A Slight Trick of the Mind

by Mitch Kallin and Mitch Cullin

Book Overview

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture?starring Ian McKellen and Laura Linney and directed by Bill Condon. It is 1947, and the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now 93, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385513283
• ISBN13: 9780385513289
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The Literary Sherlocks

What a joy it has been of late for us Sherlockians. Not only has there been a batch of new scholarly Holmes-related books to digest and debate--among them THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES--but we've also been blessed with three very interesting and top-notch pastiches. What makes this trio of recent novels so unique is that they come from unlikely writers, individuals who fall more into the literary category than the mystery genre. I am, of course, referring to the three-headed prong that is Caleb Carr (THE ITALIAN SECRETARY), Michael Chabon (THE FINAL SOLUTION), and Mitch Cullin (A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND). As I decided to read all three books back to back, I shall comment on them in the order in which they were read. For better or worse, I started with the one that I believed would be the most satisfying of the trio: Caleb Carr's THE ITALIAN SECRETARY. However, while I found Carr's book engaging and fun for the most part, I was somewhat disappointed with it. In hindsight, my feelings might have more to do with my high regard for Carr's previous novels--such as THE ALIENIST--than it does with the actual quality of his Sherlock novel. In other words, had THE ITALIAN SECRETARY been written by someone else, I might not have found myself feeling it lacked the strength and depth of story that I've come to expect from, yes, a Caleb Carr novel. So putting those thoughts aside, I will say that Carr's book is mostly well written and he has done a good job at capturing the spirit, intrigue, and style of Doyle. However, it fell a little flat toward the end, giving me the sense of a rushed job. Even so, both his Holmes and Watson are vivid and quite enjoyable, and I do hope he tries his hand at another Sherlock pastiche, taking his time to draw the story out rather than move it so swiftly to its conclusion. A somewhat slight but worthy read nevertheless. Next up was Michael Chabon's THE FINAL SOLUTION, the Pulitzer-Prize winning writer's look at an unnamed Sherlock in retirement, set with World War II as the backdrop. This novella--not novel--is actually quite wonderful and the writing is fluid, lyrical, and overall rather excellent. To be frank, I wasn't expecting much from such a slim volume that offered us Sherlock as an elderly gentleman. But I was mistaken. It is an intelligent diversion, and, like Mitch Cullin's novel, brings the character into a modern age that somewhat confounds him. If I have any complaints, though, it is that Chabon made a point of never mentioning Sherlock by name (he is simply The Old Man), and, by doing so, skirted the character's history and much of his background, making him a bit one dimensional. The shortness of the book, too, didn't leave much room for the plot (which is, by the way, very interesting) or other characters to be developed at any great length. Still, there was enough here to hold my interest, and, in its own way, THE FINAL SOLUTION not only compliments Mitch Cullin's longer work but its

Beautiful, Poignant, and Very Sad

In Mitch Cullin's fond memoirs of Sherlock Holmes living out his golden years, we see the solitary man at 93 and freshly returned from a trip to Kobe, Japan. For many years he has been retired to his country house in Sussex, having outlived Dr. Watson, Mrs. Hudson, and brother Mycroft. He wishes for nothing more than the solitary life --- not surprising, never having been a particularly gregarious sort --- and the time to tend his bees. But, however improbable, the 14-year-old son of his widowed housekeeper becomes his unlikely companion. "...they faced the hives together, saying nothing for a while. Silence like this, in the beeyard, never failed to please him wholly; from the way Roger stood easily beside him, he believed the boy shared an equal satisfaction. And while he rarely enjoyed the company of children, it was difficult avoiding the paternal stirrings..." Roger, quite obviously in awe of the aged detective, eagerly aids him with his apiary and escorts him around his gardens. The lad soaks up everything like a sponge and thirsts for more. In secret, he sneaks into Holmes's attic library, just to be among the great man's books and feel his ancient aura. While up there one day, Roger discovers an unfinished manuscript among the items on the desk. Titled "The Glass Armonicist," the story chronicles a case pursued by Holmes in Dr. Watson's absence, the subject of this case being a lovely young woman who inexplicably seized Holmes's fancy. She haunts his memory still, despite their brief encounter. As A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND unfolds, "The Glass Armonicist" is completed, while Holmes can still sort out the sequence of events. This story within a story wonderfully contrasts the quickness of Sherlock Holmes in his prime with the man now in his decline. Softened by the years, the stoic Holmes feels a genuine fondness for the boy. To his bemused astonishment, he seeks to uncover Roger's personal history, finding him more than merely unobtrusive; in fact, quite remarkable. What he knows is that Roger lost his father in the war, leaving the child with tender memories and a hunger for a male role model. Holmes met another fatherless son on his recent trip to Japan. Unlike Roger's dad, though, Tamiki Umezaki's father simply made a choice not to come home one day. Both carry the scars of their loss, while Holmes fills a void in each of their lives, however fleeting. At his advanced age, Holmes is still sharp, but time has dulled the edges of his memory. Occasionally disoriented, he sometimes is unsure whether he is remembering something from the past or contemporary times. Having lived so full a life, the myriad recollections get jumbled and he struggles to put them right. In fact, his journey to Kobe revolved around a chance to procure a supply of royal jelly, a substance said to halt the aging process. Holmes fervently wishes to stop the advancing brain muddle. Beautiful, poignant and very sad, A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND retains enough of Hol

He sensed the beginnings of closure for himself and the dead

Now ninety-three, Sherlock Holmes seems to be winding down from an illustrious and famous life. He's' finally glad to be back to the pastoral security if his stone-built farmhouse deep in the Sussex Countryside with the "rituals of his orderly country life." Sherlock has just been on an enlightening, but exhausting tour of the occupied shores of postwar Japan, visiting a Mr. Umezaki, an enigmatic Anglophile, who has been helping him with the distinctive search for the "longevity-promoting" prickly ash. Perhaps the search has been in vain, because lately, extreme old-age has catching up with poor Sherlock; memory is beginning to play tricks on him, and glimpses of a life, well-led, play before him, with "brief remembrances becoming vague impressions and invariably forgotten again." It is now 1947, and having survived two great wars, Sherlock is often at a loss to remember so much of his long and memorable life. Forced to walk with two canes, he often misplaces things - "my cigars, my canes, sometimes even my own shoes." He even finds things in his own pockets that mystify him, but he retains his sense of humour, concluding that its "all rather amusing and horrifying in the same instant." Comfortably ensconced in Sussex, Holmes finds himself drawn to the 14-year-old Roger, the artistic, shy, and awkward son of his housekeeper Mrs. Munro. Roger, is full of admiration for the aging detective, and when he's not ensconced in Holmes' attic study in the dark of night furtively reading The Glass Armonist, the sleuth's half-completed manuscript, he's attending to Holmes' apiary, thoroughly fascinated by his collection of honey bees. With Roger, Holmes attempts to bridge the lifetime between them, and his well-lived voice somehow makes Roger feel much older and worldlier than his years. But he fails to adequately educate the young boy on the indescribable danger of bees, and a fatal accident results. This is the last thing that Holmes needs at his age, and the tragedy has a profound, heart-felt effect on him. The irascible detective is forced to rethink his life of "hard evidence and uncontestable facts," where the emphasis was always on detailed observations on external matters, with very little contemplation pertaining to himself - his soul. Buried in the Glass Armonist, and uncovered by Roger, lies an old romantic infatuation. Roger reads this story, and Holmes is finally able to finish writing it before our eyes. For years, Holmes was renowned as one who could discover answers when events appear desperate, but now he struggles to remember an enigmatic and troubled young woman whom he had met decades ago. She compels herself into his thoughts during the nighttime and comes to him as a vivid, fully formed specter. "When you look upon me," Holmes tells his grief-stricken housekeeper, "I believe you find a man incapable of feeling." Maybe this is a willful reluctance to express what he really feels in his heart. What is certain is that Holmes is a

Moving, complex, mesmerizing work

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

Sherlock Holmes As An Old Man

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.