{"id":837,"date":"2010-08-22T20:59:20","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T04:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=837"},"modified":"2010-08-22T20:59:20","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T04:59:20","slug":"review-farewell-my-lovely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=837","title":{"rendered":"Review: Farewell, My Lovely"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Philip Marlowe novel – Raymond Chandler, of course.\u00a0 Like The Long Goodbye<\/em><\/a> and The Big Sleep<\/em><\/a>, this is a mystery with Marlowe trying to get to the bottom of it.\u00a0 As with the other novels, Chandler’s style creates a high contrast world of lush language and minimal, beautiful scene-setting.\u00a0 Unlike those books, we get a version of Marlowe who is much more vulnerable.<\/p>\n

In Farewell<\/em>, Marlowe is much more in the world he’s exploring.\u00a0 In the other books I often had the feeling that Marlowe was above the proceedings, even when he was emotionally invested.\u00a0 There were moments of physical peril, but I never felt it.\u00a0 More to the point Marlowe never seems to feel it.\u00a0 That’s not the case in Farewell.<\/em><\/p>\n

Marlowe’s always been human enough to make some mistakes – and he makes some doozies in Farewell<\/em> – but he generally is the smartest and highest minded guy in the room.\u00a0 In Farewell<\/em>, I came away feeling Marlowe was letting his demons have their way with him more than usual.\u00a0 And he suffers for it more than usual.<\/p>\n

The suffering is never just a plot point; it is the natural consequence of sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.\u00a0 It’s Marlowe’s reactions to it that are interesting.\u00a0 There’s the plot stuff, of course, but more interesting is how it changes him and how he shows it.\u00a0 Viewing these changes through the stylized idioms of another time makes the workings a little harder to make out, but invests them with more iconic power as well.<\/p>\n

As always, if you want a whodunnit, Chandler delivers.\u00a0 He does so with so much style and literary power – and drive to say new things with a comfortable character – that I’m happy to read it if the case is unsolved.<\/p>\n

Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Philip Marlowe novel – Raymond Chandler, of course.\u00a0 Like The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep, this is a mystery with Marlowe trying to get to the bottom of it.\u00a0 As with the other novels, Chandler’s style creates a high contrast world of lush language and minimal, beautiful scene-setting.\u00a0 Unlike those books, we get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}