Karen Joy Fowler is well known for The Jane Austen Book Club, a quirky novel where each of Jane Austen's books finds an echo in the lives of its six main characters. (The novel was so popular it was made into a film, which I didn't enjoy so much, but that's another story.) I found Fowler's The Case of the Imaginary Detective at a book fair and being a big fan of detective fiction, I had high hopes for it. And for the most part, I wasn't disappointed.
The Case of the Imaginary Detective is the story of Rima, who after the deaths of her father from leukaemia and her very dear brother in a car crash, needs to crawl away from the world for a bit to lick her wounds. She is taken in by her godmother, Addison Early, famous for writing detective novels featuring the charismatic Maxwell Lane, which have been made into movies and TV series. Addison is a brittle, bristly and secretive woman, who is none the less kindly.
Addison inhabits a rambling house by the beach in Santa Cruz, along with two dachshunds and a recovering alcoholic housekeeper named Tilda. There are two visiting university students who help out with dog-walking duties as well as attempting, at Addison's request, to take Rima out of herself. Scattered about the house are doll-house models of the murder that takes place at the start of each of Addison's novels, some of which are particularly grisly.
But the underlying mystery of this novel concerns Addison's past, which she is quite tight-lipped about: her relationship with Rima's father, and their connection with Holy City, a religious community run by the autocratic William Riker, which was also the scene of a suspicious death. Then there is the mystery of why Addison named a murderer after Rima's father, and whether this was the cause of the rift in their relationship.
These mysteries are certainly intriguing and keep the plot ticking along nicely. Rima does a lot of snooping, in Addison's attic and at the now derelict Holy City, as well as on the Internet. She's not the daughter of a prize-winning journalist for nothing. In doing so she starts to come out of her shell. She begins to face up to her feelings for her family, especially her adored brother, and interacts more with other people. The ending is just as much about Rima getting her life back on track as the solving of mysteries.
I apologise if this makes the books seem altogether too worthy, because the whole thing is packaged in a pleasantly wry narrative style. The setting of a seaside town in winter adds a ton of atmosphere - a suitable canvas for the bunch of oddbods that inhabit it. And being rather fond of oddbods in literature, I liked this novel a lot.
I think I may have mentioned that I'm a big fan of Barbara Pym novels. Virago, bless them, have been reprinting the thirteen novels Pym wrote in her lifetime, so now I've had the chance to catch up on a few that I'd not come across before.
One of these is An Academic Question, which was published posthumously. Pym never thought it would be published at all, as when she wrote it in 1971, she was very much out of fashion. She thought it too 'cosy' to have any chance of acceptance and it was left as a draft. It was years later that her friend, Hazel Holt, tidied up the various drafts and notes into a publishable manuscript.
An Academic Question is narrated by Caro Grimstone, whose husband, Alan, is an anthropology lecturer at an English provincial university. Caro is feeling jaded by her lack of fulfillment as a wife and mother when she takes up the offer to read to an invalid at a retirement home. This Mr Stillingfleet happens to be an expert anthropologist himself, with a chest full of notes he refuses to allow anyone to see, including Alan's head of department. Spotting an opportunity to further his career, Alan steals some of the old boy's research and the rest of the novel follows the moral dilemmas this action throws Caro's way. On top of all this, she is concerned about her husband's interest in an attractive colleague, Iris Horniblow.
Caro receives plenty of advice from well-meaning friends, including the spectacular mother and son duo, Kitty and Coco, who once led a charmed life on a Caribbean island, and Kitty's sister, Polly who keeps a rundown second-hand shop and has a soft spot for hedgehogs. Dry humour sets the tone for the story, which follows Caro's awkward dealings with academics and librarians, until a series of chance happenings leads to a sensible resolution.
An Academic Question is a delightful comedy of manners with the odd 'laugh-out-loud' moment. As Anne Tyler so nicely put it on the back cover, Pym is 'the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life.'
