"Gaudy Night" is a beautifully written exploration of the importance and difficulty of personal choice, of the nature and relevance of academic life, of the possibility of finding love and the difficulty of deserving it, wrapped up in a mystery set in an all-female Oxford College in 1935. ...
This book is only nominally a mystery. What it really is is Dorothy Sayers's manifesto, which holds that educating women is valuable, that women can be scholars, that work is work whether it is done by men or women, that intellectual work is valuable in it's own right, and that women should have age...
The triumphant return of reading notes! This month, I plan to re-read and talk about four mysteries by Dorothy Sayers. Specifically, those which feature both Harriet Vane & Lord Peter Wimsey, since Harriet + Peter = otp forever. As always, these posts may (will!) contain massive spoilers so beware i...
Wimsey makes an appearance, but this is definitely Harriet Vane's story. She's gone to see some old classmates and attend the opening of a new building in her college at Oxford, fully prepared to have a difficult time as the graduate-who-was-on-trial-for-murder, and a notoriously "fallen" woman who'...
I went into this knowing this was the Wimsey mystery where Harriet finally falls in love with him and says yes. I also knew that it was about harassment in an all-female Oxford college, and talked a lot about women's place in the world. What I wasn't expecting: the long, meaty passages where Harri...
This is the sound of me eating my words when I said that I would never include Gaudy Nights in my list of memorable reads. That temerity was uttered on grounds of the first few chapters, a general dislike for detective stories, and the distinct sensation that Sayers was washing her dirty linen in pu...
Harriet is so irritating! Her whole personality and life history are just so much wishful thinking by the author. The constant self-analysis never discovers any real flaws and always serves to underline how very perfect and noble she is, in spite of much suffering and having to earn her own living -...
This was the first time I've really loved Lord Peter Wimsy and Harriet Vane. Harriet is persuaded to come to her alma mater, where she has not visited since she left ten years prior. Harriet is simultaneously annoyed and glad she returned: She reconnects with an old friend and several members of the...
This was the first book I ever read by Sayers. Having read it for the second time after reading previous Wimsey novels such as the first, Whose Body?, and Murder Must Advertise, I only appreciate this one the more. This is the third book with Harriet Vane, Lord Peter Wimsey's romantic interest, and ...
This is one of my favorite Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane books - love the 30s university setting and the way Harriet finally comes to see Peter and their relationship in a different light.
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