  He lives under the causeway with a vagabond group of similarly exiled loners, each a pariah.  At this point in the story the reader is not sure what The Kid did to earn this status, but there is no doubt about the hopeless and dire situation in which this character exists.

In the second section of the book we meet The Professor.  He is a sociologist and a genius with a photographic memory.  He is doing research on the homeless and on the recidivism rate of sex offenders.  The Professor has a theory regarding these societal refugees.  He feels that if they can organize themselves into a social structure, they will be re-accepted into the mainstream of society.  Just as The Professor and The Kid have begun to assemble this organizational structure their entire world literally comes down around them as a result of a police action.  The city has decided that these folks living under the ramp hurt the tourist industry and they are forcibly removed from the area.  The Kid relocates to a nearby island, finding refuge at a site which is a bar, a frequent movie set and possibly a source of narcotics.  The Professor follow The Kid to this new location and starts to underwrite his expenses in return for The Kid’s willingness to help with The Professor’s his research.  We learn more about The Professor:  first and foremost he is morbidly obese with an obvious eating disorder.  Banks describes The Professor attacking enormous amounts of food without any ability to stop.  We learn that The Professor is married and the father of twins, but his gorging and increasing enormity causes discord in his personal life. 

The story progresses with The Professor and The Kid learning more and more about each other.  We learn that The Kid was arrested after conversing in an internet chat room with what he thought was a fourteen year old girl.  He arranges a meeting, only to be met by undercover police.    Throughout his internet chats The Kid lied about his military experience, describing exploits in Afghanistan including for a secret government agency and his paranoia that he will be killed because of “what he knows”.  The Professor even hires The Kid to film a confession of sorts for his wife in the event that he is indeed killed. 

The Kid eventually returns to the causeway to live until everyone’s life is literally turned upside down by a Category 3 Hurricane.  The Kid then takes the money he received from The Professor and goes to live on a houseboat in the Everglades and The Professor indeed dies in a suspicious manner.   The book concludes with The Kid living back under the freeway ramp, wondering about reality, truth and life:

“Maybe if he just acts like he has a third dimension whether he’s seen by others or not – whether he’s seen by practically everyone in the world on You Tube and is monitored by his parole officer on a computer screen with beeps from the GPS on his ankle or instead is invisible to the world, living underground in darkness beneath the Causeway and well out of sight from passersby on the highway – if he acts like a three-dimensional man then maybe, just maybe he’ll turn into one.  Isn’t that how everyone does it? By acting?”

Lost Memory of Skin is a complicated novel with great depth.  Russell Banks has tackled addiction issues in previous works (Affliction) and treats both The Kid’s porn problem and The Professor’s food obsessions with endearing empathy.   These characters become likable and seem victim-like despite their unseemly behaviors.  As I read this book, though, it seemed that the author was trying to make a statement about reality and identity in this modern world.  The Kid became a different person on-line and The Professor revealed identities of which even his wife was unaware.  The murkiness of the details of both character’s stories blurred the broad interface between what was real and what was not, much like modern communication, movies, television and, in particular, the internet does.  Even at the book’s conclusion, the reader is not sure which of the stories were indeed truthful.  This created confusion and an uneasiness, which I suspect is what the author was trying to achieve.

  

Book Review: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

                                          


                                         The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
                                                                By Bill Bryson

(Blogger Note: This review was previously published in "The LamLight", the physician newsletter of the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine in Lynchburg, Virginia.)

     I am not usually one to enjoy a memoir.  There always seems to be a certain smugness that someone must possess to have the audacity to think that their story is better than, well, mine.  This memoir, however, is different.  Bill Bryson’s childhood ruminations could belong to anybody who grew up in the 1950s.  Change Des Moines, Iowa to Arlington, Virginia and this story could even be mine.  If you are under 40 you probably won’t enjoy this book as much as those of us who actually endured this particular decade.  This book reads like a “Saturday Night Live” send-up of David Halberstam’s The Fifties.  Like Halberstam, Bryson touches on the many social and cultural events and changes of the 1950s including the space race, the development of the nuclear bomb, the evolution of the suburbs coupled with the decline of the inner cities and the emergence of television.  This author, however, takes great pride in pointing out the absurdities and ironic inconsistencies of that era.  He describes his refusal to participate in the required civil defense drills, pointing out to his elementary school teacher the absolute irrationality of thinking that crawling under a desk could protect a child from a nuclear explosion.  I remember thinking these same thoughts as I toted bottled water and canned goods to St. Ann’s School in Arlington which happened to be three miles from the Pentagon.  Unlike Bill Bryson, I did get under the desk when told to.  I feared for my life, not from an A-bomb, but from the wrath of Sister Mary Angelus. 

     The author was able to jog my feeble memory about certain items which are long gone.  In one hilarious segment he describes the cumbersome winter boots we all had.  Bill Bryson claims that the clasps, which required an incredible dexterity to fasten, were actually made from razor blades.  He is equally as funny when describing how kids passed their time during the fifties.  He explains that parents would kick the kids outdoors in the early morning and not expect to see them again until dinner time.  The ridiculous toys of the era are recalled in great detail.  The authors favorites were Lincoln Logs (where the box shows all of these great forts and structures and the contents are only enough to construct a small hut with one window), erector sets and electric football.  It is hard to imagine in this day of Xbox and Playstation that electric football ever existed.  I actually had two of these sets, one a hand-me-down from my cousin Mike.  The author wryly and accurately describes setting up the players on the metal “field” and turning on the electricity which caused the field to vibrate and all of the plastic players to fall over or migrate towards the wrong goal line.  There is also an awesome description of the complete disaster which was constructing plastic model airplane kits.

     The name of the book comes from the author’s fascination with comic book heroes.  He constructed his own alter-ego and named him Thunderbolt Kid.  He imagined his super powers and practiced making teachers and principals disappear.

     The greatest segments of Thunderbolt are when Bill Bryson recalls the early days of television.  He muses over the physical differences between the comic book Superman and the flabby television version.  He fondly recalls the Sky King show (and how Sky would fly around endlessly in his airplane for no particular reason) and his crush on Sky’s niece Penny.  Tell the truth: didn’t we all have a crush on Penny?  He also points out that television cowboys in the 50s never really shot anybody.  They shot AT people, for sure, but usually just shot guns out of the bad guys’ hands or shot their hats off.  Yes, it was a different era. 

     The television anecdote that evoked the most vivid memory for me was his description of how Walt Disney used his television show to make every kid in America dream of going to Disneyland in Anaheim.  For you youngsters, this was when Orlando was still a backwater town and Disney World didn’t exist.  Bill Bryson’s family finally went and, by golly, so did mine.  My sister and her husband moved to California in the sixties and I remember going to visit them and getting to go to Disneyland.  I was about twelve or thirteen, I guess, and I remember standing on Main Street and looking at Cinderella’s Castle in absolute awe.  They gave you a book of coupons on admission in those days when you paid to get in.  The coupons had different values and colors and the E coupons were the good ones (for the Matterhorn ride and Space Mountain).  I remember not wanting to use the last E coupon because then it would be time to leave.

     There are some serious moments here as well.  Mr. Bryson notes that with the passage of time the family farm has basically disappeared from the American landscape.  He also regrets the loss of the supreme optimism and sense of innocence which pervaded America in the 1950s. 

     This is a must read for anyone born before 1955.  For you youngsters, this book may help you understand why we boomers are as odd as we are.  One warning, though:  there are segments that are so funny you want to stop and tell everyone around you about them. 

The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida

The Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida

     The Dali Museum was opened in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1982.  The museum houses the collection donated by A. Reynolds and Eleanor R. Morse.  The Morses were from Cleveland and began collecting Dali in the 1940s.   They became good friends with the artist over the years and their home was filled with 96 of his works.  How this collection came to be donated to the people of Florida is an interesting story in and of its self. The original museum was an old warehouse and was replaced by the current magnificent structure on the waterfront in St. Petersburg in January, 2011.  The building, featuring a central tall, thin spiral staircase, was designed by architect Yann Weymouth and incorporates many of the artist’s themes.  The entrance fee to the museum includes a self-guided tour with an MP3 player and headphones and there are docent-led guided tours once an hour.  Both of these resources add greatly to the experience of the art.

     The paintings in the collection represent all periods of Dali’s long and varied career, including some from his early teen years.   You walk through the galleries in sequence.  First, there is an entrance gallery displaying the Morse’s first in their collection:  “Daddy Longlegs of the Evening –Hope!” which was painted in 1940.  Leaving the Entrance Gallery, you move through the Early Works including an eerie self-portrait from 1921 and many depictions of Cadaques, Spain which was a favorite boyhood spot.  His odd relations with his family become themes in many of his works.  He had an older brother (also named Salvador) who died in infancy and the artist’s own identity was interwoven with that of his deceased brother.  The painting “Portrait of My Dead Brother” was painted in 1964 and is a blend of pink and red dots which form a male image – an amalgamation of his own and his brother’s visage.  This painting is included in the gallery of what Dali called “anti-art” and showed his interest in and knowledge of pixels and how the human eye interprets what it sees.  One of the most amazing paintings in this section is “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea” which on close viewing is a detailed portrait of his nude wife gazing out of a window.  When the viewer stands back greater than twenty meters, the painting becomes a portrait of Abraham Lincoln!

(Prints in the Gift Shop - photos were not allowed in the Gallery)

     Dali was also very interested in science and physics and incorporated dimensions of science and mathematics into his paintings.  One painting of many objects in motion reflected his understanding of time and relativity.

     The surrealist gallery contains the paintings for which Dali is most remembered and recognized.  Interestingly, although he lived from 1904 through 1989, he painted in this style only during the 1930s.  Many of the paintings in this section could hold your attention for hours: “Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces” and “Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s ‘Angelus’” to name two.  In the latter, there is a miniature depiction of young Salvador and his father holding hands, representing when the two got along.  Dali’s father apparently never approved of his career or work and this paternal disapproval is another theme which recurs in Dali’s work.

     Finally, you enter the Mature Works section which contains several of his Grand Masterpieces – works of gigantic scale and detail which also contain rich symbolism and optical illusions.  “The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus” includes yet another portrait of his wife Gala and also a self-portrait.  This painting also represents Dali’s own discovery of America, where he lived during the second world  war.

“The Ecumenical Council” is another huge and detailed work created to celebrate the coronation of Pope John XXIII.  Here he depicts the Holy Trinity and sees the event as occurring somewhere between heaven and earth.  It is in this painting that Dali used an octopus to spread paint in one area and then painted in details to finish his vision.

     This art collection is incredible and makes one appreciate the artist for the genius he was rather than just an eccentric as he has been portrayed.  He was indeed a bit odd, but his knowledge and understanding of science, psychology (he was also a student of Freud, many of whose ideas show up in his paintings as well), mathematics and physics are all incorporated into his works.

     The building itself is magnificent and worthy of the collection it holds.  The central spiral staircase is a marvel and the giant domes on one end enable the visitor to view the St. Petersburg waterfront in a totally different perspective.  The outdoor gardens, including a labyrinth further illustrate Dali’s understanding of mathematics and physics in nature.

     

     This is an outstanding exhibit in a fantastic building.  I would recommend visiting to anyone who may be in the Tampa-St.Petersburg area.

2010 Edgar Nominee: Faithful Place By Tana French

Faithful Place

By Tana French

 (Blogger Note: This review was previously published in "LAMLight," the physician newsletter of the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine.)

     

     Forty pages into this book I assumed this would be my favorite of the 2010 Edgar Nominees.  The book is set in Dublin and features the mother of all dysfunctional Irish families.  The main character is an undercover detective named Frank Mackey.  His father is an alcoholic (surprise!) and abusive.  His mother is the typical Irish mother who is a master at sending her children on guilt trips.  Frank has an older and younger brother and sister.  The story opens with nineteen year old Frank waiting for his girlfriend Rosie Daly.  Their plan is to escape their lower class life and neighborhood by running away to London.  The only problem is that Rosie never shows up.  Frank finds part of a note Rosie wrote implying that she was taking off for London on her own.  Young Frank leaves Faithful Place behind also, relocating in Dublin and becoming a well-respected undercover police officer.  He marries, has a daughter, becomes divorced and never attempts to contact his parents or is siblings.

     Twenty two years later Rosie’s suitcase is found in an abandoned home on Faithful Place.  A search of the basement finds the remains of a young woman which is eventually identified as Rosie Daly.  The ultimate “cold case” becomes Frank’s obsession, despite being warned by superiors to stay away from the investigation. 

     The plot segues from the present day back to the events leading up to Frank and Rosie’s ill-fated rendezvous twenty two years previous. Frank also reluctantly reacquaints himself with his estranged family .  The list of suspects begins to narrow when Frank’s younger brother Kevin apparently jumps from an upper story window in the same abandoned house where Rosie’s body was found.  The police find a tidy explanation for both deaths:  Kevin was her killer and took his own life in remorse.  Frank, however, is not buying any of it. 

     As Frank digs into his past, he finds even more “skeletons”.  He narrows the field of suspects down to the unthinkable – other members of his own family. 

     This book is extremely well written.  It could, however, have used a bit of editing.  There is one whole chapter where Frank tries to explain death to his nine year old daughter which seemed unnecessary.   The perpetrator of the crimes is fairly obvious early on, but the way the plot resolves at the conclusion is very clever.  I thoroughly enjoyed Faithful Place.

Book Review: Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle

 Hotel Pastis

Peter Mayle

This delightful novel is the story of an early middle-aged London advertising executive who abandons his lucrative career to open and manage a small boutique hotel in the Provence region of France.  The story is humorous throughout.   There is a second plot line which involves a plan to rob a bank in a neighboring village to where the new hotel is located.

Simon Shaw is the main character, a pretentious and over-worked executive who we meet as he is approaching a divorce from his second wife.  He moves from his spacious home with his manservant Ernest to a small flat.  Ernest suggests a holiday to calm Simon’s nerves and so the adventure begins.  Simon takes his “fun car” (a Porsche) on a jaunt to the beaches of South France.  A minor mishap on the roadway forces Simon to interrupt his trip with an unplanned stopover in Le Luberon, a mountainous region in the middle of Provence.  While Simon waits impatiently for his auto repair he meets and becomes enamored with a young single woman named Nicole Bouvier.  Simon becomes smitten with the region as well as with Madame Bouvier.  The author vividly describes the view Simon enjoys as he collects his thoughts in a local café:

               

           “It was full south, overlooking a long, flat plain that ended at the foot of the Luberon, perhaps five miles away.  The evening sunlight, slanting in from the west, made shadows of deep black in the folds of the mountain, contrasting with the lighter haze, somewhere between purple and grey, of the rock face, and the green of pine and oak trees.  Down on the plain, the orderly lines of vines were broken up by scattered farm buildings that might have been painted onto the landscape, flat and sharp and glowing.  A toy tractor, bright yellow, moved silently along the black ribbon of road.  Everything else was motionless.”

                 

            Simon must return to London before the Porsche repairs are complete, so Nicole volunteers to drive his auto back to him.  When they meet again in London, Nicole spontaneously suggests he consider joining her in an enterprise renovating the old gendarmerie in her home village and turning it into a world-class boutique hotel.  Simon takes the bait and scuttles his life in London and moves with Ernest (and Ernest’s faithful companion, a bull terrier named Mrs. Gibbons).  Meanwhile, the plot to rob a bank in the neighboring village takes shape.  Eight conspirators train for their escape on bicycles by taking long looping rides in the nearby hills.  The sub-plots begin to overlap as many of the would-be bank robbers are also craftsmen who begin the renovation work on Simon and Nicole’s vision.  The new establishment is named the Hotel Pastis in honor of a local beverage, a locally popular anise drink similar to Sambuca or Ouzo.

                The rest of the book revolves around the proper design and construction of the Hotel Pastis as well as the finding the proper chef (eventually hiring an obese local, Madame Pons), purchasing the proper landscape trees and appeasing the locals.  The locals include mobsters who want to be paid for “protection” of the hotel and its guests as well as a veteran travel writer who resents the intrusion of this new hotel into his own private paradise.  The plans for the bank heist proceed as well.  The only real problem is that once the Hotel Pastis is up and running, Simon realizes that his role is a never-ending one with constant worries and problems.  He has traded one set of headaches for another quite different one.  His naivete wears off quite quickly.  The day of the bank robbery there is a hilarious complication during the bicycle escape, the resolution of which enables all to end well (except for the bank). 

                The strengths of this book are many.  The descriptions of the French countryside, the food, wine and champagne all make your mouth water.  The plots are fairly mundane, but really are just a backdrop for all of this lush description.  The real strength here, however, is the cast of characters.  Hotel Pastis is the literary equivalent of a Robert Altman film:  There is an ensemble cast of quirky but likable folks with a lot of humorous things to say: Ernest and Mrs. Gibbons, Simon and Nicole, Caroline (Simon’s ex-wife), Madame Pons, JoJo and the General (the main bank robbers) and Francoise, the ingénue mayor’s daughter hired to run the front desk.  The romantic entanglements are frequent and add to the overall frivolity of the novel. 

                Hotel Pastis is a fun read which makes the reader want to hop on a plane and travel to Provence to experience firsthand all of the wonderful sights, sounds and flavors of the region which are expertly woven into this entertaining novel.