January 28, 2010: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: The Private Patient by P. D. James

Discussion:

We had a smaller group for our first meeting of the new year to discuss P.D. James’ The Private Patient. The book garnered only a lukewarm reception. Of the readers present, five out of six gave it a thumbs sideways vote, and the sixth gave it somewhere between an up and sideways vote.

We all wanted to like the book, but we could not quite do it. One reason for this may be the extensive vocabulary James employed. One Page Turner relayed her vote by email, saying that it reminded her of her children’s homework which required them to find a certain amount of big words and look up their meanings. Other members shared this view, even pointing out specific words they had never before encountered. One such word was "uxorious", which I have since discovered means to dote upon one’s wife, perhaps to a foolish extent. The term was used to describe Dean, the clinic’s cook, who constantly worried about his wife and her ability to cope with the stress of restaurant work.

The subplot of Dean and his wife Kimberly was actually one of many extraneous plotlines and another possible reason for our tepid response to the book. There were several of these types of subplots such as Marcus’ desire to go to Africa, Sharon’s obsession with the occult, Robyn’s etiquette business, and Candace’s father’s will. Perhaps James was using these storylines to keep us on our toes and prevent us from figuring out the killer’s identity too early, however they just did not make a lot of sense.

We did not find too many of the characters, aside from the detectives, likeable either, which may be another reason we were not too interested in their individual storylines. Rhoda, in particular did not strike us as an enjoyable person. James gives us several early chapters focusing on our victim, but in the end we still did not feel as if we really knew her. We learned about the history of her scar, her relationship with Robyn, who seemed a bit of a mooch, and her feelings about her mother, yet we did not really care that much that she was killed.

Having read a summary of the book we did know that the murder was coming. I personally felt it took a long time to get around to it. However, there were a few twists in the story that we did not expect, such as Sharon turning out to have been a murderer as a child, the reappearance of a man she had been obsessed with for approximately ten years, and Robyn’s uncomfortable death in the freezer.

In spite of these twists the ending did not seem to have the requisite British mystery twist to it. Candace had been against Rhoda coming to the clinic from the beginning and is identified as the killer almost fifty pages before the novel’s end. This seemed a bit anticlimactic to me, but I suppose the fire at the end was intended to make up for it.

Another surprise came at the end, the engagement of Dr. Chandler Powell and Helena Cressett. Powell had been previously involved with Sister Flavia, which made this into a strange sort of love triangle similar to Rhoda’s obscure relationship with Robyn.

A couple of Page Turners had read a few of the books in this series before, but no one present had read them all. We discussed a few of them and the television series before moving on to other favorite mystery writers and crime programs. Some recommended authors included Janet Evanovich, Charles Todd, Deborah Crombie, Clive Cussler, and Anne Perry. The television shows discussed were crime mysteries like The Mentalist, CSI, and Bones.

As usual flyers for upcoming library programs and next month’s selection, in this case Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, were distributed at the close of the meeting.