The Fig Eater

Finished The Fig Eater while lingering over a cup of coffee & freshly-baked Gruyère gougères today. Perfect. If you have some decadent food or wine or coffee or fruit or pastry to have with this book, all the better.

I absolutely loved this book. It is full of spare beauty, of opposites (the rational vs. the emotional; male vs. female; etc...), of art.

I'm dismayed to see the low ratings this book has received on amazon & Goodreads; I'm guessing many picked up this book thinking it is a traditional or cozy mystery or thriller, when it is really nothing, nothing of the sort (& would definitely not appeal if that is what one is seeking). The Fig Eater is an artistic, atmospheric look at Vienna in 1910, the fledgling study of crime through show more systematic investigative practices contrasted with the superstitions & emotions involved in crimes, in life. There's a detached, cold air around the characters, the story, but there are bold slashes where superstition or life or art come crashing through -- a frenzy in the icy snows of a Viennese winter. Cunning, folklore, passion, photography, cafés, cigarettes, balls, husbands, wives, gypsies, fire, ice, investigations, insanity, infidelity, watercolors, figs, gardens, medicine, doctors, glints, secrets, superstitions.The mystery is really the least of the story; read it for the poetry, the beauty. Really gorgeous. show less

Decadence, the rise of forensic science, and exotic cultural clash in fin-de-siecle Vienna. The narrative voice is intriguing and the cauldron of Vienna at the turn of the century is excellently invoked. Yes, the typical mystery arc is skewed, but the author beautifully wove together the exotic elements and created a strange and eerie psychological tenor.

This book had great potential, but it was never realized. It was a good period piece in that it described Austria in the early 1900's very well. The book moved ever so slow with many red herrings--which I usually like; but in this case I'm thinking to myself: yet another red herring to slow down the plot! Another complaint is that there must have been over 1200 German (I would suppose) words used in 300 pages--just because they could? I got tired of looking them up. And lastly, had I known this was a werewolf book, I would have never never purchased it or read it. Sorry, this book just seems like a mish-mash of different topics strung together lightly to produce a book; no coherence. 311 pages.

This is a mystery set in turn of the century Vienna - a young woman turns up dead in the public gardens. Quickly identified as a daughter of a prominent family, a detective (and unknown to him, his wife) involves themselves into bringing justice to the killer.

Its a twisty book - going through the streets of a Vienna in a time when Psychotherapy, Syphilis, and belief are all mixed up in the trappings of a modern world.

I found the book to be well written, how the detective in the story approaches the murder and how his wife approaches the murder, are completely different. Science vs superstition. I'm not sure I liked the book, but it held my attention, and brought to life the city of Vienna in the Early 20th century.

The style is brooding and single-minded. Each statement is as a fact. A few things struck me; the roles people took with each other were very singular. Dora made a friend of a woman who was having an affair with her own father. Franz is an apprentice to the Inspector (whose name we never learn) and is content to be in that role, complete with an awed reverence, until he feels he can go out on his own. Wally (a weird name) is the British governess who helps Erszebet with her illicit investigations is very much in awe of Erszebet and takes much time in preparing speech she will have with Erszebet. Erszebet herself has a very ritualistic relationship with her husband the Inspector.

Their life is weird. She is very superstitious and reads show more the tarok and examines the flesh of birds to determine the future. She goes on weird fast and prayer binges to preserve good luck. Very opposite to her precise and neurotically logical husband. Whenever he has an emotion, he questions it. He deliberates endlessly over very small actions. He considers so long that often, the “moment” is gone. What a strange pair. He casually searches her dressing table and roams the house looking for caches of secret possessions of hers. In turn, she reads his investigator’s notebook and looks through his briefcase. Neither finds the other’s actions intrusive; they instead look upon them as symptoms of love and devotion and take the possessiveness as a compliment. In this century, we’d each be outraged at that kind of behavior. I wouldn’t dream of taking the liberty of searching through anything of Ken’s & I’d freak if he did that to me.

Other weird things include a museum of anatomical sculptures that only admits men. Wally disguises herself as a male and goes in. She recognizes her own colors & textures among the exposed breasts and labia. I’m not entirely sure how she & Erszebet hooked up. At one point Wally is waiting outside a restaurant for Erszebet to arrive. She has to wait outside because unescorted women are forbidden to enter the restaurant. In the 20the century! I can hardly believe it.

There’s a photographer named Egon (really!) who has some fingers missing due to the explosive power of the flashes he used. He was distracted as an apprentice by the naked woman his master was photographing.

Dora I couldn’t warm to at all. I connected her with the Dora in David Copperfield and since I didn’t like Dickens’s Dora, I couldn’t like this Dora. Even when a gypsy (for unknown reasons) cut her thumb off her buried corpse, I couldn’t develop any sympathy for her. She seemed to not care that her father was going around giving syphilis to anyone one warm and she was sickly and self-absorbed. show less

Following the murder of a teenage girl in a public park in turn of the century Austria, a police inspector and his wife conduct two parallel investigations. Erszebet reads her husband's journal to keep up to date on the official case. She keeps her own inquiries secret. She enlists the help of a young English governess whose charges are on an extended vacation. Free from the constraints of the law, this pair of women may go anywhere, question anyone, and follow their own leads. Erszebet has a rich knowledge of primitive beliefs of folklore. She uses a tarot deck to help progress her investigation.

Gradually her husband, the Inspector, becomes suspicious but will not allow himself to fully distrust his wife. He begins searching through show more her things, but finds nothing. The two have a complex and passionate relationship built on secrets. The two race each other to the killer of the young woman so that they will have the satisfaction of seeing justice done.

This is a dark, thoughtful, and very unique novel. show less

Here we have a murder mystery with extra meaning - - Dora, the famous subject of a paper by Sigmund Freud, is killed and we have two investigations into her homicide. One is handled by the police inspector and the other is handled by his wife. The wife, Erszebet, is a Magyar woman with connections to gypsy traditions and superstition. As her husband struggles lurchingly through his investigation, Erszebet conducts her own, and actually finds the perpetrator. This murderer claims it was all an accident - and we know, there's no way. She literally chases him through the woods, and he falls off a cliff to his death.

This novel could definitely take a detailed analysis of what Erszebet could actually tell from the evidence she secrets from show more her husband, but really this is a book that indicts Freud, his methods and beliefs. There is a powerful old boys' network at work, and it results in one girl's death and another's disfigurement. The network's tendencies oppress women's desires and emotions at every turn. The author takes a measure of revenge by having the police inspector's wife solve the crime (although the inspector himself is a sympathetic character). Although this book reads as dully as a police report at times, it must have provoked quite a bit of thought in me, because besides the above points, I also have notes about studying: the modern fact-finding investigation as it tries to unmoor itself from its superstitious past; the imagery of snow covering virtually everything in the second half of the narrative; the symbols inherent in how men dress vs. how women dress (the veil vs. the bowler); and the contrast between the two investigations' chief assistants: Franz and Wally.

I recommend this work. I'm glad I read it (in Sept of '07) - the images and ideas have come back to me rather clearly.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2010/07/fig-eater-by-jody-shields.html show less