The Avid Reader: Plays & Murder Mysteries

I stepped into my sister's room the other day to find her watching "Shakespeare in Love," and was reminded how much I enjoyed reading Tom Stoppard for class. I picked up the volume of his I have and read "The Real Thing" in one day.

As his other plays have been, "The Real Thing" was funny, moving, and beautifully crafted. Full of heavy dialogue and featuring a play-within-a-play, Stoppard's play is an exploration of what it means to truly love someone. It follows two couples who break up and re-group, if you will, when one of the husbands cheats on his wife. Henry, originally married to Charlotte, leaves his wife for Annie, who was married to the character Max. Following this display of infidelity and unhappiness in marriage, Annie and Henry become husband and wife, declaring themselves wholly in love with one another. But Annie does not understand Henry's attitude towards love. He does not fret when Annie is hit on by other men, nor even when she hits on them. She begins to feel the lack of jealousy as a sign of Henry not really being in love with her, but Henry defends his attitude as being a sign of his trust in their union. In is mind, any connections made during those flirtations come no where near the relationship he shares with Annie and is thus not threatened or upset. By the end, Annie feels so confused she ends up in yet another extramarital affair, but this time behind Henry's back. Henry proves himself not as willing to let the matter slide, but the couple stays together on more faithful terms.

I do not know about the ways of drama, but I very much enjoy reading Stoppard's play. Perhaps "The Real Thing" has not been favorite of the five I've had the pleasure to read, but I sure enjoyed it and the wit was definitely not lacking.

I've also read Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith. It's great! The death (Murder?! Suicide?!) is not terribly crazy or mysterious, but Rowling sets up the characters and facts with enough uncertainty that the resolution could be anything. The private investigator, Strike, is a great character though not too much time is spent getting to know him. Which is not to say you don't at all, but more that his interviews with people and research of events surrounding the death are much more what is leading the story (it is a murder mystery, after all). It is all done so that the reader is privy to a lot of questions and answers, but not so much to the mind workings of Strike as he solves the different puzzles and uncertainties surrounding the mystery. We are left to piece the facts along with him, though it is not so easy to do so.