Our next title is 'Gillespie and I' by Jane Harris. This book was published at the start of May, in fact it is so new the library copies aren't even in stock yet, so At home with Faber members are getting an exclusive.
Remember to let us know what you think: Did you enjoy it? How does it compare with The Observations? Did you like the cover?
I began Jane Harris' The Observations full of hope, enjoying the first couple of chapters which introduced Betsy, the main protagonist. Sadly it quickly turned into a struggle. I never really warmed to the other characters and thought the plot was ill thought out and just plain odd.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to read Gillespie and I and see how Harris' writing style has developed since her debut novel. The story outline sounds promising and I look forward to following what progress she's made in creating more rounded characters as well as her use of plot. I'm anticipating a more satisfying read this time around and hope I won't be disappointed.
Like Carola, I too found Jane's first novel difficult to read and confusing, so much so that I failed to complete it. I am approaching this next title with some trepidation and hope for a better read this time round. I do like the cover - so that's a start!
ReplyDeleteI think I was one of the few readers who really enjoyed The Observations, and although I've just read the first couple of chapters of "Gillespie and I", I think I'm going to like this one too. I laughed out loud at her description of the homebakes on offers: "the tarts were so blistered and misshapen that they bore closer resemblance to a cluster of purulent sores than to a selection of patisserie [..] I selected the least alarming tart" - not much good in a SWRI baking competition then!
ReplyDeletealison testing posting again!
ReplyDeletegreat!; i couldnt make a posting the other day, but its working today; must have been all that pesky volcanic ash seeping into my mac...
ReplyDeletei'm into this book far more optimistically than was the case with the other one, which i found rather creepy and unwholesome; i like her thorough research, and her author, and her inclusion of the exhibition maps (but i cannot find the streets she mentions ?); and i like the way she leads us on, dropping hints about dark days to come- and yes, i cheated and peeped at the closing pages
Oooh "al", you cheat! I hope it's got a good conclusion.... I was delighted with the powercut the other night as it meant I could spend some more quality time with this book, I'm loving it! The more I read, the more I don't trust the narrator, Harriet Baxter. I'm at the trial scene and I find the whole narrative very cinematic, ripe for a film adaptation I'd say. I also think the switch between 1888 and 1933 works well; leading to more mystery and intrigue...
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Gillespie and I. I haven't read The Observations, but intend to do so, to enable me to compare the two books. I thought Jane Harris's descriptions of the characters in Gillespie and I, as well as the descriptions of buildings, streets, cakes, etc was all very good - I was there in the scene. As the book went on, I began to think there were resemblances to Notes on a Scandal, in the sense of the overall plot and the reader's evolving understanding of Harriet's character. Loved the book - would recommend it to mystery readers everywhere. Elaine S.
ReplyDeleteFinished Gillespie and I this weekend and really enjoyed it. I found it's one of those books where you find yourself thinking of the characters during the day, longing to get back to them! I thought Glasgow was depicted really well and the characters really lived for me. I was lucky enough to get a free copy which I'll be passing along to friends with high praise.
ReplyDeletefinished it very late last night - spellbound to the end!; i wasnt quite blessed with fully 'evolving understanding of Harriet's character', as i swayed with developments pro and con her innocence- after all, she is the narrator, and so not to be assumed to be unbiased!;
ReplyDeletei finally found queen's crescent on the book's map ( in the very top rt hand corner of p xi), but my own large glasgow map only offered a stanley rd quite far due south of the clyde;
i very much enjoy following a story on maps , and it seems to be becoming a welcome established feature of mystery tales at least;
(hint, if the publishers really do read our perceptive comments: i'd still like to have family relationships and character sketches as well, a la theatre programmes);
some leading-this-reader-on treasures which i flagged in the first half:
p13 Harriet: 'i did feel rather pleased, but only in the way that one does when invited to break bread with a Native';
p122 Annie: 'Kenneth...fiddling about in the clammy netherworld of a soldier's kilt';
p222 onwards: the added interest of anxiously following the searchers on my maps;
p333 Harriet: 'no species peeves the Scotsman quite so much as an English spinster of independent means...'
Harriet is indeed a formidable character, but i frequently wondered how even she could have survived and endured quite so much unfairness, had acquired quite so much street-wiseness, and such a dryly intelligent self-mocking voice for her journal; it was all that which aroused my suspicions that there was a great deal more to our heroine than met the eye in the self-portrait which she offered us;
i also frequently wondered just why she bothered to foist herself onto boring married couples when she was clearly free, at least financially and intellectually, to do more with her own life, despite the size of her nose; but perhaps i forget how little a single woman had of a 'real' life in society at large, especially outside london, without a male partner until quite recently ( even though i myself have been in that situation, off and on, for about half my adult life, 100 years on from harriet!)
what a clever writer jane harries is - she plays with her readers, leading us along with enticing hints only to drop us into ever more unforseen complications; and she offers an apparently expert and frequently quite surprising insight into past maid/employer relationships!; i think that i prefer this scenario of the employer as narrator , to the reverse as in the observations;
i havent yet gone online to read any of the past expert published reviews - lets see what i have missed out on!
WOW, what difference a novel and four years make. I can hardly believe the author of Gillespie and I is the same one who wrote The Observations. I’m just under half way through and everything about this book has been a real joy. The beautiful textural cover and high quality paper and presentation are what I have come to expect from Faber and Faber. The writing is exemplary, in my opinion, and the characters are so real and well described that if it weren’t for the different era in which the story is set they could almost be people you might encounter in real life. I haven’t decided whether or not I actually like Harriet, judgemental, overly confident, self-obsessed and always believing her knowledge is superior to that of everyone else around her, but that is entirely down the superb way in which Jane Harris depicts her. I am assuming this is how she intended to portray her protagonist and not just how I personally perceive her. If I were to meet Harriet in reality I expect we’d have a pretty volatile relationship :)
ReplyDeleteThe Gillespie household is as intriguing as it is disturbing and I like the way in which Harris builds the tension and increasing sense of unease to what later takes place. As others have said, she ‘teases’ her audience and her Jane Austinesque method of addressing the reader works because of the period factor. I’m hoping my next few days will be less hectic than the past fortnight has been so that I can carry on reading and find out how the book ends.
Gillespie and I..I struggled with this book. Beautifully written with a gentle humour...I just did not really find the 'story' interesting enough to hold my attention. I was very close to giving up but a wet day forced me into finishing the book. The character portrayal was, in my opinion excellent and allowed you to build on the personalities within your own imagination. The teasing hints in the first half of the book on the finale were really annoying and made it a tad predictable...which is probably why I never took to the storyline....Yes.. I also can see this as film (period chic-flick?)....and you do get the impression that this is the authors intent all along.....
ReplyDeleteI finished the novel last weekend and absolutely loved it. I’m still reeling from the notion that it was penned by the author of The Observations. What a difference. In the ‘Acknowledgements’ Harris mentions she is indebted to the help her husband gave in realising the book and the miserable cynic in me can’t help wondering how large a part he played in the writing of it. In the end, I guess, it doesn’t really matter. I thought the novel well researched, overall, and in the second part warmed to Harriet Baxter a little more. It is her voice, after all, which is the story and carries it forward through a unique blend of dark foreboding and dry humour. The niggle of uncertainty at the back of my mind about the kind of person Harriet might turn out to be stayed with me right up to the end. Is she really the genuine, generous and kind-hearted (albeit self-centred and rather lonely) soul she appears to be or would she turn out to be someone else entirely? I liked the eerie spine-tingling sense of unease which imbues the plot in the manner of a Victorian melodrama.
ReplyDeleteThe other characters are well drawn, too. I could easily picture the absent-minded behaviour of Ned; his nervy wife, Annie, and Mabel the artist’s sister whose sullen exterior hides the bitterness and regret of past experiences. Elspeth: a tad loud and occasionally irrationally prejudiced, but generally kind-hearted and generous; Kenneth and the secret life he’s anxious to keep from his family; Ned’s friend and (later) brother-in-law, the awkward and irritating Walter Peden. Last, but not least, Ned and Annie’s children: Sybil, highly disturbed and impossible to control; Rosie, sweet and innocent who doesn’t deserve to meet her untimely death. Less well-portrayed, I felt, were her murderers Hans and Belle Schlutterhose.
I suspected Sarah would turn out to be Sybil as soon as Harriet, now an octogenarian living in London, begins to describe her new companion and briefly questioned whether Harris might not have handled the parts of the novel in which our main protagonist recalls the events of fifty years ago a shade more subtlely. I felt here as though I was being railroaded towards the revelation via a series of clunky clues that suggested the author thought the reader wouldn't be clever enough to work it out for herself.
Perhaps the novel could have been a hundred or so pages shorter by reducing the amount of verbatim description during the court proceedings of Harriet’s trial and further tightening some sections of it, but besides these minor observations this novel sits easily amongst some of the best crime fiction by contemporary writers even though author and publisher probably classify it as historical fiction. Many writing for this market could do worse than taking note of some of the ploys Harris utilises in Gillespie and I. I count this amongst the favourite books I have read so far this year.
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If you haven’t already, do visit the wonderful Faber website where you’ll find links to some fab interviews with Jane Harris in which she talks about the process of writing of her novel.
I have just started this book, and so far I am enjoying it. I am new to blogging, so just testing to see how it works. I will post again when finished with the book.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this book. Her character portrayals were detailed and believable. As with any historical novel, I like the description of the period and feeling past of life in 1888.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd be the first to admit that I am somewhat gullible regarding people in real life, and it's no different with characters in literature! I completely believed in Harriet and it was only during the closing pages that I began to see that Harriet was not what she first seemed, and was very probably guilty.
Very well written indeed!
I'll look out for future books from Jane Harris.
I'm with Effy - I enjoyed reading it, thought it was very well-written / -plotted / -characterised and could find no fault - except that it didn't press my buttons. For some reason the author didn't succeed in making me care enough..... Mim
ReplyDeleteFinally finished the book this morning. Like AS, I was completely taken in by Harriet - right up to about half way through the trial, in fact. When she was arrested, I was shocked - didn't see that coming at all! I can't believe that she was actually guilty, but agree that she certainly wasn't what she initially appeared to be.
ReplyDeleteThere have been a lot of comparisons here with The Observations - I enjoyed both books but found them very different. There were lots of 'laugh out loud' moments with The Observations, and I missed that in Gillespie and I. The style of writing in The Observations was irritating to start off with, but I got acclimatised to it and felt it really captured the personality of the main character. Gillespie and I deals with a more mature, intelligent character so it's inevitable that the style would be different.
I find I want to know more about some of the characters, though. Where did Sybil fit in to Rose's disappearance, for example? She seemed to be being set up as a character who would be capable of anything, and I fully expected her to turn out to be the guilty party. Was Harriet really just an innocent bystander? Or was she, in fact, more actively involved in the disappearance?
I suppose part of the appeal of this book (and The Observations) is that it doesn't dot all the 'i's and cross the 't's. It's not a crime novel where all the loose ends are tied up neatly in the final chapter. Rather, it does leave you guessing to some extent.
Overall, a good read and definitely recommended. What's next??
I loved this book and became suspicious of Harriet early on, mainly because of the way she wormed her way into the household. Even so, I was surprised at the lengths she would ultimately go to. A clever book, well written, intriguing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteOh, dear - I am out of step again!
ReplyDeleteOver-long, over-written and apparently pointless. I would like this part of my life back again.
Much preferred The Observations!