My reading of late have been “50 shades of the British upper class” for some reason. I’m currently making my way through The Patrick Melrose novels with two friends, and as they are brilliant but rather harrowing reads I’ve tried to squeeze in a few comfort reads. One is The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes and the other is Dashing for the post; the letters of Patrick Leigh Fermore (edited by Adam Sisman). I’ll be reading the latter on and off for most of the month I guess.
The second installment of the Patrick Melrose novels is called Bad news; in it we meet Patrick at the age of 22, on his way to New York to pick up his dead fathers ashes. What ensues is a drug fueled weekend in which Patrick tries to come to terms with his father’s death? Is it bad news? Or is he free?
Through the ramblings and thoughts of the only sometimes lucid (and possibly sometimes all too insightful) Patrick we learn something of what has passed since that afternoon in France when he was five. The divorce of his parents, the drug habit and his constant struggle of wanting to be himself but also someone altogether different.
The writing is brilliant, St Aubyn manages to capture frenzy in a stream of words (which I also thought he did well in Dunbar), and if Never mind is sad this installment is amusing in all its tragedy, the sarcasm that Patrick uses as a shield can be very entertaining at times.
However, after all that sharpness and anger I needed something a bit more, shall we say predictable? I saw The Mitford Murders in a bookshop before Christmas and made a note, and accidentally found it at the library the other week.
It too starts with bad news; poor Florence Shore Nightingale (herself a nurse and related to the famous nurse) gets killed on a train to visit a friend. On the same train is young Louisa, trying to get out of her uncles clutches and on her way to a job interview with the famous Mitfords. Jessica Fellowes (related to the famous Julian Fellowes; she has written books about Downton Abbey) has taken an actual event (the murder) and spun a story around that, using the Mitford family as a backdrop (some of it being informed, some of it made up).
Thoughts go to the work of Agatha Christie and the contemporary Jaqueline Winspears books about Maisie Dobbs. Loads of tea and scones are enjoyed, and we have scenes in the upper classes with all the glitz as well as insight into the harsh realities of life “downstairs”. If the detective is a plot device as it is a person that can be in all areas of society, so are maids and nurses.
It is a debut novel so all the usual caveats apply; it is far from perfect. The Mitfords have less to do with it then the title implies, which might matter to some. I’m not sure I would have picked this up had there not been a combination of chance and craving for something nice. But having read it I’m rather pleased. I did think it had charm, and I didn’t figure out who did it until rather late in the book. I would qualify this as a good holiday read, or at least it would be for me.
-Suss
Artfulreader 
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