Book #26: Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

The tenth Maisie Dobbs has finally arrived! It came out a few months ago, but I had to wait for this whole time for the hold at the library to come through because there was such a long waiting list. Definitely worth the wait. I read somewhere that each of the Maisie Dobbs novels has a theme to it, where Winspear is trying to make a statement or a point about it  (like mental illness or treatment of vets or drug addictions or something like that), and this book seemed kind of to be about racism (although it wasn't as didactic as some of the other books' themes might have been). Maisie is investigating the death of an Indian woman who was shot in London, and as usual several of Maisie's cases merge for her to solve this one. There's not much else to say about the case itself without giving too much away! Of course, Maisie is the most open-minded and charitable (and least racist) person of everyone in the book (as she always seems to be), which makes her seem much more twenty-first century than early twentieth.

As for Maisie's personal life, she is actually making plans to leave to go on a trip to India herself. I just want to smack her about her ambivalence about James and their relationship--although she's really NOT ambivalent; she loves him very much and just doesn't feel confident enough in herself to commit to marriage. So I DO understand that. I think Winspear actually does a good job of explaining her feelings in this book (or maybe it's that Maisie is finally understanding herself and her reluctance for the first time). She worries that she'll lose some part of herself (like her work, which has sustained her through her traumatic war injuries and loss of self) once she gets married, but I just want her to get married and keep working like she's always been doing. Come on, Maisie! What are you waiting for?! Gahhh. But oh well, I think there were some good signs in this book that she will finally commit while she's on her journey in India, which she embarked on at the end of the book (by herself!).