What Alice Knew

I didn't get much reading done last week. There's quite a TBR stack by my bed, but life got in the way. I borrowed a copy of "Bullet", an Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novel by Laurel K. Hamilton, from the SPL. It's the 19th book in the series and I've read them all. The language is awkward at times (did you really want to use the word "mostly" three times in that paragraph?) but after 19 books, I'm pretty invested in the ongoing adventures of Anita and her harem (man-harem? marem?). There was LKHs usual mix of porn and gore, although this book had a better balance than some, and I liked the fact that Asher, Damien, Truth and Wicked all got some screen time, and that Richard seemed to have found a clue. Not everyone has enough time in their lives to waste on these books, but if you've read enough of them that the names I mentioned sound familiar, this is one of the better in the series. Don't start with it, though.

On Thursdays the kids have choir practice at St James Cathedral. I pick Ruby up from school at 3pm and we drive up to Capital Hill to pick Matti up at 3:30. There's an hour before choir, and the last few weeks we've been spending the time at the Elliot Bay Bookstore on 10th and Pine St. We hit the cafe have 20 minutes or so to cruise the shelves before it's time to head over to the cathedral. Two weeks ago, I saw a book that looked interesting. I put a hold request in at the SPL and they were kind enough to get me a copy.

The book was "What Alice Knew" by Paula Marantz Cohen. The subtitle is "A Most Curious Tale of Henry James & Jack the Ripper". A murder mystery, it's main conceit is that the writer Henry James and his siblings Alice and William are in London at the time of the Ripper murders, and get involved in trying solve the case. William is a professor at Harvard and an expert in the new field of psychology who is asked by Scotland Yard to come to London to look into the murders. Alice is a "professional invalid", which was the way this very intelligent and well-off woman avoided the whole marriage and family drudgery. William has access to the police evidence, and Henry has access to the broader London social scene. Alice stays in bed reviewing what they find and coming up with theories.

This is one of those books where the exploration of ideas trumps almost everything else. The narrative comments on the importance of art, the way the English class system compared with American democracy, the growing understanding of the working of the human mind and the appropriate way to treat mental illness, and the place of women in society, even as it tells the story of the James's investigations. That said, the plot is well-constructed and logical. It wasn't a brain-burning page-turner, but it got the job done. The real interest for me was in being taken to such a different place and time. The book read like a 19th century novel, seamlessly integrating consistently elegant language and ideas to create a completely self-contained world.

The author is a professor of English in Philadelphia, which set up an interesting compare-and-contrast with the last big book I read, "A Discovery of Witches" because the author of that book is a professor of history. "What Alice Knew" was very different in tone and subject matter, but was similarly impressive in the scope of knowledge its author possesses. While it didn't make me as passionately excited as Witches did, it's still a very good book.