{"id":251,"date":"2004-02-20T22:00:45","date_gmt":"2004-02-21T03:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=251"},"modified":"2004-02-20T22:00:45","modified_gmt":"2004-02-21T03:00:45","slug":"sayers_dorothy_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2004\/02\/sayers_dorothy_3\/","title":{"rendered":"Sayers, Dorothy L.: (01) Whose Body?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Some time ago, I needed a novel to read at lunch, and found Whose Body?<\/cite>, the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy Sayers<\/strong>, in the work paperback exchange. “Ah-ha!” I said, “I will start re-reading Sayers over lunches when I need a break, and this will give me an excuse to fill the inexplicable holes in my collection: as I get to a book I don’t own, I can buy it.” And that is just what I did.<\/p>\n

I’d read this before, of course, and so whodunnit was blindingly<\/em> obvious<\/em> from the very beginning. I suspect it would be a fairly obvious mystery to new readers, too, even if their edition didn’t have a spoilery blurb. I was more interested in how different this book is from later ones, such as Gaudy Night<\/cite><\/a>, which I re-read not so long ago. The main thing, of course, is Peter, who is much less rounded than he becomes. I don’t say that he’s flat, because I liked him from the start and he does have the shell-shock; and I utterly deny that he’s a Mary Sue (per some at a Boskone panel<\/a>), because to include him in the category renders the term nearly meaningless. But the strong prominence of his verbal tics makes him appear rather more a caricature than in later books. (I’d noted this with reference to Strong Poison<\/cite><\/a> as well, but I think it’s even more pronounced here.)<\/p>\n

The other major difference I noticed—even different from Strong Poison<\/cite>, I think—is the narration. Or, rather, the narrator, who is a palpable presence: footnotes, for goodness’ sake, as well as that odd dip into second-person towards the end (which chapter I really like). I’ll be interested to see how this evolves over my re-reads.<\/p>\n

(The only problem with my lunchtime-reading plan is that I was given a copy of The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion<\/cite><\/a> as a birthday present last year. On one hand, it rather defeats the purpose to not have it at hand when reading the books, but on the other, I really don’t want to bring it into work. I suppose I shall just have to make notes or use sticky-flags when necessary; I didn’t really see anything in Whose Body?<\/cite> that I wanted to look up.)<\/p>\n

[ For excellent, very<\/em> spoilery commentary on Whose Body?<\/cite>, I recommend Truepenny’s LiveJournal post<\/a>; all of her thoughts on re-reading Sayers are linked to from this “memories” page<\/a>. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I needed a novel to read at lunch, and found Whose Body?, the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy Sayers, in the work paperback exchange. “Ah-ha!” I said, “I will start re-reading Sayers over lunches when I need a break, and this will give me an excuse to fill the inexplicable … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sayers, Dorothy L.: (01) Whose Body?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6,34],"tags":[372],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mystery","category-wimseyvane","tag-sayers-dorothy-l"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}