The characters in What the Dead Know are meant to be personable, identifiable, and above all just simply human. But is this really achieved? The most inhuman character out of all of them is Sunny.
How can she, Laura Lippman, expect anyone to identify with Sunny when she has created such a wretched, lying, and deceitful fictional person? In the book, Sunny uses several cards that are never worth playing, especially if for her own means. One card is of course the sexual abuse. Yes, she states many things, but how many things as readers are we made to believe what she says is true and false? She has already lied so many times by this time in the book and continues to the very end of the novel.
To counter an argument about her falsehood, Lippman has several gratuitous sex scenes within the first thirty pages. These would lead some to believe that the idea of sexual abuse is prevalent and that Lippman has her readers constantly thinking about wrongful sex throughout the novel. But, my question is why after her identity is brought to our attention through Miriam does no one address the issue? She could be potentially held liable for her actions, which I am confused about since lawyers were present in the book. Laura Lippman did not address the actions a lawyer would actually take and if such a lawyer existed he/she would already have lost her license, especially if she belonged to a large or medium firm where down payments were mandatory...and staying at the lawyers house is grounds for conflict of interest.
I believe the inhumanity of the lawyer ought to be addressed as well. If she was a lawyer, then her actions do not flow with actuality and reality. Lawyers operate, after a certain amount of schooling and practice, by the book and in this day and age straying a little could mean the end of her firm. Her inconsistent portrayal as a lawyer leads me to believe Laura Lippman did not do enough research on lawyers, even torts and criminal law, therefore made the female lawyer unrealistsic and inhuman.
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Great Title!
ReplyDeleteThis book could have been so much better if other angles were explored. I did not think about the aspect of the lawyer, though. Interesting!
Everything is played a little fast and loose in the police procedurals and lawyer interactions. I never got a sense that much of that was believable. I thought the most believable parts of the book were those from the perspectives of Miriam and Dave, almost like their stories were a separate book about families and torn relationships. I now wonder if we didn't read two books, and that each one would have been richer without the other one.
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