loren807a

I totally loved this book when I read it in October 1998, and re-read it again recently and loved it just as much the second time. Emily "Blue" McCarron is a social psychologist, lesbian, loving owner of a doberman, Bronte, who consults with business owners on how to improve their businesses. In this book, first of a series of two (Abigail Padgett has not written a book since the sequel, The Last Blue Plate Special, came out in 2001--don't know why, and am somewhat distressed about it.) a man comes to Blue's desert hideaway to ask her to help him prove that his sister, Muffin Crandell, is innocent of killing a man and freezing him in her deceased husband's game freezer in a storage facility. When the storage facility was hit by an earthquake, the electricity was disrupted and the smell alerted authorities to the presence of the body. Muffin has confessed to the crime, but her brother is sure she is innocent, and is willing to pay Blue up to $15,000 to prove it. Some of my favorite passages: p.46-47 ...When I explained that the part-time job I'd advertised would involve keeping the courtyard area clean and alerting the police about drug deals and illegal drinking, she lowered gold-shadowed lids over coffee-brown eyes and shook her head. The beads rattled. She just said, "Girl..." The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl...." The word's resonance is utterly female, the opening syllable of a story that will explain what's really going on. It says, "You don't have a clue, but I'm going to give you the inside scoop." The sound is hypnotic, like an audio version of that top-of-the-Ferris-wheel moment just before the downward rush. At that moment after my death, I would like to be told exactly what the universe is, and why. I would like to see the point. And in my fantasy the story will begin with that word on the tongue of a black woman. page 60 ...It's one of my favorite notions that the universe is essentially music, and that we came from there. Psychoneurologists document cases in which people with brain deficits who can't talk or read or understand words at all can nevertheless sing entire arias after one or two exposures to the music. Mute and autistic idiots savants have surprised their caregivers by sitting down at a piano and playing the themes from every commercial on television in the dayroom that morning. Even the ancient reptile brains of certain snakes respond dramatically to music. I think music is the original language of life, half-buried in the crumpled map of the brain. I think verbal discourse is an evolutionary newcomer, like opposable thumbs and politics. Music about communal utility bills would be like a mountain wearing a sweater. Beyond incongruous. Music has to be, and always is, about joy and despair, illumination and darkness, life and death. Even reptiles know this....

2022-11-14 18:53