I enjoy reading Jane Smiley’s work, but this book was a miss for me. The first half was interesting, but then when it got to the “mystery” part, it just fell off a cliff.
The story is set in Monterey California in the 1850s. The main character, Eliza, finds work as a
…more prostitute after the death of her abusive husband. Apparently she finds being in the company of semi-pleasant men more enjoyable than her marriage. She works for Mrs. Parks who vets the men so Eliza feels safe and makes good money. She befriends a cross-dressing lesbian, Jean, who works in a brothel for women. The two of them use their detective skills to figure out why women are disappearing and some end up being murdered. Apparently the local sheriff doesn’t care so Eliza and Jean try to figure out the disappearances. Jean and Eliza discuss Edgar Allan Poe and the detective (DuPin)in Poe’s work which leads them, apparently, to find some of the women who had been murdered. (This stretched my imagination—-why were the two of them the only people to discover dead bodies?) Eliza and Jean often refer to Dupin, the Poe detective, but when they refer to him they call him DuPANN (the correct pronunciation of that name). Smiley keeps spelling the name as DuPANN throughout the rest of the book and I found that highly annoying—-once was enough. The other thing that I didn’t enjoy was reading the word “prick” unlimited times. I’m not a prude, but did we really have to read the details of every one of Eliza’s encounters with men and their pricks. Boring and tiring!
The latter part of the book was supposedly about solving the murders and it was totally uncompelling.
Clearly life at the time was a dangerous business especially for women, but the book just fell flat.
But I’ll keep reading Jane Smiley’s books because she is a wonderful writer. (less)
Power Reviewer
