Why I Just Want to Smack the "Woman in White"

For years I've had this on my classics tbr pile but for some reason my attention always veered away. This summer the Wilkie Collins mystery moved to the top, and I dove in, eager for a good old-fashioned 19th-century yarn, my favorite kind.
I haven't been this disappointed since Anna Karenina, another doorstop of a novel which fails in every way except one, Anna, for whom Tolstoy has utter contempt and who only comprises about one-third of the aforementioned girth of the book (yeah go ahead, make my day. You know I'm right).
As I was saying, while  The Woman in White works as a thriller (or "sensation novel" as it was called at the time of publication) I found some of it, particularly parts of the ending to be dreadful.
If you're going to take readers on  a six-hundred page ride, you better give a good bang at the end, but here, you're left asking questions. Who is Percival and how did he meet the evil Count? I have no idea, and Collins apparently didn't think this was important. The bare bones of the central crime are explained, it's not the thousand percent solution that a book with this kind of longevity should have. Percival and the Count's true identities are never revealed and this is a major flaw.
Surprisingly, I thought there was an excellent balance of female characters -- the half-sisters Miss Fairlie fair and simple, Ms. Halcombe, plain and smart are cliches but balanced,  and all the other women, especially the redoubtable Mrs. Catherick, the stone-hearted mother of the woman in white in the title, are portrayed with exceptional skill and clarity. The Woman in White herself, not so much. Of course her place in the story is to set up the mystery, but for some reason I find her annoying and whiny beyond measure. Every time she appears in the story instead of sympathy I just want her to get to the friggin' point before the bad guys show up. Of course she's doomed, but even that can't endear her to me. Oh well. And by all means if you think I'm wrong, feel free to comment. The Moonstone anyone?

Drink in the City

Sherry & Narcotics by Nina-Marie Gardner (Future Fiction, 239 pp. trade paperback, $14.95 )
By Vivian Lake
This searingly authentic portrayal of a young woman's downward spiral is the best and boldest writing I've seen in a long time.  First-time novelist Gardner pulls no punches with her prose. Her writing is so emotionally authentic and unfiltered you'll have to lie down to recover.

The first person perspective works brilliantly here to drop the reader right in the middle of a troubled young woman's self-delusional downward spiral.

Mary is a talented young American writer living in Manchester who's had some success as a playwright, but thanks to addiction, when we meet her she has given up serious writing and is writing term papers for money. She is lying to her family about her drinking (and occasional drugging), and has started a relationship with a man she is to damaged to assess properly. It quickly becomes apparent how bad thing are, and it's  obvious that they're going to get worse.

Mary's two addictions are alcohol and Jake. Jake, a fairly well-known writer reached out to her and half-heartedly started a relationship. Mary's reaction is to hang on to him like a life-preserver, infusing him with all the love, generosity and good will she would want, but not realizing that the whole time, he's just standing there while she creates the relationship around him. You're wondering if she will ever realilze the truth about him, you'll wonder just how long she can remain deluded about him. Let's just say longer than any sane person could be.

Gardner paints such a wretchedly accurate portrait of the drug and alcohol fueled haze in which Mary lives, the pain she's trying to obliterate bleeds off the page.

You will find yourself cringing, moaning, screaming at Mary as she drunkenly fumbles through work, relationships, and the danger she occasionally places herself in. The narrative is as addictive as its subject, compelling you to turn the page, get to the next horror, delusion, despair, and it is great writing that gets you to sit still for something you wouldn't want to witness in real life.

In spite of its dark subject matter, Gardner somehow weaves in comic moments, and writes a runaway train of a narrative which is as compelling as any thriller. And magically, she also provides a point of light, the possibility of enlightenment and redemption.

I Know, Therefore I Am
Memory by Donald E. Westlake
HardCaseCrime 368 pp. $7.99

This is not your average hard-boiled mystery. There is no crime per se, no detective punching out bad guys and chasing down clues, no gorgeous dame with an inconvenient husband batting her eyelashes. And yet the mystery here is as noir as it gets.

Before we're introduced to the protagonist, Paul Cole, he's been beaten nearly to death by a jealous husband who caught him en flagrante.  When he wakes up he's in the hospital, and he has no idea who he is, where he's from or where to go next.  Released from the hospital and intimidated by the local cops, he decides to skip town and try to track down his former life. 

As he accumulates bits and pieces of information regarding his identity, Cole faces a tragic obstacle of his own memory, which no longer works as it should. He wakes up every morning to a series of notes explaining himself to himself, a la Memento.  The picture that starts to emerge of his life before is at odds with who he seems to be now, but of course, he wants want anyone in his shoes would want, for everything to get back to normal as soon as possible. But if he isn't the man he used to be, who is he?
You'll be thinking about this long after you've finished, and wondering about the nature of identity.
Donald E. Westlake, who died in 2008 ,was an award winning crime writer who wrote under several aliases because he was so prolific. Memory is his last book.