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"From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, spine-tingling novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past"--
I like Heller's writing, generally, but this seemed a little disjointed to me. There's an interesting mystery but I did not love how it ultimately played out or how we got to the conclusion. Celine herself is a fascinating character and I loved what we learned about her and wish more had been revealed. ( )
Celine is a character with talents incongruous with her upbringing. An artist and private investigator that tries to reunite families. She and Pete will win your hearts in this mystery. I enjoyed Celine tremendously, but even more so, since Mr Heller left so much hidden in her past. This isn't great literature, but.... ( )
(audio fiction, 11h20m) September reading challenge, set in Montana/Wyoming/Yellowstone NP - missing persons private investigator looks into the disappearance of a supposed grizzly bear victim in hopes of reuniting the widower with his daughter (though not with his malicious 2nd wife).
Narrator Kimberly Farr's pronunciation of the Portuguese words doesn't sound natural, but she is very careful to get the accent right, and that part is fairly brief anyway. Overall the speech cadences sound better at 1.05x speed, and the French bits sounded good. Character voice differentiation was decent but I kept thinking that the voices provided for Hank and New Englander Pete were female -- Pa/Pete's dialogue always brings to mind a sharp-witted old lady that would have a name like Maude or Blanche.
The story also takes a lot of detours, which I might follow better in print (my auditory attention span being somewhat lacking). There is definitely the mystery/suspense of the main story arc, but it progresses in a sort of meandering way, with lots of quiet introspective moments and sideways threads woven throughout. I enjoy Heller's sensitive artist/poet/naturalist storytelling and this intriguing storyline, though would probably opt for a print book next time. ( )
I was a little disappointed that Celine's character never really fully came together for me. She was meant to be mysterious, but her character was held at such a distance that she felt more like someone's idealized concept of a mysterious woman than an actual person. I wanted more from all the characters because the beginning sketches of them were so promising, and in the end I was let down. ( )
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With all Love
To my Mother, Caroline Watkins Heller— Artist, Spiritual Warrior, Private Eye.
And to Lowell "Pete" Beveridge, The Quiet American.
Primeres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
It was bright and windy, with the poppies flushing orange down the slopes of the bluffs, all mixed with swaths of blue lupine.
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
It was one year and one day after the Twin Towers had fallen. She could still almost smell the char, still see the air gritty with ash, and remember how the wind blew bits of charcoal financial statements and Post-it notes across the river where they fluttered over the dock like lost confetti. She could not have imagined a sadder finale to a grim year.
But she didn't know if she had the will to do any longer the work she was born for. Which was saying, in a way, that she no longer had the will to live.
Now, in Brooklyn, he channeled his talents into making healthy dinners that his wife would half eat, and into carving unabashedly erotic sculptures that the cleaning lady refused to dust.
One of Pete's other talents was to allow long conversations to be nonverbal and to have his companions be comfortable with it.
They were in open-range country north of Denver, running parallel to the mountains off to their left, the piled ranges of Rocky Mountain National Park dusted with new September snow.
It was a cool fall evening, the clouds over the mountains burning with russets and purple shadows, and there were still a couple of snowy pelicans drifting slowly on the dark water like fat schooners. Hank loved how the huge white birds took on the hues of the sunset. They came every year to breed, and happily fished for crawdads and carp, and helped the lake's visitors pretend they were on the coast.
His roommate, Derek, insisted that he read those parts aloud so that they could ponder the puzzle, like young Watsons, while they lay in their bunks before sleep and a winter wind howled in the eaves of their cabin.
Pete half smiled. It was his way of giving vigorous applause.
"His son, Norwood Jr., kept a pet lobster one summer. That one didn't end so well."
"You know, Pete, I've been cutting you slack all afternoon." "I'm supremely aware." This was how they sparred. It was a call and response, a little like the cries red-tailed hawks screed across a valley to their mates: Are you there? Yes, I am here.
The sun sets behind mountains but the cloudless sky that is more than cloudless, it is lens clear—clear as the clearest water—holds the light entirely, holds it in a bowl of pale blue as if reluctant to let it go. The light refines the edges of the ridges to something honed, and the muted colors of the pines on the slopes, the sage-roughened fields, the houses in the valley—the colors pulse with the pleasure of release, as if they know that within the hour they too will rest.
The wonderful thing about having a close and long marriage is that certain responses are as dependable as sunrise.
"It's very hard to be a boy," Celine commented dryly. "You're never sure whether to love something or kill it."
In the shocked silence that often follows mortal combat, Celine and Pete looked at each other.
They ran like escaped convicts down the lawns to the beach where the fog still moved in a living cloud.
They crept through the tall grass at the edge of the lawn like leopards. The light through the needled limbs broomed across their backs and they pretended they wore spots.
she knew, or saw—she said it was just like seeing a night landscape in a flash of lightning—that the world was divided. "On one side is the good and just, on the other is the bad and cruel. That simple. I felt evil breathing on my neck and I went ahead. It was a charge, a thrill, like perhaps a shot of heroin is to some. I can imagine. I understood nothing about addiction, but I could feel that a person might seek that rush again. It was a great moral failure."
Later, it would occur to her that certain dial tones and the flatlining of certain hearts sound almost the same.
Dusk was moving over the water with a stillness that turned half the world to glass. The wall of mountains had gone to shadow as had the reflections at their feet. In the stillness the rings of rising trout appeared like raindrops. Slowly, in silence, the dark water tilted away from the remaining daylight.
Celine got up to pee once and for a long time stood in her wrapper in the chilly dark—there would be frost in the morning, she thought—and marveled at the depth and texture of the stars. Like some infinite woven fabric. Which it was. The Milky Way ran through it like the unfurling and whimsical thought of the weaver.
"Sometimes now I think just making it through a day is the point. Practically a triumph, don't you think? If you don't melt down or kill anyone or just give up? If you happen to be kind, or help someone else, or create something beautiful, well, you've really done something to crow about."
She thought that one might not make a dent in the Great Sadness, but one could help make another person whole.
The words settled on the young mother like a flock of exhausted songbirds.
The man tilted his head. Hank could almost see the name working through a nest of copper tubes, like in an old still.
When Celine stepped out of the truck in her short Austrian felt jacket and beret, with her gold bracelets and almost every finger bejeweled with rings, his hand dropped and his face betrayed raw skepticism—as if this might be a practical joke. Or some Publishers Clearing House scam. Celine stepped carefully around dried mud cakes in her Italian calfskin boots and waved a hand at him like an old friend she'd spotted on the beach-club veranda.
He started to laugh. It erupted out of him and his little frame shook like one of the leaves in the aspen at the edge of the yard.
"I just had an idea," she said as she holstered the handgun. "Getting shot at clarifies the mind." "For me it has more to do with the bladder."
Darreres paraules
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"From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, spine-tingling novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past"--
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Google Books — S'està carregant…
(3.74)
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I like Heller's writing, generally, but this seemed a little disjointed to me. There's an interesting mystery but I did not love how it ultimately played out or how we got to the conclusion. Celine herself is a fascinating character and I loved what we learned about her and wish more had been revealed. (