"Illiterate" (read: dyslexic) working class home help kills her well-meaning but utterly clueless upper class employers.  The end.  (And because it's an inverted mystery, we know literally from the first sentence that this is going to happen.)  Aaaannnd ... I'm out.

I'm not merely bored, though.

Chiefly, I'm furious at Rendell for deliberately framing dyslexia:

(1) as a class issue (which it patently is not and never has been), and

(2) what is infinitely worse, as the trigger that causes a psychopath who is secretly morbidly ashamed of her lack of literacy to fatally lash out at others.

Shame on you, Baroness.  You ought to have known better.

Let no part of the blame fall on Carole Hayman, however, whose spirited reading made me give this book way more of my time than I should have.

Plato's cosmology and theory of the human body, and the story of Atlantis; courtesy of a phantastic audio version featuring David Rintoul as Socrates, David Timson as Timaeus, and Peter Kenny as Critias.  Philosophical and scientific enquiry redolent with the joy of the intellectual exercsie for its own sake -- that alone makes it a joy to tag along (however much Plato might be distressed to learn that his theories on the human body have at long last, after some two millennia. been proved wrong after all -- and despite his warnings about the falliability of the human mind, even by scientific experiment).

(Task: Read a book about philosophy or a philosopher, or a how-to book about changing your life in a significant way or suggesting a particular lifestyle (Hygge, Marie Kobo, etc.).

The same kind of seemingly unassuming writing, combining gentility (and apparent gentleness) with acute, razorsharp, detached observation of both society and its individual constituents, and a very subtle sense of humour.  Pym, like Austen, is far from being a revolutionary, but she notes the state of the world in which she lives and comments on it with wry humour and the self-deprecation only possessed by those who are truly beyond the need of advertising themselves.  And, of course, like all great writing (Austen's included), Pym's feels relevant and -- to use a word much bandied about in connection with this particular buddy read -- "relatable" long after first having been published, in a world that (at first blush) seems to have undergone quite a number of drastic turns since.

Like Austen's, Pym's writing abounds with memorable quotes -- in lieu of pausing every other minute to post yet another one while I was reading / listening to the book, let me just share this:

"'You could consider marrying an excellent woman?' I asked in amazement. 'But they are not for marrying.'

 

'You're surely not suggesting that they are for the other things?' he said, smiling.

 

That had certainly not occurred to me and I was annoyed to find myself embarrassed.

 

'They are for being unmarried,' I said, 'and by that I mean a positive rather than a negative state.'"

Preach it, Mildred -- and Barbara, of course.

"... Curried whale, goodness, you wouldn't feel like having that for tea, would you?  I had an argument about it the other day with Protheroe -- you know how strictly she keeps Lent and all that sort of nonsense -- well, there she was eating whale meat thinking it was fish!"

 

"Well, isn't it?"

 

"No, of course it isn't.  The whale is a mammal," said Dora in a loud truculent tone.  "So you see it can hardly count as fish."

 

Hah.  Take that, Mr. Melville ...

Buddy read with Moonlight Reader, Murder By Death, BrokenTune, Lillelara, The Better To See You My Dear, Person of Interest, Peregrinations, Locus Amoenus: All By My Shelf, and Mike Finn.

And so far, I'm loving it!