Mrs. Parks might run a brothel in Monterey, California in 1851, but what she says about women is as true today as it was then. “Everyone knows this is a dangerous business, but, between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business.” Eliza Ripple has known that since she was eighteen. Jane Smiley tells Eliza’s story in her latest novel, A Dangerous Business.
Eliza is from a religious family in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She had eyes for an Irishman, but, when she was eighteen, her father turned her over to Peter Cargill, a thirty-eight-year-old man. Peter hoped to make his fortune in California, so he and Eliza traveled to Monterey. He treated Eliza as his servant, insisted on sex at least once a day, and, when she began pregnant, sent her for an abortion, and then taught her to use birth control. When he was shot in a bar fight in late 1851, Eliza was relieved, not sorry.
Eliza changes her name to Ripple, and finds a job at Mrs. Parks’ house of prostitution, one of the few jobs for a woman in Monterey. Now, she studies the men who are clients, and learns to please them. But, she’s lonely until she meets up with Jean, a woman who works at a brothel for women. She and Jean share a love of reading, and when they discover Poe and “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, Eliza is intrigued with the detective Dupin.
The first of “the girls” disappears when Eliza is twenty-one. But, no one in town seems to care. Even when Eliza and Jean find another working girl’s body, they can’t get the sheriff interested in an investigation. The two women are determined to find the killer, using skills they copy from Dupin.
I’m going to admit I wasn’t as taken with A Dangerous Business as others have been. I struggled through the book, although I liked Eliza, Jean, and Mrs. Parks. I found it interesting as Eliza studied her clients, looking for a killer. The description of Monterey as a port, with sailors often in town, and the foreshadowing of the Civil War, with talks of slavery and anti-slavery sentiment were interesting. However, I felt as if all the descriptions were just stories of one day following another. There wasn’t enough action to move the story along, for me.
The blurb on the back of my copy calls A Dangerous Business “A rollicking murder mystery”. Hardly. If you’re looking for that kind of story, forget it. If you’re looking for a literary novel about a time and a place, try the book. Although I loved Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, when I read this book, it really only showed me why I seldom read literary fiction. I was bored.
A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley. Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. ISBN 9780525520337 (hardcover), 224p.
FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent an ARC of the book, with no promise of a positive review.
This book is indeed literary fiction, and I would never call it a “rollicking mystery”! That is so misleading. Smiley has always experimented with different genre influences, making her difficult to categorize, but overall she is still a literary writer, even when telling a story from the POV of animals, as in Perestroika in Paris. I liked A Dangerous Business very much, but as I’ve said before, everything she writes is compared to A Thousand Acres.
It’s not a “rollicking” anything, Sandra. It was okay, just not really for me. I don’t mind authors experimenting. Why shouldn’t they? This one just didn’t fit my taste. But, I gave my copy to a friend today, and told her she’d probably enjoy it. I know her taste.
“Although I loved Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, when I read this book, it really only showed me why I seldom read literary fiction. I was bored.“ YES and AMEN
That’s funny, Becky. You know what I like about genre fiction – plots, characters & action. Genre fiction usually doesn’t meander through 200 pages.
There are a few books I guess could be labeled literary fiction on my list of favorite books read in 2022 that i think you might enjoy, Lesa.
Do they have plots, Kaye? (grin) They don’t wander along for 200 pages, do they?
I will simply say The Color of Ice, to pick just one, moved me. It moved me with story, phrasing, lyricism, pacing, setting and characters. But then, i’m one bored by extreme cozy books.
Oh, I have no doubt about your lists, Kaye. I’ll take a look at that one, and I have the Erika Bauermeister from NetGalley.
I hope you enjoy them, but i know we always agree on the fact that just because someone loves (or doesn’t love) a particular book – or movie, or song – is no guarantee that some else will. Ya just never know. 😘
You’re right, Kaye. And, sometimes, we’d love it if it was a different time when we encountered it, or a different mood. Sometimes, timing is everything.
So true!