Castle Freeman - All That I Have

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

A Joy 

I loved All That I Have. It’s involving, shrewd, witty and above all has the most wonderful narrative voice in Sheriff Lucian Wing.

Wing is Sheriff in a rural part of Vermont; he knows the people he polices and has a thoughtful, flexible approach to “sheriffing,” as opposed to that of his deputy; as another character puts it “All he does is run around arresting people. That’s not what anybody wants.” Wing’s contemplative, laconic style is tested when a local tearaway becomes involved with some very serious Russian gangsters; the plot moves quite gently and plausibly, interesting things happen without resorting to overblown action or violent sequences and it kept me interested throughout. The real joy of the book, though, is Wing’s voice and his take on things. These couple of examples give a flavour:

“Fact is, Wingate’s barely making it. After all, he’s eighty-three or -four. I go visit him every so often, but Clemmie don’t come. Wingate don’t want her. He don’t want Clemmie to see him broken down the way he is, it looks like. If you’re Wingate, you don’t show weakness, or anyway you don’t show it to women, or anyway you don’t show it to women of an age to be your daughter. Wingate’s old school.”

or

“Addison’s what you could call a pillar of the community, though he’s the kind of pillar where the side facing out gets a little more paint than the side facing in.”

and this typical little comment on his own role:

“I sat there and thought things over – didn’t get far with it, though. I decided I didn’t yet have quite enough to think about to make thinking worthwhile.”

If you like those, you’ll like the book. Don’t expect a high-octane mystery full of Twists; for me this was far more involving with its quiet, thoroughly engaging view of the complexities of ordinary lives – and it made me laugh out loud several times. Castle Freeman is a wonderful discovery for me and I have immediately bought the next two in the series. I can recommend this very warmly indeed.