Sue Grafton's
U Is for Undertow has left me in a quandary. After reading it, I've finally figured out why I've always had reservations about her books. First, each book has a ton of characters, which means I have to read it fast so I can keep up with who's who. But I can't read Grafton fast because she's so descriptive—every piece of clothing a character has on, every piece of furniture in a room, every change in the color of the sky. And in
U we starting getting doses of history, whether they're related to the story line or not. So why not just stop reading her? Because I'm crazy about the secondary characters who show up in every book. They're interesting and quirky. Surprisingly, I'm still not sure how I feel about the protagonist, PI Kinsey Millhone. But she's well-rounded enough that there's plenty to like and dislike. Additionally, it's hard to stop the series because I've read A to U. That's 21 books. Can I really not read the last five?
Specifics from
U Is for Undertow:
1) Looking a the book as a whole, it bothers me that my favorite-to-read-about character, an uber-villain from a backstory set in the 1960s, got only a miniscule of "onstage" time compared to that given to many far less interesting characters.
2) A nurse insets a catheter though a character's penis. While I was amazed that Grafton knew the most common sizes of catheters, that information, IMHO, did nothing more than waste space in an already overlong book. (page 127)
3) A character tells Kinsey, "… I lived in an institution, the Children's Haven of Saint Jerome Emiliana. He was the patron saint of orphaned and abandoned little ones." (page 156) WHO CARES?
4) A bit of dialogue did grab me.
I laughed. "That's right—1967 was the Summer of Love. What were they thinking?"
He smiled and shook his head. "That's how you know you're getting old—when you start looking back with kindness on things you knew for sure were ridiculous at the time." (page 193)
Wow! A good bit of dialogue? Guess it proves the old adage, "Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and …" Well, you know the rest.
5) About another character: "He had to laugh at himself. He hadn't written a word and he was already suffering writer's block." (page 204) Back when I first started to write, I used to wonder if writer's block truly existed if a writer hadn't been published. Set that bar high, Martha.
6) On page 205 Grafton writes a few sentences that compare/contrast Hemmingway and Faulkner, and they do it well. The comparison probably didn't advance the plot any more than the size of catheters did, but IMHO it was far more interesting.
7) On page 210, we get a detailed history of building a harbor in a town on California's southern coast. Be still my heart.
8) Did I know a "Boston marriage" was two women? No idea. It sounds familiar. Whatever. Even so, why Boston? Anyone know?
9) On page 353 I ran across a section that reminded me why I invariably break down and buy the next letter. Kinsey is talking about word problems in math and how she could never do them because she'd start wondering about the people on the train, who they were and where they were going. When describing my own problems with math, I've said the exact same thing.
All in all, 'tis now a quandary.
