Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. Harper & Row Publishers, 1936.
Reason read: after many false starts I am finally getting around to reading the next book in the Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey series.
From the very beginning of Gaudy Night, Sayers makes sure the reader is connected to Harriet’s past. This is important for the story to be successful. In Gaudy Night Harriet returns to her alma mater, Shrewsbury College, for a reunion of sorts. Called a ‘Gaudy Night Dinner’ Harriet attends the feast during the college’s reunion weekend and has a wonderful time reconnecting with people and the place. However, afterwards Harriet receives a nasty message tucked inside the sleeve of her college gown, calling her a “dirty murderess.” Someone knows of her past: years earlier she had been on trial for the death of her lover, but ultimately acquitted, thanks to Lord Peter Whimsey coming to her rescue and proving her innocence. Despite all that, there are people out there who still think of her as guilty beyond a shadow of doubt. The messages don’t stop there. Harriet and others continue to receive threatening missives. Someone has a bone to pick with the women of Shrewsbury College. Shrewsbury administration is adamant that Harriet solve the mystery…with the help of Peter, of course. What better way to avoid public scandal than to have alum Harriet Vane investigate the nasty letters? Never mind that Harriet is not a trained investigator. The fact that she writes compelling mystery fiction is clout enough. When the investigate stalls, of course Lord Peter must come to Harriet’s rescue and uses this latest mystery as an excuse to yet again propose to Miss Vane. I found the scene when Peter gives Harriet a lesson in self defense while flirting silly. Peter even outfits Harriet with a dog collar to protect her precious neck while sleeping.
Marriage and romantic relationships are a prominent theme in Gaudy Night. [As an aside, Wimsey is so persistent and Vane is continuously so reluctant that I wished more than a few times that Peter would give up. I wanted him to break the news to Harriet that he has found someone else; a bombshell of a girl who he considers his true love.] All in all I found Gaudy Night to be a long and winding story that moved away from the mystery for long periods of time.
Line I liked. When Peter is talking to Harriet he utters, “The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo” (p 404). Phrase I also liked, “…distorting-glass of suspicion…” (p 462).
Confessional: there is talk of suicide throughout Gaudy Night that was difficult to read. I had a friend who took her life earlier this year.
Author fact: After reading Have His Carcase the author fact was Dorothy Sayers full name. The fact for this blog is that she died at 64 years of age.
Book trivia: I am always annoyed when someone like a hairdresser always gets caught up in murders. Their involvement never seems clever enough. There is no murder in Gaudy Night.
Audio trivia: my version of Gaudy Night was read by Ian Carmichael.
Music: “Love in Bloom,” Bach, “Greensleeves,” Morley: Canzonets for Two Voices, “Sweet Cupid, Ripen Her Desire,” Tobias Hume’s “True House of Joy and Bliss,” and Bach Concerto.
BookLust Twist: You can always tell just how much Pearl loves a book by how many times it gets mentioned in various chapters. Gaudy Night appears in all three Book Lust books. There is a double mention in the original Book Lust: first, in the chapter called “Academic Mysteries” (p 4), and again in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 117). In More Book Lust, Gaudy Night shows up in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 169). Finally, there is a fourth mention of Gaudy Night in Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Oxford” (p 170).
