Harm Done. This is not a review of the novel, because I didn’t read the novel. This is a review of the audio version available at Audible, and the review could stop right here after these two words: it sucks.

I bought this about a year ago without realizing it was an abridged version. Once I realized that, I set it aside and didn’t listen to it. Then last week I found it in my library, wondered why I hadn’t listened to it, and put it on my iPod. And it was terrible. The reader is Christopher Ravenscroft, and unlike the other readers who have tackled her Inspector Wexford novels, Ravenscroft gives Wexford a hokey, fake-sounding accent that made me wonder if the reader was actually an American.

The abridgement is also just plain terrible. I half wonder if this was originally an unabridged recording, because at times the reading is awkwardly cut off with some phantom sounds remaining, like the reader got cut off mid-sentence with an old-fashioned tape recorder. No attempt is made to smooth out the abridged transitions; nights turn to days, scenes change, new characters show up but aren’t explained or introduced. I suspect that, in its entirety, this book would have been at least twelve hours long, but the abridged version is barely three.

It’s terrible, so bad that I am not going to blame Rendell for what felt like a heavy-handed, unsatisfying mystery involving spousal abuse and cancer patients. (Well, I blame her a little. But as someone recently pointed out, I obviously don’t know what great literature is or what makes a great writer.)

The Black Tower. Another one I have read before, although I thought I remembered a different ending. I must be getting her books mixed up in my head in my old age. I like this one quite a lot; it’s not one of her very best, but it’s much better than more recent offerings.

The Inimitable Jeeves. I should probably be embarrassed to admit that this is my first Wodehouse. I’m not even sure that’s accurate, because the stories seemed so familiar that I am not sure whether I actually read this in high school, or whether Wodehouse has just been imitated and adopted into popular culture to such an extent that his work seems familiar even if you’ve never actually read any of his stories.

In any case, I loved it, of course. But by the time the collection was over, I was ready for it to be over. I have a half dozen more collections downloaded, but I haven’t been in the mood to listen to any more. I’m sure I will be eventually, but I think I like Wodehouse in small doses.

Shroud for a Nightingale. The nice thing about listening to mystery novels on audio is that you can’t skip ahead and read the ending. The bad thing about listening to P.D. James on audio is that it is very difficult to keep the characters straight.

I don’t know if I guessed the ending this time or if I vaguely remembered it from reading this book twenty years ago.

End in Tears. I know I said I was over her, but I’ve had a really bad year and I’ve needed some escapist reading, and when I saw that she had a new Wexford mystery out I thought I’d give it another try. And I’m mostly glad that I did. Despite my occasional irritation with Rendell’s provincialism, Wexford is my favorite fictional detective. (That “fictional” qualifier probably sounds ridiculous if you don’t know that my dad is a retired detective!) Dalgliesh and Lynley are all well and good, but they are a little cold for my taste. I like Wexford, I like his family, and I like the other detectives, although I wish Rendell would lay off the crazy feminist one. I guessed the solution to the mystery within the first hour or so of the audiobook, but guessing the solution to mysteries is what I do, so that doesn’t necessarily mean the mystery sucks.

In this case, though, my early guess was confirmed for me at every turn in the novel, due to an issue that does mean that the mystery sucks, because that confirmation was supplied by something that I think is a fairly serious flaw in this novel. This flaw has to do with the subject matter and the portrayal of a particular category of women. I am not going to post any actual spoilers, but if you are a Rendell fan and plan to read this one no matter what, you should probably skip the rest of this post until after you read it, because my complaints will reveal some stuff that is probably better if it unfolds as you go. So here’s your warning: don’t read any further if you don’t want to know.

A large portion of the plot concerns infertility, childlessness, fertility treatment, adoption, and surrogacy. So this is probably not a novel that you want to read if you are looking for a break from thinking about that particular set of issues.

But the problem is not just that the issues are there; the problem is that Rendell is so nasty about childless women. She is nasty about women who can’t have children, about women who are too old to have children, even about women who just want to have children. Every such woman in the book is portrayed as dangerously crazy and incredibly stupid, willing to buy into any scam, however obvious and outlandish. The infertile woman are pathetic and shrill; the kindest thought any other character spares for them is condescending pity. Mostly they are treated with contempt by Rendell, by the other characters, and by the plot itself.

Whatever bug Rendell has up her ass about infertile women bothered me enough that I went looking for Rendell’s biography online, and I couldn’t find much, no mention of marriage or children. I don’t really care whether she is writing from a position of smug superiority because she does have children, or because she doesn’t have children and doesn’t want any. The attitude in the book is still smug superiority, and it’s a mean and stupid portrayal, and it hurts the novel.

I’m not sorry that I read End in Tears, but having one sensible, not-crazy infertile woman in the bunch would have done a lot to save this book. As it is, once you’ve identified the author’s weird bias, you can pretty much guess where the plot is going. And that’s the worst thing you can ever say about a mystery novel.

T.H. White, The Once and Future King. Continuing the Arthurian kick that prevailed when I stopped updating here. I loved this book the first time I read it, but I have since become too old for it. I did like the way that he dealt with the real history, by making Arthur into the reality and the Wars of the Roses into the myth. That was cool. And it is interesting to see the ways in which this book was influenced by its time; in an odd way it makes me less forgiving of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, because they look like a couple of fascists next to White. But I’m still too old for it.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon. Why, God, why, did I reread this? I was too old for this when I was born.

Gregory Maguire, Wicked. Audio. I never finished this when it first came out, but this time I finished it and liked it fine. Actually I liked it a lot, until it was over and I couldn’t exactly remember what I’d liked about it. I was never a huge fan of the Oz books — I read them too late, when I was ten or eleven, and they always seemed sort of babyish to me — but I am a big fan of Oz as an American metaphor. But Wicked didn’t quite work for me on that level. It was fun, how’s that?

Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch. Audio, abandoned. This felt exactly like Wicked except minus Elphaba (uh, I hope it is not a spoiler to tell you that the Wicked Witch of the West dies). And I think maybe Elphaba is what makes Wicked interesting, so this sort of wasn’t. I will probably go back to it; I only quit because I lost my place in the audiobook and then couldn’t find it again. Although that last part is usually not a good sign.

L. Frank Baum, The Annotated Wizard of Oz. I am still not a huge fan. The annotations were pretty good, although mostly they concerned trivia about the original stage production and the film.

L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz. Abandoned. Yeah, that’s enough of that. This series was too twee for me when I was ten, and it’s too twee for me now.

Stephen Dobyns, The Church of Dead Girls. I’m not going to say that this book was good, exactly. But of the books on this list, it was possibly the least disappointing. I picked it up in a used book store for four bucks because it looked like a good thriller, and it was in fact a good thriller. I only rolled my eyes and said, “Oh, please,” maybe seven or eight times. I enjoyed it. I would pick up another of his books to read on an airplane, and I don’t really do airplane books.

Martin Amis, Night Train. I read this on accident instead of the book I was supposed to read for my book club, and I don’t really remember much about it except that I thought it was a really great reworking of the noir novel, and that I had no fucking idea what happened to the dead chick. No idea. This book went right over my head.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden. Oh, I loved this book so much. This is the best book I’ve read this year. I have nothing to say about it, because I know, I know that the language is ridiculously flowery and the imagery just conks you over the head like it is a caveman and you are its bride, but I loved it, and I want to have twin boys and name them Caleb and Aaron and let them fight it out. And I have finally forgiven Steinbeck for all that annoying shit he wrote, because I love this book.

Amy Tan, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Audio, abandoned. Dear Amy Tan: please do not write any more books. Maybe you could take up pottery.

Larry McMurtry, Telegraph Days. Audio. At some point I wound up in an audio slump; I couldn’t finish a book, couldn’t start a new one, and it occurred to me that Larry McMurtry would be good on audio. And he is. This is read by Annie Potts, who is probably the most adorable person in America. Jeremy and I listened to it on our trip to and from Wyoming, and we both enjoyed it a lot, even though the novel isn’t really about anything and it seems kind of pointless and actually, we didn’t quite finish it and didn’t really care. It is a good book to read as you drive across Utah, and that’s about all I have to say about it.

Larry McMurtry, Boone’s s Lick. Audio. This one is also a little meandering and pointless, and it also has an ending that can be skipped altogether, but it kept me diverted while I washed the dishes.

Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost. I wound up liking this just fine, and I wanted to know how it turned out, but I was left vaguely disappointed, and I almost dropped it after the first chapter. There is a blurb on the front that calls this possibly the greatest historical mystery of all time, and man, I really hope that isn’t true. I have to hope there are better historical mysteries out there, because I would sort of like to read them. This one was okay except when it was excruciatingly boring or annoyingly earnest, and except when it got all mystical for a while.

Pamela Ribon, Why Moms are Weird. Man, what am I, a hundred? I am too old for everything lately. I had trouble with this because the pop culture references went right over my aged head. But people who enjoy chick lit have been loving this, so if that is your thing, you’ll probably like it too. I didn’t think it was really chick lit, which probably just means I don’t know what chick lit is. To me it seemed a lot like some of Susan Isaac’s stuff, where you have a kind of unlikeable heroine who attracts a whole pack of gorgeous men just because she’s spunky and has big boobs. It doesn’t really feel like a romance novel, because the men, wow, what a pair of assholes. Uh, I wouldn’t read this one if you are single, because it might make you kill yourself. But if you are not single, and if you like chick lit, and if you are younger than I am, and if you don’t feel like reading East of Eden even though Oprah and I both told you that you should, then this is the book for you.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Yet another for the new-to-me book club, which is turning out to have great selections (although I was already reading this one when G. decided to pick it for the club). This was at least my third attempt with this one, and I’m not sure why I could never get into it before. It’s a deceptively easy read, hiding a deep, meaty novel behind a simple southern coming-of-age facade. I found myself thinking about it constantly during the time I was reading it, and for a week or more afterward.

Mostly the question that bugs me is whether this novel believes in God, if you’ll pardon the phrasing. I decided that I did not think that Singer was a Christ figure, exactly, but you can see him as a god figure if you mean that in an atheist sense. Each of the three characters who mythologize Singer has some big all-encompassing obsession that separates him or her from other people: Mick has music, Copeland has his “one true purpose,” and Blount has socialism. Singer winds up being not so much their connection to the divine, but their connection to humanity — except it is a very false and selfish connection, since they see him as a mirror rather than as a person. So to see Singer as a Christ figure is to see Christ/god in really very atheistic terms, as a human creation to fill a lack in the self.

I will definitely be reading this again. This is one of the great American novels.

(I listened to the reading by Cherry Jones, which is excellent, and also skimmed the actual book in preparation for discussing it with the book club.)