As reviewers are writhing all over themselves in praise of Tana French’s latest mystery, The Trespasser, allow me to remove myself from the frothing queue. Still bruised by her last book, I’ve been bruised all over again by this one.
I had devoured French’s In the Woods with an almost unnatural passion. I tore through most of that novel’s 425 pages without breathing, awaiting what had to be a spectacular denouement given the harrowing, granular plot that filled this emotionally charged mystery. So it was with something like a classic case of coitus interruptus that I responded, in the end, to the shocking realization that French was actually going to refuse to tell us what frickin happened back there, in the woods. Not fair!
Nonetheless, I was willing to take another chance when I saw The Trespasser —after all, who in their right mind can resist a murder mystery featuring the foul-mouthed, short-tempered detective Antoinette Conway and her mild-mannered fellow newbie Steve Moran? Welcome to the sixth installment of French’s intimate crime capers embedded deep within the Dublin Murder Squad. Just to get close to the linguistically baroque arsenal of expletives that ripple through the average day on the Dublin streets was worth the price of the book alone.
Skanger; gob; gaff; jacks; kax; kip: tosser: bugger-all.(trans: Filthy foreigner; mouth; home; toilet; more toilet; food; upper-class fop; f-word to everybody). Crunchy crispy urban slang that features myriad alternatives for mysogynist, racist, classist, and mostly scatological proper nouns and active verbs. Bugger-all may be the cleanest of the “bugger” family, and this digression serves simply to clarify that no, The Trespasser is not the sort of book I could recommend to me mum.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the excrement, sexual slang, or rampant anatomical argot that I mind. Au contraire. I’m as salty as the next daughter of Ireland. It’s that almost from the start, we can watch the plot being plotted. We can almost see French consulting a playlist. Hmm, have I used Conway’s uncontrollable temper outbursts in the past ten pages? Nope. Grand. I’ll throw in one of her inner asides: “If he looks at me sideways once more I’ll shove his head up his arse.” That kind of thing. Here’s another of the angry detective’s self reflections:
“I can’t wait for them all to bring it on. Danger doesn’t bother me; I’ll eat danger with a spoon. Breslin the puffed-up little tosspot, trying to twist me like a balloon animal, he made me feel like I was in a straitjacket and writhing to punch him.”
We get the picture. Conway is one tough cookie. Problem is, Conway offers these interior musings about what she’ll do to some fool of a detective frequently. Very frequently. Too frequently. It’s a go-to strategy, as if French is insisting to us, the reader, that her female detective is every bit as raw, rough, and capable as the guy detectives. French places too much reliance on the same repeating anger issues. Conway always lets us know just how much she wants to deck someone. Way too much redundant grumbling and groveling and rummaging around the lackluster ecology of the Dublin detective scene. Dashiell Hammett would be appalled.
We know that French can craft sensitively-observed descriptions. Here we meet an early informant:
She opens the door fast and wide awake. She’s short and fit, the kind of fit you get from life, not from the gym—she wears it like it’s owned, not rented. Cropped platinum hair with a long sweep of fringe falling in her face—pale face with clean quic features, smudges of last night’s mascara.
Occasionally French dives deeper and comes up with a reason to keep reading. Conway’s nemesis on the force is Breslin.
Unfortunately Tana French delivers exactly no payoff for all my wading through 500 pages of complaining, nagging, drinking of cold coffee, musings about why she has no friends on the force (she could have asked me), reflections on just how tired she is, hungry she is, sick of the other detectives she is. There is no attempt to give us a character—any character—to hang our allegiance on. Conway is a bitter, complaining stick figure. Her partner Moran is even less fleshed out. All of the heavy lifting in The Trespasser is done by a plot as transparent as Clingwrap. Red herrings abound, especially (SPOILER alert) the gratuitous guest appearance of the long lost dad. An old partner who now works undercover is called in for a house visit that goes exactly nowhere. A maybe boyfriend, another missing father, possibly gang-related clues. Or not. Clues lead down blind alleys. Dialogue goes in circles, with heavy handfuls of expletives thrown in to grease the journey and to assure us that Conway is really getting angry now.
And in the end—holy jacks!—the person who committed the crime is one we suspected in the beginning, and the poor sod they spend their time trying to convict is—as we all knew from the get-go—not guilty of anything except stupidity.
The Trespasser, written by an obviously skilled and renowned author, cries out to be read. And then it cries out to be put down. It’s one giant tease. It leads nowhere either interesting or unexpected, and yet we’ve been asked to follow the author and her slim cast of cardboard characters through a tedious loop of (very quickly) predictable jargon and stake-outs. Where are Dalziel and Pascoe when we need them?
As I emerged from a period of mourning over the recent election, I headed for what I knew would provide the perfect antidote—a matinee screening of Dr. Strange starring the elegant and resourceful Benedict Cumberbatch. The Big Screen and plenty of popcorn—it was sure to raise my spirits. Oh and it did it!
From the first moment of director Scott Derrickson’s cinematically opulent version of the Marvel classic, I was hooked, fully engaged, doors of perception flying off their hinges. The set-up is as old as Faust.
Genius neurosurgeon Stephen Strange possesses uncanny powers of dexterity (with an ego to match). Yet he hungers for more—more challenges, more conquests, more of everything.
As played by Cumby, Dr. Strange is also wickedly sexy, playful, arrogant, fanatical, and a collector of expensive timepieces. Well, here’s the deal: en route to a dressy Long Island fundraiser, checking MRI results on his Bluetooth video, his speeding car veers into an oncoming truck and tumbles over a cliff. In the fiery crash his hands are crushed.
Waking in the hospital, Strange is told by his colleague (his surgical virtuosity has gained him the esteem, and affections, of a fellow MD played by Rachel McAdams) that his hands have been reconstructed using dozens of titanium pins. Strange does not take this news well. Growling with rage he tells her that he could have done the procedure better himself.
Pacing in his loft, anguished over his trembling, scarred hands, Strange begins ransacking the world’s data banks for a cure, some way of regaining the use of his once-skilled hands. The wounded healer, e.g. Amfortas in Parsifal, is one of those Jungian archetypes impossible to resist, even in a glorified CGI-driven comic book.[See the Hands of Orlac, a 1924 German silent film starring Conrad Veidt as a brilliant concert pianist who loses his hands in a train accident. Unfortunately the newly transplanted hands he acquires belonged to a murderer, and you can see where this might lead.]
Strange’s search for a miracle eventually leads, as it must, to Katmandu, where a mysterious face emerges from the crowd. It is Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a protege of an all-powerful sorceress called The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton rocking an utterly perfect shaved head). Well, anyway, this sorceress possesses the means to reshape space and travel through time. She agrees to accept Strange as a pupil, with Mordo as his mentor.
From the start, the movie lets us know that we are in for some fun, as well as astonishing visuals. As Strange is shown to his monastic cell, Mordo gives him a piece of paper on which is written the word shambala. “What is this, my mantra?” Strange sneers. “No,” replies Mordo, “it’s the wifi password. . . . We’re not savages.” And so Strange begins his training. Multi-dimensional martial arts, creation of wormholes using hands as shape-shifting wands, and learning to create fiery spheres that unzip one reality into another. Strange is deeply intrigued, but still cocky.
The film winks at us, announcing that however deep and metaphysical its pretext— the arrogant physician learning the secrets of true wisdom in the mystic East—it’s still having fun in much the way that the first Ironman refused to take itself too seriously. Both the Ironman films and Dr. Strange soar on the multi-faceted gifts of their lead stars. Robert Downey Jr and Cumberbatch both blend attractively odd looks and split-second comic timing. They are ace physical actors who can nonetheless convince us of their anguish and rage. In short, here are leading men we will follow anywhere.
What Dr. Strangedoes take seriously are its eye-popping visuals which owe a huge debt to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Cityscapes fold and twist like geisha fans. Spatial dimensions splinter and multiply like kaleidoscopic glass. Write it off as CGI kid’s stuff if you will, but these effects are gorgeous, inventive, and neuron-thrillingly psychedelic. In a word, awesome.
But of course, there’s got to be a villain in all of this astral ambience. And for that there’s the deliciously psychotic Mads Mikkelson, playing a time jumper named Kaecilius, who’s out to thwart the serene balance of the Ancient One’s multi-verse by stealing one of the mystical keys to immortality.
Cumby throws on a cape, a carefully manicured goatee, and the film soars to a final insanely explosive confrontation. Oh and there’s much more, all of it juicy, but I won’t spoil it. I will tell you to stay for the credits, in which a little scenario pops up that pretty much guarantees a sequel. Yummy!
There are three strands in play in Dr. Strange. The ensemble acting, led by the gracefully innovative Cumberbatch. The special effects dazzle, pushing us to the edge of what we’ve ever seen before and pinning us there. And best of all the glee of fully suspending disbelief for two hours while we’re being taken for a ripping great ride.
In our zeal to clean up, throw away, and streamline we are in danger of losing touch with important moments and aspects of our lives. Before you toss out that old theater program or cluster of dried leaves, step back, take a deep breath, and consider this:
• Clutter preserves our Identity. Strip a room utterly of your familiar toys, tchotchkas, plants, post-its, notepads, and little nameless souvenirs, and you’ve stripped it bare of your unique personality. Clutter places you in the here and now, in the center of your life and your work. Things we keep around us are part of us. Even the scraps of paper, the little handwritten notes and doodles. These can contain special memories that love to be looked at and touched.
• Clutter stimulates creativity! Ideas hide inside of clutter waiting to be released. Keeping pet objects around us is the sign of a playful imagination. Let’s face it — a clutter-free room is a room stripped of creative potential.
• Clutter is fun for the eyes. They crave unusual shapes, colors and textures. Making sure your immediate environment is filled with visual “news” creates exercise for the eyes, and that means the brain too!
• Clutter is like a mini city, filled with cultural richness and stimulation. Or like fine wines, assembled “stuff” suggests subtle and eclectic associations. These in turn lead to labyrinths loaded with potential discoveries, solutions, and just plain delight.
• Clutter suggests alternative ways of doing things. Your eye snags on a bit of napkin from a cafe in San Francisco and you remember the decor and how you can translate that into your own home. A stray business card suddenly suggests a way of laying out your newsletter. Random juxtapositions of paper and pen, tissues and succulents can contain an internal logic waiting to be understood.
• Clutter organizes and articulates space. The things we keep around us serve to punctuate our work space, giveing it multi-dimensional, multi-layered meaning. It makes the space in which we live and work more vivid, more specific. A bare workspace has all the ambience of solitary confinement.
• Clutter kickstarts conversation. Our unique collections of this and that create opportunities for our guests to respond, “Where did that little glass globe come from?” or, “I used to have one of those. Why did I get rid of it?” The objects that make our lives ours can open portals of unexpected pleasure and discovery for everyone around us. Yes, clutter can even be inspiring.
Excited about the Inside the Flame events lined up for November and December. Please come to any and all of them and help me spread the word by telling your friends, too. I am so honored to share this with my great community and beyond. (Take a look Inside the Flame here.)
• Thursday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m. Books Inc., Berkeley. This will be a pre-publication reading at the oldest independent bookseller in the West!  http://www.booksinc.net/Berkeley
• Tuesday, Nov 22, 7-8 p.m. I’ll be a guest on Bruce Bratton’s radio show, Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 FM. Listen live on your computer. Bruce and I have been friends since working together back in the Santa Cruz Express days. He’s a great interviewer and we’ll dig into the writing of my book.
• Monday, Nov. 28, 7 p.m. Bookshop Santa Cruz. This is my big regional book-signing and reading thanks to the generous folks at BSSC. Poet Stephen Kessler will introduce me. I want to see all of you there! http://www.bookshopsantacruz.com/
• Tuesday, Dec. 6 Gabriella Cafe Salon. Dinner at 6pm, followed by reading from Inside the Flame at 7:15 p.m. Come for some food and wine, and stay for some tasty Q&A. http://gabriellacafe.com/
• Sunday, Dec. 11, 3-5 p.m. Soif Wine Bar Book Party. Plan to come for Prosecco, appetizers, purchase books, and lots of backstory (and laughs) about how it finally got written. Make reservations to join me for dinner afterwards. http://www.soifwine.com/
I have been working on Inside the Flamefor two years and am so excited about seeing it in print on November 22, 2016! In this small, color-illustrated book I offer my hard-won observations for a rich and adventurous life. Even some unexpected exercises for you to do. Bringing forth this book has been a huge event in my life—I look forward to sharing it with all of you. I’ve also listed these activities on my website: ChristinaWaters.com and on my Facebook business page: ChristinaWatersAuthor. If you haven’t already please give that page a like and check out the posts about what it takes to write a book!
There’s the book, and there’s the movie. The book moves quickly, until it doesn’t. The movie has a score by Danny Elfman. A very haunting, distinguished score by Danny Elfman. The book ended in a hail of red herrings, dei ex machina, and obviousness. The movie simply ended.
For a book that almost everyone on the planet seemed to be reading last year, Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train was neither electrifying nor surprising. It moved, and for the first 2/3 of its 300+ pages, it moved briskly. What it did seem to have going for it was the use of three first-person voices. Rachel’s was the most persistent — she is the eponymous day-tripper played by Blunt. But then those other women she noticed through the train window—Megan (the one who goes missing)—and Anna (married to Rachel’s ex-husband Tom) both have their own points of view offered in interwoven chapters. This infrequently used (and rarely successful) literary device tends to get the blood racing. (Dickens used multiple narrators brilliantly in Bleak House).
So I stayed with it, the book I mean. But then the scenes began repeating their own tropes. Women daydreamed of having a more meaningful something – life, husband, job, quickie affair. The men were listless careerists. The bored suburban housewives continued to daydream. The dialogue was banal. And ultimately the ending —seen from as far away as the headlight on a midnight special—collapsed into an improbable bloody mess. Once I closed the book I felt like an idiot for having stuck it out.
Which drove me straight into the arms of the cinematic version. Surely it HAD to be better than the book. Didn’t it?
The beautiful Emily Blunt playing boozy Rachel with puffy face, runny eye-makeup, looking pretty much like 12 miles of bad road, nonetheless is the most shining entity in this uninteresting waste of 2 hours. With its real estate brochure cinematography, Girl failed to lure us in with intriguing locations— unless you can count “actress” Haley Bennett’s cleavage and willingness to go full nude whilst wandering around the woods. And that’s the real problem with the film: bad casting. And bad casting (unless you’re Alfred Hitchcock) translates into bad acting.
That’s what The Girl on the Train is best at—showcasing bad acting. Especially from all three of the male characters. As Tom, the girl on the train’s ex-husband and current husband of Anna, Justin Theroux (Mr. Jennifer Aniston) struggles to convince us of anything.
But he’s Benedict bloody Cumberbatch compared to Luke Evans, as the husband of nubile Megan (the one who goes missing). Evans has all the appeal of a rent boy with a bad coke habit and a few tours in Iraq under his belt. The scenes in which he and Rachel attempt to come to various understandings—which might have conceivably moved the plot along—are embarrassing.
Evans comes from the scrunch up your face and yell school of Strong Emotions. Just as bad, is the unlikely Venezuelan Edgar Ramirez playing Middle-eastern psychiatrist/rent boy Dr. Kamal Abdric. Yes, it is that absurd, and that confusing.
And if you confuse audiences enough, without a single bit of plot payoff, they will grow angry and restless. In my case, I needed to dig down to the very last dry, unpopped kernel of popcorn in my bag (an over-priced small popcorn with NO artificial butter, thank you), in order to stay the course.
So in the end, let’s consider just why everybody was into this book/movie. Â The voyeur in each of us? Probably. The universal wanderlust appeal of riding trains. Absolutely. And the challenge of trying to detect just whether or not the “unreliable” main narrator was truly unreliable. Yeah. But let’s put it another way. I’ll never have those three afternoons back again!
Genius neurosurgeon Stephen Strange possesses uncanny powers of dexterity (with an ego to match). Yet he hungers for more—more challenges, more conquests, more of everything.
Pacing in his loft, anguished over his trembling, scarred hands, Strange begins ransacking the world’s data banks for a cure, some way of regaining the use of his once-skilled hands. The wounded healer, e.g. Amfortas in Parsifal, is one of those Jungian archetypes impossible to resist, even in a glorified CGI-driven comic book.[See the Hands of Orlac, a 1924 German silent film starring Conrad Veidt as a brilliant concert pianist who loses his hands in a train accident. Unfortunately the newly transplanted hands he acquires belonged to a murderer, and you can see where this might lead.]
Strange’s search for a miracle eventually leads, as it must, to Katmandu, where a mysterious face emerges from the crowd. It is Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a protege of an all-powerful sorceress called The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton rocking an utterly perfect shaved head). Well, anyway, this sorceress possesses the means to reshape space and travel through time. She agrees to accept Strange as a pupil, with Mordo as his mentor.
Cumby throws on a cape, a carefully manicured goatee, and the film soars to a final insanely explosive confrontation. Oh and there’s much more, all of it juicy, but I won’t spoil it. I will tell you to stay for the credits, in which a little scenario pops up that pretty much guarantees a sequel. Yummy!
That’s what The Girl on the Train is best at—showcasing bad acting. Especially from all three of the male characters. As Tom, the girl on the train’s ex-husband and current husband of Anna, Justin Theroux (Mr. Jennifer Aniston) struggles to convince us of anything.
Evans comes from the scrunch up your face and yell school of Strong Emotions. Just as bad, is the unlikely Venezuelan Edgar Ramirez playing Middle-eastern psychiatrist/rent boy Dr. Kamal Abdric. Yes, it is that absurd, and that confusing.