G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 320 pages, $17 (paperback), c2020
I started this book about a year ago, read about twenty pages, and stopped. I didn’t want to read yet another book about college students and their passionate secrets. Yet, there I was a year later, picking up the book again, and this time engrossed in the storyline. What’s the moral to this little story? Heck if I know.
Jess Walker has just begun her freshman year at an English university (not Oxford, not Cambridge), which she chose because her hero, author Lorna Clay, is teaching there. A few years back, Lorna published a popular book called, “The Truants.” (Yep, same title as Kate Weinberg’s book. Meta much?) Jess was bummed when she was kicked out of Lorna’s class because of overcrowding. As appeasement (or maybe manipulation), Lorna has enrolled Jess in her class on Agatha Christie. A far cry from the original class on the “gin-soaked authors” like Hunter S. Thompson, Zelda Fitzgerald, and John Cheever Jess had chosen. Lorna’s class on Agatha proves anything but delicate and genteel.
Jess finds a best friend almost immediately. She is Georgie, the daughter of two wild, crazy, and privileged aristocrats. Georgie has issues. Jess has issues. Yay, sistah-bond! Jess meets Nick, nice looking and geeky. Georgie meets Alec, an 26-year-old student, who is drop dead gorgeous and charismatic. Georgie is in love. So is Jess. Secretly. With Alec. It’s hard not to be. The guy’s got lines and moves.
Let’s not discuss the plot too much, because it’s actually the character delineations which engrossed me. Author Weinberg can write. Even though one of her main characters, Lorna, is an author, the book isn’t about writing or the writing process. Nevertheless, it is made obvious that Lorna is working on a new book, about Dame Agatha, no less. The central mystery, Lorna says, is why Agatha disappeared for eleven days in 1926.
Agatha Christie was already famous for her detective stories when she disappeared. The police found her abandoned car and started a huge manhunt for her. She was found in a hotel, registered under the name of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s mistress’s name. She never publicly explained what happened. Was she an early feminist making a convoluted statement about infidelity? Was she passive-aggressive?
Jess, Georgie, Nick, and Alec become fast friends. And most of them fall under the thrall of Lorna. That’s a good set-up, isn’t it, but it doesn’t lead where you think it will lead — at least it doesn’t for three-fourths of the book. Until then it is Jess’s inner monologue. Will she and Alec? What about Georgie? Does Lorna have ulterior designs on Jess?
And why would these people eat mushrooms Alec, who grew up in South Africa, picked in his aunt’s garden somewhere on the coast of England? Honestly. It’s a wonder they aren’t all dead by page thirty.
I don’t mean to make fun of the book. I think it’s well-written and I was just as enthralled by Lorna as everyone else, even as I found her nature wildly inconsistent and challenging to understand. (Villain or savior? Teacher or cult leader? Cheers to Weinberg for her exquisite ambiguities.)
Is there a murder? I don’t know. Maybe there were several. Somehow it all revolves around Alec. Is he the crusading reporter from South Africa, who fled for his life from criminals because of his hot-potato work on the abysmal mine conditions in his country? Or is he a charlatan?
Weinberg has written a story about college students and their passions, and I didn’t throw the book against the wall. Furthermore, here I am recommending it.
Here are a couple of quotes from the book:
That was the thing about Georgie. She changed tone so fast that your head whirled. Mostly, she was like a slot machine flashing all its lights in constant jackpot, but there was a kindness there, and in amidst the glib, smart chatter, beguiling glimpses of something more tender.
About a puppet show version of Agatha’s last Poirot book,* Lorna says:
Its standout idea is the fact that the villain is not the murderer but the person who applies psychological pressure, teasing out murderous intent. A puppet-master, in other words, pulling deadly strings.
* Curtain
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