Another one bites the dust

[debitha]

I picked this up on spec, based on hearing that GK Chesterton is a very clever man. From a quick reading of the back I thought what I was getting was a series of murder mysteries with a regular mystery-solver, Miss Marple-style. Closer inspection after the fact reveals that the foreword (I never read them anyway) was written by Ann Widdecombe. The blurb assures me this means that Father Brown is set to thrill another generation of readers. People, Ann Widdecombe =/= thrills. Ever.


So this suffered a bit from being different from my expectations. Partly false advertising, partly me not reading the blurb properly. What it actually is, is a book of parables. To rewind a bit, GK Chesterton was what used to be referred to as a "Man of Letters". He was erudite and eclectic, and possibly also erratic. (It would certainly improve my alliteration if he were.) He was also a devoted Christian, converting to Catholicism somewhere along the line. Basic Christian principles drove his view of the world. Not the nut-bar fundamentalist type of principles that drives people to wave around signs announcing that God hates fags and the like, but principles like tolerance, humility, justice and mercy.

Let's be clear. Chesterton is very clever. His parables are commentaries on the nature of humanity; studies of the way people respond to the modern world (where modern = 1914-1926, but the same problems apply, just even more so). Although they are old-fashioned, they are still relevant. The characters almost all translate into the modern era, as do the dilemmas.

One of my main issues with the stories is that Father Brown is a screaming Gary Stu. Proper Literary Persons would probably have me hung, drawn and quartered for this statement, but nonetheless. At first glance he's a different sort of Gary Stu. He is short and dowdily dressed in his Catholic Priest gears, and always carries an umbrella. But to me, these things feel like affectations. He is at all times a humble and rational man. But again, it feels put on - he is a little too rational, too divorced from what is going on around him. His observations end up coming across a bit like pronouncements from on high, which I find tiresome. Again, though, some of this may come from my expectations of a murder mystery as being something the reader has a hope of working out themselves. It may also relate to the writing style of the period. I haven't actually read any Sherlock Holmes in A Very Long Time, so I'm not sure how writing style compares. I personally dislike it when the underlying message from the author is "Totes smarter than joo!"

So, the Father Brown books, of which this is the third of five collections, are an interesting look at developing a rational and moral view of the world. But the main character is not engaging, and the rest are all gone by the end of the story, and in the end I read four of the eight short stories and gave the rest a miss. I'd rather be reading The Saint.



The Prince - Machiavelli
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden - Morgan Spurlock
Personal Demon - Kelley Armstrong
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain - John O'Farrell
The Lantern Bearers - Rosemary Sutcliffe
Small Favour - Jim Butcher
Lean Mean Thirteen - Janet Evanovich
The Incredulity of Father Brown - GK Chesterton
Tithe - Holly Black
Red Seas Under Red Skies - Scott Lynch
The Mark of the Horse Lord - Rosemary Sutcliffe
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
A Snowball in Hell - Christopher Brookmyre
Churchill's Wizards - Nicholas Rankin
The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton
The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television - Stephen Pinker
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
First Among Sequels - Jasper Fforde
Definitely Dead - Charlaine Harris