Sign in with Facebook
Alisha's Reviews > Gaudy Night
Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)
by
by
Alisha's review
bookshelves: own, thoughtful-fiction, best-of-the-best
Feb 25, 2009
bookshelves: own, thoughtful-fiction, best-of-the-best
Read 3 times. Last read November 8, 2021 to November 17, 2021.
Re-read, November 2021: There’s so much to take in with this book, and even though I’ve read it 3 or 4 times now, every time it still feels like a fresh peeling back of the layers and trying to understand. It’s a bit more complex than what I can competently parse, but I do love it so.
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
Original review:
The dialogue and prose in Gaudy Night is some of the richest I have ever read. It's very dense and it takes time to understand it, but that's what creates such a connection between me and this book. Hours after finishing the last page, phrases from it still roll around in my head to be savored.
This volume contains the resolution for a romantic relationship three books in the making, and, incidentally, one of the most thoughtful adult relationships I can recall in fiction. Much as I enjoy reading about the Mr. Darcys and Mr. Rochesters of the literary world, you can have them all and leave me Lord Peter Wimsey. He's the one with the real power of mind, heart, and words.
I have heard that Dorothy Sayers, having created her detective and slowly endowed him with great complexity, more or less fell in love with him, and created a match for him in "Harriet Vane," a stand-in for herself. It wouldn't surprise me at all. His blend of intelligence, compassion, wit, honesty, affectation, nervous energy, and control is unique, contradictory, and hardly imaginable in the real world, but very appealing.
I also love Harriet Vane a lot. Her honest analytical mind is only enhanced by her all-too-relatable emotions as she tries to work out whether it is possible to balance the demands of brain versus heart.
Favorite passage:
"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures."
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
Original review:
The dialogue and prose in Gaudy Night is some of the richest I have ever read. It's very dense and it takes time to understand it, but that's what creates such a connection between me and this book. Hours after finishing the last page, phrases from it still roll around in my head to be savored.
This volume contains the resolution for a romantic relationship three books in the making, and, incidentally, one of the most thoughtful adult relationships I can recall in fiction. Much as I enjoy reading about the Mr. Darcys and Mr. Rochesters of the literary world, you can have them all and leave me Lord Peter Wimsey. He's the one with the real power of mind, heart, and words.
I have heard that Dorothy Sayers, having created her detective and slowly endowed him with great complexity, more or less fell in love with him, and created a match for him in "Harriet Vane," a stand-in for herself. It wouldn't surprise me at all. His blend of intelligence, compassion, wit, honesty, affectation, nervous energy, and control is unique, contradictory, and hardly imaginable in the real world, but very appealing.
I also love Harriet Vane a lot. Her honest analytical mind is only enhanced by her all-too-relatable emotions as she tries to work out whether it is possible to balance the demands of brain versus heart.
Favorite passage:
"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures."
Sign into Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ to see if any of your friends have read
Gaudy Night.
Sign In »
Quotes Alisha Liked
“I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”
― Gaudy Night
― Gaudy Night
“The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.”
― Gaudy Night
― Gaudy Night
“I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.â€�
“Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.”
― Gaudy Night
“Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.”
― Gaudy Night
“There’s something hypnotic about the word ‘teaâ€�. I’m asking you to enjoy the beauties of the English countryside; to tell me your adventures and hear mine; to plan a campaign involving the comfort and reputation of two-hundred people; to honor me with your sole presence and to bestow upon me the illusion of paradise, and I speak as though the pre-eminent object of all desire were a pot of boiled water and a plateful of synthetic pastries in Ye Olde Worlde Tudor Tea Shoppe.”
― Gaudy Night
― Gaudy Night
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
February 25, 2009
– Shelved
December 2, 2009
– Shelved as:
own
January 6, 2017
– Shelved as:
thoughtful-fiction
December 7, 2017
– Shelved as:
best-of-the-best
June 20, 2018
–
Started Reading
June 24, 2018
–
18.0%
"I had forgotten how SOLID the dialogue in this is...it's virtually impossible to switch back to a fluff novel after this...ugh, I love it so much."
July 18, 2018
–
Finished Reading
November 8, 2021
–
Started Reading
November 17, 2021
–
Finished Reading
