#deleted my previous post just about the Miss Newland scene because i thought it came too close to extracurricular criticism of my employer

[ravenpuffheadcanons]

Finished my Gaudy Night reread, and once again I am struck by how much there is in it that I've never appreciated before. Isn't that the mark of a really excellent book? It ends up forming a barometer of how much I have changed over the years, if nothing else. Stray (slightly spoilery, though I've been vague on purpose) observations:

Last time I read this, I either hadn't started teaching at all, or I was in the very early days of my career. I certainly wasn't a seasoned and experienced faculty member. This time around, the scene with poor Miss Newland had a horror for me that I just don't think it has had in the past. (In fact, I'd forgotten about it altogether - which I doubt I ever will again, having cried over it in a public place this time around). Similar scenes have haunted my nightmares during Stressful Situations in the workplace. Sayers does such a wonderful job conveying the sick dread of it.

I know who the perpetrator is now, of course. When you read Gaudy Night knowing, there is a clue on almost every page. Certainly several per chapter. Yet the first time I read this (and, I think, the second!), I only put it together a few pages before the denouement. The mark of a truly excellent mystery novel: to make it that obvious and yet still pull the wool over the reader's eyes!

I've started writing much more, and more seriously, since my last reread. It was therefore a very great pleasure to read Harriet struggling with Wilfrid: letting him become more human, more real; dealing with the varied consequences that has for her plot! I love the fact that Sayers leaves us in no doubt that the novel will still be a mystery novel. (One of my tedious soapboxes, on which I will discourse at length given half a chance, is that genre fiction can and should and often does have very human characters in it). The thing I'm writing at the moment has a writer as one of the primary point of view characters, and I'm constantly tempted to let her just spend all her time thinking about that instead of actually, you know, engaging with the plot. This is definitely Harriet's fault.

"Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face however difficult it may be" must be one of the best prayers recorded in fiction. Surely one of the most difficult to pray, too, lest it be answered in the affirmative!