In Distraction World

‘What happened' is never what defines you in life; 'What you did next' is what defines you. 
~ Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune 

I just finished the latest Thursday Murder Club installment and it was awesome. Also poignant. The club members are getting up there in age. Author Richard Osman is only in his mid-50s but he writes his late septuagenarian characters with a great understanding of what it’s like to be in a body that just doesn’t function as well as it once did.

He mentions Ron, the once rabble rousing union activist, being frustrated and disturbed over the fact that he needs to hold his pint with two hands now and is losing the manual dexterity to easily tie his shoes. Ron knows he’s not as able as he once was – he’s no longer a force to be reckoned with. He still wants to protect his family, contribute to investigations, and NOT be seen as a pathetic, broken old man though. Of course!

I’m more than a decade younger but, due to that rat bastard NF2, I can totally relate. 

Ibrahim, the psychiatrist, is insecure about his intelligence or, rather, how quick, logical, and canny he is and is perceived to be by his peers. As he ages, he knows that his mental processes are slowing/slipping. It's scary.

Elizabeth, the fearsome retired MI6 spy, is not as slick as she once was either. She, however, seems less reluctant, less bothered about needing and accepting help.

I don’t feel that my own cerebral functions are more rickety than, say, ten years ago but it’s not like I’ve ever been on par with Obama, Noam Chomsky or Dr. Patricia Cowings. UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT.

Joyce is Joyce. Whenever I think she’s too much of a clueless, intellectual lightweight for the group, she surprises me. Joyce really is paying attention and is able to see past conventional presumptions. Between the last book and this, she doesn’t seem to have lost a step.

For me, this wasn’t just about the mystery – who killed Holly and will Danny succeed in offing his wife and her brother (Ron’s children) – it was, at heart, about aging and how unnerving it can be to arrive there. It’s one thing to watch your parents lose a step or three, to become forgetful and possibly come to the need of full time care. As sad and heart-wrenching as that can be, you know it’s coming – it’s expected. It’s quite another ocean of eels to look fading vitality eyeball to eyeball – to experience it yourself.   

Wonderful book. Osman's a truly empathetic writer.

IF there are sequels to that bungled, desperately disappointing, cringing embarrassment of a movie version of the first Thursday Murder Club book, the scriptwriters would have to practically rewrite the novels in order to get around their elimination of a major player. Given the writer’s wrecking ball, slapstick handling of book one, I hope they don’t get a second chance. And I really don’t need to see the smooth, ultra glamorous Tom Ellis playing a late middle-aged boxer again. Was the director (or whoever’s in charge of this sort of thing) unable to hire a makeup artist to at least create the illusion that Ellis had, at least, brushed past an opponent in the ring? Just once maybe? Possibly he suffered a stubbed toe in a fight? How's about making him look like he's a day over 35? 

I’m asking you!