Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by pleforge
Gaudí Afternoon by Barbara Wilson
This is a hard series not to like. Not only is it professionally written, with an interesting storyline and quirky characters, but it’s almost half mystery, half travelogue. In this book, Cassandra Reilly, who makes her living translating South American literature into English, is asked by the friend of a friend to find her missing husband in Barcelona, Spain. Well, Cassandra needs the money so she can go to Hungary to see some old friends (see Trouble in Transylvania, below). But come to find out, the man she is looking for is not a man at all, nor is the woman who hired her really a woman.
All of the characters are, well, unusual to say the least. Carmen the hairdresser that Cassandra has a crush on is a Catholic and won’t go all the way. Ana, whom Cassandra is staying with, is an architect who builds special, portable rooms designed specifically to a client’s needs. Ben is a butch dyke with a young daughter who is always getting kidnapped. Frankie is a male-to-female transsexual who is Ben’s ex-husband. Then there is April Showers, a foot masseuse whose presence in Barcelona seems suspect. Add to this the fact that some of these characters speak English, some Spanish, and some Catalan—the native language of Barcelona—and you have traveler’s stew.
The title is tip of the author’s hat to Dorothy L. Sayers, who penned the exciting Harriet Vane mystery, Gaudy Night, but there is no other similarity. While Sayers’ story was set in a woman’s college, Wilson’s takes place on the streets and in the buildings of Barcelona. Gaudi is Antoni Gaudi, an early 20th Century architect whose incredible structures dot Barcelona like sprinkles on a donut. The descriptions of these structures were so awe-inspired that I had to stop reading and Google as many Gaudi images as I could call up.
For a change, there are no murders in this book. No deaths at all, in fact. Just a series of misunderstandings and a lot of walking around, sitting in clubs and restaurants and apartments, and discussions of sexuality. But Wilson does this in a way that keeps you interested and wondering what will happen next. Cassandra, who at 46 is one of the oldest protagonists in the initial offering of a mystery series, even manages to get laid, although off camera. At the end, we know everything we want to know and more—even where Cassandra will travel next.
BONUS REVIEW: Gaudi Afternoon (The Movie)
I was excited to learn that there was a film of Gaudi Afternoon, directed by Susan Seidelman. I ordered it on Netflix and watched it the day after finishing the book. It was pretty dreadful. There are a lot of reasons why, and no real excuses.
To start off with, Cassandra (played by Judy Davis), is not identified as a lesbian. Instead, the movie focuses on the odd gender reversal roles exhibited by Frankie (a pre-op male to female transsexual) and Ben (a butch dyke) as father and mother respectively of the young Delilah. This is pretty heady stuff, it’s true, but Seidelman chose to play it primarily for its comic value and leave the social issues aside. Save for the part of Hamilton, who was terrific, the movie was badly miscast. I suppose Davis could have played a pretty good Cassandra, but decided (or was directed) to portray her as alternately angry and bewildered. Frankie and Ben were given some of the right lines, but didn’t have the right actors to say them. April was played by Juliette Lewis as gorgeous, thin, and young (none of which attributes April had in the book, except through lusty Cassandra’s eyes). The young girl, Delilah, is given such horrible lines that you wish she had stayed in San Francisco.
As you might expect, Cassandra doesn't have any girlfriends in this movie, unless you count the times that April inexplicably makes a move on her. Ana, the architect of small rooms, doesn’t make an appearance at all and Cassandra’s eventual in-book lover, Carmen, appears in the movie as a mother of three with a no-good boyfriend.
So why did Seidelman choose not to express Cassandra’s lesbianism? Nor her lust for April nor her nights with Carmen? Cowardice, I guess. And box office expectations, although I doubt this movie got more than a handful of viewers in the theater. The movie would have been far more effective it she had stuck to more of the book, using the camera for panoramic shots of beautiful Barcelona—including the Gaudi constructions, which appeared only briefly. If she had retained Cassandra’s sexual nature, the movie would have at least had a shot of being an underground lesbian classic, watched by like-minded women for generations to come. Well, you make your choices and have to live with the results—and sometimes the negative reviews.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.
All of the characters are, well, unusual to say the least. Carmen the hairdresser that Cassandra has a crush on is a Catholic and won’t go all the way. Ana, whom Cassandra is staying with, is an architect who builds special, portable rooms designed specifically to a client’s needs. Ben is a butch dyke with a young daughter who is always getting kidnapped. Frankie is a male-to-female transsexual who is Ben’s ex-husband. Then there is April Showers, a foot masseuse whose presence in Barcelona seems suspect. Add to this the fact that some of these characters speak English, some Spanish, and some Catalan—the native language of Barcelona—and you have traveler’s stew.
The title is tip of the author’s hat to Dorothy L. Sayers, who penned the exciting Harriet Vane mystery, Gaudy Night, but there is no other similarity. While Sayers’ story was set in a woman’s college, Wilson’s takes place on the streets and in the buildings of Barcelona. Gaudi is Antoni Gaudi, an early 20th Century architect whose incredible structures dot Barcelona like sprinkles on a donut. The descriptions of these structures were so awe-inspired that I had to stop reading and Google as many Gaudi images as I could call up.
For a change, there are no murders in this book. No deaths at all, in fact. Just a series of misunderstandings and a lot of walking around, sitting in clubs and restaurants and apartments, and discussions of sexuality. But Wilson does this in a way that keeps you interested and wondering what will happen next. Cassandra, who at 46 is one of the oldest protagonists in the initial offering of a mystery series, even manages to get laid, although off camera. At the end, we know everything we want to know and more—even where Cassandra will travel next.
BONUS REVIEW: Gaudi Afternoon (The Movie)
I was excited to learn that there was a film of Gaudi Afternoon, directed by Susan Seidelman. I ordered it on Netflix and watched it the day after finishing the book. It was pretty dreadful. There are a lot of reasons why, and no real excuses.
To start off with, Cassandra (played by Judy Davis), is not identified as a lesbian. Instead, the movie focuses on the odd gender reversal roles exhibited by Frankie (a pre-op male to female transsexual) and Ben (a butch dyke) as father and mother respectively of the young Delilah. This is pretty heady stuff, it’s true, but Seidelman chose to play it primarily for its comic value and leave the social issues aside. Save for the part of Hamilton, who was terrific, the movie was badly miscast. I suppose Davis could have played a pretty good Cassandra, but decided (or was directed) to portray her as alternately angry and bewildered. Frankie and Ben were given some of the right lines, but didn’t have the right actors to say them. April was played by Juliette Lewis as gorgeous, thin, and young (none of which attributes April had in the book, except through lusty Cassandra’s eyes). The young girl, Delilah, is given such horrible lines that you wish she had stayed in San Francisco.
As you might expect, Cassandra doesn't have any girlfriends in this movie, unless you count the times that April inexplicably makes a move on her. Ana, the architect of small rooms, doesn’t make an appearance at all and Cassandra’s eventual in-book lover, Carmen, appears in the movie as a mother of three with a no-good boyfriend.
So why did Seidelman choose not to express Cassandra’s lesbianism? Nor her lust for April nor her nights with Carmen? Cowardice, I guess. And box office expectations, although I doubt this movie got more than a handful of viewers in the theater. The movie would have been far more effective it she had stuck to more of the book, using the camera for panoramic shots of beautiful Barcelona—including the Gaudi constructions, which appeared only briefly. If she had retained Cassandra’s sexual nature, the movie would have at least had a shot of being an underground lesbian classic, watched by like-minded women for generations to come. Well, you make your choices and have to live with the results—and sometimes the negative reviews.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.