October 10, 2004

Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell

A couple of years back, on the recommendation of a colleague from History, I read a Patricia Cornwall novel, I can't remember which one. She (my colleague) said that she loved Cornwall's stuff, particularly the way in which she depicted Kay Scarpetta, her main character, as a professional woman. So I went on a bit of a reading jag and have read, I think, just about all of the Scarpetta novels. And yes, I could appreciate what my friend saw in her, but with each novel I felt a growing unease, and not just because of the gut-churning descriptions of autopsies — I am a big fan of C.S.I., after all. No, it was Scarpetta herself: she seemed increasingly humourless, increasingly reactionary living in her gated Virginia community, increasingly isolated and paranoid. This was all awhile ago and mostly forgotten as I picked up the newest paperback at the supermarket. Reading the first chapter it all came flooding back: the rarified Scarpetta literally sick because she has two glasses of wine from (shudder) a carton; Scarpetta the object of veneration from an equally driven, equally humourless young woman at a seminar she is giving (sidebar: you know all those unintentionally hilarious books/tv shows/movies that scream "Homoeroticism!" in neon letters three feet high that everyone but the oblivious heroes can see half a mile off? Well the Scarpetta novels are the only place I have ever seen this dynamic transposed, otherwise unaltered, onto female characters. Something on another planet than sisterhood. Something Kirk, Spock and Bones would recognize. Something closeted and Republican. But I digress.)

Blow Fly is not well written, and it is too full of convoluted loops begun in previous novels to be of much interest to new readers. But what is really irritating me is the way in which Scarpetta seems more than ever to be, in a blatant, where-the-hell-is-the-editor sort of way, an avatar for Cornwall herself. It is not just that the descriptions of the petite, mature, blond, blue-eyed Scarpetta could refer equally well to Cornwall's author photo (see above), though that cannot fail to impress when reading the description, early in the novel, of Jay, the serial killer de jour, looking down on his next victim, tied up and naked: .

Her wide, panicked eyes shine in the dark. In daylight, they are blue, a deep, beautiful blue. She painfully screws them shut as Jay caresses her with the beam of the flashlight, starting with her mature, pretty face, all the way down to her red painted toenails. She is blonde, probably in her early- to mid-forties, but looks younger than that, petite but curvaceous.

This woman has been chosen because she reminds Jay of Scarpetta, whom he hates. Scarpetta, the avatar of Cornwall. This is disconcerting. Almost as disconcerting is the way that Cornwall practically forces the reader/viewer to scrutinize her own appearance in the first place. One senses that the reader could very easily share in the disdain with which characters outside the inner circle are described, that diminishing circle of the select, battling back to back as the hordes of serial killers, corrupt politicians, soul-crushing bureaucrats, and people who drink wine from boxes close in.

This is not the story of a professional woman battling for respect in a "man's world"; it is a skewed, solipsistic vision of personal aggrievement.

So will I finish it? Of course I will. And then I will feel the same queasy aftertaste that I now remember from all the others. So who's caught in some weird, unhealthy feedback loop now? Huh?

Though it does strike me, sixty pages in, that Scarpetta has not been much in evidence. Perhaps Cornwall is tired of her too.

And all grousing aside: it's either Cornwall or that growing pile of marking.

Scribbled at October 10, 2004 11:14 PM AST | Permanent link to this post | More? books/reading

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