Writelife

I read Michael Chabon’s short novel The Final Solution without knowing anything about what I was about to read. Lucky me: I had no preconceived notions and, being someone with a very poor memory, I didn’t pick up on one of the main elements of the story – the identity of “the old man” - until quite late. End result? I liked this book and I liked it a lot.

(You should be warned – there will likely be “spoilers” here and the book is a mystery.)

Since every review I’ve seen of the book reveals this, I may as well come right out and say the old man is Sherlock Holmes, 89 years old and keeping bees in Sussex (as the original Holmes stories said he would). Chabon, however, never comes right out and names him.

It’s 1944 and the world is still at war with Germany. A man is murdered and the old man is asked to help out. The murder also involved the companion of a mute boy, a parrot that spouts numbers in German. The bird was stolen at the time of the murder.

Because I wasn’t aware the old man was Holmes, I think I was able to pay more attention to other parts of the story without distractions or fixed ideas about what the story should be. My impression from other comments about the book is that many people missed important aspects because they had Holmes and what he must mean to the story set in their heads.

This is a problem because it places too much focus on the traditional mystery aspect of the story and not on the real mystery and what it means. In The Final Solution there are four key questions, or mysteries, all related:

1. Who killed the murder victim?
2. Who took the parrot?
3. What do the numbers the parrot recites mean?
4. Why is the boy as he is (why is he silent)?

On the formal, surface level, the book’s mystery is the first question. It’s also the second question, I suppose, since the answer to the first presumably answers the second. It’s worth noting that the old man has no interest in the murder – which should be a clue to the reader regarding what the book is not about.

He only becomes interested when the second question arises. And this is because this question implies others, such as why was the parrot taken. That leads to the third question on the list, what do those numbers mean?

And this brings us to the fourth question and the heart of the book: why is the boy as he is?

The answer is in the book’s title. It’s a clever title, perhaps too much so, in that it refers back to a Holmes story, the one where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off his popular detective. But it also refers to Hitler’s plan for the Jews, genocide as his “final solution.” 

The key chapter is the second last, chapter 10. The novel, while largely focused on the old man, shifts perspectives throughout and in this tenth chapter we are seeing things through the parrot’s eyes. The parrot reveals everything though he is not always aware of its meaning. And we, if not perceptive, may not pick up on what he is telling us.

Finally, it’s interesting that the book’s true mystery, that of the boy, is never solved by Holmes. While we, as readers, hopefully have answers to all the questions, the old man does not. In fact, he isn’t even aware that they remain unanswered because he doesn’t know they even exist for him. No one, including Holmes, has solved the mystery of the parrot’s numbers (though they think they have) and therefore no one knows the boy’s story. Except us, the readers.

I think it’s a mistake to read The Final Solution as simply an homage of sorts to the Holmes detective stories. I didn’t think the novel was greatly interested in that aspect beyond using it as a frame for telling its real story. In the end, I’m not entirely sure what the book is about. It may simply be that some secrets, like our personal stories, are so well hidden (not always consciously) that they remained unrevealed to even those most skilled at detection.

The book’s subtitle is “A Story of Detection,” and Holmes is the great detective, yet he does not fathom the book’s secret. The job is left to us.

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