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#5 Platform - The Daughter of Time
Feb. 19th, 2009 12:52 amAnother case for history being written by the winners?
Book #4: The Daughter of Time
Author: Josephine Tey
Provenance: Received as a present from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prodigalsword
Over the years, one learns all sorts of pieces of trivia that may or may not be true, just from being in the culture, or hearing bits and pieces of common knowledge in discussions, or getting fed the received wisdom in history classes or children's stories. In most cases, the story is more complex, and some of the time, the story's just wrong. That's the point of Tey's book, largely: you should be more inquisitive and find out whether the world is what it looks like.
Her particular illustration comes through the personage of Inspector Alan Grant, in the hospital after falling through a trap door while trapping a criminal, looking into historical mysteries, since he can't go out chasing down new ones. An actress friend of his brings him a picture of Richard III, and he falls into the question of what happened to Richard's two young nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Common belief holds that Richard killed the two boys to help cement his hold on the throne. Grant starts off with the feeling that the man in the picture doesn't look like a criminal, and then starts investigating the crime from his bed, with the help of his nurses, friends, and an American researcher that becomes attached to the story, as well.
Since this is a mystery, I won't discuss the twists and turns of the story, but I will say that I found it an engrossing read, with an acerbic tone to the writing and interesting characters. Even the explanation of the historical research, which could have been quite dry, comes across as lively. Digging into who the historic players were, and how people actually work versus how we sometimes think of them through the filter of many years, as paper cutouts who just did what they did. That's Tey's real triumph here; you can see the people, both in the story's present and in the past, as real and sympathetic.
This is the best mystery I've read in a while, and it's helped by the unusual format of searching through history. This one's highly recommended.
Next up: Memories of Ice. That'll take a while.
Book #4: The Daughter of Time
Author: Josephine Tey
Provenance: Received as a present from
prodigalswordOver the years, one learns all sorts of pieces of trivia that may or may not be true, just from being in the culture, or hearing bits and pieces of common knowledge in discussions, or getting fed the received wisdom in history classes or children's stories. In most cases, the story is more complex, and some of the time, the story's just wrong. That's the point of Tey's book, largely: you should be more inquisitive and find out whether the world is what it looks like.
Her particular illustration comes through the personage of Inspector Alan Grant, in the hospital after falling through a trap door while trapping a criminal, looking into historical mysteries, since he can't go out chasing down new ones. An actress friend of his brings him a picture of Richard III, and he falls into the question of what happened to Richard's two young nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Common belief holds that Richard killed the two boys to help cement his hold on the throne. Grant starts off with the feeling that the man in the picture doesn't look like a criminal, and then starts investigating the crime from his bed, with the help of his nurses, friends, and an American researcher that becomes attached to the story, as well.
Since this is a mystery, I won't discuss the twists and turns of the story, but I will say that I found it an engrossing read, with an acerbic tone to the writing and interesting characters. Even the explanation of the historical research, which could have been quite dry, comes across as lively. Digging into who the historic players were, and how people actually work versus how we sometimes think of them through the filter of many years, as paper cutouts who just did what they did. That's Tey's real triumph here; you can see the people, both in the story's present and in the past, as real and sympathetic.
This is the best mystery I've read in a while, and it's helped by the unusual format of searching through history. This one's highly recommended.
Next up: Memories of Ice. That'll take a while.
