Writelife

I’m not sure if it’s me, something in recent culture or a combination of the two, but I’ve recently read a number of books that have revisited the Victorian period, particularly Sherlock Holmes.

Contradictory though this sounds, they’ve been a bit like Victorian literature with a contemporary sensibility.

I’m thinking specifically of four novels (of greater or lesser lengths). The first one I came across was Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution, the main character of which was Sherlock Holmes (though if I recall correctly he isn’t actually named as such). I read that a little over a year ago, back in January 2005 and wrote about it here.

The second was Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George. In that novel, one of the two main characters is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The other character is George Edalji, kind of an obscure country lawyer who is accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit. George becomes a victim likely because he is half-Indian in a very white Victorian England. It is ultimately Doyle who comes to his defence. (There is, of course, a great deal more to the novel than this.)

The third book I read was A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin and, of all these books I’ve been reading, is the one I most enjoyed. Here again Sherlock Holmes is the main character. Like Chabon’s The Final Solution, there’s a great deal more to the Holmes’ characterization than we get in the Doyle stories. And I think that’s what attracted both authors to Holmes. Beginning where Doyle leaves off, these stories concern an elderly Holmes and, in the case of A Slight Trick of the Mind, the novel is a humanizing of the coldly intellectual Holmes character and a study of his loneliness. This is a Holmes who is uncertain of his abilities, is beginning to lose some of his mental dexterity and is looking back at certain aspects of his life.

It’s written in three sections that interweave – one where Holmes is at his country home (bee-keeping), one on a trip Holmes makes to Japan and another which is an old case (“The Glass Armonicist”). All three touch on the theme of his isolation.

The last book, which I just finished, is The Ghost Writer by John Harwood. There’s no Sherlock Holmes or Arthur Conan Doyle here. But it’s similar in that it takes as its inspiration Victorian stories – specifically, Victorian ghost stories. It does a good job too. It’s a pretty creepy book capturing pretty well the hair-raising qualities of those stories of hauntings. It doesn’t have the depth of the other three books, however, as it’s more about capturing a style than it is about exploring an interesting character.

It struck me odd, however, that so many writers seemed to be going to Doyle and other Victorian stories for inspiration. It seemed a strange coincidence – a happy one, however, as all are very good, and I especially recommend Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind. That’s the most enjoyable book I’ve read in quite some time.

Tags: Mitch Cullin, Julian Barnes, John Harwood, Michael Chabon, Sherlock Holmes

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