Mysteries of Winterthurn

Rating:
Summary: Enthralling and Challenging. A twisted and romantic journey
Review: Fascinating book, when one considers that Oates is writing in the early 1980s in a retrospective style and language. She completely hits the Victorian mark. Don't expect "easy reading"-- this one takes time and committment, but it's worth it. Elements of horror, romance, and historical interest are blended in a fairly balanced manner. The first tale in this 'trilogy' of sorts gets bogged down a bit with all of the Kilgarvan family trivia, but it is essential to the rest of the tales. Work through it. Xavier Kilgarvan is truly one of the most unique and engaging (and pitiful) characters of all the detective/mystery genre. The most impressive aspect of this novel is that Oates leaves mysteries as mysteries. Meaning, she does not rend the veil of mystery in some hackneyed (though at times clever) manner, like so many writers in this genre (Doyle). The supernaturally strange events in Winterthurn remain shrouded (and as you will see, justifiably so) even after extensive examination and "ratiocination" (Oates' word). In the end, the Truth (if there be such a thing) is left for us to speculate. The importance (and the fun) lies in the journey, not in an unattainable destination!

Rating:
Summary: Mysteries of Winterthurn
Review: Oates has taken some vintage American crimes and fictionalized them to shed light on the true "mysteries of Winterthurn" : The attitudes towards class and gender which make the true culprits and events highly explicable to the reader, but not to the inhabitants of Winterthurn. The aristocratic inhabitants of Winterthurn (the poorer ones don't matter) are willfully blind to facts which conflict with their images of each other, which enables a vicious sex killer to operate with ease, or for a lady to get away with crimes which would have been detected quickly if commited by a poor woman. The poor can be hired, fired, scapegoated, raped, even murdered at will, and the parallels between their economic vulnerability and degradation, and their vulnerability to violence is deftly handled. Oates' description of Riviere du Loup, the working class community which Winterthurn uses as a refuge dump and as a place where any crime may be commited against the lower class inhabitants by the wealthy young men of Winterthurn, is chilling and plausible.

And for the record : Ms Oates didn't merely go back and take old crimes and recast them event-for-event with her own fictional characters in the roles of murderer, victim, witness...Instead, she takes elements from many different crimes and recombines them. Recognizing the famous cases adds to the pleasure of the book. Here are some of the famous crimes which she used in the plotting of "Winterthurn":

The Lizzie Borden case,
The Hall-Mills murder case, aka the minister and the choir singer,
The Thomas Piper "Bat Belfry Murders",
The Leo Frank tragedy,
and I believe I detect traces of
Mary Rogers,
Theodore Durrant, and
Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray.

The distancing effect of the archaic language helps to make it clear to the reader that the plight of the poor and downtrodden has changed little in the decades gone by. The language will add to some reader's pleasure ; others will find it off putting. It requires the reader to really think about the information s/he is being given, as the narrator is the 'incompetent omniscient' : A third person narrator who knows everything, including the most private thoughts of the characters, but who misses entirely the truth of the crimes and the motives of the actors. This makes the portrait of Erasmus Kilgarven, one of the most evil villians in modern American literature, all the more horrific.

Rating:
Summary: Mysteries of Winterthurn
Review: Oates has taken some vintage American crimes and fictionalized them to shed light on the true "mysteries of Winterthurn" : The attitudes towards class and gender which make the true culprits and events highly explicable to the reader, but not to the inhabitants of Winterthurn. The aristocratic inhabitants of Winterthurn (the poorer ones don't matter) are willfully blind to facts which conflict with their images of each other, which enables a vicious sex killer to operate with ease, or for a lady to get away with crimes which would have been detected quickly if commited by a poor woman. The poor can be hired, fired, scapegoated, raped, even murdered at will, and the parallels between their economic vulnerability and degradation, and their vulnerability to violence is deftly handled. Oates' description of Riviere du Loup, the working class community which Winterthurn uses as a refuge dump and as a place where any crime may be commited against the lower class inhabitants by the wealthy young men of Winterthurn, is chilling and plausible.

And for the record : Ms Oates didn't merely go back and take old crimes and recast them event-for-event with her own fictional characters in the roles of murderer, victim, witness...Instead, she takes elements from many different crimes and recombines them. Recognizing the famous cases adds to the pleasure of the book. Here are some of the famous crimes which she used in the plotting of "Winterthurn":

The Lizzie Borden case,
The Hall-Mills murder case, aka the minister and the choir singer,
The Thomas Piper "Bat Belfry Murders",
The Leo Frank tragedy,
and I believe I detect traces of
Mary Rogers,
Theodore Durrant, and
Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray.

The distancing effect of the archaic language helps to make it clear to the reader that the plight of the poor and downtrodden has changed little in the decades gone by. The language will add to some reader's pleasure ; others will find it off putting. It requires the reader to really think about the information s/he is being given, as the narrator is the 'incompetent omniscient' : A third person narrator who knows everything, including the most private thoughts of the characters, but who misses entirely the truth of the crimes and the motives of the actors. This makes the portrait of Erasmus Kilgarven, one of the most evil villians in modern American literature, all the more horrific.