Rating: 5/5
Review:
A fine novel
I thoroughly enjoyed Gaudy Night second time around (after about
forty years). Although I’ve been back to the others many times,
this was my first re-reading of Gaudy Night. It is principally about
Harriet Vane and her return to her old Oxford college to investigate
some rather sinister goings on.
I think what made me
like the book more this time is that I accepted from the start that
it is not primarily a detective story and that Wimsey doesn’t
appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. There is a
mystery which drives the narrative, but it’s really a novel about
sexism and how it relates (or related in the 1930s) to marriage,
women in academia and attitudes to women generally. It is also a
book about Oxford and Sayers’s love for both the city and the
academic rigour for which it stands.
She writes
beautifully and penetratingly about all these things, creating very
well observed and well painted portraits of her subjects, who are
principally the Dons in a women’s college. The mystery forms a
backdrop at best and isn’t hugely interesting in comparison with
the novel’s setting and with the relationship between Harriet and
Peter. Her understanding of people is acute and she gets vital
human details exactly right, like the poignancy and mixture of
feelings when returning to university for a reunion, for example
I found the whole
thing engrossing, witty, exceptionally intelligent and a pleasure
pretty well from start to finish. I think it was a little long, with
some episodes which could have been left out, and Wimsey remains
implausibly accomplished in absolutely everything, but these are
minor niggles. This is a fine novel which I can recommend very
warmly.
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