Gaudy Night
Book - 1995
When Harriet Vane attends her Oxford reunion, known as the "Gaudy," the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obsentities, burnt effigies and poison-pen letters, including one that says, "Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup." Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. And Harriet finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection, and those of her paramour, Lord Peter Wimsey.
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Publisher:
New York : HarperPaperbacks, 1995, c1936
ISBN:
9780061043499
0061043494
0061043494
Characteristics:
viii, 501 p. ; 18 cm
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Add a CommentWonderfully written. What a pleasure it is when a good writer takes the time with her craft and uses her scholarship to great effect.
I do wish for footnotes to translate the Greek.
I re-read her novels and always enjoy them all over again.
Splendid. My favorite DS book. Completely brought Shrewsbury College to life for me, even before I visited Somerville. Characters I just want to keep knowing.
Great read, enjoy the poetry and prose quotes. It's a lost world, unfortunately. When bogged down, just read any article in the NY Times or Washington Post and after feel dizzy from the dangling participles and misplaced dependent clauses, then rejoice when you return to it.
If you've enjoyed Sayers' Strong Poison and Have His Carcase, the two previous novels about Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey, you'll probably love this one. If not, you probably won't. I've read it and re-read it and loved it each time. But of course I've been in love with Lord Peter Wimsey from the first novel I read with him as protagonist. His finding his true love after all the years, well, it's just too beautiful. The Oxford University verbosity is, of course, nurturing bread and wine for readers of Sayers' novels.
Yes, it's a classic, but still readable? I broke under the weight of all that Oxford U verbosity and gave up halfway through. Much more enjoyable as a BBC minseries.
Book # 10
Dorothy Sayers was a brilliant woman - probably too brilliant to write fiction. Peter Wimsy is an amazing character - i only wish there were dozens more.