The Innocence of Father Brown
Thoughts on The Secret Garden (with plenty of spoilers)
*If you are new around here, welcome! Please scroll to the bottom to see all of the options for how to get involved in our book clubs!
Good Morning Readers,
We are only a week away from Easter! Lent (and Middlemarch) seemed so long and then all of the sudden it is almost over. I am looking forward to a hopefully quiet and penitential Holy Week (I think I shall declutter my house since I always joke that the clutter represents the state of my soul) and then I am really looking forward to a celebratory Easter season!
I hope everyone enjoyed the end of Middlemarch and their meetings to chat about it. It is such a long book and there is so much to chat about so I am sure it will continue to be a topic of conversation at book club. That is one thing I love about reading books together over the course of months and years: we have so many shared points of understanding. It is amazing how conversation opens up when you have so many stories and characters to point to as examples of whatever point you’re trying to make. And because we read together you know there are people in the room who know what you’re talking about. I have definitely had plenty of moments in my life where I want to relate something in a conversation to a book, but the other person hasn’t read it before and as I try to explain the connection I quickly realize that “you had to be there.” So I really enjoy having so many shared connections with you all.
I am very much enjoying reading The Innocence of Father Brown this week. I had only ever read a few of the short stories (and it was long enough ago that I’m not sure I even know which ones). This is the first of four volumes of short stories featuring our amateur sleuth (and actual priest). Even though we are only focusing on four of the stories and our first is the second chapter, I went back and read the first chapter to get oriented with our main character. But to be honest, he is not in the first story until the end so I actually got to know Valentin better (so I was very surprised at the second story!). But, onto our actual story. There will absolutely be plenty of spoilers so close your computer or phone, go read the story, and then come back and read this!
If you are new to reading G.K. Chesterton in general then the first thing I want to say is that he is HUGE on paradox. As soon as I started reading I started noting all of the paradoxes. And as it turns out the solution to the crime is a paradox as well (but I’ll get back to that in a moment). If you want to do a fun exercise reread or listen to the story again and make a list of all the paradoxes.
Summary
In this story we come home from work with Valentin, the Paris chief of police, where he is late to his own dinner party. He has been overseeing executions. He examines all of his guests and realizes Brayne isn’t there yet (who he calls his chief guest). We meet all the chief characters, including Father Brown. Then after dinner in the garden they find a beheaded man who is not one of their party (but how did he get in because there is only one entrance to the house and no way to get in or out of the garden). Valentin asks for this to remain private because he has “been so public he can afford to be private.” Brayne is gone and they assume he is the murderer. They find another head on the road out of the house. Father Brown recognizes the head as Brayne’s and also realizes that his head belongs on the original murder victim’s body. Which leads Father Brown to solve the case. Valentin is the murderer. He brought home the head of a man recently executed. Decided to execute Brayne because he was becoming Catholic. And switched the heads and threw Brayne’s over the wall. The chief of police is actually the criminal. He has committed suicide.
Reading Process
My process for reading this story (and I think I will keep it up) was that I read it first, took some notes after, and then relistened to it while writing down things that I noticed. I became a very good detective after I already knew the solution to the murder. There are so many details in the story that point so markedly at Valentin, but I did not find myself suspecting him the first time around. This is one of the good things about reading detective stories: all the details matter and it teaches you to pay attention to them. In other books all the details matter too, but it is sometimes subtler. If you have been “trained to read” on detective stories I think it transfers to other books as well!
Things I Couldn’t Help But Notice
The narrator says this murder was Valentin’s business and we assume it is because he is a police detective, but really it is because he murdered him.
There is so much Garden of Eden imagery. The garden that is completely walled in and the snake of blood running from the murder victim, a head being crushed
I love Margaret’s acceptance of O’Brien’s proposal, “she gave him something better than an apology.”
The doctor’s questions, which help Brown solve the case, have a catechism feel to them. Which seems significant because Brayne was being catechized to be received into the church before he was murdered.
The comment about O’Brien’s Irish soul and his Frenchified intellect was very interesting.
They can’t recognize Brayne’s body of head on its own. Only Father Brown recognizes his head and once he puts it back on his body does anyone else recognize him. It is almost like he is almost himself as a whole man. Which makes it also interesting that Valentin would choose to behead him. It also reminded me of Lewis’ idea in The Abolition of Man that you can’t just have a belly or a head, but you need a chest to be whole.
Someone makes a reference to Macbeth which seems like a good hint since Macbeth also murders a guest in his home.
At the end Father Brown says he needs to go ask Valentin to confess and I appreciated the double meaning here when a priest says it.
These are absolutely not complete thoughts on the story, but I hope these rambling musings help you notice some more things as you read and help you appreciate the story more. I can’t wait to talk about it with you all at our in person meetings.
I would love to hear your thoughts before then as well so feel free to comment below!
Podcast
I wanted to share this Literary Life Podcast on The Importance of the Detective Novel to aid in your reading of these short stories. I am sure I have shared it before, but it has great information. They were reading Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night at the time (we also read Murder Must Advertise in May 2022), but it is a more general conversation and really helpful. If you love detective fiction as much as I do then it will make you feel justified and if you aren’t quite there yet it may convince you to read more.
TV Show
I have not watched this yet so take this recommendations with all the caveats, but there is an 11 Season Father Brown TV show (starring Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter!). I have heard that it is VERY loosely based on the G.K. Chesterton stories, but still very enjoyable and well done. I could not find an episode on The Secret Garden, but if you read The Blue Cross (the first story in this book), the last episode in season 1 is based on that.
Other Things I’m Enjoying
This post by
on how to rest amidst the chaos of life and some very practical suggestions. I like number 5 especially (but really I think it has to be Book Club!)St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry has a one free summer audit program. I signed up for the IMAGE OF THE MAKER: THE THEOLOGICAL POETICS OF GEORGE MACDONALD AND J.R.R. TOLKIEN if anyone would like to join me in July and August!
Speed Dating Books: I have not been waking up as early as I would like (Daylight Savings Time strikes again) so I have been trying to get a little bit of spiritual and non-fiction reading in since morning is usually my time for that. So after we are done homeschooling for the morning I have been grabbing my stack of books (see below) and setting a timer for 5 minutes for each book. My husband called it speed dating for books and I thought that was funny enough to share! But also if you feel like you are reading too many books and not making much progress this is a great way to get a few pages under your belt each day. I think 10 minutes with each would probably be better, but I have a large stack and only 30 minutes at the most, so speed dating it is! (Caveat: I don’t think this would be nearly as fruitful with novels, I like to really dive into those…but 5 minutes is better than no minutes)
I am reading The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin as my “just for fun” fiction read right now and I cannot recommend it enough. Amnesia memory novel set during the Bolshevik Revolution (but with a somehow hopeful tone, so far at least).
I am reading Decluttering at the Speed of Life as a motivator to do some good Holy Week decluttering. I didn’t do 40 bags in 40 days, but I might be able to do 40 bags in 7 days! I am really enjoying the way this woman talks about decluttering!
If anyone wants a glimpse into my very much less than perfect literary and writing life: I started writing this newsletter thinking no one was sick anymore (finally) and about a quarter of the way through someone threw up on the kitchen floor. Such is life with little kids and this unending winter/spring of sickness (it seems like it has been bad for everyone). So, I wish you all health and if someone does get sick I hope you get to cozy up and read lots of books (or at least really well done TV or movies).
Enjoy your reading until we meet again!
“Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”
-C.S. Lewis in his introduction to On the Incarnation
(and I hope you appreciate the reference to the story!)
A Few Reminders
Our April Book is The Innocence of Father Brown. We are going to focus on these four short stories. I will be writing about them on Substack on the below dates if you’d like to follow along! Feel free to read the whole volume (I will probably at least listen to the whole thing). I just wanted to give people a little bit of breathing room after such a long book!
March 23rd- The Secret Garden (30 pages)
March 30th- The Invisible Man (25 pages)
April 6th- 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.
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!
If you are part of a group, but you’re not on our Slack page, please contact me. That is where people share thoughts and logistics for each in person group.
Book lists from previous years can be found here.
We are on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (with links to Substack) in order to spread the joy of the reading life to more people...if you want to like or share with any friends that want to start their own groups (or follow along virtually) please do!
*As always, some of the links are affiliate links. The few cents(literally) earned with each purchase you make after clicking links (at no extra cost to you) go toward the time and effort it takes to keep Literature Book Club running and I appreciate it!