Sepulchre! by Kate Mosse! Pages 73-251.
Where were we? Oatmeal pouts around 1891 Paris, and Cream of Wheat cavorts around 2007 Paris. There is a mystery that is not very mysterious. The book marginally improves, I will confess. Ad nauseam.
Go! Cream of Wheat continues to shutterbug her way around town. I had almost forgotten about the business with the tarot cards when I deigned to pick the book up again, but I should have known it wouldn’t be far behind, as the inside flaps feature illustrations of the critical cards in the fictional deck used in the book. Which, as I recall, was one of the things that enticed me into taking this book home in the first place, one aspect of the siren song of this book that led me to the literary rocks that I currently find myself mired in.
But wait! Zut alors! something is going on in the south of France. Suddenly, for the next chapter, we are taken to the estate that is the destination of both CoW and Oatmeal. There’s a British bloke there who seems to own the joint now that it’s all a hella historical hotel. There is some kind of funeral taking place there, involving the owner’s brother. The deceased’s son is there, and oh, he’s rakishly handsome and crap. Is this CoW’s Anatole, except probably not blood-related? Or maybe they are…CoW is going there to do a little research on her Debussy business, and other research on a long lost relative who had a picture taken in the town the estate is outside. Could this book be promising an incest double header? Suddenly I am imagining this book ending with everyone vomiting everywhere like in a modern movie as all the family ties and liaisons are revealed. But not me. I will be standing back slow clapping.
Can I tell you that next there are three chapters devoted to a tarot reading? THREE CHAPTERS? Of course CoW is skeptical, yet she chooses to spend her money this way anyhow. I think we are supposed to identify with her through this device, but it really just gave me a case of the “mehs.” When I am skeptical of something, I find it best to not spend my money on it. Especially since CoW is waiting for her book advance or some shit (do they still really do those for young, unpublished authors? I thought you had to cough up the doc first.). Much like Oatmeal was unable to convince us that she was spunky, intrepid, and headstrong, CoW is unable to convince the audience that she is sensible and scientific by bucking off her research and spending money she doesn’t have on something she doesn’t believe in.
In the end, she redeems herself somewhat by getting away with the reader’s tarot cards and “forgetting” to pay, due to being too disturbed by the veracity of the results. This just means that you are a credulous, easy mark, CoW. Also, that the author is using lame plot devices as the keystone of this very, very long novel. CoW claims to feel bad about “forgetting” to pay, but I cannot believe a word out of any of the characters’ mouths anymore.
Meanwhile, back in 1891, Anatole and Oatmeal prepare to flee Paris. I say flee, because Anatole seems determined to get out of town without leaving a trail indicating where they went. He keeps switching carriages and departs from a different train station than the one their carriage initially took them to. The reader begins to get the impression this is about more than debts, but what yet is unclear.
Blah blah traveling, blah blah mountains. I am a little shocked that the author did not see fit to describe the entire three-day journey, but maybe she hasn’t completely killed off her editor yet a la The Later Works of JK Rowling. The servants are dispatched to collect frere and soeur but the hoopty they usually ride in is broken so they have to hoof it to the estate. WELL I NEVER, Oatmeal bleats, and stamps her little boot again. They are taken into the back of the estate, which is kind of a hot mess compared to the front, and Oatmeal baaaaws loudly about the weirdness of the situation and how ghetto it all is. During this whinealogue, of course, enters Auntie Isolde, stage right. “Sup ingrate,” she says, but nicely.
Paris: DUN DUN DUNNN. Page 141: something vaguely interesting happens for the first time. The villain behind Anatole’s flight materializes in their Paris apartment, where their mother, who as you recall was on the barricades during the revolution (“When the beating of your HEAAART matches the beating of the DRUUUM…”) is tied up with piano wire or something. Victor Contstant, complete with a mustache that is sadly, not long enough to twirl, looms and attempts to squeeze information out of dear maman about Anatole’s whereabouts. Victor is prone to thinking of women in terms of “sluts” or “whores” and in his spare time enjoys cutting a bitch and menacing tiny street children. Dear maman, we know, is an actual toughie, because of the Revolution thing and because she carries on with Major Pompousass, some guy who supports her as a widow and all she has to do is listen to him bloviate and condescend. I left out the scenes with the two of them as a couple in the first recap, because I just couldn’t go there, but know that Major P. is the source of the lulzy “blackguard” quote. So we suspect that Victor won’t be able to get any real information out of her, but it will, of course, be a testament to how dangerous he is by what he attempts with maman.
Victor monologues in his head about how his former lover left him and later took up with Anatole, after which Anatole and nameless lover realize that Victor has a permanent case of the Mondays so they fake her death. But Victor sees her walking around Paris later.
PROTIP: After faking one’s death, leave town.
In the end, Victor kills dear maman, does the horizontal EWWYUCK Are You For Real? with her corpse, and frames Major Pompousass for the crime. YAAAAY! I mean, boo, no, even Major P. doesn’t deserve that framing. Being a blowhard is criminal, but technically not a crime, if you know what I mean.
At the estate, Oatmeal reads creepy historical ghost stories about the estate and nearby town and country, helpfully provided by Anatole. You can just see him chuckling to himself. I know life in the country can be dull, but why set up little miss wild imagination here with something that is going to make her peep her petticoats? Ah yes, it keeps the plot moving along with the tarot cards and such. Perhaps it’s just that Anatole is distracted being with his aunt whom he has never met, and yet seems overly familiar with…his blonde, young, attractive aunt who is described as looking like the woman on the inside of the cover on “The Lovers” tarot card with a young man with dark hair, alongside a tarot card with a young woman with long copper curls who looks like Oatmeal’s description.
[I think a lot of what you get out of a book depends on where you’re at, of course. How clever you are, how versed you are in the particular conventions of a genre, if you have read the author’s previous work. Ideally, if there is a mystery afoot, I like the author to be a couple of steps ahead of me, sprinkling hintlets here, foreshadowing there, a couple of red herrings for fun. You want the unfolding and the ending to be credible, to make sense. There are books on the other side of Sepulchre that are so dense you are tripping over yourself and in the end you say, “So the Vicar did it. Who is the Vicar?” So for one I think the illustrations hurt the book, because they confirm what you sense may be true. I don’t think I am a fricking genius by any stretch, nor am I a mystery reader, but I think I may be too smart for this book. C’est la vie, dude. If people are smart enough to craft a whole novel, though, I have to wonder how they can write airport novels. Do people set out to write airport novels? It is a mystery. Also, I want nachos or ramen SO badly. Or maybe just a salt lick.]
So, after recovering from another concussion from yet another plot anvil, we move back to 2007. Cream of Wheat shows up in town, just in time for the funeral, and checks in at the hotel, and gets the key to DUN DUN DUN AGAIN Oatmeal’s room.
The only thing of note in these final passages before page 251, imo, is 1. That CoW meets the deceased’s son, Hal, in the bar of the hotel, and they start with the googie eyes immediately. If this will stop the walking around and describing every park bench, sign post, and every picture taken I am for this liaison. However, I am suspicious that CoW will retain the ability to be boring even in the presence of a handsome man. 2. Word of dear maman’s death does not reach the estate because Anatole covered their tracks so well, and the children are wondering why they haven’t heard. 3. Oatmeal reads the original owner’s account of messing with evil spirits and the tarot at the sepulchre which is on the land somewhere nearby. It sounds like a bunch of hilarz Victorian first-person mumbo-jumbo, which it is, with demons clawing at backs and blood running down the walls and other scenic crap like that. Oatmeal takes off and checks out the sepulcre for herself and it’s pretty much as creepy and groady as described and she ends up fleeing like a ninny. Oatmeal drunkenly brings all this hooey up at a dinner party they throw at the estate to the man who wrote the first ghost/history story and it turns out he’s all psychic and crap because he refers to Anatole and Auntie as “your brother and his wife and unborn child” (or maybe he just looked at the illustrations too). Oatmeal’s all BACK UP THE PHONE, HOSS but she’s all disorderly and then the party ends!
NEXT UP! The word “judder” is used for the 5,000th time! The Da Vinci Code and DC tour is referenced yet again! Are these bad signs? Of course they are! Stay tuned.