#16// holmes to save the day?
elementary my dear reader
Dear Reader,
Hello! I’ve been in some crime grime these days. Apparently it is excellent especially for gloomy, rainy days. I might just give up all other genres altogether and stick to crime watch plus vintage comfort novels and big pot-fulls of tea. My blood is solely filter coffee + tea these days and not the things blood is usually made of.
Read
Do you have a thing for Victorian fiction? I’ve got just book you'll love: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss. This is about women (daughters, brides etc) of fictional classics characters trying to find their dubious origins, solve murders and find a secret society that might have answers. There’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to assist these girls. Holmes does not get the limelight but it is lovely to see him in here. It is the ‘monstrous’ girls who strike up an unlikely friendship who get all our attention.
So yes, there’s girl talk about how much more women could have achieved with pockets, whining about corsets, discussions on women’s right to vote. There are two threads in this novel. One is about serial murders of prostitutes (with their limbs cut off from corpses) plaguing the city. Secondly, there seems to be a secretive scientific society that might have BIG secrets that aren’t that good at all.
Mary Jekyll is an orphan with none but her lovely housekeeper Mrs. Poole. She comes across some money transactions by her late mother and ultimately finds Hyde—not the villainous Mr. Hyde, friend of her late father, Dr. Jekyll, whom the servants in the Jekyll household hate, but the 14-year-old Diana Hyde. But then there are more of them it seems. One thing leads to another and soon women, often called monsters by the society, find each other. They form the Athena club—"we claim the wisdom of Athena, but we identify with her dubious parentage"
So we have the penniless, sensible Mary Jekyll, the leader of the group; Diana Hyde, a wild, hellish, smart-mouthed girl raised by prostitutes (both based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); Beatrice Rappaccini (from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, Rappaccini’s daughter), who tended to her father’s garden of poisonous plants and ended up being poisonous herself and harmful for humans (but she falls in love); Catherine Moreau (based on H. G. Well’s The Island of Dr. Moreau), a woman with disturbingly cat-like abilities and born as a result of human-animal experiments, and Justine Frankenstein (based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), a giantess assembled to be the bride of Frankenstein.
There are references to Dracula, Jack the Ripper and 19th century novels and overall this book is mad entertaining. I love how Goss took her liberty with fashioning the characters. Diana hates men, Beatrice is vocal about women’s rights and dress reforms, Catherine scoffs religions, Justine is true to her faith and a gentle woman. I loved how the women disagreed with one another, helped one of them escape circuses and freak shows, cross-dressed to appear less suspicious (wouldn’t be a Victorian novel without cross dressing, would it?).
Now, there are two things to keep in mind before you pick this book. First, this is more about the characters, so you might wonder by the end of it ‘where was this plot going?’ But it is very enjoyable, especially on audio. Such fun! Secondly, there’s this annoying conversation between the characters in between the narrative. Every time that came up, I wondered why the editor did not ask (and if Goss said no, why didn’t they ask again and again) to cut those out. We don’t want the characters talking midway and disagreeing about where the story is going; just give us the damn story in all its glory! That aside, lots of fun and imagination in this novel. Also, Goss has written a whole series. I want to know more about the books that follow.
Rating : 4/5
Watch
I fell into the sweet nothings of Netflix’s campaign for Enola Holmes. A clever sister in the Holmes family? Some crime solving and clue hunting?—Yes, please. Well, it was a disappointment. I mean there were moments with potential. A mother raising a wild child who plays tennis and has read every book in the library and is an expert at word games—nice! But overall, it was dull. The crime wasn’t exciting, the solving wasn’t suspenseful and the minor characters—Sherlock, Mycroft and Lestrade—could be completely eliminated with no dents to the plot. I think the film intended to have some impact on women votes, Reform and all that historically, but sadly it didn’t work for me. So watch it if you want something in the background while cooking dinner, else skip it altogether.
For a palate cleanser, rewatch the Sherlock Holmes starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. If you haven’t watched it yet, you are in for a treat. Four seasons, One-hour long three episodes each, wit, clues and twists. Cumberbatch is wonderful as the high headed, arrogant Holmes and each character is memorable. If you haven’t watched it yet, stop reading and skip to next section. I still chuckle at the Hound of Baskervilles episode where Sherlock locks up Watson because he already knew the effect of a spoiler-something on superior minds (himself) and wants to see the effect on an average mind. How does Watson put up with him? But also aren’t they the darling boys? The Watson-wife Mary episode and the therapist—you know what I’m talking of—broke my heart on the rewatch too.
What’s new?
Dead Girls by Selva Almada gave me sleepless nights with its very human narration instead of the usual beat of an investigative novel. Revolving around femicides in Argentina in 1980s, particularly three murders, the book will break you because women’s experiences are universal. The following para shows what Almada accomplishes in few sentences—excerpt from the review. Read my whole review here.
“There’s a passage where María Luisa’s brother is in conversation with Almada. He owns a picture of María in the morgue, bought off a police officer. The line gave me a feeling of being slapped on the face. Just a line, but the impact! Later he tells how they could not identify María Luisa’s body—“Completely disfigured. I only recognized her because of a scar on her leg, from when I chucked a tape player at her one time.”
Amazing links
- Japan’s love-hate relationship with cats (Zack Davisson, Smithsonian Mag)
"Cats are everywhere in Japan. While it is easy to see they are well-loved, Japan also fears cats. The country has a long, often terrifying history of folklore involving monstrous supernatural cats. Japan’s magic catlore is wide and deep—range from the fanciful, magical shapeshifters (bakeneko) to the horrendous demonic corpse-eaters (kasha). That’s where I come in."
- Why the pandemic and life in lockdown feels like a never-ending Haruki Murakami novel (Arunima Mazumdar, Scroll)
“But it has not in any way restricted communication, and yet I hesitate. Communicating via Instagram stories seems easier. You see my story, I see yours. Occasionally I send you an emoji, it is my way of making up for the missed calls. I wish I could use this approach with the husband too, it’d be so much easier."
- Fandoms, conspiracy theories, fame gone wrong (The Atlantic)
"When I asked Melanie Kennedy, a media researcher at the University of Leicester, in England, about the demand for TikTok for videos like this, she emphasized the popularity of “girl culture” on the platform. Many girls go from no followers to hundreds of thousands in a matter of days, in part because TikTok turns the kind of things they’ve been doing for decades—dancing in their bedroom, joking around with their friends, fighting with their parents—“into a global spectacle,” Kennedy argued. Every major cultural trend that has come from TikTok is a girl-culture trend: VSCO girls, e-girls, the dances created by girls and copied by other girls. By the numbers, Charli D'Amelio, a 16-year-old who has popularized many of the platform’s biggest dance crazes, is about as famous on TikTok as Rihanna is on Instagram, and more famous than the president is on Twitter."
- iPhone photos of strangers during commute (by Dina Alfasi, Bored Panda)
- What My South Asian Family Taught Me About Sustainability (Before I Knew What It Was) (Henna Parikh, The Good Trade)
"Throughout my educational journey—because the mainstream terms used were sustainable and eco-friendly—hearing from only Western white women via their influencer platforms never resonated with me on a personal level. What did they understand about sustainability that was different than what other cultures had been practicing for centuries? ... As an adult, I’m seeing how much I mimic the very practices my parents taught me. My most interesting observation? Whenever I keep old plastic containers or reuse tees as rags, I do so because I understand it’s the right thing to do. Even though my parents never used common terms or jargon, sustainability is an ethos I will practice forever."
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ALSO, I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier for the first time this year and ADORED it. I did not want to talk about this novel—that I would happily give six out of five stars and happily re-read every year—in the newsletter because I think everyone has read it? But I have been floored by some of you who discovered it late, like me, this year. Seriously, once you read it, I think you automatically join the secret society of Rebecca fans. There’s just so much to unpack in this gem. So if you haven’t read it, please please pick it up. It is GLORIOUS and the characters will haunt you forever. And of course later we can argue about whether or not the upcoming Netflix adaptation is a a good one. (Yes, I watched the Hitchcock adaptation on Youtube). PS: you need a physical book, because you’ll definitely want to re-read it at some point. My copy is almost unreadable though because of too many annotations.
Wishing you potfulls of tea, and infinite steel tumblers of filter coffee,
Stay safe, stay indoors, wash hands.
Until next time,
Resh x
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