BoatGirl’s #CBR4 Review #24: The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katherine Green

It was a dark and stormy night.

The House of the Whispering Pines doesn’t start that way, but it may as well have.  This is certainly part of the genre that inspired the Bulwer-Lytton Contest (http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/).  This was one of the many books that I have found on Project Gutenberg and goes to prove that aging may work well with wine, but not necessarily with books.   A case may be made against transcribing some out of print books onto the web and thus perpetuating their crimes against fiction.

The book is a whodunit of the murder of Adelaide Cumberland, found strangled to death in a golf club (the “house” of the whispering pines) that has been closed for the winter.  The suspects?  Her estranged fiancé Ranelagh, observed with his hands at her neck, and her drunkard brother Arthur, also skulking around the scene of the crime.  Each of them suspects younger sister Carmel Cumberland of some involvement, and so tell the police a series of half-truths and lies, in misguided attempts to protect her.

The entire story hinges on the reader’s belief that a) Adelaide is all that, b) Carmel is the bag of chips and c) that they are both willing to do craziness to hold on to Ranelagh who comes across as insipid, self-important and not that great.  The ending is very pat.  Wealthy people couldn’t possibly have committed a crime, they must have noble reasons for everything they did, and the only crime, well the butler did it.

BoatGirl’s #CBR4 Review # 04: Woman and Artist by Max O’Rell

Woman and Artist by Max O’Rell

This was another Gutenberg Roulette book. Published in 1900 in French as Femme et artiste: roman modern, by a French author, Léon Paul Blouet, under the nom de plume of Max O’Rell. Page 2 included the following: I dedicate this volume to my wife.  Were I that wife, I’d have divorced him. Instead, she translated his volumes for him.  From that, I can only assume that she was a masochist. Not that the book is badly written, but that the views, while pretending to be sympathetic to women, are actually really extremely mysoginistic.  Women are delicate creatures meant to be wrapped in tissue paper and kept on a shelf to inspire men.

 I shouldn’t complain, because it is an olde timey book, written way back in yesteryear, so I should not expect it to be full of modern feminist sentiment.

 Anyway, the book examines what love means via the story of Philip, an artist, and his beautiful wife Dora.  Philip has defied his father to become an artist, giving up wealth to do so.  Dora, meanwhile, adores Philip and gladly suffers “poverty” by his side.  By “poverty,” she means they only have one or two servants and Philip actually has to sell paintings.  Philip however, has plans.  He has come up with an idea for a new type of bomb, and sells it to get rich.  Then he wants to be even richer, claiming it is all for Dora.  Dora however, would prefer to stay poor and hates her new life of wealth, fancy clothing and parties.

 There occurs tragedy, misunderstanding, death, mild insanity and finally, a return to the status quo.

 It left me with one big question: were people in 1900 really this stupid?