The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers

[lightreads]

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


On the surface, a pleasant puzzle-piecey little murder mystery, with Peter bounding here and there, declaiming and detectiving his way to an answer. But under that . . . yikes. What an uncomfortable book, with people turning and twisting and snagging on each other like brambles on silk. Everyone stuck inside a little box called marriage or poverty or shell shock or police rules. This book is all tight spaces – the badly lit veteran’s club, the body crammed up tight in the phone box, the stifling social scene. There’s something bitter and angry down deep here, something peculiarly postwar and female and stuck in a way I can’t put my finger more precisely on.



And then the little cut of the title, because of course we wouldn’t want anything unpleasant to happen, no no, particularly not to the soldiers who made it home alive, the lucky ones who are clearly and absolutely fine now.



Eek.





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Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

Yeah. This is the first Wimsey book where the characters really start transforming from types, however charming, into people, and I love it and often come back to it for that reason. But I think it might only be the rigidity of the settings that lets them do it.

[ecaterin]

*runs fucking FAR AWAY from this book*

That 'something particularly postwar and female and stuck' thing gives me the SCREAMING HEEBIE JEEBIES, OMG.

*shudders*

[lightreads]

It's very subtle! But yeah, definitely there.

There are better Sayers books, though, anyway.

[kate_nepveu]

What a great observation.

There's something similar about _Have His Carcase_ WRT gender/relationship roles, running alongside mystery-novel meta. Though I'm not sure I'd recommend reading it before _Strong Poison_.

[lightreads]

Hmm, I'm glad you said that. HHC is the next Sayers I have in the pile to review, and I've been struggling to figure out what I'm trying to say about it. (I've read all the other Hariet books, I'm just going back and filling in gaps as they become available in audio).

[kate_nepveu]

I never liked HHC until I read what truepenny had to say about it--not that I'm sure I _like_ it now, but at least I appreciate it.

Are you listening to the Carmichael readings or something else? I love Carmichael's Wimsey in the BBC radio adaptations, but I'm not sure how I'd like him doing the entire book.

[lightreads]

I have the Carmichael for some( which is . . . okay. very very british), and for others I have very old National Library Service for the Blind recordings with a different narrator. They are only slowly going up on the Library of Congress website, but they are amazing. They made the one with all the painters almost enjoyable.

[kate_nepveu]

Which is saying something!