Two books to keep you detoured in a comfortable way

Dear reader,

Here in New York, there is a cinema with booster seats, showing a series of kids-worthy revivals on Sunday. My 5 year old and I went there frequently, and a few months ago we went to see the 1944 musical “Meet Me in St. Louis.” We had a wonderful time seeing the 1903 technicolor arousal in St. Louis. He kept repeating this recommendation whenever Esther and John Toruette teenage characters had scenes together. The children in attendance looked confused, but were unable to understand mercilessly.

I went home bursting on our adventure, but wanted to reread the book by Sally Benson, where the musical was based. And accordingly, I dug out the paperback the next time I was able to access the box at my parents' house.

– Sadie

Benson was known as a short story writer. Both this book and her collection, Junior Miss, consisted mainly of stories she published in New Yorker. Originally, the semi-autobiographical sketches gathered here appeared between 1941 and 1942 as a series called “5135 Kensington.” However, by the time the book was published, MGM's adaptation was already underway, and Benson changed the title to match. She also added four new vignettes and constituted the book as a year of the Smith family's life.

Much of this revolves around children's jokes and attitudes, rivalry and loyalty. Rose, Bell. Esther, Acolite is obsessed with her boy. The opposite Agnes and the pathological 5-year-old Tootie. Benson is an expert in clever establishment sketching. In the first chapter of the book (June 1903) we meet the whole family through Rose's new love, John Shepherd. Mr. Smith is tolerant and unimpressed. His wife is rushing to a dressmaker for a new dress.

It's a truly moving relationship between financial worries and small heartaches not getting caught up in a Vincente Minnelli movie, and the grandpa and younger children. This is Benson's love letter to her childhood and lost time, but it's also clever, sharp and entertaining. When I put down the book I noticed that my face actually hurts from the smile. I think it's worth sharing, right?

Of course, if you like it, read: of course the musical “Meet Me in St. Louis.” “Life among the Savage People” by Shirley Jackson. Betsy-Tacy High School Books.
Available: Number of second-hand sites. It was not printed, but it was a bestseller of the time. (My copy of Bantam has been in 1958.)

“The Murder of Tokyo Zodiac”, Soji Shimada

Fiction, 1981 (Japanese); 2004 (English translation)

I have long wanted to recommend this debut mystery novel from a prolific master, but I am not sure how best to indicative its complexity without ruining the joy of the book as well as the twist. It is useful if your reader is already familiar with the Japanese subgenre of “Honkaku”, characterized by a puzzle that gives you all the clues to solving a crime.

“The Tokyo Zodiac Murders” also has a lot of fun with the mystery practices of the locked room, the motifs of paper chase, the narrative story, the enigmatic will, and astrology. In 1936, the artist working on a series on Constellations was found to be murdered in his locked studio. His Journal – Is it a short story? – Discovered, they reveal a disturbing plan to build his ideal woman from the body parts of the family.

It will jump 40 years in the future. Illustrator and mystery fanatic, Ishikawagawa is handed over valuable (and needless to say, complicated) new clues to police-related murders, sending Ishikawa throughout Japan, bringing in a massive amount of astrology into a bargain. Quoting author Anthony Horowitz. Anthony Horowitz has a promotional character on the cover of my edition. “The solution is one of the most original things I've ever read.” I'll make it second, but add that the reading process is truly a joy here. Whether you're trying to solve the case yourself (I didn't), or just immersed in a real distraction, this will take you across the ocean, filling up your week's holiday or sweep you out for a few hours before going to bed.

Read if you like: Honkaku, Sherlock Holmes, Puzzles, Astrology.
Available: Pushkin Press.

Why…

Would you like to go to the library? The Morgan Library exhibition “Bel da Costa Green: The Librarian's Heritage” is a fantastic collection of Green's acquisition and eras from literary legends (and JP Morgan's right-hand woman). Green, the daughter of Harvard's first black alumni, “passed” as a white man for most of her professional career, running Morgan's collections and donations for years after her death. Morgan's online show is a great alternative to face-to-face visits or a supplement for those who don't get enough. Check out our annotated Balzac page with Doodles.

Speaking of Balzac… have you read Henry James' literary criticism? Was that collection recently published by NYRB? “The Balzac Lesson” is in favor of French realists, but even the younger authors are delved into it several times, just like George Elliott (“Romora” is undermined by “overabundance of analysis”) and Thomas Hardy (“very cleverly wandered in it), as Michael Gola opens his presumable introduction, “the nerve he had.”

Do you want to stir the dull roots? As a child, I often listened to TS Elliot on vinyl. It is the only way to see it on the cruelest moon.

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