she reads and reads: Historical Fiction

Opening lines of the book:

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder.”

Why I read it:

I read Maisie Dobbs, the first book in this series, a couple of years ago and loved it, so I jumped at the chance to read the second book during the March Is Maisie Month read-along.

What it’s about:

The year is 1930 and Maisie Dobbs, who calls herself a “psychologist and investigator,” has just been hired by a self-made businessman to find his runaway 32-year-old daughter. When three of the daughter’s friends are found dead, Maisie must dig deep to find out what happened to these women. Is the missing daughter the killer or the next victim?

What worked:

Jacqueline Winspear gets two things very right in this series. The first is Maisie herself. I love Maisie. I love her intelligence, her reliance on her intuition and gut feelings, her belief that coincidence is “a messenger of truth,” the fact that she meditates and that she can tell how a person is feeling just by imitating their posture. The daughter of a costermonger, Maisie was sent into service at age 13; however, she has also been educated at Cambridge and served as a nurse in World War I. As a result, she is now neither “upstairs” nor “downstairs,” which gives her a unique perspective on the world.

The second thing that Winspear gets right is the historical setting. I didn’t know much about this period before I read these books, but Winspear does an excellent job of portraying the cost of the Great War on civilians, nurses and soldiers alike. She also manages to make all her characters fully human—I felt for all of them, including the “bad guys” and unsympathetic characters. Having read these two books, I feel like I have a much better idea of what it would have been like to be living in England between the two world wars.

What didn’t work:

Because I reread the first book in the series just before reading this one, I found myself a bit dismayed that the end of Maisie Dobbs, which is so poignant, is recapped so bluntly at the beginning of Birds of a Feather. Mind you, I’m not sure I would have noticed this if I hadn’t literally just finished rereading the first book before starting the second.

[MINOR SPOILER]

I also found myself somewhat annoyed with the possible-love-interests plot points in this book: while it’s pretty obvious what the men in question see in Maisie, it’s not so clear what she sees in them. I found her interactions with them to be totally lacking in chemistry. I can’t help but hope that romance doesn’t become the focus of any of the subsequent Maisie books!

[END OF MINOR SPOILER]

Favourite quote:

“While she walked, Maisie remembered feeling a prickling of the skin on her neck while she stood in the upstairs hallway of [—]’s house, outside the room where her body lay. She had not shied away from the sensation but had instead silently asked, What is it you want me to see? Never before at the scene of a crime had Maisie felt such a duality of sensation, like a fabric that on one side is smooth and satin-like but on the other, rough with a raised pile. She knew that the last person who had come to the house came with a terrible burden, a burden that was no lighter for having taken [—]’s life” (p. 61).

Final thoughts:

Since I read the first two books back to back, I can’t help but compare them and I do think I liked Maisie Dobbs more (especially on second reading). However, Birds of a Feather is more of a classic mystery than the first one, and it kept me guessing until the end (although I did figure out the significance of one element of the story before the final reveal). If you are interested in World War I and the Interwar Period or just want to read a mystery series featuring a strong and quirky female sleuth, I highly recommend the Maisie Dobbs series. I generally never read books in series back to back, but I’m very tempted to dive into Pardonable Lies right away—I can’t wait to find out what happens to Maisie next!

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To celebrate the hardcover publication of Elegy for Eddie (book 9, out on March 27, 2012) and the paperback publication of A Lesson in Secrets (book 8, out today), Harper Books is sponsoring the first annual March Is Maisie Month, which includes a TLC book tour of all the books in the Maisie Dobbs series thus far.

Visit these blogs for other reviews of Birds of a Feather:

The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader • A Few More Pages • Wordsmithsonia [spoiler alert!]

For a complete list of bloggers participating in the March Is Maisie Month read-along, visit the TLC Book Tours site.

Other reviews: