The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau by Graeme Macrae Burnet
‘The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.’
Thus saith the Wikipedia entry in its definition of this illustrious literary accolade. Until recently, the Booker has declined to include crime fiction in its yearly lists of nominees. That changed when His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet made the 2016 short list. If that title makes it seem as if it would be particularly violent, even for a crime novel – well, believe me, it is. In fact, that quality, manifested mostly at the book’s climax, is what mainly remains with me from my reading of it.
In general, I recall thinking that His Bloody Project was very good but not brilliant. Click here to see what I wrote about it at the time.
Burnet has also penned a trilogy of mysteries featuring Inspector Georges Gorski. These books are set in a small town in eastern France, near Strasbourg. Several years after reading His Bloody Project, I read The Accident on the A35, the second book in the trilogy. I described it as “…An oddly downbeat, extremely powerful procedural set in the east of France.”
Really? I don’t remember anything about it. Even so, I decided to go back to the first book in the trilogy: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau.
There are two main characters in this novel: Manfred Baumann and Inspector Gorski. (Adèle herself is a minor, not especially memorable figure in the story.) The first is a bank manager in his mid thirties, a furtive, secretive individual who for various reasons is not at home in the world. Oddly enough, Inspector Gorski shares some of these personality traits, although he is more likeable – at least, I found him so. As the story unfolds, the fates of these two men run along roughly parallel lines.
I like Burnet’s writing. His sentences are short and unadorned, putting me in mind, to an extent, of Hemingway. And as with Hemingway, they advance the plot in a relentless, almost hypnotizing way.
This is an unconventional crime novel that I found downbeat but nonetheless intriguing. There’s a sudden twist at the end that I for one did not anticipate. I’m now rereading The Accident on the A35. The final novel in the trilogy, published here last month, is called A Case of Matricide.
If you’re looking for something light, try Alexander McCall Smith or David Rosenfelt. But if you’re looking for something darker, more melancholy, and rather offbeat, I recommend the novels of Graeme Macrae Burnet.
Music for the Season: 2024
Some wonderful music I’ve recent;y discovered on YouTube.
First, two selections from the Middle Ages:
Next, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
Founded in 1921, The Netherlands Bach Society has made a commitment to perform all 1080 works by Bach, both audio recordings and HD video. This is in honor of the ensemble’s one hundredth anniversary.
Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. The text for this work is based on a collection entitled The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett and published in 1942. This volume can be viewed on the Internet Archive.
I sang Ceremony of Carols with a choir I was part of at Goucher College in the 1960s. I had never heard it; indeed, I had never even heard of it. When we began rehearsals, I was astonished by its strange, otherworldly beauty – and by the fiendish challenge of singing the section entitled ‘This Little Babe” (10:04)
Here are the Choristers of Wells Cathedral:
Finally, the ‘Grand Pas de Deux’ from The Nutcracker, ballet by the dancers of Ukraine’s National Opera. I find this piece especially moving:
The Last Chronicle of Barset: On returning to the classics
The novels comprising The Barsetshire Chronicles by Anthony Trollope are set mainly in the fictional county of Barsetshire and more specifically in its cathedral town, Barchester.
Below is the list of the novels in this series:
The Warden (1855)
Barchester Towers (1857)
Doctor Thorne (1858)
Framley Parsonage (1861)
The Small House at Allington (1864)
The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
The publication dates correspond roughly to the time in which the action of the novels takes place.
So I began by reading – again- several months ago. Barchester Towers. Why had I loved this book so much when I first read it years ago? The answer to that question became obvious at once. Trollope is fantastic storyteller! The tangles that his characters get into are very involving; there’s a hint of humor also, sometimes more than a hint.
The plot – or plots, I should say – concern the denizens of the fictional county of Barsetshire, and in particular the politics and machinations concerning the administration of Barchester Cathedral and the various adjacent clerical entities. If this sounds arcane – trust me, it is anything but. And unfolding concurrently with the cathedral politics are several very compelling love stories.
I went on to reread Doctor Thorne and Framley Parsonage. From there I went to The Last Chronicle of Barset, skipping The Small Houses at Allington for reasons I can’t quite articulate.
The Last Chronicle of Barset is the sixth and final work in this series – and its crowning glory, in my opinion. This may seem like an odd thing to say about a novel from this era, but the novel was a real page turner. I got so engrossed in the lives of these characters, I could not stop reading. This is the consummate goal of great fiction – to compel the reader in this way. (I regret that I’m having this experience so rarely with contemporary fiction.)
Also, as I was reading these novels, a faint feeling of recognition stole over me. That feeling had to do with their likeness, in some sense, to the works of Jane Austen. No wonder I was loving them so much!
The following comments come from Graham Handley’s introduction to the Knopf edition of this novel:
‘Trollope’s keen eye has exposed the inequalities and the derelictions in small communities and a wider society, sometimes with a sardonic humour, sometimes with that quiet tolerance and compassion which exemplifies the quality of his writing. The Last Chronicle is a considered, consummate aesthetic structure and a vibrant identification, imbued with a high sense of art and a higher sense of humanity: that combination in itself is the measure of its greatness.’
The series The Pallisers was broadcast on PBS in 1974. I never watches it, but I know many people who did; they still hold it up as the gold standard for the kind of period drama at which the British excel. (My brother Richard recently alluded to it in this regard.) And so, feeling somewhat bereft after finishing the final Barset chronicle, I decided to embark on a reading of the Palliser novels. Like The Barsetshire Chronicles, this series is comprised of six books.
So far I’ve read the first two entries, Can You Forgive Her? and Phineas Finn. And now: on to The Eustace Diamonds!
Oh, and I am now a member in good standing of The Trollope Society USA.
Books to the Ceiling