SHERLOCK HOLMES AND RELATED MATTERS

I haven’t read any children’s fiction for a while, for one reason or another. My daughter has just lent me MONDAYS ARE RED by Nicola Morgan, however, which I’m looking forward to reading.

I did read ARTHUR AND GEORGE by Julian Barnes, which is essentially a fictionalised biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, two men, both famous but for very different reasons, whose paths crossed under intriguing circumstances during the early years of the twentieth century. The story is full of anxiety and tension (George was wrongfully arrested - for mutilating farm animals!), though it also has elements of humour and some particularly touching moments. I enjoyed the way the book was constructed, with the story of the two men’s lives related side by side, despite the difference in their dates of birth (George was considerably younger than Arthur).

I have an interest in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because I am a fan of Sherlock Holmes (a fact that would doubtless have irked Sir Arthur himself – he found the success of his fictional detective to be something of an albatross around the neck). I read a Sherlock Holmes story, written not by Doyle the Edwardian writer but by Michael Chabon in 2003. It's a short(ish) novella called THE FINAL SOLUTION. Using the chilling new resonance that the title of Doyle’s last Holmes story has since acquired, following its use by the Nazis as code for their attempted extermination of the Jewish race, Chabon creates a truly ancient Holmes, 89 years old, and already touched by the shadow of Alzheimer’s disease. It is the aged Holmes takes on one last case in an effort to help a young concentration camp survivor - and his parrot.