I may have gotten around to reading this book eventually. I had seen Ha’Penny was on the list of novels being considered for the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards and borrowed it from the library, before realizing it was book two of a series. So I may or may not have been motivated to track down Farthing and read it, except that K had this idea of all of us reading and reviewing the same book, and M suggested this one.
Farthing is a British mystery set in the 1940’s, but it’s also an alternate history. Then there’s a dash of gay interest thrown in. Taken separately, I wouldn’t have been interested in this book, but all together, there’s enough there to make it worth a read.
How well does it work as a mystery? I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but it seemed to me to be rather dull and also rather obvious. We have two point of view characters, only one of which is the detective, so the other character has rather more access to information than the detectives usually get. Which means the reader knows more, and this reader is not an idiot.
In particular, there are a couple of chapters where the detective is just driving here and driving there and tracking down this bit of information that’s needed and the writing there is quite uninspired.
How does it work as an alternate history? Again, I don’t read a lot of alternate history — or real history for that matter — so I found it a little confusing. How much of the situation was true and accurate and how much was a what-if? The basic premise though, I believe, is that the UK signed a truce with Hitler to let him go on doing whatever he wanted elsewhere as long as he stayed out of Great Britain. Which, you may imagine, is not good news for the Jewish people in Europe. But on the face of it, it seems a good thing for the Brits. No more bombings, no more evacuations. The political climate is changing though. I don’t think you’ll be seeing socialized medicine in this UK.
How does it work as gay interest? Not interesting enough. One of the primary bi characters in the story is dead years before the story begins. The main character’s lover never makes it on screen. He barely even spares a thought for him. So the gay interest is all political. Which is fine and all, but it would’ve been nice to see some affection, no matter how non-public and discreet it would need to have been.
So all in all, rather disappointing on all fronts. The two positives I will say about it are, one, that it was very readable, even in the more uninteresting of the chapters. It didn’t feel like a slog. And, two, I found the two point of view characters interesting and likeable. I would read more with either of those characters, though I would be fervently hoping for some more interesting plots and scenes to come along.
If I were to give it stars out of five, I’d give it a very middle-of-the-road 3.