Book #3: Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Funny enough, I've only heard about this book when Amy Poehler mentioned it in her memoir Yes, Please. But the fact that Nora Ephron wrote it made it stick in my mind, because her movies are some of my favorites. So I wrote it down and put it on my Goodreads account, and eventually checked it out from the library and it sat around at my house for a month and a half before I read it today. And I kind of wish I hadn't read it--just because of the subject matter. I hate stories about cheating spouses--and that's basically all this book is. Rachel Samstat, a cookbook writer, with one toddler son and seven months pregnant, finds out that her husband has been having a serious affair for months and that he has no intentions of breaking it off. The whole book is basically her funny, sarcastic reactions and thoughts on the whole situation and the whole month or two after finding out about the affair and what she decides to do about it. To make matters worse, it's an autobiographical novel based on Nora Ephron's marriage to Carl Bernstein (Watergate), and how she caught him cheating on her. So it's not just a story about a spouse cheating on her--it happened like this to her in real life. And no matter how funny and well-written this book is (which it is, don't get me wrong), the subject matter is still so distasteful and depressing to me that I don't like thinking about it. Plus, Rachel's life sounds eerily similar to mine right at this second (2-year-old son, seven months pregnant with another boy) which makes it all the less appealing to read. I feel like everyone in the novel was just so selfish (especially her husband, but also Rachel herself in a lot of ways--her two kids didn't ever factor into her thoughts about the break-up at all) and that wasn't all that fun to read. This was really a funny, quick read, but not worth all the negativeness of the storyline to me.

Book #2: Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers

I think this and Gaudy Night are my two favorite of Sayers's murder mysteries that I've read. This is also the last one I'm planning on reading, at least for a while, because I'm eager to move on to some of the other books I have on my list (at some point, eventually--we have so much going on that I'm not getting much reading time in lately). But I felt like I had to read about Harriet and Peter's marriage and honeymoon to feel like I've finished off their relationship arc over the books I've read. As you can guess by the title, Harriet and Peter go on their honeymoon and get involved in solving a murder mystery when a corpse is found in the basement of the home they're staying in (after they've already slept there a night!). The mystery is complex--they have to try to figure out why or how the man was killed without basically any clues, since they'd disrupted the whole evidence scene when moving into the house. But they of course figure out the whole scheme in the end.

I really liked how this book kind of introduced Peter and Harriet into a small hamlet in England (where they're honeymooning) and brings the motley crew of characters who you would expect to find in such a place. I also, of course, liked the honesty and difficulty that the two honeymooners have with each other and how they begin to navigate marriage together, and how being married instead of just friends/engaged affects or changes their relationship (for better and for worse). I think it's so interesting how both Peter and Harriet are so flawed, both of them being almost too independent for marriage and too messed up by past lives to make it work--but they somehow do. I did feel that Harriet made quite an abrupt about-face in this book from previous ones, where she repeatedly ignored and resented and refused Peter's advances and proposals, to now being completely besotted and in love without any problems with that. Oh well, I guess it could happen that way.

Overall, this book had a great mystery in it, and it helped me to finish off the Peter Wimsey storyline that I've been interested in, so now I'm ready to move on to something else.

Book #1: Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

This is another one of Dorothy L. Sayers' murder mystery novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I've got one more by her checked out from the library, and then I think I'll be done with the mysteries for a while. Have His Carcase was an interesting case where Harriet finds a dead body on the beach while wandering about England on a backpacking trip by herself, and she is obviously detained and becomes involved in solving the mystery, along with Lord Peter Wimsey, who travels down from London to help with the mystery. The case hinged on the fact that Harriet apparently found the body immediately after he had been killed, because the blood was still running freely and not clotting at all. The detectives (both professional and amateur) are all stumped because there doesn't seem to be a way the guilty parties (who they suspected) could have completed the crime at that moment. But there's a twist at the end to help make everything clear and explain how it could all have happened like it did. To me, this twist felt a little like a deus ex machina to neatly tie the knot in the story, but it all fit together in the end anyways. It was definitely an interesting mystery, and I felt like Sayers went to pains to show every little drudge-y step of the detective work, all the background digging up they have to go to and all the canvassing and inspecting and useless asking questions that is part and parcel of solving a mystery like that. I thought that was pretty interesting to see those aspects included in the story (because usually they're ignored or downplayed in books, I think). It was also interesting how Harriet Vane's experience as a murder mystery writer played into her abilities to contribute to solving this real-life mystery; I liked that interplay between fiction and reality and fiction again.

This book is placed between Strong Poison, when Harriet and Lord Peter meet (and he falls immediately in love with her for no explicable reason), and Gaudy Night, when after years and years of cajoling, they finally get engaged (sorry for the spoiler, but it was pretty obviously bound to happen!). I liked this intermediate step in their relationship and looking at how they have progressed. Lord Peter is still asking Harriet to marry him randomly throughout the book, but they have one or two serious conversations about how their relationship is affected by their shared experiences, how he's always bailing her out of trouble and she's left with nothing except to be "grateful" to him and how difficult that is for her. This same dynamic is still fully in play in Gaudy Night too. I thought it seemed very realistic and appropriate, and I enjoyed that part of the book.