Folly [Import] [Paperback]

Laurie R. King (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007115962
• ISBN-13: 978-0007115969
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)

More About the Author

New York Times bestselling crime writer Laurie R. King writes both series and standalone novels.

In the Mary Russell series (first entry: The Beekeeper's Apprentice), fifteen-year-old Russell meets Sherlock Holmes on the Sussex Downs in 1915, becoming his apprentice, then his partner. The series follows their amiably contentious partnership into the 1920s as they challenge each other to ever greater feats of detection.

The Kate Martinelli series, starting with A Grave Talent, concerns a San Francisco homicide inspector, her SFPD partner, and her life partner. In the course of the series, Kate encounters a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, a manifestation of the goddess Kali and an eighty-year-old manuscript concerning'Sherlock Holmes.

King also has written stand-alone novels--the historical thriller Touchstone, A Darker Place, two loosely linked novels'Folly and Keeping Watch--and a science fiction novel, Califia's Daughters, under the pseudonym Leigh Richards.

King grew up reading her way through libraries like a termite through balsa before going on to become a mother, builder, world traveler, and theologian.

She has now settled into a genteel life of crime, back in her native northern California. She has a secondary residence in cyberspace, where she enjoys meeting readers in her Virtual Book Club and on her blog.

King has won the Edgar and Creasey awards (for A Grave Talent), the Nero (for A Monstrous Regiment of Women) and the MacCavity (for Folly); her nominations include the Agatha, the Orange, the Barry, and two more Edgars. She was also given an honorary doctorate from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

Check out King's website, http://laurierking.com/, and follow the links to her blog and Virtual Book Club, featuring monthly discussions of her work, with regular visits from the author herself. And for regular LRK updates, follow the link to sign up for her email newsletter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars publisher's weekly doesn't know best, January 22, 2001

By 

jean utley (burbank, ca USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Folly (Hardcover)

Despite the horrible review given this book by Publisher's Weekly, I've read a copy of Folly and I think it is one of the best novels of the year. It is a wonderful story of a woman who heals herself emotionally and physically after the loss of her family. She comes to an isolated island between Washington State and Canada and begins to build a house and a new life for herself, always wary of the past and learning from her mistakes. There is a small mystery but it is mostly the conflict within herself that keeps Rae interesting. I think this is an award winner-and at the very least, a terrific read! I urge everyone to read this book and all of Laurie King's work. I think she gets better every book!

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars building a world in time, July 5, 2001

By 

Julia M. Walker (NY Finger Lakes) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Folly (Hardcover)

King's newest novel is everything that the other reviewers claim, good and bad. (Except that it's NOTHING like Mary Higgins Clark, whose works I had to ban from my Women's Murder Mystery class after finding them 98% romance and 2% mystery.) But in "Folly," King does use obvious symbolism, long digressions, unexpected and non-chronological flash-backs, bleeds a bit into romance, and lacks a clear articulation or resolution of the immortal "who dunnit?" Or at least "why?"

But it is a very good book.

Unlike the books of her Kate Martinelli series or Mary Russell series, King's newest novel is only incidentally a mystery, although almost none her other books are _simply_ mysteries. But in "Folly" there's certainly fearful suspense artfully manipulated and enough problems to be solved to provide a satisfactory, if not perfectly neat resolution. The plot's chronology is complexly presented, so it's no book to read when you have to put it down for a day then pick it up for thirty minutes before bedtime. But the focus on single and mutably complex main character (however unfortunately allegorical her name) justifies that.

While I am a great fan of King's work, I wouldn't claim that she can't write a less-than-wonderful book -- see "To Play the Fool" or "The Moor," a book that gave me an even worse headache than the Dorothy L. Sayers' exercise with Scottish fish and train timetables. But this book IS, in many ways, wonderful. The metaphor of a woman rebuilding herself as she rebuilds a house may be as obvious as "new born" and "sanctuary," but that doesn't make it any less compelling -- see Homer or Virgil or Dante, also writers with obvious controlling metaphors. The point is that the metaphor works, and as it works, becomes something larger than a simple comparison.

King's sense of place is exquisitely portrayed here. Not just the island upon which Rae lives, but the whole eco-system of the San Juan's is a feast for the reader. She makes a world I'd want to walk into, making it real with attention to plants and rocks and birds and mud, and the ebb and flow of wind and water, as well as with the larger outlines and the more ambiguous ambience of a community made up of islands and a population both dependent on and resentful of tourists. But aside from Rae, the island itself is the main character, and one of King's most interesting characters. Here I'm reminded of Mary Stewart's early novels that blend mystery, travelogue, and (yes) romance so effectively that, reading them as a teen, I fell in love with those settings, a love that out-lasted my memory of the characters or plots. Visiting Delphi, Avignon and environs, the Isle of Skye as an adult, I've met other women travelers who were there for the same reason. King's islands have that effect, making me seriously consider a trip to that area -- something entirely new for me.

So it's a book that can metamorphose the reader in many ways. The subject of depression -- which I'd dreaded after reading the reviews -- is actually affirmative as King crafts it in the struggle of Rae. And the art and love of wood is an unexpected but powerful gift that the book brings to the reader with world enough and time.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of King's best efforts!, June 18, 2002

By 

Cathy Wright (Port Ludlow, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Folly (Paperback)

Having read and loved both the Mary Russell and Kate Martinelli series' by King, I expected a similar read with Folly, but I was surprised and pleased to see her go in an entirely different direction with this astonishing, heartbreaking and ultimately victorious work of fiction. While King's series work plots complex mysteries with strong characters, Folly is more a character study, with a 50-ish woman in the unlikely role of heroine.

Rae Newborn has endured tragedies and loss that would destroy a weaker woman, and while she has faltered, she has not fallen. Instead she finds redemption in a house-building project that she tackles alone, on a desolate northwest Washington State island. King uses the metaphor of house construction to underline Rae's rebuilding of her shattered psyche, one layer at a time; she gives older women readers insight and hope as she slowly tears down the old, then begins constructing the new, developing Rae's muscles and physical stamina to parallel her slowly evolving mental and emotional health.

I loved the character of Rae Newborn for her own life's "folly" of attempting the incredible task of building a house. I cried for her tragedies and losses and suicide attempts. I was angry at her family members (like I would be at my own) if they could not, or would not, see the person beneath the title of Mother or Daughter, Aunt or Niece, etc. I cheered at the characters who fought to befriend the frightened, desperate Rae when she tried so hard to stand in isolation rather than chance loss once more.

Mostly I hated the last pages of this book, because they WERE the last pages and I would have to leave Rae Newborn, when I wanted to stay with her on that island, or wherever life took her, forever. She became my sister, my friend, my hero.

While Folly contains mysterious pieces of a soon-to-be-solved puzzle and some edge of the seat suspense, it can't be pigeonholed as just another Mystery or Thriller. It is so much more! Don't let the words of those who believe themselves critics deny you this unforgettable story - if you truly love good fiction you will enjoy this novel while you read it, and for years to come as you recall its lessons, its hope and its beauty.