Just finished "Among the Mad," a Maisie Dobbs book by Jacqueline Winspear ... for me, truly an amazing read. I'm struck by Winspear's ability to give us a complete portrait of a life - multiple stories running concurrently, yet the reader (me, that is) doesn't get lost.
Winspear's a fine writer and has created an endearing character in "investigator and psychologist" Maisie Hobbs, whose life is as complicated as the characters she investigates, as complicated, I suppose, as are all our lives.
For me, this book, in particular, (published 2009), as all of her books thus far, give heed to the profound social conditions that shaped England after the Great War - the wounded, in soul and body ... how a callous society hurries on by and hopes to forget them, and the endless machinations of government ...
As one point, Maisie attends a political meeting, to hear the latest demagogue claim to have all the answers for England, and I couldn't help but think of our latest adventures with Donald Trump.
Anyway, this book started off with a bang, so to speak, and didn't let up ... and always more than a mystery, but a look at people, the countless people who cross our path ... in the end, the mystery might be solved, but the mystery of life pushes on, just out of our reach.
So, like Maisie, we wonder ... do we ever belong? And what does it take when our soul departs in sorrow, and can the eyes, perhaps, tell us when the soul has returned.
An amazing read ...
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