More Father Brown
The Invisible Man and The Wrong Shape
Good Morning Readers,
Happy Eastertide! Christ is risen! I am so happy that Easter is here finally. Lent was filled with fruitful penances (planned and unplanned) and I am thankful for it, but it is always exciting to make it to the celebrating part. I hope you and your families have had a feast filled week and can continue to live in the Easter spirit for all 50 days. I love that the Church sets up the feasting seasons longer than the fasting seasons. Fasting is good for us, but so is enjoying the world that God has given us.
I hope that those of you on spring break have gotten a little bit of extra reading time and you’ve been able to take part in the Easter tradition of reading detective stories (it may only be a thing in Norway, but I say we bring it here too). I am always ready to read a good detective novel so I enjoy participating even though I am pretty sure I have zero nordic blood in my veins.
We are now well on our way into the Father Brown stories. I am enjoying them very much! This week I read The Invisible Man and then listened to it and took some notes. Then I listened to The Wrong Shape twice (I did a lot of driving this week). I found both times that I got so much more out of the story the second time so if you find yourself with a spare half hour I encourage you to listen or reread a story you’ve already read. You will find yourself to be a master detective if you do!
I know I have said it before (and so have lots of people smarter than me), but I truly believe that detective stories can teach you to read well. When reading a detective story, you know that all of the information is important (and I would say this is even more important in a short story, detective or otherwise) so you train yourself to pay attention to all the details in order to solve the crime. I think this prepares you to read other novels. You realize that, even though there isn’t a crime to solve, a good author includes details that matter and you start noticing more details that help you understand the story better (and maybe you even like it better).
With that being said, Nancy Carpentier Brown (who wrote the biography of Frances Chesterton, G.K.’s wife) adapted some of the Father Brown stories for kids in the Father Brown Readers I and II. We have them and haven’t read them yet, but I’ve heard great things (and my oldest just saw these pictures and says she wants to read it now so I’ll let you know what she thinks!).
The Invisible Man
Summary
A young man (Angus) proposes to a young woman (Laura Hope). She says she would except that she already promised to marry one of two sketchy characters (Smythe and Welkin) she used to know if they made something of themselves. So they leave and she never sees them again. She has heard from Smythe in letters and she has heard Welkin’s voice when no one was around. Smythe shows up in person to tell Laura he is ready to get married and Welkin has left a note saying he will kill Smythe if she marries him. Angus decides to go to Flambeau (who is a recovered criminal now?) to ask him to help solve the mystery and, of course, Father Brown is there. While Angus is gone he leaves Smythe in his apartment with a lot of people watching him, but he is taken from his apartment and there is blood on the floor. All the watchers swear that they let no one in. Father Brown reveals that there are invisible people all around, but that it isn’t a supernatural phenomenon, but a natural one. No one ever notices the post man, for example. Welkin is a post man which is why Laura always heard him when letters are delivered. Welkin had killed Smythe and put his body in a parcel and no one ever noticed, except our intelligent Father Brown. Of course, Father Brown talks to Welkin at the end and we can only hope he has given up his criminal ways!
Things I Couldn’t Help But Notice
The descriptions at the beginning…the things we see and the things we don’t
Laura says it’s a fairy tale….3 men make their way in the world to win the girl! Sounds like a fairy tale to me too.
All three suitors have some sort of silence about them: Welkin is silent but Smythe has the silent machine business…Angus has “obstinate quietude”
The bigger character (Welkin) is the invisible one…more paradox
The quiet servants are pointless because normal servants are already invisible…but at least the human ones would save you from being murdered!
Servants are almost viewed as inhuman as the “domestic dummies”
Father Brown included in the furniture descriptions…is he also invisible?
Father Brown understands that physical things are important too (not just spiritual)
You always begin at the end of a story…more paradox
Is even Welkin is “blind” with his squint?
Why no back doors in so many of the stories? Is it simply for the mystery to be harder to solve or is there something deeper here?
Quotes
“if you really were mad you would think you were sane”
“And I can’t even find out who leaves them (the letters) or if it’s Welkin himself”
“The Celtic corner of his Scotch soul…”
“The unimportant Father Brown…”
There is an episode of Father Brown (on Prime Video) about this story in season 3 if you’d like to watch it!
The Wrong Shape
Summary
Father Brown and Flambeau are visiting an old acquaintance of Flambeau, Quinton (who seems like a quack artist?). During their visit the doctor is keeping an unwanted family member out of Quinton’s room by lying about a sleeping draught. Father Brown then finds a knife that is “the wrong shape.” Quinton is interested in eastern things so he has an “Indian hermit” living with him as well. Later the doctor gives the sleeping draught and then is concerned about his patient so the three men (priest, reformed criminal, and doctor) rush in to find what seems like a suicide note and then they find Quinton stabbed to death. The suicide note is also “the wrong shape.” Father Brown has a secret meeting with Quinton’s wife (which we hear nothing about) and then he asks Harris (the doctor) to write up his version of events before the police get there. As Father Brown is explaining parts of the case he finds interesting to Flambeau he receives a written confession from the doctor. He loved Mrs. Quinton and only followed “natural laws” and was only looking for the perfect way to murder Quinton without being caught. He thought he wouldn’t feel guilty but for some reason confesses to Father Brown. Then the police show up and we don’t know how it resolves criminally.
Things I Noticed
All the descriptions of the shapes of people and things at the beginning
Color and form
Harris is the first to say Mrs. Quentin is a good woman
Father Brown notices the knife is the wrong shape “in the abstract” but it ends up being important physically
Harris takes the knife “back to its owner”
The “trinity” of “I want nothing”
The knife and the paper are the only two things that are “wrong”
When Father Brown asked Harris to write up the case for him I thought he was getting his own “John Watson” like Sherlock Holmes. He fooled me!
The end? Why do we think we are left at this moment?
Quotes
“That’s the kind of woman who does her duty for twenty years and then does something dreadful”
“You have to know something of the mind as well as the body…we have to know something of the body as well as the mind”
“I sometimes think that you know some details of this matter that you have not thought for to mention.”
“The modern mind always mixes up two different ideas. Mystery in the sense of what is marvelous and mystery in the sense of what is complicated.”
It looks like there is an episode of Father Brown (on Prime Video) about this story. It is in season 1 if you want to look for it!
I would love to hear any thoughts or things you enjoyed from these stories in the comments! I also look forward to hearing the discussion that happens at our in person meetings. I hope you enjoy the last story. I will be back to post about The Sign of the Broken Sword next week!
Other Things I’m Enjoying
The new A Gentleman in Moscow TV show is starting to drop episodes. It is available on Paramount Plus but you need to add a ShowTime subscription it seems like. It looks like there is a free trial option but all the episodes aren’t out yet so I may wait! (In case you missed it, we read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles in December 2023)
And speaking of Amor Towles, he has a new book of “short” stories and a novella that is a sequel to Rules of Civility and comes highly recommended by the lady I talked to in a Chapel Hill book store yesterday. It is called A Table for Two and I am currently waiting for my copy to come in from the library. I will let you know how it is.
This marriage advice from
is gold. I was introduced to Emily via her book These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body (which I highly recommend) when we were coming into the church back in 2018. If you don’t already follow her, you probably want to!If you haven’t read
, I was really enjoying JD Flynn’s thoughts on Saint Joseph the other day and wanted to highly recommend them as your source on Catholic News. They are doing very good work and Ed and JD are very engaging to read and listen to on lots of other topics as well.I just finished The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin yesterday and I cannot recommend it enough! I think I liked this one even better than Laurus (his previous novel that was also very good). It is about a 30 year old Russian man born in 1900 who wakes up with no memories but he finds out that it is 1999. As his memories start to return he remembers being in a labor camp. The rest of the novel explores themes of memory, time, history, and relationships. It is worth a read for sure!
That is all I have for you this morning. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and get to curl up with a good book at least a few times. If you’ve been on spring break this week I wish you the best in getting back to normal. I always think my reading life will benefit from the breaks, but really I think I read more on our normal schedule so I am ready to jump back into the normal routine. I hope everyone has great in person meetings in next week or two. I always look forward to these immensely. I am very excited to chat about our favorite priest detective! I am off to try to find a few quiet moments to read before anyone needs anything (so probably not long).
Enjoy your reading til we meet again!
“The world is a fabric woven of mysteries, and a mystery is a provocation to our humanity that cannot be dissolved by googling a few more bits of information.”
-Stratford Caldecott
A Few Reminders
If you haven’t taken the survey for this year yet, please do so here!
In case you haven’t seen it yet here is our schedule for The Innocence of Father Brown this month. Feel free to read the whole book if you want, but also feel free to take a break from long reading assignments!
March 23rd- The Secret Garden (30 pages)- Here’s the post if you missed it!
April 6th- The Invisible Man (25 pages) AND The Wrong Shape (27 pages)
April 13th- The Sign of the Broken Sword (26 pages)
After that we have Crossing to Safety in May. I am very excited to chat about this one and maybe introduce you to a new author that I love. Feel free to read the book at any pace that works for you, but below is how I am planning to read and the dates I will post about each part if you’d like to read along.
April 20th: Part I: ch 1-7 (pgs 3-104)
April 27th: Part I: ch 8-13 (pgs 105-195)
May 4th: Part II (pgs 199-271)
May 11th: Part III (pgs 275-327)
If you found your way here and are not part of an in person book club, welcome! We would love you to read along with us. But, in person literary community is a beautiful thing. So please contact me if you’d like to join or start a group!
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Book lists from previous years can be found here.
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