Nice Novel But Very Bad Mystery Novel

For book club discussion.

In conclusion, it is a nice novel but a very bad mystery novel.

Like

• Writing. The writing style builds up the academic feeling. Very knowledgeable and has a cold sense of humour from an intellect. All these Latin quotes make it very hard for me.
• Setting. The vividly presented everyday life of the all-female Shrewsbury College in Oxford helps give me a feeling of how different life could be in the academic world.
• Character. They are all very distinctive and could stand on their own.
• Topic. Feminism discussion.

Dislike

Feminism, kind of radical and not well delivered.

• The Feminism discussion happens in long dialogs lasting for pages and that makes it quite didactic and boring. Normally in writing, action/plot is the better way of delivering notions to the reader. And throughout the book, readers are focusing on the detective process, I doubt how many people noticed the topic until the very end.
• I have mixed feelings about the plot that it is a woman who is attacking other women written by a woman author. That victim of the Patriarchy turned back to hurt other fellow women. It is tragic and pathetic. I don't like it that the union is broken from inside.
• The feminism the book conveyed is quite radical and black & white thinking. Housewife and focusing on the career are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. There is definitely ground for people to balance in the grey. What is more important, isn't feminism about women having their own choices, about making women willing to accept and love being a woman, and about equal respect for everyone?

Discrimination on social class.

• Thank you Vicky for helping me realise this part.
• In the author's mind, it is not a woman attacking other women. It is the uneducated working class attacking the intellects. That is a very discriminatory and condescending thought.

Plot, quite bad.

• All the trivial details diluted the detective story plot.
• Could make the reader feel deceived as it exempts all the non-teacher roles from suspicion at an early stage and really consistently elaborates on investigating the teacher roles throughout the rest of the book. While alas, at the very end, turns out it is a worker that did the crime. Such a waste of energy pondering on all the teacher characters. Misleading went a bit too far.