A Slight Trick of the Mind [Paperback]

Mitch Cullin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2006

It is 1947, and the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now 93, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his housekeeper and her young son. He tends to his bees, writes in his journal, and grapples with the diminishing powers of his mind. But in the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was asking–about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know. A novel of exceptional grace and literary sensitivity, A Slight Trick of the Mind is a brilliant imagining of our greatest fictional detective and a stunning inquiry into the mysteries of human connection.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Long after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle allowed him to retire to Sussex to take up beekeeping, there seems to be no end of enthusiasm for imagined versions of the life of Sherlock Holmes. There was Michael Chabon's The Final Solution in which "the old man," an 89-year-old beekeeper in Sussex is undoubtedly Holmes. Laurie King, a fine mystery writer, has appropriated Holmes and created a romance between him and young Mary Russell which has lasted through several enjoyable books. And now, nonagenarian Holmes reappears, most appealingly, in Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind. He is frail and forgetful but still observant and capable of shining the bright light of his insight and brilliance on events both past and present.

Cullin has carefully woven three stories together and managed it so neatly that no threads show--worthy of Holmes himself. The first is the story of Holmes's recent return from a trip to Japan, ostensibly in search of prickly ash, a bush that he believes contributes to healthy longevity, as does his beloved and trusted royal jelly. While there, he is met by his correspondent, Mr. Umezaki, who isn't as interested in prickly ash as in gleaning information from Holmes about his long-gone father. Supposedly, they met many years before, in London, and Holmes advised him not to return home. Of course, Holmes has no recollection of the meeting but finesses it nicely.

It is 1947 when they visit Hiroshima, post-atomic bomb, and Holmes marvels at what he sees. He compares it, most poignantly, to the loss of the queen in a hive, "when no resources were available to raise a new one. Yet how could he explain the deeper illness of unexpressed desolation, that imprecise pall harbored en masse by ordinary Japanese?" That is what he tells Roger, the 14-year-old son of his housekeeper. Roger is the second thread of the novel. Holmes is introducing him to beekeeping and Roger proves an apt student. His hero-worship of Holmes and his need for a father form an integral part of Cullin's intention of "humanizing" the great Sherlock Holmes.

The final thread is revealed in a journal that Holmes kept, in which he entered an encounter with a married woman, many years ago. He is infatuated with her, and hardly knows what to call it or what to make of his feelings. This is unfamiliar territory for the man who is rational above all else. The man we know at the end of the book makes the reader want another installment, showing a new Sherlock with a heart as well as a brain. --Valerie Ryan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The Sherlock Holmes pastiche is a time-honored tradition, though most attempts are interesting primarily to Sherlockians who pick them apart, searching for mistakes. But Cullin (Branches; Tideland; etc.) has produced an ambitious, beautifully written novel that examines an enfeebled but still intellectually curious Holmes as he copes with the indignities of old age. It's just after the end of WWII: Holmes's brilliant brother Mycroft is dead, as is Watson ("You know, I never did call him Watson—he was John, simply John"). Now 93, the great detective has been retired for decades; he spends his days immersed in his lifelong passion, beekeeping, and in writing various articles and letters. One of his projects is an account of a case concerning a mysterious young woman who played the glass armonica. Holmes will complete the manuscript by the book's end, and the fascinating result will explain something of his peculiar character. Cullin gives Holmes a companion in his housekeeper's young son, Roger; their close relationship is a great solace to the prickly and famously solitary old man. It is this elucidation of Holmes's "true" character that is the purpose of Cullin's story. This look at Holmes near his natural death is a delight and a deeply satisfying read—more so than Michael Chabon's recent The Final Solution, which also features a nonagenarian Holmes. (Apr. 26)Forecast: Cullin's work is hard to pigeonhole—Texas noir (Tideland; Branches), coming-of-age novel (Whompyjawed), academic satire (The Cosmology of Bing)—but his talent is undeniable. This sophisticated spin on Doyle's perennially popular detective could take him up a notch recognition-wise.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (May 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400078229
• ISBN-13: 978-1400078226
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #862,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, complex, mesmerizing work, May 21, 2005

By 

B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Slight Trick of the Mind (Hardcover)

Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind has a lot in common with Michael Chabon's The Final Solution. Both have at their center an elderly, somewhat frail Sherlock Holmes. Both present Holmes in isolation, outside of the familiar haunts and relationships we recall so fondly from Doyle's work. Both have him living into a time period that calls into question his reliance on logic and intellect. Most importantly, each, in its own way, offers up one of the best literary pleasures a reader is likely to experience this year.
Cullin places Holmes in his 93rd year, retired to Sussex with his bees and his housekeeper and her adolescent son. While Holmes has grown somewhat frail physically (he needs two canes, lots of rest), more distressing to him is the obvious loss of his mental faculties. He finds himself entering rooms for unknown reasons, forgetting near-events and losing himself in long-past ones, falling asleep suddenly in the midst of something. Even more confusing, he finds that his renowned logic and aloofness seems to be more and more capitulating to the long-buried emotional part of himself, particularly in three-fold fashion: in his reaction to the father-worship of the housekeeper's adolescent son, in his memory of a decades-old infatuation with a woman from one of his old cases, and in his response to a Japanese man who seeks answers to why his father long ago abandoned his family at the seeming urging of a younger Holmes.
The story unfolds in slow fashion, slipping quietly, sadly, smoothly between the three storylines. With Holmes, we sorrow in present time over his slipping acuity, mourn the passing of that legendary intellect, wince at how easily he forgets, loses himself in time and place and deed. We mourn as well the passing of an age where reason and logic could hold such sway as it did in Holmes' hands (a topic more directly focused on in Chabon's book). Faced as he is during his trip to Japan with the devastation wrought by the first atomic bomb--a devastation not only of life and place but also of spirit, Holmes begins to question the place of logic and reason in such a world.
Where then can he find solace, if at all? One answer of course is his bees, in their ordered humming generational lives. But he is less and less involved in their actual keeping, and so we see the seemingly cold Holmes slowly opening up to the possibilities of human connection in his interaction with young Rodger, the housekeeper's son whom he trains to care for the bees as he no longer can. And through Rodger we learn of an earlier case of Holmes where for a while the machine-like intellect was overrun by a strange infatuation with a woman, one that continues even now. And we see him thinking not rationally but emotionally as he ponders what to do about the Japanese man who seeks answers Holmes does not have. Cullin has taken Holmes and made him human, with all its potential for rapture and ruin.
Through these perilous waters of fading memory and slipping mind, of human emotion and weakness, of past and approaching mortality, Holmes and the reader move slowly, quietly, painfully toward an ending that nearly drowns the heart. Highly, highly recommended

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "What have you ever known about loving anyone?", June 16, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Slight Trick of the Mind (Hardcover)

In this fascinating portrait, Sherlock Holmes, now ninety-three, deals with the indignities of old age and the forgetfulness which accompanies it. It is now 1947, and Dr. Watson has been dead for many years. Holmes lives in a small country house in rural Sussex with a housekeeper and her 14-year-old son, spending much of his day tending to his bees and working on his writing. Frail and reliant upon two canes to get around, Holmes is dedicated to the pursuit of longevity and believes that the royal jelly from his hives is a key ingredient.

Holmes has just returned from postwar Japan, where he has been seeking information about the prickly ash plant and its life-giving properties. His host there, the son of a diplomat who disappeared when World War II broke out, tells Holmes that his father once met him in England, but Holmes no longer remembers the man. As he reminisces about the trip, he wants to help the man come to terms with his father's mysterious abandonment.

These two settings, one in rural Sussex and one in Japan, in 1947, alternate with "The Case of the Glass Armonicist," an uncompleted story about one of Holmes's cases from 1902, which Holmes hopes to finish before he forgets the details. The story concerns a young man whose wife keeps disappearing following her lessons on the glass armonica (sometimes called the "glass harmonica"). Holmes follows the woman, often donning a disguise to get closer to her. In formal Victorian language, Holmes tells a story reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in style.

Cullin has created a plausible psychological profile for Holmes, who, to the best of anyone's knowledge, has never been in love and has never allowed his emotions to govern his life. Now, at the end of his life, he has the same needs and fears as the rest of mankind, a man far more human than we have ever seen before, though he retains his dignity. Vibrant physical details about the natural world and the places in which the action takes place bring life to the narrative, which is unusually sensitive in its descriptions of the inner world of an elderly man whose memories consist of "brief remembrances that soon became vague impressions and were invariably forgotten."

Gracefully combining all the story lines, Cullin leads the reader to a conclusion which is especially memorable for its completeness. Here Holmes concludes his searches, lays his philosophical ponderings to rest, and tries to find whatever peace is possible for a solitary man. A captivating continuation of the Sherlock Holmes legend. Mary Whipple

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sherlock Holmes As An Old Man, May 1, 2005

By 

C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Slight Trick of the Mind (Hardcover)

Sherlock Holmes remains alone of all the Victorian literary heroes from the last century. Even when "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (graphic novel and film) convened a who's who of these super-heroes, Sherlock Holmes was excluded for he was in a league of his own.

From "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (1974) of Nicholas Meyer (where Sigmund Freud works with Sherlock) to the current Mary Russell series of Laurie King (where Sherlock finds a brilliant feminist mate), the fun has been reading of the new situations that Sherlock finds himself placed in while staying true to the canon created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Mitch Collin's contribution to the genre is imaging Sherlock as a 93 year old in the aftermath of World War II.

It is an entertaining read which aspires to a poignant ending. The writing is clear and crisp without a misstep. The creative difference is Holmes pondering his inner emotional life in the twilight of his days. The reader does not need to be a Sherlock Homes fan to appreciate this novel. Afterwards the reader may want to consult Leslie Klinger's "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes" (2004) which contains all 56 of the short stories to see if Mr. Cullin got the details right. I believe that he did.