The Chorister at the Abbey by Lis Howell
published 2008
[excerpt] It was five o’clock on the Friday before Christmas when Tom
Firth left the carol service rehearsal. He stood on the Abbey steps in the
misty evening, trying to make up his mind what to do. Should he go for a drink
with some of the singers from the Abbey Chorus, or go back to Norbridge College
where he was a student?
Frantic brightness buzzed from the shopping mall, cutting
through the drizzle. Office parties spilt onto the pavement from the pub,
despite the damp. But, set back from the high street, the biscuit-brown Abbey
seemed dunked in the wintry evening. The only lights were those sprinkled like
sugar on the Christmas tree in the porch. Here, the unique hiatus of the
holiday had already descended. Soon the rest of the world would press the pause
button, and the special atmosphere of the Abbey would take over.
comments: And it's the Friday before Christmas today. These are the opening lines of the book, and – along with
the cover pictured here – are slightly misleading: I think anyone would be
expecting a real Christmas cozy mystery here. But that’s not what’s happening.
Lis Howell - who has a busy career as a broadcast
journalist – wrote a handful of murder mysteries set in a fictional town
in northern England, close to Carlisle and to the border with Scotland. They
have a good stab at describing small-town life, and have an unusually strong
church presence in them – with plots revolving round obscure church history,
and modern-day issues in the Church of England, and following the church
calendar. They make for enjoyable reading, although she appears to create a lot
of characters whom she actively dislikes, pouring scorn on their clothes,
décor, weight, life choices. Is it naïve to say it seems slightly unfair to
give people these attributes and then lay into them for exactly those features?…
but this is widespread among many people writing about British provincial life, with crime writers particularly guilty (and going back a long time, into the Golden Age. Ngaio Marsh, looking at you). I sometimes wonder - as I try to work out who is the murderer - why they have handicapped themselves by making it so very clear which of their characters they really like.
Anyway. The heroine, Suzy Spencer, and some of her friends, are
exempt from this, and it is fun reading about their lives.
The story runs at a leisurely pace from Christmas to
Easter, and concerns a fictional hymn writer and a lost psalter.
As with all her books – it makes for interesting reading.
Picture of choristers at Salisbuy Cathedral – misleading for content, but nicely seasonal…
You're not really selling this to me, Moira. I do prize good-heartedness in a novelist. I think it is a bit mean to create characters without redeeming features - unless of course they are the murder victim in a GA crime novel. In which case, have at it! Chrissie
ReplyDeletetee hee, I'm not am I? There were other aspects to enjoy. And I am quite fascinated by this idea of authors who create awful characters apparently for no reason except to criticize them.
DeleteYou know, I hadn't thought about it, Moira, but you've got a good point. Why create an unpleasant character and then heap derision (or worse) on that character? Unless, of course, that person's going to be a murder victim... And yet, it happens. The setting and context for this one sound appealing, and I've not read Howell before.
ReplyDeleteHalf good half bad! It IS an interesting question, isn't it, about dislikeable characters.
DeleteI note that one of her titles is "The Flower Arranger at All Saints"! I too am not sure about this author, based on your post - ideally I'd get one from the library to try but I logged hopefully in to their catalogue and found nothing.
ReplyDeleteSovay
She seems to have disappeared, along with her books, which is a shame - there have been a lot worse books around. I read the flower arranger one - if I'd known how interested everyone is I would have done a post on that one!
DeleteOpen Library has a few of her books available to borrow, including this one and the flower arranger book.
DeleteOh thank you Marty.
DeleteI agree with Chrissie. Usually I like a novel set in a cathedral town, but you are not selling this one! You don’t say whether you enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say cathedral I mean abbey, big church and so on. An all inclusive word! And yes, having worked in Lichfield I am well aware that there are differences between the various religious establishments - but I choose to ignore them!
DeleteOh yes I knew what you meant! Abbeys, priories, minsters... does anyone fully understand the differences. Mmm, I said enjoyable and interesting, which is about right
DeleteTrollope and Mrs Oliphant would probably know all about those differences. (And Miss Marple, of course.)
DeleteYes indeed!
DeleteMiss Marple would have looked at me most reprovingly!
DeleteMiss Climpson is the expert, but almost nobody would preach "sound Catholic doctrine". (Lucy)
DeleteAh yes Miss Climpson. But then I always remember her reading someone else's notes as they were about to go into confession. Not sure about that.
DeleteAnd Miss Silver would no doubt have coughed reprovingly!
DeleteHigh moral principles!
DeleteProbably not the best reason to read the book but I really like the cover :-)
ReplyDeleteThat may have been significant to me too! I wasn't sure whether to post on this book or not, but I thought it would be a shame not to show that cover
DeleteLove the cover and think I might enjoy a slightly mean-spirited author! Laura Lippman, an American writer of crime fiction, jokes about a tee shirt she wears that says,"Be careful or I'll put you in my novel." Apparently not everyone finds it amusing! I will check my library.
ReplyDeleteI love Laura Lippman, I'm always astonished that I haven't featured her on the blog.
DeleteBut the characters I'm talking about - I don't believe they do exist in real life, I think the authors have invented them out of some pool of resentment in their own minds.
I just checked - Laura Lippman is mentioned just once on the blog, with Tess Monaghan featuring in a list of young female detectives
DeleteI just started one of Lis Howell's books whose heroine is a television producer. One scene has her at a dinner with a couple of those unpleasant characters, and it has a feel of encounters the author actually had. But that might be just in this particular book. Maybe Howell got some bile out of her system by creating characters with features that she could then denounce. Maybe she literally loved to hate them?
DeleteI don't know why I am defending these awful imaginary people, but it just feels exaggerated and one-sided! I hope you enoy the book.
DeleteThis is what bothers me a bit about the Cormoran Strike novels. It seems to me that J.K. Rowling creates at least one particularly dislikeable secondary character in each of them, dwells on this character's nastiness and then punishes them at the end. I leaves a slightly bad taste in my mouth.
DeleteI absolutely agree with you! I also think Cormoran Strike behaves very badly at times, has no manners etc, but this is seen as almost endearing: but then a character who doesn't have the authorial approval will be strongly criticized for very similar actions.
DeleteI'm not going to finish the book, it has already turned me off! Maybe if I had kept reading I would have seen what you're talking about. I can understand what you say about the Cormorant Strike books, sounds very double-standard-ish!
Deleteit is something I have noticed in a few different books, and it annoys me more than it should!
DeleteAnd it just occurs to me that one reason I like Richard Osman's books so much (have just read the latest one, "We Solve Murders", and thought it was great) is the exact opposite of this. He creates characters that might be unimportant or uninteresting or stupid or ignorant in the eyes of other people, or simply have a very low social status, but who turn out to be interesting and endearing when we get to know them. There is a genuine warmth in his writing and in his obvious interest in people which I find immensely attractive. And as I write this today, on Christmas Eve, it strikes me how seasonably appropriate it is, so I take the opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas Moira. May you and your blog flourish for a long, long time!
DeleteWhat a lovely comment Birgitta! And yes, it hadn't occurred to me but you are absolutely right, that is what Richard Osman does.
DeleteAnd a very Merry Christmas to you and yours, and thank you for your kind words and your alway-wonderful comments!
Re Laura Lippman - I am listening to her newest book, Murder Takes a Vacation (I suppose everyone is doing an Osman/senior citizen mystery these days) which has some great clothes descriptions in it (although how the heroine can do a two week vacation with just a carryon baffles/impresses me, especially once she buys a caftan, which I am sure takes up a lot of space). Lippman is a big fan of the Betsy-Tacy books and often includes an allusion - in this book it is the Kipling quote, "Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone," which Betsy quotes to give herself courage when traveling alone to Europe. That was a nice surprise as I was driving along earlier in the week.
DeleteConstance, the poster Bernadette below says the same about the clothes. So I have made up my mind to read the book, though it does sound a bit out of Lippman's usual style.
DeleteI am very fond of that quotation myself (and Kipling in general)
I like Laura Lippman too. IIRC there wasn't a lot of clothing detail in her books, and Tess was a t-shirt kind of gal--so maybe not a lot of "material" for this blog.
ReplyDeleteThe standalones have more clothes in fact, and there is one that I lent to a close relative, saying he could keep it. He returned it saying I needed it back to do a post on the clothes... This was quite a long time ago, but I will get round to it....
DeleteI recently read Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman and there was a huge amount about clothes in it! It's the only Laura Lippman book I've read. Its protagonist is Muriel Blossom who has apparently previously featured before as Tess's assistant. Tess occasionally appears at the end of a telephone but it's not a Tess Monaghan book. I would recommend it - I found it sweet and heart-warming but not revoltingly so. It's funny too.
DeleteOh, thank you! I wasn't even aware of this book, and it sounds great.
DeleteHonestly, guilty as charged on the unpleasant characters front (I think every author has absolutely written at least one really full blown character assassination) but in my defence most of the really blistering ones I've written reflect people I've personally met/known or seen in action. I've not published any fiction yet though.
ReplyDeleteI bet yours are great! I'm honestly not saying that there shouldn't be horrible characters, that everything should be nice and sunshine-y - it's just a certain kind of character that seems to be unconvincingly awful, and created just for the author to lay into them. I will have to find some more examples.
DeleteThere ARE some truly awful people who seem to go out of their way to be as unpleasant and vicious and unlikeable as possible. I could tell a few stories, there's people where I and my friends have been like "That person absolutely CANNOT be for real, nobody's like that, yet they are...."
DeleteOh yes, I do know what you mean
Delete