Lately an
interview with Lyn Hamilton made me order a half-dozen of her “archeological”
mysteries from the library. It wasn’t till I looked her up on the internet that
I learned she has been dead quite a while. I’ve read two of her books now, and
have two more waiting on the nightstand. I scan quickly through the historical
backstory she includes throughout each novel, the story of the archeological
treasures that are the reason people are murdered. Hamilton has done her
research, but it is catching the killer that interests me.
Another book
whose plot grabbed my attention is The Haunting of L, by Howard Norman. “What a
lovely man,” I thought, as he chatted with the host. "His thoughtfulness; his way of seeing." I had ordered one of his
books before — a memoir — but in spite of its dramatic content (a friend had
killed herself and her child while staying in the home of Norman and his wife),
it had not held me. I left it unfinished. Still, on the strength of this
interview, I asked at the library for this other one.
The Haunting
of L is a fiction revolving around the practice of “spirit photography,” which
was apparently popular in the late 1800s. The image of a dead friend or
relative or lover was inserted into a photograph of living people, and claimed
to be a real presence. Often this was a comfort to the living, and so it became
a way for charlatans to make money.
The opening
line:
“In the
four-poster bed, my employer’s wife, Kala Murie, lying beside me, the world
seemed in perfect order.” The employee is a photographer’s assistant, and Kala
Murie always wears two pairs of socks to bed because she is cold from the knees
down, although the rest of her body is so warm she often sleeps without any
covering at all.
The assistant
thinks in captions. He frames everything he sees in this way, so much that it
is almost an obsessive habit. Part of my work at the newspaper is writing
captions for photographs, and I note that the practice hasn’t filtered into my
consciousness, like breathing, as it has for this character.
“I looked at
Kala. She’d shawled the bed quilt around her shoulders.” I love it when authors
describe things in ways I’ve never thought of. Sometimes so simply, yet so
effective.
And that’s as
far as I’ve gotten, this Saturday morning. I’ve got the next four days off; dishes to do, other than that no plans or obligations. I’ll bake bread on
Monday, but otherwise something tells me this girl will be reading. And I mean
to get my papers together to take to my favourite accountant. I’ve been meaning
to do that for a month already.
Out on the step, the wind smells like spring.
