Lethal White – R Galbraith
I was chatting to someone recently…they thought I read a
lot; this amused me as I don’t think I read much more than most people. They
also pointed out that once upon a time, if I read a book I thought people would
find interesting, I shared it here on my blog and I should consider doing that
again. Apparently, it had helped them pick some books that they would never usually
consider, and they had really enjoyed them. So that was a nice thing to say...and
so here I am with a bit of a book blurb!
I’ve been eagerly anticipating the fourth instalment of the
Cormoran Strike novels; I wanted to know what happened next in Strike and
Robin’s journey. I picked the book up on its day of release and started reading.
By day two it was finished and I tweeted I had enjoyed it but thought it a bit
long-winded. The reaction was mainly surprise that I’d finished it, rather than
the “how dare you say anything against JKR” but I think that was possibly more
to do with the fact that most people were still reading the book at the time.
Now they’d probably turn on me and say it was the perfect length!
Before the book was released, Robert Galbraith/J K Rowling
posted various teasers on Twitter, from headers showing a wooden anatomical
horse (which artists use for form and perspective when drawing) Benjamin West’s
painting “Death on a Pale Horse” a reference to the biblical passage from
Revelation “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him
was death,” to a picture of a USB stick in the shape of a white horse
announcing the book was finished. All of these pictures made me think Lethal
White would be set within the confines of the equestrian world. I was rather
excited, as a child I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things equestrian;
if I couldn’t have a horse as a child, I would damned well know all I could
about them for when I’d grown up!
Overo lethal white syndrome is a fatal, inherited condition
found in horse breeds with white coat patterns. It is probably most renowned in
the American Paint Horse, but can also be found in miniature horses,
Thoroughbred and part-Arab horses. The affected foals are born with a white (or
nearly pure white) coat due to a lack of melanin-producing cells, plus an
impaired intestinal tract. At birth they look like any normal white foal (not
all whites foals are affected by OLWS by the way) however as the infected foals
cannot digest food properly down the intestinal tract, once they start to drink
the mare’s milk they start showing signs of severe colic. An affected foal can
usually show signs within the first 12 hours of birth and death can occur with
48 hours as the abdomen distends and becomes increasingly painful. There is no
cure for OLWS and so the kindest thing is for the foal to be euthanised.
It seemed an odd title for a book, naming it after such a
horrendous condition, but then the promotional excerpt about Lethal White came
out…”I seen a kid killed…He strangled it, up by the horse.” Hmmm. Nope. OK, so probably not a story set in
the horse world at all…up by the horse could be anything. A pub (let’s face it,
there are a lot of pubs called The White Horse) or perhaps a famous British
landmark…a chalk horse (there are plenty of them cut into British
hillsides…from the Kilburn White Horse in the North York Moors National Park,
to the Westbury White Horse of Wiltshire and beyond.) There was only one way to
find out…read it!
The first thing I noticed flicking through from cover to
cover was that each chapter starts with an excerpt from Henrik Ibsen’s
Rosmersholm. Ibsen's politically biased
play covering scandal, corruption and an unhappy marriage (the characters in
the play being based on the real life elopement of a fiesty young countess who
ran off with the husband of one her relatives, a Swedish poet, who were guests
of Ibsen for a short period.) One of the themes in the play is the folklore of
the White Horses of Rosmersholm. The play was originally written under
the title White Horses and later changed to Rosmersholm, so it was a tangible use
of his work in her book.
Now I don’t intend to spoil the book for those who have not
read it by writing spoilers. The book does start where we left off in the last
one, at Robin’s wedding. Whilst there is no hard and fast rule as to how long a
prologue should be, I think it should be limited to no more than five pages. It
opens up a story, giving background details and context, and helps establish
the story going forward. Now when I finished Career of Evil, I was desperate to
know what happened between Robin, Strike and Matthew but I wasn’t expecting a
warts and all start to the book. I read the (very) long prologue thinking,
“well this is all very nice…but is this supposed to be romantic fiction or a
detective novel…and when are we going to move onto the crime bit?”
I guess the book relies on both the crime element, and the
romantic notion of Strike and Robin’s relationship, but I thought it took too
long for the book to really get started…it was a very slow burn and it wasn’t
until I’d got to about the 24th or 25th chapter that I
actually thought the book took off. Strike’s success in a Career of Evil has meant
that his agency has grown and he is now able to employ some contract staff to
assist him with investigations. He receives a visit from a young man, Billy
Knight, who claims he witnessed a murder and the burial of someone when he was
younger. He’s an agitated character with a history of mental illness, and he
runs from Strike’s office before identifying himself. Strike however catches up
with Billy’s brother Jimmy, an activist opposed to the up and coming 2012
London Olympics, who tells Strike his brother is an unreliable personality and
not to be believed.
The meeting of Jimmy and Strike is noticed by Jasper
Chiswell – the Minister for Culture – a politician plagued by scandal who, he
tells Strike, is being blackmailed by Jimmy. Strike takes up the case and
places Robin undercover at Westminster to find out what is going on behind
closed doors. Robin, unsurprisingly, is not having the best of times with
Matthew, and so is eager to accept her latest assignment. She meets a number of
characters including Geraint Winn, the husband of the Minister for Sport (Della
Winn) who wishes to destroy Jasper’s career…however, whilst undercover, Robin
finds out that there are other things he’s guilty of! The plot weaves back and
forth through a myriad of characters which we are introduced to in Rowling’s
distinctly verbose style.
As the investigation continues, Strike is drawn to a
painting, possibly painted by the Liverpool artist George Stubbs of a horse
mourning the death of her foal (which has died of lethal white.) For my A-Level
art exam I had to write a thesis, my subject was Equine Metamorphosis…looking at
the changing face of the horse from Albrecht Durer to Franz Marc. As someone
who had easy access to the Liverpool art galleries, George Stubbs featured a
lot in my research, although I can’t ever remember seeing a painting matching
the description in the book! But that is neither here nor there, JKR has done
her research and embedded as many horse connotations into her book as possible.
By the end of the book I was full of mixed emotions. I
enjoyed being reacquainted with Strike and Robin. JKR has created two beguiling
characters that you can’t help falling in love with. I enjoy a good
crime/detective novel, and in essence these books do have a skilfully weaved
storyline but I just wish there was tighter editing. All characters, including incidental
characters, are described in so much detail that the flow of the story wanes. I
also got the feeling that JKR was distracted when writing the book, there is
repetition in some areas and mistakes in others, and I found it unnecessary to
keep describing Strike’s missing leg in so much detail so many times. We’re
meant to believe that Strike is not defined by his injury, yet at every given
opportunity a paragraph will be given to how he lost his leg. For an audience with
the intellectual capabilities of processing a passage of Rosmersholm per
chapter, the author should trust the same audience to remember (if you tell
them once per novel) how Strike sustained his injury. As the story progresses
it is perfectly acceptable to say the pain shot down Strike’s leg as an
adequate reflection of when he is suffering, rather than the pain shot down Strike’s missing
leg which he had sustained…blah blah blah. The constant reminders just
irritated and distracted me.
I think JKR is blessed with a vivid imagination and an
ability to create a good story. She creates interesting, complex characters and
has a great feel for the human psyche; she is also very visual and this translates
well to film and TV, however her publisher really needs to be brave and cut the
extraneous material. The various flaws (e.g. an item mysteriously changing into
something else) should also be ironed out when proofreading because they stand
out, particularly if you read the book over two days! (At one point in the book
I was reminded of Tom Burke’s character, Norbert, in the short “One Wrong Word.”
A novelist is trying to get his book published, but the text just isn’t quite right!)
Despite my grumbles, I did enjoy the book! I’m looking
forward to the TV adaptation (Tom back on my telly…of course I’m looking
forward to it!) and I have a great desire to find out what happens in the next
stage of Robin and Strike’s journey. I just hope that we might get to see some
more of Shanker in book 5…I do like him!
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