February 2016 Discussion: Brat Farrar (spoilers)
 

The time has come to discuss the February 2015 MobileRead Book Club selection, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. What did you think?

I liked the book, in spite of a few big holes in the plot, like the contrivance of having the dental records destroyed in the Blitz. How could an undocumented alien be wandering around New Mexico (Los Alamos!) at the same time? Also, the legal cover-up at the end was not convincing.

Still, the quality of the writing was very good, so that saved the book for me.

I nominated this originally, and I'm sure at some point in the past I'd read it, but I was really pleasantly surprised as I read it this time. Even though the "mystery" was easily solved, the book kept sucking me in and I really enjoyed it. This has encouraged me to read the rest of the Josephine Tey books, all of which are available in the public domain in Canada.

I found this... unsettling.

I had read it a long time ago but had little memory of it except that it was an impostor plot. The wonderful prose, with its descriptions of the landscape, spot-on dialogue and lively characterizations, had me sailing through the reread with great pleasure. However, ultimately there was much I thought distasteful about it.

As bfisher said, when you think about it, there are significant plot holes. I didn't mind blowing the dentist and his pertinent records to smithereens in the Blitz so much, as there had to be some explanation for not checking the dental records* and the Blitz was handy, but how to account for the travel between Britain and France and France and the USA during the war?

But ok, it's not watertight, that's not my major issue. In fact, I have two. One is the essential morality of it. Brat gets a pass because Simon's a rotter? Suppose Simon had been a good guy? Or even suppose a not-so-good guy, but still not a murderer? It shocked me that the family was so ready to abandon the memory of Simon and embrace Brat, who had set out to cheat them. Bee was even glad Simon was dead! So much for compassion for the child who had gone wrong. It's not as if Simon would have been hanged, given his age, and the family chose not to pursue it anyway. More on that.

As troubling was the rampant classism. I know it's a factor in Golden Age mysteries, but this seemed over the top. The essential smugness of the haves, attributing to the lesser classes contentment with their lot because their lives were seen to be sufficiently fulfilling. Only the Scottish reporter questions the social contract and he's dismissed by Brat, who takes to being gentry like a duck to water. Worse is the explicit attitude to the working class. It's offensive to refer to a hard-working waitress as a slattern; I don't care how Golden Age** it is.

As for the police taking orders from the landed gentry, it cost the Ashbys a pretty penny to save face. If Simon had been established as having killed Patrick, he wouldn't have inherited, as you can't profit from a crime in that manner (as I remember from Dorothy L. Sayers). So the estate would have gone from Patrick to Eleanor, saving one set of death duties. Oh, well!

*It would be flatly impossible to write an impostor story these days, I suppose, without going AU or setting it in the past.

**And calling this Golden Age is doing it a favor it doesn't deserve. This wasn't written in the 20s or 30s; it's post-war, there's a Labour government, and class issues were at the forefront of discussion. Ultimately this read like nostalgia for a by-gone age and while there's nothing really wrong with that, it should still have striven to be more honest in regard to the lesser privileged.

Were others bothered by these issues?

Not very good mystery, but interesting
 

I didn't know about Josephine Tey until I saw the winner of this month. I was pleasantly surprised, as a mystery I'm sorry to say it didn't amount to much, but the way she portrays the protagonist made me want to go on reading just to find out what happened to him.
Also there are the horses! a substantial part of the book and the plot is related to horses. As a non-native speaker it got me going back to the dictionary to look up all the horse related words. It's something I like, that I can learn some jargon of a subject I know very little.
Overall for me, its charm resides more in her descriptions of the life at the horse farm and how Brat finds his way among some questionable moral choices. The mystery elements are not very strong because you can see from the first pages that Simon is "special" and from the first time he meets Brat it's clear he knows for a fact that he's not his brother (how could he know, unless...). Also the family wholeheartedly embraces him so it doesn't feel like his cover will be blown any minute now. The only thing that puzzles me is that maybe I wasn't paying attention to the geography of the place because I have no idea where the quarry is, relative to the cliff or why it was possible for Simon to reach the quarry but not the cliff, but I'm too lazy to re-read that part.

Ok Issybird, now you made me read more :). About the time Brat went to France: it is mentioned that eighth years have passed since Patrick’s “suicide” and we’re left to assume that The Blitz was afterwards, this means that depending on his timing Brat could have traveled to France before the war broke out. But it is kind of plot hole that the war is not mentioned at all when recounting Brat’s travels.

About the classism, I kind of blotted it out, not being familiar with English history; but yes it’s there for example in the relief of Bee knowing that Peggie having a good horse means her relationship with Simon will fall apart. Now that I think about it, I read it more as the general attitude of the family than an endorsement by the author; furthermore, I can’t tell if this was common with books of the time.

But the moral part, I think at first Brat is clearly in the wrong setting out to deceive an innocent family, he even acknowledges that Loding, “is a swine” for proposing such an action and yet he changes his mind when horses enter the picture; he was faced with a test of his moral fortitude and he failed. But yet his conscience keeps nibbling at him and had not Simon been a rotten apple he would most likely have run away from it, as the Rector told him. And in the end he does the right thing revealing himself as an impostor and allowing Eleanor to take her rightful inheritance; I don’t see him getting a pass since from my point of view he undid the wrong he had made.

Even though this was post-war and there is a Labour party, Josephine Tey was very much a product of her class, so I give her a pass on that. Class in England was (is?) as ingrained as race in America, though perhaps not as pernicious. (People were no longer routinely hanged for being poor by this point in England, something that could not be said about Blacks in the US in the 50's.)

Another product of the class and era was Angela Thirkell, and her writing of the post-war period shows the class issues and attitudes even more glaringly. For her I don't give a pass, by the way.

The quality of the writing (and the horse writing especially, as noted by Grey Ram) is so very good that I was completely drawn in from very early on. I had this book finished within a few days of the vote, even though I had other things on my plate. I wanted to find out how the relationships resolved, even though I knew early on "who did it". As others have pointed out, this isn't a particularly mysterious Mystery. But the characters and venue are so well drawn that they are compelling in themselves.

Had this book been written in the 60's or later, I'd probably have been more unsettled by the moral and class issues. But even Brat knew from the beginning that this was wrong and that it couldn't continue, and we see him struggling throughout to find a way out. (Of course, preferably without giving up his new "family", of course.) The one character I can't forgive or give a pass to is Alec Loding, the instigator of this deception.

Finally, the question left completely unsettled or resolved is who Brat actually IS. That he is genetically related seems undoubted, and I kept expecting that to be a factor in the final resolution.

It seemed rather clear to me, although it was not directly said, that Brat was the son of Walter Ashby and the young cook in Gloucestershire. My biggest question about the book is what the heck is a heraldic cat? (Page 8.)

In the beginning, I had been thinking that perhaps Brat/Patrick was the real thing and had somehow forgotten his former identity. It wasn't until page 43 that a second possibility arose in my mind: Perhaps Simon was so sure "Patrick" was an impostor because he killed the real Patrick when they were boys. Of course, we all now know that was indeed the case, but I still enjoyed the ride.

I was disappointed with the mystery but really enjoyed the book overall. Tey did an excellent job in her descriptions of all the characters and what was going on that figuring out the mystery early didn't bother me much.

Personally, I feel that Brat Farrar is a failure as a mystery novel. The mystery of why Brat looks so much like Patrick is generally underplayed and resolved in a very contrived way at the end. The other mystery is the death of Patrick but there is little focus on the murder until we are nearly half-way through the book. Then it is apparently dropped until the very end.

As to matters involving the plotting, ethical questions, and class and gender assumptions, I think Issybird has dealt definitively with these. On the plus side, as with others, I found that the writing was excellent. The characters were certainly well-drawn and interesting and I generally mildly enjoyed reading the book as a novel of community and family relationships--but not as a mystery.

Jo Walton's review of Brat Farrar.
http://www.tor.com/2010/09/10/a-pit-...s-brat-farrar/

The time discrepancies inspired her to write Farthing and its sequels which are set in a Britain that made peace with Germany in 1941.

I agree; I thought that was made quite clear. Both parents are now dead, so no further confirmation could be had.

Agreed! Although the very explicit childhood memories from the orphanage made me fairly sure that Brat hadn't merely had amnesia. I still wasn't sure till Simon indicated that "he knew".

This is a mystery where you DO pretty much know who ... it's HOW that is in question. I was a bit disappointed that HOW was not spelled out to us more completely (did S hit P on the head, or what?) but I thought that perhaps "gruesome" details like that were more normally omitted, in "genteel" books of this period. Death being from a head wound rather than the fall implies this is how it was done. But that was a tiny detail, nearly glossed over, in the details during the healing at the end.

Making Brat a cousin also means that he still has the Ashby last name .... and when Eleanor marries him, there will still be Ashbys living in the house. To the relief of all! Also, you note that "each generation tends to have a wastrel" has still held true, because it was Simon in the current generation.

I enjoyed the book!

I have to say that Tey, as with Wodehouse and cricket and golf, made me interested in a subject about which I know and care nothing at all.

Ultimately, I wasn't swayed by the attempt to make Brat a moral person. And I'm glad you mentioned Loding, since this is another area where Tey pulled her punch, I think. It's impossible to believe that anyone but Alec could have had the knowledge to coach Brat. A woman who emigrated to Canada? Faugh! They must have know, on some level, that it was Alec. But again, they preferred to smooth things over, ignore the issues, and save face.

I agree with you about Thirkell. I've read everything by her, and what was charming in the 30s Barsetshire novels was quite sour by the 50s. But there was a smugness in Tey's account, for me, that made me want to smack her.


Well, as a by-blow, Brat wasn't entitled to the Ashby name, but I suspect he'd have it changed, sigh. But you raise a point that occurred to me - just how would the Ashbys have reacted if it turned out that Brat wasn't a relative, but the offspring of some "slattern" and just happened to have a resemblance? I'm thinking the love wouldn't have been there.

Obviously I agree with you about the failings of the book, but as I read it, I thought that they made for a better discussion!

Absolutely. I've been on a horse twice in my life, both ancient mares suitable for VERY sedate walking. But this book actually made me momentarily think I should change that. VERY momentarily, given my age and physical condition.

Somehow, that didn't happen for me, though looking back at it through your eyes I certainly see why you'd feel that way. Just didn't hit me the same. Though we definitely agree about Thirkell's 50's novels. :(

This has certainly been one of our better discussions. I think the shortness of the book, and its obvious quality, have allowed more of us to read it, and yet it's failings give us something to talk about. Interesting dichotomy.

Loved that "Faugh".

Yes, Tey seemed to have been very willing to cut Brat some moral slack. Would it have been because he was the product of centuries of breeding? I don't think that it was a coincidence that the Ashbys seem to be centered on horse breeding. Tey hints at that, with the Ledinghams next door having failed, and only the long grey line of Ashbys carrying on in their squire-ly way. Why else would she have written "Bee hoped that it would go on sheltering Ashbys for centuries to come"? Note, Tey left her estate to the National Trust.

I found it very odd that Brat, brought up in a foundling's institution and living as an adult in the fo'c'sle and in bunkhouses, was able to fit so seamlessly into the Ashby household, as if to the manor born. I think Tey was saying that breeding is crucial in people as well as in horses and dogs.

I think you're spot-on with the analogy of breeding in people and horses. I'll extend that a bit to Timber, who seems to me to personify both Simon and Brat. Like Simon, he's killed, but Brat is sure he can be broken, as indeed Brat is by his tumble into the quarry, with the implication that he's purged of his own evil tendencies.

Your comment about Brat's assuming the mantle of gentry so seamlessly reminds me of a quote in a novel I was reading recently, spoken by a Polish Jew who's a student at Harvard, "You can only get so far from where you start." That seems to be to be more accurate.

I agree! I'm going to move this to the Discussion/Suggestion Thread to comment.

The whole analogy of the horses and people totally escaped me, and I really appreciate it being brought forward here. Gives me another insight into Tey and the book. Thanks, bfisher and issybird.

And yes, I'm glad you copied that comment over to the Suggestion thread. More than once, including that Murakami book, I've just passed on the selected book because it was too long or too challenging in some other way.