I became a fan of Fraser’s books back in the 1970s—not only her Jemima Shore books, but also her history books, beginning with Mary Queen of Scots. I recently bought the first three Shore mysteries, which had been reissued in attractive paperbacks and settled in to re-read them in the order they were written. I found the first two, Quiet as a Nun and Tartan Tragedy, as pleasant to read now as I did 30 years ago. At that time, the thought of a woman journalist with her own popular investigative reporting series on TV was an unusual concept. The third book, however, bothered me and that fact shows how much the world has changed in those decades since it was written and I first read it. In A Splash of Red, everyone takes as a matter of life the fact that Jemima’s friend has a lover who beats her up. Then, when the friend disappears and the lover starts hanging around Jemima and holding her hostage, Jemima isn’t outraged. The behavior apparently was not considered abnormal back in England at that time (late 1970s and early 1980s), and I obviously didn’t see it when I read it then as a big deal, either. It is not the main plot of the book, but just part of the character development of Jemima’s friend and the friend’s lover. Now, in today’s world, it just no longer fits.
No comments:
Post a Comment