I went off to see the doctor again today, and consequently had my monthly weigh-in. I’ve been feeling rather fat the last couple of weeks, as though I were putting on weight again, and I was all prepared to discover that hadn’t lost anything this month.

Turns out, greatly to my amazement, that I lost seven more pounds. Apparently all those walks around the Rose Bowl and Brookside Golf Course (not on the course, mind you, but around it, outside the fence) have been paying off.

For the record, that’s fifty-four pounds since the beginning of February.

Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are.

Recently someone asked me whether I’d read any Alan Garner. I had, of
course, but not in over twenty years.

I first encountered Garner’s fantasy novels when I was in college, and
had an odd reaction to them–or, rather, to three of them; one,
Red Shift, I simply didn’t like. But the other three I read
and enjoyed; and yet, although I’ve kept them all these years I’d never
been moved to re-read them. That’s extremely odd; I can’t imagine that
there are many books I’ve had for so long without re-reading them at
least once.

Anyway, now, as then, I decided to start with Elidor. Going
in my memories of the book were exceedingly faint, consisting mostly of
two impressions: that I’d liked it very much, and (somewhat
paradoxically) that there wasn’t much to it. And now that I’ve read it
again, I can see why I retained those impressions.

What the book is, is a somewhat contrarian take on an old chestnut: the
story in which children from our world are magically transported to
another which desperately needs their help. The children usually adapt
quite marvelously to their new surroundings, and (except for Eustace
Clarence Scrubb) have little difficulty understanding the folks they
meet. Culture clash simply isn’t an issue, and the strangeness is
embraced with joy. Garner’s tale is grittier, and quite likely more
realistic.

The story takes begins in London, at a time some short while after World
War II when entire neighborhoods laid desolate by German bombing are
still standing. Four children, Nicholas, David, Helen, and Roland, are
exploring the ruins when they are drawn into another world. There they
meet a strange figure named Malebron; they speak his language, somehow,
but they don’t really understand him or his world–how could they, after
all? He persuades them to rescue three treasures from an ancient evil
vault, and return with them to England for safe-keeping. It’s an
interesting answer to the question, “Why should children from another
world be needed so desperately?” Precisely because they are from another
world, and can return there.

That’s about all I remembered of the plot from the first time I read it,
and there’s little enough to it. The remainder of book takes place in
England, and it’s a doozy, almost more of a horror novel than a fantasy.
There are strange goings-on and peculiar manifestations, and although
good triumphs in the end, due in no small way to the children’s actions,
there’s much that remains strange, fantastic, and unclear. The result is
both compelling and oddly unsatisfying. We haven’t seen the whole story,
and we know it; we’ve been on the edge of things, and will never see or
understand the center.

As I say, it’s a contrarian approach to a classic plot, and probably the
way things would actually be if a story like this could actually be true.
I’m not surprised that other authors haven’t followed Garner’s line, here,
though.

We have here six volumes of mastermind and sleuth Nero Wolfe,
containing twelve tales, and there isn’t a bad nut in the set.

I’m not going to wax rhapsodic about these books, although I justifiably
could. And I’m not going to spend paragraphs telling you how Nero Wolfe
is an interesting character, with his bed temper, his rudeness, his
gourmet appetite, and his orchids, but that Archie Goodwin, now, Goodwin the
wise-cracking sidekick, is the real hero of the books, and a completely
sufficient reason for reading them. Even though it’s true.

Suffice it to say that if you enjoy mystery novels, and you’ve not read
any of Stout’s books, you’ve got better things to be doing than reading
this review when Amazon’s just a click away.

And now, a few notes about these particular books.

Fer-de-Lance is the first of the Nero Wolfe novels; I like
it, but it isn’t the best of the series. The maguffin’s a little
over-complicated, and Wolfe isn’t quite himself–at maybe 99%, he’s more
himself than most long-running characters are at first appearance, but
not quite himself.

I fear I read In The Best Families out of order (I was just
picking the books off of the shelf in whatever order I found them, which
wasn’t chronological). There are three Nero Wolfe novels for which the
sequence matters; this is the third, in which Wolfe has his final
showdown with that mastermind of crime Arnold Zeck.

Over My Dead Body‘s an interesting little tale, involving
fencing, murder, Balkan politics, and, most remarkably, Wolfe’s long-lost
daughter from Montenegro. As Wolfe dislikes women intensely, much comedy
ensues. We learn quite a lot about Wolfe in this one, some of it good.

The remaining three books are all triples; apparently Stout wrote three
shorter Wolfe tales every year, which (IIRC) were always published in a
single volume just before Christmas. I won’t say too much about these
except that in each tale you get the distilled essence of Wolfe and
Goodwin, and that’s no bad thing.