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Brat Farrar
In this tale of mystery and suspense, a stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerism's, appearance, and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that jeopardize the imposter's plan and his life.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
About the author
Josephine Tey
103 books783 followersJosephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh. Josephine was her mother's first name and Tey the surname of an English Grandmother. As Josephine Tey, she wrote six mystery novels featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant.
The first of these, The Man in the Queue (1929) was published under the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot , whose name also appears on the title page of another of her 1929 novels, Kif; An Unvarnished History. She also used the Daviot by-line for a biography of the 17th century cavalry leader John Graham, which was entitled Claverhouse (1937).
Mackintosh also wrote plays (both one act and full length), some of which were produced during her lifetime, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot. The district of Daviot, near her home of Inverness in Scotland, was a location her family had vacationed. The name Gordon does not appear in either her family or her history.
Elizabeth Mackintosh came of age during World War I, attending Anstey Physical Training College in Birmingham, England during the years 1915 - 1918. Upon graduation, she became a physical training instructor for eight years. In 1926, her mother died and she returned home to Inverness to care for her invalid father. Busy with household duties, she turned to writing as a diversion, and was successful in creating a second career.
Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of her novels, A Shilling for Candles (1936) as Young and Innocent in 1937 and two other of her novels have been made into films, The Franchise Affair (1948), filmed in 1950, and 'Brat Farrar' (1949), filmed as Paranoiac in 1963. In addition, a number of her works have been dramatised for radio.
Her novel The Daughter of Time (1951) was voted the greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.
Miss Mackintosh never married, and died at the age of 55, in London. A shy woman, she is reported to have been somewhat of a mystery even to her intimate friends. While her death seems to have been a surprise, there is some indication she may have known she was fatally ill for some time prior to her passing.
The first of these, The Man in the Queue (1929) was published under the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot , whose name also appears on the title page of another of her 1929 novels, Kif; An Unvarnished History. She also used the Daviot by-line for a biography of the 17th century cavalry leader John Graham, which was entitled Claverhouse (1937).
Mackintosh also wrote plays (both one act and full length), some of which were produced during her lifetime, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot. The district of Daviot, near her home of Inverness in Scotland, was a location her family had vacationed. The name Gordon does not appear in either her family or her history.
Elizabeth Mackintosh came of age during World War I, attending Anstey Physical Training College in Birmingham, England during the years 1915 - 1918. Upon graduation, she became a physical training instructor for eight years. In 1926, her mother died and she returned home to Inverness to care for her invalid father. Busy with household duties, she turned to writing as a diversion, and was successful in creating a second career.
Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of her novels, A Shilling for Candles (1936) as Young and Innocent in 1937 and two other of her novels have been made into films, The Franchise Affair (1948), filmed in 1950, and 'Brat Farrar' (1949), filmed as Paranoiac in 1963. In addition, a number of her works have been dramatised for radio.
Her novel The Daughter of Time (1951) was voted the greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.
Miss Mackintosh never married, and died at the age of 55, in London. A shy woman, she is reported to have been somewhat of a mystery even to her intimate friends. While her death seems to have been a surprise, there is some indication she may have known she was fatally ill for some time prior to her passing.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,154 reviews
August 22, 2019
This 1949 suspense novel is a gripping story of deception and hidden identity, set in post-WWII England among the upper classes. Simon Ashby is about to turn 21 and finally inherit his dead parents' estate, easing the financial stresses on his family and younger sisters. But suddenly another young man appears, claiming to be Simon's older twin brother Patrick, who is thought to have committed suicide at age 14.
However: "Patrick" is Brat Farrar, an orphan who's been coached by an unscrupulous neighbor to claim Patrick's place and inheritance. (This is disclosed in, like, the 2nd chapter, so I'm calling it Not a Spoiler). But all isn't as it seems, and the plot thickens from there...
The mystery is more or less disclosed fairly early on (or is it?) but the suspense builds until the end. Even when the Ashby family is engaged in horse shows or other apparently innocuous pursuits, there's an ominous atmosphere, a feeling that disaster could strike at any time. It was a highly entertaining old-fashioned mystery/suspense novel, one of the inspirations for Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree (which I also recommend!).
If this kind of thing bothers you, there's some unexamined classism in the story, but it's pretty minor and typical of the time this was written. The mystery itself isn't up to, say, Agatha Christie levels, but Josephine Tey was a fine author who spins a good tale.
This and several other Tey novels are available online at Project Gutenberg Australia, if you're interested in checking her out.
However: "Patrick" is Brat Farrar, an orphan who's been coached by an unscrupulous neighbor to claim Patrick's place and inheritance. (This is disclosed in, like, the 2nd chapter, so I'm calling it Not a Spoiler). But all isn't as it seems, and the plot thickens from there...
The mystery is more or less disclosed fairly early on (or is it?) but the suspense builds until the end. Even when the Ashby family is engaged in horse shows or other apparently innocuous pursuits, there's an ominous atmosphere, a feeling that disaster could strike at any time. It was a highly entertaining old-fashioned mystery/suspense novel, one of the inspirations for Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree (which I also recommend!).
If this kind of thing bothers you, there's some unexamined classism in the story, but it's pretty minor and typical of the time this was written. The mystery itself isn't up to, say, Agatha Christie levels, but Josephine Tey was a fine author who spins a good tale.
This and several other Tey novels are available online at Project Gutenberg Australia, if you're interested in checking her out.
August 7, 2024
“Someone had said that if you thought about the unthinkable long enough it became quite reasonable.”
Brat Farrar is an excellent mystery by Josephine Tey, full of such conundrums. Although this novel was first published in 1949, in the era of so-called golden age crime novels, Josephine Tey pushed the boundaries. She anticipated the works of later writers, such as Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. She made the reader ask uncomfortable questions.
So what is the mystery in Brat Farrar, which could have led to that provocative first statement? It sounds straightforward enough when described: it is a case of mistaken identity.
Josephine Tey sometimes based her mysteries on real events or actual cases. For instance, “The Franchise Affair” from 1948, was loosely based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning, a maidservant who claimed she had been kidnapped and held prisoner for a month. Then three years later in 1951, in the much lauded “The Daughter of Time”, her protagonist attempted to solve the mystery of whether King Richard III of England had murdered his two nephews: the Princes in the Tower.
Brat Farrar, written between these two, is also such a book. It was published a little later in the USA under the title “Come and Kill Me” and is a riveting mystery tale. It is set around the time it was written, yet it is loosely based on a real event, known as “The Tichborne Claimant”, from much earlier. The Tichborne Case was a notorious legal dispute, which had gripped Victorian England in the 1860s and 1870s.
“The Tichborne Claimant” centred around Roger Tichborne, the heir to the family’s title and fortunes. He was said to have died in 1854, at the age of 25, in a shipwreck. His mother however, clung to the belief that he might have survived. After hearing rumours that he had made his way to Australia, she advertised widely in Australian newspapers, offering a reward for information about her son.
In 1866, one “Thomas Castro”, a butcher from Wagga Wagga came forward claiming to be Roger Tichborne, heir to the baronetcy. He was instantly accepted by Lady Tichborne as her son, although other family members did not believe it, and tried to expose him as an impostor. The story is complex and fascinating. After a lengthy trial over 3 years, the claimant known as Thomas Castro failed to convince the courts, and was sent to prison for perjury, for 14 years. His counsel too was condemned for his behaviour. However, some still believed that the claimant was who he said he was.
Brat Farrar is thus a parallel case. It is about a young man, the Brat Farrar of the title, who is claiming to be the heir to a large estate. However, there is one major difference. From the very beginning, we know that he is a fraud.
This claimant is a young man, who has recently returned to England from America. We even know the details: he left from Westover in a ship called the Ira Jones. Brat Farrar had been brought up in an orphanage, and worked in ranches and stables in the United States, until he became an expert horseman. However he had been injured in a fall, and was left with a limp.
Brat Farrar has no knowledge of the Ashbys, a family of English landed gentry, although he is about to get to know them very well. For centuries they have held their family estate, “Latchetts”, which is in the fictional village of Clare, near the south coast of England. The Ashby family is headed by Beatrice Ashby or “Aunt Bee”. She cares for the four children of her late brother. They are Simon, who is 20, Eleanor, who is a year or so younger and the twins Jane and Ruth, who are just 9.
We meet the Ashbys in the first chapter, as they all gathered around for breakfast, and get an impression of their personalities. “Aunt Bee” immediately comes across as a straightforward, well meaning and competent woman. She has kept the estate running by creating a profitable business from the family stables, so that the family now breeds, sells and trains horses, and give riding lessons.
The action then moves to London, where to Brat’s astonishment a complete stranger greets him in the street as “Simon”. The stranger invites him for a drink, in which he says he will explain. He is Alec Loding, a second-rate actor, who knows the Ashby family intimately. Brat Farrar happens to be the spitting image of Simon, the heir to the estate, and this has made Alec’s mind jump to a way in which they could both become very rich indeed.
Alec Loding tells Brat that Simon had not always been the heir to the Latchetts estate. Like his younger sisters, he had been one of a pair of identical twins. However Patrick, the older twin by a few minutes, had died in mysterious circumstances about 8 years earlier, leaving Simon to inherit. Patrick’s body had never been found, but it was assumed that he had drowned, jumping to his death off a cliff, leaving a pile of clothes behind. Because Brat’s likeness to Simon is so remarkable, Alec is sure he can teach Brat to impersonate the missing twin, Patrick, and thereby as the elder brother, claim the trust and the estate.
“Riches, my boy, don’t consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don’t want to do. Riches is being able to thumb your nose.”
Alec has acting skills, and is an inquisitive sort of person, who knows a great deal about the Ashbys’ lives. He is familiar with the layout of Latchetts itself, and the village of Clare, and is convinced he can coach Brat on all the background details. However, Brat is an honest young man and does not like the sound of this very much at all. What eventually convinces him to try, is when he hears about the horses. His life at the moment is dreary, and without prospects. He badly misses the life he had working with the horses in the States. He agrees.
Although this seems to be a lot of the action, it is all really premise and explained in the first couple of chapters. We have begun to like this young man, and although what he is proposing to do is fraudulent - both criminally and morally reprehensible - we cannot help rooting for him. From now onwards, all through Alec’s careful and thorough coaching, we sense Brat’s reluctance, and disbelief that this could work. But the horses are a strong pull for him, and prove irresistible. After two weeks of careful tutoring, the challenge is put to the test.
Brat appears at the office of the Ashby family solicitor, Mr. Sandal, saying that he had adopted the name “Brat Farrar” after running away. As Alec Loding has advised, he never invents more than he has to, and gives his own story as the account of Patrick’s missing years. Mr. Sandal informs Aunt Bee, who meets Brat and - despite herself - is convinced. We watch the Ashby family as they gradually meet and get to know the young man, and are persuaded that Brat is indeed Patrick, and has a genuine right to be known as the heir to the estate. Except …
The story is engrossing. We become immersed in the various characters and settings and Josephine Tey persuades us somehow, through Brat’s engaging personality, that nothing should come between him and this family. The author often stresses Brat’s similarity to Patrick. Unlike Simon, who is rather arrogant and domineering, Brat is a quiet, kind, person, who begins to care for the other Ashbys, particularly Aunt Bee, Eleanor, and Jane. He feels part of a family at last, and one where he genuinely likes the people. Brat himself begins to feel he knows Patrick very well, and seems to try to uphold what he thinks Patrick would have wanted. In a way perhaps, he tries to be Patrick. He has, despite everything, integrity.
There is of course competition between him and Simon, Patrick’s twin brother. Simon of course had assumed the role of heir, when Patrick had been legally declared dead as a suicide. Simon is cruel and self-absorbed, although his family accept him with all his faults. We too see his unpleasant side, But Brat does not welcome such competition; he tries to avoid it. His relationship with Eleanor too is difficult, as there seems to be an attraction.
Of course a romantic involvement with a character who believes herself to be his sister is not a possibility. Also, there is an undefined, asexual or bisexual quality about Brat Farrar. He comes across as a character who nowadays would be freely written as gay, but this would have been against the social conventions of the time. Alec Loding is clearly signalled as homosexual, and the ease and speed with which Brat went with him on their first meeting would be difficult to explain any other way. There are other indications in the text too, such as He was basically just not interested in any relationship other than being a part of a family.
As the story proceeds, we have far more character delineation than in most mystery stories. If your favourite type of mysteries are whodunnits where there is a complex set of clues to fit together logically to find the murderer, this novel may not be for you. However, there is a mystery to solve here, and Brat soon determines to solve it at any cost. This results in an unusually gripping tale, where we do get to know the truth a long time before the end:
“this is the answer to something that has puzzled me for eight years … The fact of Patrick’s suicide. I could never reconcile it with the Patrick I knew. Patrick was a sensitive child, but he had a tremendous fund of common sense; a balance … he had also moreover a great sense of obligation.”
There is a genuinely terrifying, if melodramatic, climax. And then right at the end, there is a small twist, which explains much of what had previously seemed odd.
In a way, Brat Farrar is about the lengths people will go to to avoid the truth. Only when someone from outside is in the unique position of being accepted into the small, rather stifling and claustrophobic family circle, are they then in the position of seeing the truth, .
Josephine Tey was an intensely private person, shunning all publicity throughout her life. Even the names she wrote under were pseudonyms. As well as “Josephine Tey”, she wrote wrote plays under the name “Gordon Daviot”; in reality she was Scottish, and her given name was Elizabeth MacKintosh.
Even when the author knew that she was terminally ill, she still resolutely avoided people. Her friends were unaware of it, including her good friend Sir John Gielgud, who was shocked to read news of her death in “The Times” in a break during a matinee performance. Even then, her death notice gave her name as the pseudonym “Gordon Daviot”, with no mention of either her other pseudonym, “Josephine Tey”, or her real name. However, she has left us a great legacy in her work. In addition, like the author Beatrix Potter, she left all the proceeds from her estate, including the royalties from her books, to the “National Trust” .
“The worst of pushing horrible things down into one's subconscious is that when they pop up again they are as fresh as if they had been in a refrigerator. You haven't allowed time to get at them to — to mould them over a little.”— Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar is an excellent mystery by Josephine Tey, full of such conundrums. Although this novel was first published in 1949, in the era of so-called golden age crime novels, Josephine Tey pushed the boundaries. She anticipated the works of later writers, such as Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. She made the reader ask uncomfortable questions.
So what is the mystery in Brat Farrar, which could have led to that provocative first statement? It sounds straightforward enough when described: it is a case of mistaken identity.
Josephine Tey sometimes based her mysteries on real events or actual cases. For instance, “The Franchise Affair” from 1948, was loosely based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning, a maidservant who claimed she had been kidnapped and held prisoner for a month. Then three years later in 1951, in the much lauded “The Daughter of Time”, her protagonist attempted to solve the mystery of whether King Richard III of England had murdered his two nephews: the Princes in the Tower.
Brat Farrar, written between these two, is also such a book. It was published a little later in the USA under the title “Come and Kill Me” and is a riveting mystery tale. It is set around the time it was written, yet it is loosely based on a real event, known as “The Tichborne Claimant”, from much earlier. The Tichborne Case was a notorious legal dispute, which had gripped Victorian England in the 1860s and 1870s.
“The Tichborne Claimant” centred around Roger Tichborne, the heir to the family’s title and fortunes. He was said to have died in 1854, at the age of 25, in a shipwreck. His mother however, clung to the belief that he might have survived. After hearing rumours that he had made his way to Australia, she advertised widely in Australian newspapers, offering a reward for information about her son.
In 1866, one “Thomas Castro”, a butcher from Wagga Wagga came forward claiming to be Roger Tichborne, heir to the baronetcy. He was instantly accepted by Lady Tichborne as her son, although other family members did not believe it, and tried to expose him as an impostor. The story is complex and fascinating. After a lengthy trial over 3 years, the claimant known as Thomas Castro failed to convince the courts, and was sent to prison for perjury, for 14 years. His counsel too was condemned for his behaviour. However, some still believed that the claimant was who he said he was.
Brat Farrar is thus a parallel case. It is about a young man, the Brat Farrar of the title, who is claiming to be the heir to a large estate. However, there is one major difference. From the very beginning, we know that he is a fraud.
This claimant is a young man, who has recently returned to England from America. We even know the details: he left from Westover in a ship called the Ira Jones. Brat Farrar had been brought up in an orphanage, and worked in ranches and stables in the United States, until he became an expert horseman. However he had been injured in a fall, and was left with a limp.
Brat Farrar has no knowledge of the Ashbys, a family of English landed gentry, although he is about to get to know them very well. For centuries they have held their family estate, “Latchetts”, which is in the fictional village of Clare, near the south coast of England. The Ashby family is headed by Beatrice Ashby or “Aunt Bee”. She cares for the four children of her late brother. They are Simon, who is 20, Eleanor, who is a year or so younger and the twins Jane and Ruth, who are just 9.
We meet the Ashbys in the first chapter, as they all gathered around for breakfast, and get an impression of their personalities. “Aunt Bee” immediately comes across as a straightforward, well meaning and competent woman. She has kept the estate running by creating a profitable business from the family stables, so that the family now breeds, sells and trains horses, and give riding lessons.
The action then moves to London, where to Brat’s astonishment a complete stranger greets him in the street as “Simon”. The stranger invites him for a drink, in which he says he will explain. He is Alec Loding, a second-rate actor, who knows the Ashby family intimately. Brat Farrar happens to be the spitting image of Simon, the heir to the estate, and this has made Alec’s mind jump to a way in which they could both become very rich indeed.
Alec Loding tells Brat that Simon had not always been the heir to the Latchetts estate. Like his younger sisters, he had been one of a pair of identical twins. However Patrick, the older twin by a few minutes, had died in mysterious circumstances about 8 years earlier, leaving Simon to inherit. Patrick’s body had never been found, but it was assumed that he had drowned, jumping to his death off a cliff, leaving a pile of clothes behind. Because Brat’s likeness to Simon is so remarkable, Alec is sure he can teach Brat to impersonate the missing twin, Patrick, and thereby as the elder brother, claim the trust and the estate.
“Riches, my boy, don’t consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don’t want to do. Riches is being able to thumb your nose.”
Alec has acting skills, and is an inquisitive sort of person, who knows a great deal about the Ashbys’ lives. He is familiar with the layout of Latchetts itself, and the village of Clare, and is convinced he can coach Brat on all the background details. However, Brat is an honest young man and does not like the sound of this very much at all. What eventually convinces him to try, is when he hears about the horses. His life at the moment is dreary, and without prospects. He badly misses the life he had working with the horses in the States. He agrees.
Although this seems to be a lot of the action, it is all really premise and explained in the first couple of chapters. We have begun to like this young man, and although what he is proposing to do is fraudulent - both criminally and morally reprehensible - we cannot help rooting for him. From now onwards, all through Alec’s careful and thorough coaching, we sense Brat’s reluctance, and disbelief that this could work. But the horses are a strong pull for him, and prove irresistible. After two weeks of careful tutoring, the challenge is put to the test.
Brat appears at the office of the Ashby family solicitor, Mr. Sandal, saying that he had adopted the name “Brat Farrar” after running away. As Alec Loding has advised, he never invents more than he has to, and gives his own story as the account of Patrick’s missing years. Mr. Sandal informs Aunt Bee, who meets Brat and - despite herself - is convinced. We watch the Ashby family as they gradually meet and get to know the young man, and are persuaded that Brat is indeed Patrick, and has a genuine right to be known as the heir to the estate. Except …
The story is engrossing. We become immersed in the various characters and settings and Josephine Tey persuades us somehow, through Brat’s engaging personality, that nothing should come between him and this family. The author often stresses Brat’s similarity to Patrick. Unlike Simon, who is rather arrogant and domineering, Brat is a quiet, kind, person, who begins to care for the other Ashbys, particularly Aunt Bee, Eleanor, and Jane. He feels part of a family at last, and one where he genuinely likes the people. Brat himself begins to feel he knows Patrick very well, and seems to try to uphold what he thinks Patrick would have wanted. In a way perhaps, he tries to be Patrick. He has, despite everything, integrity.
There is of course competition between him and Simon, Patrick’s twin brother. Simon of course had assumed the role of heir, when Patrick had been legally declared dead as a suicide. Simon is cruel and self-absorbed, although his family accept him with all his faults. We too see his unpleasant side, But Brat does not welcome such competition; he tries to avoid it. His relationship with Eleanor too is difficult, as there seems to be an attraction.
Of course a romantic involvement with a character who believes herself to be his sister is not a possibility. Also, there is an undefined, asexual or bisexual quality about Brat Farrar. He comes across as a character who nowadays would be freely written as gay, but this would have been against the social conventions of the time. Alec Loding is clearly signalled as homosexual, and the ease and speed with which Brat went with him on their first meeting would be difficult to explain any other way. There are other indications in the text too, such as He was basically just not interested in any relationship other than being a part of a family.
As the story proceeds, we have far more character delineation than in most mystery stories. If your favourite type of mysteries are whodunnits where there is a complex set of clues to fit together logically to find the murderer, this novel may not be for you. However, there is a mystery to solve here, and Brat soon determines to solve it at any cost. This results in an unusually gripping tale, where we do get to know the truth a long time before the end:
“this is the answer to something that has puzzled me for eight years … The fact of Patrick’s suicide. I could never reconcile it with the Patrick I knew. Patrick was a sensitive child, but he had a tremendous fund of common sense; a balance … he had also moreover a great sense of obligation.”
There is a genuinely terrifying, if melodramatic, climax. And then right at the end, there is a small twist, which explains much of what had previously seemed odd.
In a way, Brat Farrar is about the lengths people will go to to avoid the truth. Only when someone from outside is in the unique position of being accepted into the small, rather stifling and claustrophobic family circle, are they then in the position of seeing the truth, .
Josephine Tey was an intensely private person, shunning all publicity throughout her life. Even the names she wrote under were pseudonyms. As well as “Josephine Tey”, she wrote wrote plays under the name “Gordon Daviot”; in reality she was Scottish, and her given name was Elizabeth MacKintosh.
Even when the author knew that she was terminally ill, she still resolutely avoided people. Her friends were unaware of it, including her good friend Sir John Gielgud, who was shocked to read news of her death in “The Times” in a break during a matinee performance. Even then, her death notice gave her name as the pseudonym “Gordon Daviot”, with no mention of either her other pseudonym, “Josephine Tey”, or her real name. However, she has left us a great legacy in her work. In addition, like the author Beatrix Potter, she left all the proceeds from her estate, including the royalties from her books, to the “National Trust” .
“The worst of pushing horrible things down into one's subconscious is that when they pop up again they are as fresh as if they had been in a refrigerator. You haven't allowed time to get at them to — to mould them over a little.”— Josephine Tey
September 18, 2020
Anaxagoras, ancient Greek philosopher, differentiated mind and matter. Mind, unlike matter, "is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself"... matter is composite, mind is simple. Ah, the purity and independence of the lonely mind!
Poor Brat Farrar, a lonely soul, without affect, disconnected from the material world, disconnected from himself, a man and a mind alone. But at least he loved his horse! RIP, horse.
Ω
The Neoplatonic, medieval Christian theologian known as "Pseudo-Dionysus" posited that what comes from God - and all things come from God - is therefore good. And so evil is merely an absence of this good. An evil person is good in all ways - except when their will operates in this absence. This so-called evil person suffers from... a deficiency.
Lucky Brat Farrar, given quite an opportunity. His life an absence, his being lacking meaning, deficient in impetus... but he shall be given a purpose, a new being and a new identity. Doesn't hurt that that new identity is filthy rich!
Ω
George Berkeley, Empiricist, provoked his fellow philosophers with a simple formula: "to be is to be perceived" - if something were not perceived, it would not exist. Further, he insisted: we only have differing perceptions of things when we see them from different perspectives. Indeed, this is a no-brainer; but still - such an immaterialist stance for an empiricist!
Poor Brat Farrar, never perceived, never really existing. Poor little Patrick Ashby, his own being ended too early. Can one truly become the other? Can Brat achieve existence by taking on the identity of Patrick? And who then is being perceived - the long-dead Patrick, or the newly alive Brat? Who is the true Brat, who was the true Patrick - are the answers only a matter of perspective?
Ω
Henri Bergson, a Metaphysical philosopher, elucidated an absolute path to knowledge: we must "enter" that object to grasp that object as it really is. We must use the way of intuition to have true sympathy; we must think in duration to have a true grasp of reality. We must identify with the object of our scrutiny.
Lucky Brat Farrar, able to grasp the reality of tragic young Patrick Ashby, taken before his time. Brat shall enter this persona and understand him, he will identify so completely with Patrick that he will then recognize the incompleteness within himself. Rare is the lonely man who can start his life anew; rarer still, the man who will use his new life to complete the life of another, to achieve justice, to find grace.
Ω
John Dewey, Pragmatist, decried the "spectator theory of knowledge" in which each idea corresponds to a fixed reality. Not so! cried Dewey. Truth is not static nor eternal; thinking is not a quest for truth. "Thinking" is simply the act of trying to achieve an adjustment between self and environment.
Poor Brat Farrar, torn in two and desperately concealing those tears. To give up this new life and be a good man - and so go back to that loneliness, that emptiness? Or to stay in his disguise, to forever move between truth and lie, to divide his true self from his environment? "Truth" for Brat Farrar is a slippery thing, always changing; but he recognizes it when it appears, and comes to like the feel of it. He shall move from spectator in life to participant: a painful journey. It is hard to be a rogue when one is also a thinker; it is harder still to live falsely when one yearns for truth.
Ω
Edmund Husserl, creator of Phenomenology, believed that to understand existence, we must stand back from it, we must pause and detach and reflect. In that space of detachment, we can understand our own body, our own life, our own subjectivity - and with that understanding can come an empathy with the subjective perspectives of others. Will these shared subjective states, this intersubjectivity, then constitute... objectivity?
Lucky Brat Farrar: as he begins to understand his new world, and to understand the living family of that sweet dead boy... so they begin to see him in turn. He moves from detachment to reflection to empathy. They move from wonder to understanding. Perceptions shift, deepen; subjective perspectives meet and a certain objectivity is found. Shall this latest iteration of Brat Farrar be his final self?
Ω
Poor Brat Farrar, a lonely soul, without affect, disconnected from the material world, disconnected from himself, a man and a mind alone. But at least he loved his horse! RIP, horse.
Ω
The Neoplatonic, medieval Christian theologian known as "Pseudo-Dionysus" posited that what comes from God - and all things come from God - is therefore good. And so evil is merely an absence of this good. An evil person is good in all ways - except when their will operates in this absence. This so-called evil person suffers from... a deficiency.
Lucky Brat Farrar, given quite an opportunity. His life an absence, his being lacking meaning, deficient in impetus... but he shall be given a purpose, a new being and a new identity. Doesn't hurt that that new identity is filthy rich!
Ω
George Berkeley, Empiricist, provoked his fellow philosophers with a simple formula: "to be is to be perceived" - if something were not perceived, it would not exist. Further, he insisted: we only have differing perceptions of things when we see them from different perspectives. Indeed, this is a no-brainer; but still - such an immaterialist stance for an empiricist!
Poor Brat Farrar, never perceived, never really existing. Poor little Patrick Ashby, his own being ended too early. Can one truly become the other? Can Brat achieve existence by taking on the identity of Patrick? And who then is being perceived - the long-dead Patrick, or the newly alive Brat? Who is the true Brat, who was the true Patrick - are the answers only a matter of perspective?
Ω
Henri Bergson, a Metaphysical philosopher, elucidated an absolute path to knowledge: we must "enter" that object to grasp that object as it really is. We must use the way of intuition to have true sympathy; we must think in duration to have a true grasp of reality. We must identify with the object of our scrutiny.
Lucky Brat Farrar, able to grasp the reality of tragic young Patrick Ashby, taken before his time. Brat shall enter this persona and understand him, he will identify so completely with Patrick that he will then recognize the incompleteness within himself. Rare is the lonely man who can start his life anew; rarer still, the man who will use his new life to complete the life of another, to achieve justice, to find grace.
Ω
John Dewey, Pragmatist, decried the "spectator theory of knowledge" in which each idea corresponds to a fixed reality. Not so! cried Dewey. Truth is not static nor eternal; thinking is not a quest for truth. "Thinking" is simply the act of trying to achieve an adjustment between self and environment.
Poor Brat Farrar, torn in two and desperately concealing those tears. To give up this new life and be a good man - and so go back to that loneliness, that emptiness? Or to stay in his disguise, to forever move between truth and lie, to divide his true self from his environment? "Truth" for Brat Farrar is a slippery thing, always changing; but he recognizes it when it appears, and comes to like the feel of it. He shall move from spectator in life to participant: a painful journey. It is hard to be a rogue when one is also a thinker; it is harder still to live falsely when one yearns for truth.
Ω
Edmund Husserl, creator of Phenomenology, believed that to understand existence, we must stand back from it, we must pause and detach and reflect. In that space of detachment, we can understand our own body, our own life, our own subjectivity - and with that understanding can come an empathy with the subjective perspectives of others. Will these shared subjective states, this intersubjectivity, then constitute... objectivity?
Lucky Brat Farrar: as he begins to understand his new world, and to understand the living family of that sweet dead boy... so they begin to see him in turn. He moves from detachment to reflection to empathy. They move from wonder to understanding. Perceptions shift, deepen; subjective perspectives meet and a certain objectivity is found. Shall this latest iteration of Brat Farrar be his final self?
Ω
September 13, 2017
I've not been a fan of every Tey I have ever read & sometimes a reread can disappoint - but not in this case! Brat Farrar's temptation into a life of assumed identity (or is it???) & intrigue thrills every step of the way. Every detail of this book works perfectly & meshes together. We take every careful step with Brat & the scene where is a quite wonderful example of taut suspense.
If you don't read any other works by Tey, please read this one - you won't regret it.
If you don't read any other works by Tey, please read this one - you won't regret it.
January 13, 2024
Elizabeth MacKintosh, was known by her pen name Josephine Tey. She was born in 1896 and died in 1952. This story was originally published in 1950. In 1990, the Crime Writer’s Association, considered her book “The Daughter of Time” as the greatest crime novel of all time.
And…
She is known to be part of the Golden Age of British Crime writing. She has also been considered to be a first-rate storyteller, and that is why readers have bonded so readily to her writing style and realistic characters.
In this story…
The reader is taken in by the author’s refreshing prose and keen eye for character.
And…
It centers around imposters and identity theft. With the character of Brat Farrar, as odd as he is, still with a conscience.
So…
The tension in the novel arises from his own discomfort with the fraud he is perpetuating. It seems that all he wants to do is belong. To a family.
But…
At what cost?
And…
The question becomes…could he actually be the long-lost brother?
Especially…
When it is a rich family that is missing their “dead” family member.
And…
When he is questioned more closely, he signals that he is after “retribution.”
For what?
And…
Why?
Has somebody in this family committed some crime that they need to be held accountable for?
And…
By saying he is there for “retribution,” is Brat now putting himself in danger?
Will…
Brat escape the trap he has created for himself and make it into a world where he really does belong and can be loved for himself?
The deception on all sides makes for a chilling, page turning twisty mystery.
And…
She is known to be part of the Golden Age of British Crime writing. She has also been considered to be a first-rate storyteller, and that is why readers have bonded so readily to her writing style and realistic characters.
In this story…
The reader is taken in by the author’s refreshing prose and keen eye for character.
And…
It centers around imposters and identity theft. With the character of Brat Farrar, as odd as he is, still with a conscience.
So…
The tension in the novel arises from his own discomfort with the fraud he is perpetuating. It seems that all he wants to do is belong. To a family.
But…
At what cost?
And…
The question becomes…could he actually be the long-lost brother?
Especially…
When it is a rich family that is missing their “dead” family member.
And…
When he is questioned more closely, he signals that he is after “retribution.”
For what?
And…
Why?
Has somebody in this family committed some crime that they need to be held accountable for?
And…
By saying he is there for “retribution,” is Brat now putting himself in danger?
Will…
Brat escape the trap he has created for himself and make it into a world where he really does belong and can be loved for himself?
The deception on all sides makes for a chilling, page turning twisty mystery.
Read
January 10, 2023Rabbit-holes
In the early pages of Barley Patch, which I'm currently reading, Gerald Murnane talks about the images that have remained in his mind from books he read at the impressionable age of eleven or twelve. One of those images is of a two storey house which lies at the bottom of a great green hill crowned by a clump of beeches, and across which a beautiful woman is riding a fine horse. Another unrelated book memory of Murnane's concerns Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake, and centers around Murnane's child's imagination allowing him to enter the story to comfort Hereward's neglected wife in her loneliness.
I admit to being less interested in Murnane's account of Hereward the Wake (it sounded more like historical fiction, which I generally avoid) than in his much more interesting account of the book featuring the woman rider on the fine horse, so I decided to pause my reading of Barley Patch and read Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar straight away.
In Tey's book I found reference to a strip of lilac cloth associated with a jockey's 'colours' which propelled me back into Murnane's essay Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs which is partly about his preoccupation with horse racing and the colours worn by his favourite jockeys.
But I found something else in Tey's book. I found a brief reference to the the favourite book-memory of the woman-rider character who featured so vividly in Murnane's own book-memory. Hers centered around the main character in Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake, and the adventures she imagined herself having by Hereward's side (oblivious to his neglected wife)!
So, for the relief of my connection-obsessed mind, I downloaded Kingsley's piece of historical fiction and took a look at it. It's a novel about the life of Hereward the Wake/the Watchful, a knight who lived in eleventh century England. But here's an interesting thing: it turns out that Hereward's mother was Lady Godiva. The only image I and many others may have of Lady Godiva is of a beautiful woman riding a fine horse across a landscape just like the character in the Tey book! Well, not quite 'just like'. In the mythology around Lady Godiva, she rode naked through the streets of Coventry to fulfill a bargain she made with her husband so that he might lower the cruel taxes on the people of the city. She stipulated that everyone in the town stay indoors and that their houses remain completely shuttered up. They all did as she requested—except for one man who peeped at her through a gap in his shutters, and that's where the expression 'Peeping Tom' is said to come from.
So where am I going with all this, I ask myself. Well, although these connections are not made by Murnane, it occurs to me that they are a little bit relevant to one of the themes in his 'fictions': the preoccupation of many of his main characters with peeping between a gap in shutters or in a doorway or a clump of trees at woman characters who may sometimes be undressed and who may sometimes need comforting in their distress. I find that incredibly interesting—though I don't expect anyone else to! I write reviews mainly for myself after all, so that I'll figure out something I didn't see before.
And now I'm smiling as I remember that when I set out to post a quick review of this little book this morning, I thought I'd simply write five or six snappy words about it and then get back to the other longer reviews I'd like to post before the end of the year. If I'd done that I'd never have figured out all these interesting-to-me connections!
And now, as reviewing time runs out, I need to decide which of the remaining two outstanding reviews will get the snappy treatment...
In the early pages of Barley Patch, which I'm currently reading, Gerald Murnane talks about the images that have remained in his mind from books he read at the impressionable age of eleven or twelve. One of those images is of a two storey house which lies at the bottom of a great green hill crowned by a clump of beeches, and across which a beautiful woman is riding a fine horse. Another unrelated book memory of Murnane's concerns Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake, and centers around Murnane's child's imagination allowing him to enter the story to comfort Hereward's neglected wife in her loneliness.
I admit to being less interested in Murnane's account of Hereward the Wake (it sounded more like historical fiction, which I generally avoid) than in his much more interesting account of the book featuring the woman rider on the fine horse, so I decided to pause my reading of Barley Patch and read Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar straight away.
In Tey's book I found reference to a strip of lilac cloth associated with a jockey's 'colours' which propelled me back into Murnane's essay Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs which is partly about his preoccupation with horse racing and the colours worn by his favourite jockeys.
But I found something else in Tey's book. I found a brief reference to the the favourite book-memory of the woman-rider character who featured so vividly in Murnane's own book-memory. Hers centered around the main character in Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake, and the adventures she imagined herself having by Hereward's side (oblivious to his neglected wife)!
So, for the relief of my connection-obsessed mind, I downloaded Kingsley's piece of historical fiction and took a look at it. It's a novel about the life of Hereward the Wake/the Watchful, a knight who lived in eleventh century England. But here's an interesting thing: it turns out that Hereward's mother was Lady Godiva. The only image I and many others may have of Lady Godiva is of a beautiful woman riding a fine horse across a landscape just like the character in the Tey book! Well, not quite 'just like'. In the mythology around Lady Godiva, she rode naked through the streets of Coventry to fulfill a bargain she made with her husband so that he might lower the cruel taxes on the people of the city. She stipulated that everyone in the town stay indoors and that their houses remain completely shuttered up. They all did as she requested—except for one man who peeped at her through a gap in his shutters, and that's where the expression 'Peeping Tom' is said to come from.
So where am I going with all this, I ask myself. Well, although these connections are not made by Murnane, it occurs to me that they are a little bit relevant to one of the themes in his 'fictions': the preoccupation of many of his main characters with peeping between a gap in shutters or in a doorway or a clump of trees at woman characters who may sometimes be undressed and who may sometimes need comforting in their distress. I find that incredibly interesting—though I don't expect anyone else to! I write reviews mainly for myself after all, so that I'll figure out something I didn't see before.
And now I'm smiling as I remember that when I set out to post a quick review of this little book this morning, I thought I'd simply write five or six snappy words about it and then get back to the other longer reviews I'd like to post before the end of the year. If I'd done that I'd never have figured out all these interesting-to-me connections!
And now, as reviewing time runs out, I need to decide which of the remaining two outstanding reviews will get the snappy treatment...
July 26, 2009
so this isnt a mystery novel in the traditional sense, but its got a very compelling pacing to it that makes the suspense parts both immediate and british-leisurely. like a brisk stroll on the grounds where we mustnt go too quickly or geoffrey will tire. my love of law and order (the one on television) has ruined me for mystery novels. or maybe just mystery novels written before 1950. because i always know my whodunits too soon. i have this affliction where i can retain very little of what i hear, but if i see it written, i can remember it quite well (for a time - dont ask me about books i read 10 years ago). it is why i always took really extensive notes in lecture classes, and why i forget things people tell me allll the time. why is this important? i dont know, except that i remember little facts that stick out in my mind - inconsistencies and whatnot because i am a pretty good close reader. but even the most obvious and bad movie with a central mystery, i generally dont figure it out until the reveal. and thats me. oh right, the book? the family is pretty interesting, its got horses for dana, its full of british charm and restraint, and i should get back to my paper. damn.
May 19, 2023
Is this the appearance of a prodigal twin or a greedy imposter? Should the family unquestioningly embrace this member, the long missing heir? He has all the right answers, knows all about his earlier life. His mannerisms and appearance also seem fine. This much loved member of the Ashby family, or perhaps fraud, loves horses - the clincher. It is so easy to snuggle into a comfortable life on this idyllic English horse farm. There is just one question that bothers this recently arrived addition; Does a murderer live within these walls?
I have no expertise in judging the worth of this genre. I sprinkle mysteries here and there between other “heavier” books, always enjoying the change of pace. Maybe there were predictable elements in Brat Farrar, maybe it wouldn’t check all the boxes if read by a mystery book connoisseur. But this 1949 novel by Josephine Tey, aka Elizabeth Macintosh, was perfect for me. I settled pleasantly into the tranquil countryside, felt the warmth of the family. Those frequent readers of mysteries may want to try this book. Its age does not date nor lessen the impact of a good story well told.
October 25, 2011
You know those reviews where somebody is reviewing a deeply loved old book, and criticizing everything on it, accusing it of all types of political incorrectness? Either skip this or hold on, because this is going to be one of those reviews. (and that is surprising *me*. I did not know I had it in me).
This was my second read. I read it maybe 10 years ago, and I recalled it as being charming and with an interesting plot which included a favorite trope - impersonation. I picked up and read the first pages a while ago and was hooked into a full reread, how can anybody resist a book which opens like this:
"Aunt Bee," said Jane, breathing heavily into her soup, "was Noah a
cleverer back-room boy than Ulysses, or was Ulysses a cleverer
back-room boy than Noah?"
"Don't eat out of the point of your spoon, Jane."
"I can't mobilise the strings out of the side."
"Ruth does."
Jane looked across at her twin, negotiating the vermicelli with smug
neatness.
"She has a stronger suck than I have."
"Aunt Bee has a face like a very expensive cat," Ruth said, eyeing her
aunt sideways.
Bee privately thought that this was a very good description, but wished
that Ruth would not be quaint.
"No, but which was the cleverest?" said Jane, who never departed from a
path once her feet were on it.
And that is precisely a perfect example of the things I loved: the eccentric family britishness of this setting, the oh so clever allusions, the wit, and the writing. But on reread, I found problems I did not remember, either because I am older (presumably wiser and definetely pickier) or because it was a reread, and since I remembered something of the plot I was at liberty to think more on circunstances. It seemed as cozy a read as I remembered, but poking under the surface of this book disturbed me.
This is a profoundly reactionary book. That is an adjective I do not often use, but it seems the most appropriate to the tone of this. A british upper class countryside murder mystery reactionary novel. This is a nostalgic ode to traditional conservative british country values, a book published in 1949, likely set at that same time but which can fit no period in history - it glides over the history, it uses WWII as details for some things in plot () but then totally avoids the occurrence of world war II as having changed society or having influenced the lives of the main characters. For example there seems to be no rationing in this 1949 Britain (nor seemed to exist in recent past, apart from a small mention of "Ireland in the days before it was more advisable to bring home the bacon." If that is what is meant by bringing home the bacon) and the past history of Brat Farrar is simply impossible to insert into history at any time pre 1949 . Nope, this book fits no period in history.
I am mentioning the lack of historical coherence, not as a fault on its own but more as one example of the fact that this book is all about mood with little concern for details. More seriously than historical background for a mystery novel, is the fact that the mechanics of the mystery are never explained! Our main character mulls the logistics of an event, how it could have possibly have been done, till he has an eureka moment. While the reader understands the revelation of what that eureka moment is about, it still does not explain the hows and whens of the sequence of events(). It fails at making clear the puzzle. And this appalls me: ).
The characters quite often baffled me. Maybe it is an irreconcilable social-cultural gap between me and that particular class of people living at that moment in time, but oh they do seem so shallow to me. They are emotionally restrained (the horrors of providing entertainment to strangers by reuniting in public with a long lost brother) to the point of seeming emotionally stunted - the motives for a 13 year old child (nephew, brother) running away and not sending any news for 8 years are not at all questioned (bullying? Abuse? Secrets? apart from obliquely question ONCE days after his "return"), they are not the sort of people who pry or emote, you know: There was no backslapping, congratulatory insistence on the situation as there would be in a transatlantic household. What his family wants to know of yet unmet returned "Patrick" is not his explanations of why he run away, if he is happy or not, they want to know "Is he nice to look at? And does he talk nicely or has he a frightful accent?”. And there you have their priorities.
There is an inherent classism and snobbery, sometimes combined with misogyny in this book which drives me crazy. It´s unspeakably important that the lovely old houses remain with their old families. Upper class things are "lovely". Social climbing is a horrible thing, particularly in women. "Progressive" schools are for dodgers"anyone who loathes hard work ". The casual misogyny, oh either women are horsey, upper class (preferrably. And no matter what the Ashbys think of themselves they are not, with their horror of gentility, middle class by any definition of it) and totally unconcerned with their looks, or are vulgar or worse "nymphomaniac moron", "slatternly girl". Brat thinks horsey 11 year old Jane is a proper young girl, the sort of sister he would pick; but her girlier twin Ruth does not quite deserve the same love, being interested in clothes and attention from adults. I do not like nor respect the set of values of these characters. (I kept thinking of what either Jane Austen or Terry Pratchett would have made of these people or Miss Tey herself.)
There is a disturbing element to the plot()
This was a hard book to reduce to a rating. It´s cozy, eccentric and interesting. It´s often witty. I can see why so many people love it, even while I loathed many aspects of it, and think it is at core shallow and snobby. So let´s throw it a three as a compromise.
This was my second read. I read it maybe 10 years ago, and I recalled it as being charming and with an interesting plot which included a favorite trope - impersonation. I picked up and read the first pages a while ago and was hooked into a full reread, how can anybody resist a book which opens like this:
"Aunt Bee," said Jane, breathing heavily into her soup, "was Noah a
cleverer back-room boy than Ulysses, or was Ulysses a cleverer
back-room boy than Noah?"
"Don't eat out of the point of your spoon, Jane."
"I can't mobilise the strings out of the side."
"Ruth does."
Jane looked across at her twin, negotiating the vermicelli with smug
neatness.
"She has a stronger suck than I have."
"Aunt Bee has a face like a very expensive cat," Ruth said, eyeing her
aunt sideways.
Bee privately thought that this was a very good description, but wished
that Ruth would not be quaint.
"No, but which was the cleverest?" said Jane, who never departed from a
path once her feet were on it.
And that is precisely a perfect example of the things I loved: the eccentric family britishness of this setting, the oh so clever allusions, the wit, and the writing. But on reread, I found problems I did not remember, either because I am older (presumably wiser and definetely pickier) or because it was a reread, and since I remembered something of the plot I was at liberty to think more on circunstances. It seemed as cozy a read as I remembered, but poking under the surface of this book disturbed me.
This is a profoundly reactionary book. That is an adjective I do not often use, but it seems the most appropriate to the tone of this. A british upper class countryside murder mystery reactionary novel. This is a nostalgic ode to traditional conservative british country values, a book published in 1949, likely set at that same time but which can fit no period in history - it glides over the history, it uses WWII as details for some things in plot () but then totally avoids the occurrence of world war II as having changed society or having influenced the lives of the main characters. For example there seems to be no rationing in this 1949 Britain (nor seemed to exist in recent past, apart from a small mention of "Ireland in the days before it was more advisable to bring home the bacon." If that is what is meant by bringing home the bacon) and the past history of Brat Farrar is simply impossible to insert into history at any time pre 1949 . Nope, this book fits no period in history.
I am mentioning the lack of historical coherence, not as a fault on its own but more as one example of the fact that this book is all about mood with little concern for details. More seriously than historical background for a mystery novel, is the fact that the mechanics of the mystery are never explained! Our main character mulls the logistics of an event, how it could have possibly have been done, till he has an eureka moment. While the reader understands the revelation of what that eureka moment is about, it still does not explain the hows and whens of the sequence of events(). It fails at making clear the puzzle. And this appalls me: ).
The characters quite often baffled me. Maybe it is an irreconcilable social-cultural gap between me and that particular class of people living at that moment in time, but oh they do seem so shallow to me. They are emotionally restrained (the horrors of providing entertainment to strangers by reuniting in public with a long lost brother) to the point of seeming emotionally stunted - the motives for a 13 year old child (nephew, brother) running away and not sending any news for 8 years are not at all questioned (bullying? Abuse? Secrets? apart from obliquely question ONCE days after his "return"), they are not the sort of people who pry or emote, you know: There was no backslapping, congratulatory insistence on the situation as there would be in a transatlantic household. What his family wants to know of yet unmet returned "Patrick" is not his explanations of why he run away, if he is happy or not, they want to know "Is he nice to look at? And does he talk nicely or has he a frightful accent?”. And there you have their priorities.
There is an inherent classism and snobbery, sometimes combined with misogyny in this book which drives me crazy. It´s unspeakably important that the lovely old houses remain with their old families. Upper class things are "lovely". Social climbing is a horrible thing, particularly in women. "Progressive" schools are for dodgers"anyone who loathes hard work ". The casual misogyny, oh either women are horsey, upper class (preferrably. And no matter what the Ashbys think of themselves they are not, with their horror of gentility, middle class by any definition of it) and totally unconcerned with their looks, or are vulgar or worse "nymphomaniac moron", "slatternly girl". Brat thinks horsey 11 year old Jane is a proper young girl, the sort of sister he would pick; but her girlier twin Ruth does not quite deserve the same love, being interested in clothes and attention from adults. I do not like nor respect the set of values of these characters. (I kept thinking of what either Jane Austen or Terry Pratchett would have made of these people or Miss Tey herself.)
There is a disturbing element to the plot()
This was a hard book to reduce to a rating. It´s cozy, eccentric and interesting. It´s often witty. I can see why so many people love it, even while I loathed many aspects of it, and think it is at core shallow and snobby. So let´s throw it a three as a compromise.
October 9, 2018
4,5 estrellas.
Josephine Tey aúna la sofisticación "British" con un toque de maldad y mala idea deliciosas.
Muestra esa ideal campiña inglesa, con personajes entrañables y otros muchos excéntricos, hace gala de un sutil sentido del humor, te rodea de todo ese aire de amabilidad, pero deja entrever pequeñas sombras, una tensión que va subiendo poco a poco hasta hacerte incapaz de soltar el libro de lo mucho que quieres llegar al final.
Es curioso, porque sus estilos no se parecen en nada, pero Josephine Tey me ha gustado por la misma razón por la que me gusta Pierre Lemaitre: la mala leche concentrada. No hay ni una gota de sangre en esta historia de Tey, pero se nota que le gusta jugar con el lector. ¿Esa idea tal vez un poco retorcida que se te ocurre (o a mí al menos) hacia el principio del libro? ¿No sería gracioso que tuvieras razón? A Josephine Tey también se lo parece. Hace pasar mal rato y tensión al lector cumpliendo exactamente sus peores expectativas. Nunca llega a niveles de tensión agobiantes, no es un thriller vertiginoso ni una novela de terror psicológico. Es una novela negra disfrazada de (melo)drama familiar, pero muy bien disfrazada.
Porque al final lo que importa son esos personajes con los que te encariñas. Esa familia que ha sufrido tanto y que no quieres que vuelva a sufrir.
Esta novela ha sido una gratísima sorpresa. Me ha enganchado, ha cumplido todas las expectativas sobre ella y me ha dejado con ganas de leer más de esta autora.
Josephine Tey aúna la sofisticación "British" con un toque de maldad y mala idea deliciosas.
Muestra esa ideal campiña inglesa, con personajes entrañables y otros muchos excéntricos, hace gala de un sutil sentido del humor, te rodea de todo ese aire de amabilidad, pero deja entrever pequeñas sombras, una tensión que va subiendo poco a poco hasta hacerte incapaz de soltar el libro de lo mucho que quieres llegar al final.
Es curioso, porque sus estilos no se parecen en nada, pero Josephine Tey me ha gustado por la misma razón por la que me gusta Pierre Lemaitre: la mala leche concentrada. No hay ni una gota de sangre en esta historia de Tey, pero se nota que le gusta jugar con el lector. ¿Esa idea tal vez un poco retorcida que se te ocurre (o a mí al menos) hacia el principio del libro? ¿No sería gracioso que tuvieras razón? A Josephine Tey también se lo parece. Hace pasar mal rato y tensión al lector cumpliendo exactamente sus peores expectativas. Nunca llega a niveles de tensión agobiantes, no es un thriller vertiginoso ni una novela de terror psicológico. Es una novela negra disfrazada de (melo)drama familiar, pero muy bien disfrazada.
Porque al final lo que importa son esos personajes con los que te encariñas. Esa familia que ha sufrido tanto y que no quieres que vuelva a sufrir.
Esta novela ha sido una gratísima sorpresa. Me ha enganchado, ha cumplido todas las expectativas sobre ella y me ha dejado con ganas de leer más de esta autora.
August 17, 2019
A lovely little interlude from heavy reading, this early mystery was reminiscent of one of my favorite Daphne du Maurier novels, The Scapegoat. Patrick Ashby is meant to have committed suicide when he was thirteen years old. A body washed up downstream from his home, but unrecognizable, was assumed to be his and buried. His twin, Simon, will turn twenty-one soon and inherit the family estate at Lachetts in Patrick’s stead.
Enter a stranger who looks too much like Simon to be ignored and claiming to be Patrick, not a suicide, just a run away. The stranger, who has gone by the name of Brat Farrar, has led a life of adventure and has come home just in time to assume his inheritance. Of course, the intrigue begins as we watch this man find his place in the family, as we wonder if he might truly be Patrick, and if not, who is he and how has he come to have the face of an Ashby?
Part of the mystery was pretty easy to solve for me, but no matter, the book was still fun. I loved the character development and was more interested in how Brat would solve the emotional dilemma of revealing the truth and not losing the love of the family he has found.
I seem to enjoy the older mysteries more than the newer ones. There is a quaintness in the settings and the way of life that is more appealing. I wouldn’t hesitate to read another Tey in the future.
Enter a stranger who looks too much like Simon to be ignored and claiming to be Patrick, not a suicide, just a run away. The stranger, who has gone by the name of Brat Farrar, has led a life of adventure and has come home just in time to assume his inheritance. Of course, the intrigue begins as we watch this man find his place in the family, as we wonder if he might truly be Patrick, and if not, who is he and how has he come to have the face of an Ashby?
Part of the mystery was pretty easy to solve for me, but no matter, the book was still fun. I loved the character development and was more interested in how Brat would solve the emotional dilemma of revealing the truth and not losing the love of the family he has found.
I seem to enjoy the older mysteries more than the newer ones. There is a quaintness in the settings and the way of life that is more appealing. I wouldn’t hesitate to read another Tey in the future.
June 17, 2016
After so many re-reads, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey is still one of the best classical British mystery novels of all time.
I like the plots and how the characters were written, I like the strong sense of British-ness that seeps through the story, although the typical classism (everyone in the story tends to judge people by their family backgrounds, their breeds and their social statuses, etc) is pretty difficult to swallow, still the strong points of the story easily manage to overwhelm the weakness, so 5 satisfying full stars.
I like the plots and how the characters were written, I like the strong sense of British-ness that seeps through the story, although the typical classism (everyone in the story tends to judge people by their family backgrounds, their breeds and their social statuses, etc) is pretty difficult to swallow, still the strong points of the story easily manage to overwhelm the weakness, so 5 satisfying full stars.
April 4, 2013
A mystery involving an imposter and a possible crime set in and around a horse stud in the south of England, sometime after World War II, this is a novel which kept my interest from beginning to end. It's an intriguing work. On the one hand, the way in which the narrative develops and the resolution of the mystery are extremely predictable. I'm not particularly skilled at solving literary crime before the protagonist charged with that task, but here I worked out what had happened and what was going to happen reasonably early in the piece. On the other hand, even though the novel contained no surprises, I still found it very suspenseful. Tey's prose is elegant, her characters are well-developed and she evokes a great sense of place and time. In addition, while I know nothing about the world of horses in which the novel is set, the way in which Tey writes about that world is entirely convincing.
The major weakness of this work is that the ending feels rushed. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I would have liked somewhat more exposition. It felt a bit like Tey, having written a particular number of words, was keen to wrap up the novel as soon as she could. It didn't ruin the reading experience for me, though. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel and although I didn't do so, I could easily have read it in one or two sittings.
I'm not sure why I read and enjoyed two novels by Josephine Tey when I was in my teens - The Franchise Affair and The Daughter of Time - and then didn't read another of her novels until last year, when I read two of the novels in her Alan Grant series. Neglecting Tey's novels for such a long time means that I missed out on a lot of reading enjoyment. On the other hand, not having read them before means that I still have that pleasure ahead of me.
Another enjoyable buddy read with my friend Jemidar.
September 9, 2017
This is one of my all-time favorite mysteries. Published in 1950, Brat Farrar is about a young man, Bartholomew Farrell (he comes to be known as Brat Farrar over the course of extensive teenage wanderings), who is left as a foundling at a high-class orphanage. He leaves that life in his early teens and knocks about Europe and the Americas, eventually feeling the call of his homeland and returning about age twenty. In London he crosses paths with a ne’er-do-well, Alex Loding, who is startled to see Brat’s close resemblance to the members of a family who lived near his childhood home: the Ashbys. Loding hatches a scheme to pass off Brat as Patrick Ashby, a boy who disappeared at age thirteen and was presumed a suicide. Patrick and his twin, Simon, would be about to come of age; and because Patrick was the elder of the two, he stood to inherit Latchetts, a small estate and stud farm, upon reaching his majority. So if the impostor can pull it off, he will be a well-off man and can afford to pay Loding an allowance for life.
We see the Ashbys—the remaining four children having been brought up by their aunt on the estate after their parents’ death—preparing to celebrate Simon’s coming-of-age, when word leaks out of “Patrick’s” return from the dead. The pseudo-Patrick is accepted by the family with various degrees of willingness, and he settles into a life he might have been born to lead. But all is not happy under the surface, as you might imagine: Simon in particular is not pleased with the return of his twin.
The story is told from within Brat’s mind, so we know from the start that he is not Patrick Ashby and is committing an imposture. Even so, it’s very hard not to like Brat and wish him success. The foundling boy has finally found a place where he fits, and he loves his new family, feeling a deep need to belong to them, even though those feelings are crossed with his sense of guilt. The pressure builds on various fronts until a dramatic climax is reached—about which I propose to tell you nothing. But it is a satisfyingly tidy yarn, full of characters to savor and plenty of suspense.
Though I have read this mystery several times, it never ceases to enthrall me.
We see the Ashbys—the remaining four children having been brought up by their aunt on the estate after their parents’ death—preparing to celebrate Simon’s coming-of-age, when word leaks out of “Patrick’s” return from the dead. The pseudo-Patrick is accepted by the family with various degrees of willingness, and he settles into a life he might have been born to lead. But all is not happy under the surface, as you might imagine: Simon in particular is not pleased with the return of his twin.
The story is told from within Brat’s mind, so we know from the start that he is not Patrick Ashby and is committing an imposture. Even so, it’s very hard not to like Brat and wish him success. The foundling boy has finally found a place where he fits, and he loves his new family, feeling a deep need to belong to them, even though those feelings are crossed with his sense of guilt. The pressure builds on various fronts until a dramatic climax is reached—about which I propose to tell you nothing. But it is a satisfyingly tidy yarn, full of characters to savor and plenty of suspense.
Though I have read this mystery several times, it never ceases to enthrall me.
December 3, 2016
I was confused whether I should read this one or the Daughter of Time, but I chose the former since it's different from what I've read before. And wow, This probably one of the best book I've read.
I's not a typical classical mystery where a murder is committed in countryside and a detective is summoned to solve it. Instead, it revolves around Brat Farrar, an orphan who spent few years in America and returned to England. Few days after his return he's approached by Alec Loading, an actor who mistakes him for Simon Ashby (the next heir to the Ashby's fortune). After realizing his mistake, Alec invites Brat to lunch and offers to him a deal (which occurred to him at the moment) ; to disguise as Patrick Ashby, the twin of Simon Ashby who was originally the heir and who has disappeared at the age of 14 and was assumed to have committed a suicide. Alec in return wants a small allowance to be send to him every week. Brat at beginning refuses the offer but later accepts when he learned that the Ashbys own a horses stud farm ( and Brat is a fan of horses).
So Alec spends two weeks couching Brat about the family members, memories, Patrick personality and hobbies. Brat succeeded in infiltrating and convincing the Ashbys that he's Patrick and life seems to go well with him until some secrets starts to emerge and jeopardize his life.
I's not a typical classical mystery where a murder is committed in countryside and a detective is summoned to solve it. Instead, it revolves around Brat Farrar, an orphan who spent few years in America and returned to England. Few days after his return he's approached by Alec Loading, an actor who mistakes him for Simon Ashby (the next heir to the Ashby's fortune). After realizing his mistake, Alec invites Brat to lunch and offers to him a deal (which occurred to him at the moment) ; to disguise as Patrick Ashby, the twin of Simon Ashby who was originally the heir and who has disappeared at the age of 14 and was assumed to have committed a suicide. Alec in return wants a small allowance to be send to him every week. Brat at beginning refuses the offer but later accepts when he learned that the Ashbys own a horses stud farm ( and Brat is a fan of horses).
So Alec spends two weeks couching Brat about the family members, memories, Patrick personality and hobbies. Brat succeeded in infiltrating and convincing the Ashbys that he's Patrick and life seems to go well with him until some secrets starts to emerge and jeopardize his life.
March 14, 2018
There's an intriguing premise here as an orphan is brought to pose as the lost heir to a family fortune: we know this from the start so this is no spoiler - yet, there's still a question about who exactly is Brat Farrar?
I usually like the brisk conciseness of Golden Age mysteries but here it can feel too abbreviated in places, especially towards the end which wraps up with puzzling rapidity. This is also a very horsy book and while that certainly helps to characterise Brat well, it can also get a bit much for non-horsy readers.
Tey, as always, writes well and the characters are well defined - do note, though, some class-bound stereotypes of female 'nymphomaniacs'! There are interesting sub-texts, too, of homoeroticism and a slightly edgy 'romance'
One kind of mystery shades into another and I have to say I found the later developments unconvincing. For all my niggles, though, Brat himself is a wonderful character and I would happily have read about him for far longer.
I usually like the brisk conciseness of Golden Age mysteries but here it can feel too abbreviated in places, especially towards the end which wraps up with puzzling rapidity. This is also a very horsy book and while that certainly helps to characterise Brat well, it can also get a bit much for non-horsy readers.
Tey, as always, writes well and the characters are well defined - do note, though, some class-bound stereotypes of female 'nymphomaniacs'! There are interesting sub-texts, too, of homoeroticism and a slightly edgy 'romance'
One kind of mystery shades into another and I have to say I found the later developments unconvincing. For all my niggles, though, Brat himself is a wonderful character and I would happily have read about him for far longer.
Read
January 24, 2019Nekad* treba čoveku da se malo opusti uz klasičan krimić u kome pogine zaista malo ljudi (i to uglavnom iza scene) a na kraju se sve lepo zataška i nikom ništa.
U tom slučaju je Bret Farar pravi izbor jer ima simpatične likove, dosta jahanja, retro engleske manire (retro i za 1949. kad je knjiga objavljena), lagodnu temu dvojnika koja je i pre i posle viđena hiljadu puta ali valjda nikad s ovako komotnim razrešenjem, i sve u svemu čita se brzo i prijatno i ako umete da isključite senzore za englesku malograđanštinu garantuje vam lepo popodne ili veče.
*Recimo da je to "nekad" na pola istinski krvoločne fentezi trilogije koja počne smakom sveta a odatle krene nizbrdo i neprekidno otvara razna mučna etička pitanja i ređa mučne prizore i sve tako nešto zanimljivo
U tom slučaju je Bret Farar pravi izbor jer ima simpatične likove, dosta jahanja, retro engleske manire (retro i za 1949. kad je knjiga objavljena), lagodnu temu dvojnika koja je i pre i posle viđena hiljadu puta ali valjda nikad s ovako komotnim razrešenjem, i sve u svemu čita se brzo i prijatno i ako umete da isključite senzore za englesku malograđanštinu garantuje vam lepo popodne ili veče.
*Recimo da je to "nekad" na pola istinski krvoločne fentezi trilogije koja počne smakom sveta a odatle krene nizbrdo i neprekidno otvara razna mučna etička pitanja i ređa mučne prizore i sve tako nešto zanimljivo
April 11, 2022
3.5 stars - I was expecting something closer to a Christie suspense, but ended up thinking this felt more like a Du Maurier suspense. It was quite enjoyable, and I really enjoyed the writing itself. Will seek out more Tey!
September 16, 2019
No wonder her books have stood the test of time. It's very good.
October 14, 2018
‘Come and see me again before you decide anything,’ the Rector had said; but he had at least been helpful in one direction. He had answered Brat’s main question. If it was a choice between love and justice, the choice had to be justice.
Brat Farrar (written in 1949) was not a perfect read. I have had issues with the some of the reactions of the characters:
‘Funny,’ he said, as Brat plunged the shoe into the water, ‘if any Ashby was to earn his living at this job it ought to have been your brother.’
‘Why?’
‘You never showed much interest.’
‘And did Simon?’
‘There was a time when I couldn’t keep him out of this place. There wasn’t anything he wasn’t going to make, from a candlestick to gates for the avenue at Latchetts. Far as I remember, all he ever made was a sheep-crook, and that not over-well. But he was always round the place. It was a craze of his for the whole of a summer.’
‘Which summer was that?’
‘Summer you left us, it was. I’d misremember about it, only he was here seeing us put an iron on a cartwheel the day you ran away. I had to shoo him home for his supper.’
I suppose the last line was the author saving a discrepancy here. I just can’t get my head around that “Patrick”, i.e. Brat, has only been gone for 7 years but people seem to allow for him forgetting an awful lot about his life before that. It does not add up.
Also, Simon is very suspicious and I would have expected him to be able to tell if Brat is his brother or not. It’s not like they were separated at a young age.
And why does no-one ask Simon why he thinks that Brat isn’t/couldn’t be his brother when he first hears about him?
I believe some of the timing of the story is off, too.
The story is set in post-WWII Britain, which puts some of the story at a time during the height of WWII. I’m not disputing that this is possible, but Tey doesn’t mention anything about the ongoing war when relating those parts of the story – and this is not typical for Tey whose main character in another series, Allan Grant, suffers from PTSD after WWI.
What it does read like is a story that was originally drafted in the 1930s and then was revised for publication in 1949…except that some of the historical facts were silenced.
However, the story itself was really interesting: it’s not the usual whodunit. We know from the start that Brat Farrar is an impostor. What we don’t know is what happened to the character that he is trying to pass off as. This is revealed very slowly while were waiting to see if any of the Ashby family recognise Brat as a fraud.
I loved that concept.
I also loved the way that Brat introduces himself to the villain of the piece:
‘I suppose you wouldn’t like, in return for my confidences, to tell me something?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Who you are?’
Brat sat looking at him for a long time. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ he said.
‘No. Who are you?’
‘Retribution,’ said Brat, and finished his drink.
You see, I was tickled by the coincidence that Agatha Christie pursued a similar line in her book Nemesis (with Miss Marple playing the part of Nemesis). Nemesis being the name for the goddess of retribution.
There are no connections or similarities between Tey’s and Christie’s books other than the reference to mythology, but I liked that both authors picked up on the same theme.
Brat Farrar (written in 1949) was not a perfect read. I have had issues with the some of the reactions of the characters:
‘Funny,’ he said, as Brat plunged the shoe into the water, ‘if any Ashby was to earn his living at this job it ought to have been your brother.’
‘Why?’
‘You never showed much interest.’
‘And did Simon?’
‘There was a time when I couldn’t keep him out of this place. There wasn’t anything he wasn’t going to make, from a candlestick to gates for the avenue at Latchetts. Far as I remember, all he ever made was a sheep-crook, and that not over-well. But he was always round the place. It was a craze of his for the whole of a summer.’
‘Which summer was that?’
‘Summer you left us, it was. I’d misremember about it, only he was here seeing us put an iron on a cartwheel the day you ran away. I had to shoo him home for his supper.’
I suppose the last line was the author saving a discrepancy here. I just can’t get my head around that “Patrick”, i.e. Brat, has only been gone for 7 years but people seem to allow for him forgetting an awful lot about his life before that. It does not add up.
Also, Simon is very suspicious and I would have expected him to be able to tell if Brat is his brother or not. It’s not like they were separated at a young age.
And why does no-one ask Simon why he thinks that Brat isn’t/couldn’t be his brother when he first hears about him?
I believe some of the timing of the story is off, too.
The story is set in post-WWII Britain, which puts some of the story at a time during the height of WWII. I’m not disputing that this is possible, but Tey doesn’t mention anything about the ongoing war when relating those parts of the story – and this is not typical for Tey whose main character in another series, Allan Grant, suffers from PTSD after WWI.
What it does read like is a story that was originally drafted in the 1930s and then was revised for publication in 1949…except that some of the historical facts were silenced.
However, the story itself was really interesting: it’s not the usual whodunit. We know from the start that Brat Farrar is an impostor. What we don’t know is what happened to the character that he is trying to pass off as. This is revealed very slowly while were waiting to see if any of the Ashby family recognise Brat as a fraud.
I loved that concept.
I also loved the way that Brat introduces himself to the villain of the piece:
‘I suppose you wouldn’t like, in return for my confidences, to tell me something?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Who you are?’
Brat sat looking at him for a long time. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ he said.
‘No. Who are you?’
‘Retribution,’ said Brat, and finished his drink.
You see, I was tickled by the coincidence that Agatha Christie pursued a similar line in her book Nemesis (with Miss Marple playing the part of Nemesis). Nemesis being the name for the goddess of retribution.
There are no connections or similarities between Tey’s and Christie’s books other than the reference to mythology, but I liked that both authors picked up on the same theme.
February 18, 2017
A friend recommended this mystery book to me when hearing of my interest in English authors. Josephine Tey is better known for her book "The Daughter of Time" which is next on my reading list. If "Bret Farrar" is any indication of this author's talent, then I am in for a treat. "Bret Farrar" is a intense look at the English upper classes and their love for well-bred horses. The wealthy family in the book has a history of traditions, class snobbery and tragic loss. It is a crime novel based on the Tichborne Claimant, which was a famous 19th-century legal case in Victorian England. Like the Tichborne Claimant case, the novel tells the story of a "missing heir" who returns home to his family. The family warmly excepts him (even though he is a imposter) with the exception of his twin brother and a family friend. They know he is a fraud and that he wants to claim the family manor and wealth as his own. Josephine Tey is a brilliant observer of human nature and she tells a very good story.
March 29, 2013
Free download at Project Gutenberg Australia
Chapter 1:
"At this same table had eaten Ashbys who had died of fever in India, of wounds in the Crimea, of starvation in Queensland, of typhoid at the Cape, and of cirrhosis of the liver in the Straits Settlements. But always there had been an Ashby at Latchetts; and they had done well by the land."
"No queens had come to Latchetts to dine; no cavaliers to hide. For three hundred years it had stood in its meadows very much as it stood now; a yeoman’s dwelling. And for nearly two of those three hundred years Ashbys had lived in it."
"But the Ashbys stayed at Latchetts."
Chapter 18:
"Antipathy or no antipathy, common sense or no common sense, he wanted to know where Simon Ashby was when his twin went over the Westover cliffs."
Page 176:
"Some day, Brat Farrar, he thought as he walked down the path to the Rectory, you are going to be faced with something that you couldn’t possibly have forgotten."
Page 219:
“I suppose because you are the only one who doesn’t believe that I am Patrick.”
“You mean, don’t you, that I’m the only one who knows you’re not?”"
Another splendid gothic mystery written by Josephine Tey which books are becoming available at public domain.
Chapter 1:
"At this same table had eaten Ashbys who had died of fever in India, of wounds in the Crimea, of starvation in Queensland, of typhoid at the Cape, and of cirrhosis of the liver in the Straits Settlements. But always there had been an Ashby at Latchetts; and they had done well by the land."
"No queens had come to Latchetts to dine; no cavaliers to hide. For three hundred years it had stood in its meadows very much as it stood now; a yeoman’s dwelling. And for nearly two of those three hundred years Ashbys had lived in it."
"But the Ashbys stayed at Latchetts."
Chapter 18:
"Antipathy or no antipathy, common sense or no common sense, he wanted to know where Simon Ashby was when his twin went over the Westover cliffs."
Page 176:
"Some day, Brat Farrar, he thought as he walked down the path to the Rectory, you are going to be faced with something that you couldn’t possibly have forgotten."
Page 219:
“I suppose because you are the only one who doesn’t believe that I am Patrick.”
“You mean, don’t you, that I’m the only one who knows you’re not?”"
Another splendid gothic mystery written by Josephine Tey which books are becoming available at public domain.
December 29, 2023
Somehow, I never read this before. Somehow I never had a copy until not too long ago, and somehow when I reread all my Teys at the beginning of the year I couldn't put my hands on my copy. (It's a trade paperback, which lives in a different place from the ordinary paperbacks. Stupid segregation.) Also, there is the sort of vague feeling that I was saving this: with Brat Farrar still unread, there was still a Tey novel out there that would be new to me. But then last week my Goodreads friend Jemidar pointed out that Josephine Tey was available free online, and that was all I needed to hear. I didn't plan on reading it online in two big gulps, but that's what happened, and the less said about what computer was used for those gulps the better, mmkay?
The synopsis: A young man called Brat Farrar, orphan and traveler and something of a chameleon, is approached by a less than scrupulous actor because he is the spitting image of another young man called Simon Ashby, the heir to Latchetts, something of an equestrian empire. The actor – Loding, an old friend of the family, if by friend you mean opportunistic crook – propositions Brat almost immediately; I enjoyed the fact that he had to be very specific that what he had in mind was a business arrangement, and a different sort of illegal-and-immoral than Brat initially assumes. Simon, he informs this striking young man, is a twin – or, rather, was, because the twin, named Patrick, killed himself shortly after their parents died in an accident when the boys were thirteen; he walked into the sea and drowned. But the note he left behind was somewhat open to interpretation: it is an apology, not specifically for suicide but for leaving, and Loding's brainstorm upon seeing this young stranger who looks so very like Simon is to send Brat to the Ashbys as Patrick returned from not death but prodigality. And of course out of the money that that would bring, a monthly stipend would be forwarded to himself. Brat refuses; he's disgusted by the idea. But then Loding mentions the horses. And Brat starts to wonder what, really, would be the harm in taking up his dream life.
The understanding of horses – the plain common sense of it – is a joy. (“It’s the sound of the crowd that worries her,” Gregg said. “Something she hears and can’t understand. If I were you, Mr. Patrick, sir, I’d take her out and walk her. Take her out and show her the crowds and she’ll be so interested she’ll forget her nerves.”) They're not overly romanticized, seen through a soft-focus lens; horses can be a right pain in the rump just like any other creatures (and more often a literal pain there, if you see what I mean, than most), and are a chancy entity to pin your living onto; they can sicken and die or fail to live up to expectations – or kill. But for all of that they have a fascination which I thoroughly enjoyed seeing explored here.
(At which I must interrupt for a brief word toward whatever Recording Angel or Celestial Agent or whatnot who has the placing of infants: Dear Sir/Madame/Otherwise: This is the life I should have had. Horses, sir/madame/other – horses. That's all I ever wanted. England would have been nice too. My own family is mostly lovely, so thank you – but this is where I belonged. There's probably some Englishwoman out there exactly my age who loathes horses and wishes she had been born in Connecticut and would have been perfectly happy working in offices. Ill done, sir/madame/other.)
A brief – but intense – period of preparation using photos and maps and blueprints later, Brat slowly works himself into the Ashbys' bosom at Latchetts, and something funny happens. The book is largely told from Brat's point of view, so that the reader is given the privilege of knowing his reasoning and reaction. And even though his history (as, once upon a time, Bart Farrell, then Brat Farrar, and now Patrick Ashby) is thoroughly documented and I was given no reason to see him as an unreliable narrator, lying about the early years, Brat is … nice enough, and so well suited for the place, that I half believed that somehow he really was Patrick. And Simon is just enough short of nice (not vile, but, among other things, not loving the horses as he should, as Brat does) that the half-belief is bolstered by a wish.
There is also the anxiety about when these lovely folk will learn the truth. Because they will. And all of them (except for Simon) are characters I don't like to think of being hurt. (Ruth is a flighty and self-centered little creature, but still to be protected.) Therein lies the suspense: with judicious foreshadowing and excellent character building, Tey creates a situation in which a wrong word could bring everything crashing down about their ears.
"Some day, Brat Farrar, he thought as he walked down the path to the Rectory, you are going to be faced with something that you couldn’t possibly have forgotten.
- He should thank God Patrick was only thirteen years old when he vanished; even a couple more years and there would have been a great many more associations, not to mention girls.
Before long, a new question begins to rise, as to whether part of Brat and Loding's ploy might not have a little truth to it: perhaps Patrick did not kill himself.
The exposition in this book is masterful, and makes me sigh when I think of trying it myself. The history of the family is introduced in a completely painless manner – Josephine Tey never heard of the concept of "infodump". Characters are presented, fully formed human beings with flaws and virtues and "hair … of what color it please God": their characteristics come out in their actions and conversation, and it's a lovely thing to watch.
Conversation between the younger set of twins:
“If I ran away for years and years, would you believe I was me, Jane?” Ruth asked.
“You wouldn’t stay away for years and years, anyhow,” Jane said.
“What makes you think I wouldn’t?”
“You’d come home in no time at all.”
“Why would I come home?”
“To see how everyone was taking your running away.”
Here's where the doubts about Simon come in – first, the question of whether Brat, false as he is, might not after all be a better heir to the estate than his purported twin. "No one, no one, was going to come between Simon Ashby and the sun and get away with it."
This, plotwise, possibly doesn't really rate five stars. Even as I read the ending I recognized a problem: the solution to the mystery of eight years before is glossed over. Brat ponders the data he's collected, and the apparent impossibility of what he's thinking – and after a bit of time he has an epiphany in which all is revealed to him. The epiphany, however, is never shared with the reader: the details are never revealed. Also, I have no idea what the laws were in the forties and fifties in England, but I hardly think that fraud to usurp a fair-sized inheritance was looked at any more lightly than it would be now; they still hanged criminals in the 40's and 50's. I think whatever the personal feelings of those involved Brat should have faced a good deal more trouble than, in the end, he does… He took on the plot as something of a lark, and his only hesitations were purely moral: it was the wrong thing to do, and sordid. But he never really considers what will happen, on legal or personal levels, if he gets caught. Finally, Loding
Still and all, there it is: the last new-to-me Tey. It was a wonderful read. (Thanks, Jemidar!)
The synopsis: A young man called Brat Farrar, orphan and traveler and something of a chameleon, is approached by a less than scrupulous actor because he is the spitting image of another young man called Simon Ashby, the heir to Latchetts, something of an equestrian empire. The actor – Loding, an old friend of the family, if by friend you mean opportunistic crook – propositions Brat almost immediately; I enjoyed the fact that he had to be very specific that what he had in mind was a business arrangement, and a different sort of illegal-and-immoral than Brat initially assumes. Simon, he informs this striking young man, is a twin – or, rather, was, because the twin, named Patrick, killed himself shortly after their parents died in an accident when the boys were thirteen; he walked into the sea and drowned. But the note he left behind was somewhat open to interpretation: it is an apology, not specifically for suicide but for leaving, and Loding's brainstorm upon seeing this young stranger who looks so very like Simon is to send Brat to the Ashbys as Patrick returned from not death but prodigality. And of course out of the money that that would bring, a monthly stipend would be forwarded to himself. Brat refuses; he's disgusted by the idea. But then Loding mentions the horses. And Brat starts to wonder what, really, would be the harm in taking up his dream life.
The understanding of horses – the plain common sense of it – is a joy. (“It’s the sound of the crowd that worries her,” Gregg said. “Something she hears and can’t understand. If I were you, Mr. Patrick, sir, I’d take her out and walk her. Take her out and show her the crowds and she’ll be so interested she’ll forget her nerves.”) They're not overly romanticized, seen through a soft-focus lens; horses can be a right pain in the rump just like any other creatures (and more often a literal pain there, if you see what I mean, than most), and are a chancy entity to pin your living onto; they can sicken and die or fail to live up to expectations – or kill. But for all of that they have a fascination which I thoroughly enjoyed seeing explored here.
"You haven’t got my favourite in your collection," she said, having examined his choice, and brought another tome from the shelves. And then, finding that he was totally ignorant, she took him back to the beginning and showed him the foundations — Arab, Barb, and Turk — of the finished product. By midnight there were more books on the floor than there were on the shelves but they had both had a marvellous time.
(At which I must interrupt for a brief word toward whatever Recording Angel or Celestial Agent or whatnot who has the placing of infants: Dear Sir/Madame/Otherwise: This is the life I should have had. Horses, sir/madame/other – horses. That's all I ever wanted. England would have been nice too. My own family is mostly lovely, so thank you – but this is where I belonged. There's probably some Englishwoman out there exactly my age who loathes horses and wishes she had been born in Connecticut and would have been perfectly happy working in offices. Ill done, sir/madame/other.)
A brief – but intense – period of preparation using photos and maps and blueprints later, Brat slowly works himself into the Ashbys' bosom at Latchetts, and something funny happens. The book is largely told from Brat's point of view, so that the reader is given the privilege of knowing his reasoning and reaction. And even though his history (as, once upon a time, Bart Farrell, then Brat Farrar, and now Patrick Ashby) is thoroughly documented and I was given no reason to see him as an unreliable narrator, lying about the early years, Brat is … nice enough, and so well suited for the place, that I half believed that somehow he really was Patrick. And Simon is just enough short of nice (not vile, but, among other things, not loving the horses as he should, as Brat does) that the half-belief is bolstered by a wish.
There is also the anxiety about when these lovely folk will learn the truth. Because they will. And all of them (except for Simon) are characters I don't like to think of being hurt. (Ruth is a flighty and self-centered little creature, but still to be protected.) Therein lies the suspense: with judicious foreshadowing and excellent character building, Tey creates a situation in which a wrong word could bring everything crashing down about their ears.
"Some day, Brat Farrar, he thought as he walked down the path to the Rectory, you are going to be faced with something that you couldn’t possibly have forgotten.
- He should thank God Patrick was only thirteen years old when he vanished; even a couple more years and there would have been a great many more associations, not to mention girls.
Before long, a new question begins to rise, as to whether part of Brat and Loding's ploy might not have a little truth to it: perhaps Patrick did not kill himself.
The exposition in this book is masterful, and makes me sigh when I think of trying it myself. The history of the family is introduced in a completely painless manner – Josephine Tey never heard of the concept of "infodump". Characters are presented, fully formed human beings with flaws and virtues and "hair … of what color it please God": their characteristics come out in their actions and conversation, and it's a lovely thing to watch.
Conversation between the younger set of twins:
“If I ran away for years and years, would you believe I was me, Jane?” Ruth asked.
“You wouldn’t stay away for years and years, anyhow,” Jane said.
“What makes you think I wouldn’t?”
“You’d come home in no time at all.”
“Why would I come home?”
“To see how everyone was taking your running away.”
Here's where the doubts about Simon come in – first, the question of whether Brat, false as he is, might not after all be a better heir to the estate than his purported twin. "No one, no one, was going to come between Simon Ashby and the sun and get away with it."
This, plotwise, possibly doesn't really rate five stars. Even as I read the ending I recognized a problem: the solution to the mystery of eight years before is glossed over. Brat ponders the data he's collected, and the apparent impossibility of what he's thinking – and after a bit of time he has an epiphany in which all is revealed to him. The epiphany, however, is never shared with the reader: the details are never revealed. Also, I have no idea what the laws were in the forties and fifties in England, but I hardly think that fraud to usurp a fair-sized inheritance was looked at any more lightly than it would be now; they still hanged criminals in the 40's and 50's. I think whatever the personal feelings of those involved Brat should have faced a good deal more trouble than, in the end, he does… He took on the plot as something of a lark, and his only hesitations were purely moral: it was the wrong thing to do, and sordid. But he never really considers what will happen, on legal or personal levels, if he gets caught. Finally, Loding
Still and all, there it is: the last new-to-me Tey. It was a wonderful read. (Thanks, Jemidar!)
January 19, 2014
Josephine Tey’s best known for her mysteries featuring the suave Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, particularly The Daughter of Time; however, Brat Farrar has to be her best book. The novel, which deals with mistaken identity and how appearances can be deceiving — on many levels — builds such suspense that you can’t put the book down. That’s such a cliché, I know, but, in the case of Brat Farrar, it’s actually true.
By chance, British-born orphan Brat Farrar gets the chance to pose as the long-lost heir to a horse stable in the English countryside. Brat has spent the last years as a cowboy in France, other parts of Europe and America. On Brat’s return to England, in a move reminiscent of The Prince and the Pauper, a distant relative of the heir, Alex Loding, realizes that Brat’s the spitting image of the missing heir, Patrick Ashby. Alex drills Brat on the Ashby family and directs the imposture where Brat would reclaim Patrick’s legacy.
Thirteen-year-old Patrick disappeared eight years and was presumed a suicide. Since then the estate, The Latchetts, was to go to Patrick’s fraternal and slightly younger twin, the mercurial Simon. Needless to say, Simon’s none too happy to see his long-lost brother, but Aunt Beatrice — along with a team of lawyers — happily accept Brat as Patrick. Despite the initial subterfuge, the reader comes to sympathize with Brat. Will Brat be able to keep up the deception? And what really happened to Patrick those many years ago?
Despite having been published more than 60 years ago, Brat Farrar holds up magnificently: Tey does an amazing job keeping readers on the edge of their seats. Don’t miss out on this classic suspense story!
By chance, British-born orphan Brat Farrar gets the chance to pose as the long-lost heir to a horse stable in the English countryside. Brat has spent the last years as a cowboy in France, other parts of Europe and America. On Brat’s return to England, in a move reminiscent of The Prince and the Pauper, a distant relative of the heir, Alex Loding, realizes that Brat’s the spitting image of the missing heir, Patrick Ashby. Alex drills Brat on the Ashby family and directs the imposture where Brat would reclaim Patrick’s legacy.
Thirteen-year-old Patrick disappeared eight years and was presumed a suicide. Since then the estate, The Latchetts, was to go to Patrick’s fraternal and slightly younger twin, the mercurial Simon. Needless to say, Simon’s none too happy to see his long-lost brother, but Aunt Beatrice — along with a team of lawyers — happily accept Brat as Patrick. Despite the initial subterfuge, the reader comes to sympathize with Brat. Will Brat be able to keep up the deception? And what really happened to Patrick those many years ago?
Despite having been published more than 60 years ago, Brat Farrar holds up magnificently: Tey does an amazing job keeping readers on the edge of their seats. Don’t miss out on this classic suspense story!
July 23, 2019
The premise is intriguing, and the challenges facing the protagonist are enough by itself to put the reader on edge. But as the story unfolds, an additional element of suspense unfolds.
Brat Farrar is an orphan returning to Britain after years away when he is accosted in the street by a stranger who proposes that he become an impostor, posing as a young man who supposedly killed himself 8 years prior, in order to inherit the stud farm and fortune that would belong to the missing heir if he were alive. At first he is loathe to heartlessly embed himself into the young man's family, but then the thought of his true love in life, horses, breaks his resistance. At once I (mistakenly) identified Brat with Tom Ripley of Patricia Highsmith's novels, mainly due to the cold, cruel act of impersonation, but the similarity breaks down immediately. He is no unfeeling sociopath, but on the contrary a sensitive character quite capable of empathy, and it is this quality which drives him to solve the mysterious secret that insidiously lies within his adopted family.
This was a great novel, the tension is relentless. The only disclaimer I make is that the reader should have some appreciation of horses and English show riding, as this takes up a fair amount of pages in some parts.
Brat Farrar is an orphan returning to Britain after years away when he is accosted in the street by a stranger who proposes that he become an impostor, posing as a young man who supposedly killed himself 8 years prior, in order to inherit the stud farm and fortune that would belong to the missing heir if he were alive. At first he is loathe to heartlessly embed himself into the young man's family, but then the thought of his true love in life, horses, breaks his resistance. At once I (mistakenly) identified Brat with Tom Ripley of Patricia Highsmith's novels, mainly due to the cold, cruel act of impersonation, but the similarity breaks down immediately. He is no unfeeling sociopath, but on the contrary a sensitive character quite capable of empathy, and it is this quality which drives him to solve the mysterious secret that insidiously lies within his adopted family.
This was a great novel, the tension is relentless. The only disclaimer I make is that the reader should have some appreciation of horses and English show riding, as this takes up a fair amount of pages in some parts.
February 18, 2017
A novel that's (very) loosely based on the case of the Tichborne Claimant. Back in 2009 I read another novel based on the same case, Robin Maugham's The Link (1969). It's not really worth comparing the two because they offer completely different treatments of a similar tantalizing subject: How do you know someone whom you haven't seen in many years is actually the person they claim to be rather than a well trained impostor, even if that person is purportedly a family member?
(There's a more direct treatment of the case in the movie The Tichborne Claimant [1998], which I haven't seen but oughter. The theme is also tackled in two non-Tichborne movies, Le retour de Martin Guerre [1982] and Summersby [1993]. I'm sure there are others.)
Eight years ago, following the death in an air crash of his parents, 13-year-old Patrick Ashby, heir-presumptive by a matter of minutes to the Latchetts estate, left a suicide note on a cliff-edge and vanished. Now someone claiming to be him approaches the family solicitor; he has a strong resemblance to his just-younger twin Simon, and successfully answers all sorts of questions put to him by first the lawyer, then by Aunt Bee, who raised the kids after their parents' death: Simon, the somewhat younger Eleanor and the two much younger twins Jane and Ruth. By this time we know that Patrick is in fact an impostor, Brat Farrar, left on an orphanage doorstep as a baby and since then a wanderer in Europe and the Americas; he has been superbly schooled by a close acquaintance of the family, who wants to split with Brat the income from the estate that he'll very shortly inherit.
The trouble is that Brat is far too honorable a person to keep up such a pretense for long; besides, he soon falls in love with -- Simon excepted -- his new family. Just to complicate matters, in a different sense of the term he and Eleanor almost immediately start falling in love.
Soon he's taking a full role in the family business of rearing, training and displaying horses -- while in the US he spent much of his time working with the animals, albeit in rather less chichi environs than Latchetts. I'm not a fan of equestrian sports, nor even of horses in general (they want me to like them, they should stop pooping on my foot or trying to bite my head off), so it's something of a tribute to Tey's skills as a writer that, during a longish section of the book set at a horse show, I was, at least metaphorically, on the edge of my seat. But then that was the case throughout this novel.
Which is all the more remarkable when you consider that I've read it before (admittedly a long while ago) and so knew what was going to happen.
The text is full of wry observations, some quite poignant, some very funny. Here, from the very first page, we have a bit of dialogue as the two little Ashby girls are coping with a dish of vermicelli:
While I was reading this novel it struck me for the millionth time that, although Tey is generally talked of as a writer of detective novels, the four books for which she's most renowned are the ones that really don't properly fall into the category of detective fiction at all:
Of these four, I'd be hard-pressed to decide which I like the best. They're all really quite exceptional.
Returning to Brat Farrar, while I can imagine some people might find it irksome in that it's set in a sort of golden England that never was, and is quite smugly content to be set there, I found it to be -- again -- marvelous entertainment. The glorious conceit that it should be the Claimant who's trying to set things aright carries the novel a long way, but in the end it was the portrayals of the various characters, and their interactions, that made the pages go by in a blur: I really cared about what happened to these people.
(There's a more direct treatment of the case in the movie The Tichborne Claimant [1998], which I haven't seen but oughter. The theme is also tackled in two non-Tichborne movies, Le retour de Martin Guerre [1982] and Summersby [1993]. I'm sure there are others.)
Eight years ago, following the death in an air crash of his parents, 13-year-old Patrick Ashby, heir-presumptive by a matter of minutes to the Latchetts estate, left a suicide note on a cliff-edge and vanished. Now someone claiming to be him approaches the family solicitor; he has a strong resemblance to his just-younger twin Simon, and successfully answers all sorts of questions put to him by first the lawyer, then by Aunt Bee, who raised the kids after their parents' death: Simon, the somewhat younger Eleanor and the two much younger twins Jane and Ruth. By this time we know that Patrick is in fact an impostor, Brat Farrar, left on an orphanage doorstep as a baby and since then a wanderer in Europe and the Americas; he has been superbly schooled by a close acquaintance of the family, who wants to split with Brat the income from the estate that he'll very shortly inherit.
The trouble is that Brat is far too honorable a person to keep up such a pretense for long; besides, he soon falls in love with -- Simon excepted -- his new family. Just to complicate matters, in a different sense of the term he and Eleanor almost immediately start falling in love.
Soon he's taking a full role in the family business of rearing, training and displaying horses -- while in the US he spent much of his time working with the animals, albeit in rather less chichi environs than Latchetts. I'm not a fan of equestrian sports, nor even of horses in general (they want me to like them, they should stop pooping on my foot or trying to bite my head off), so it's something of a tribute to Tey's skills as a writer that, during a longish section of the book set at a horse show, I was, at least metaphorically, on the edge of my seat. But then that was the case throughout this novel.
Which is all the more remarkable when you consider that I've read it before (admittedly a long while ago) and so knew what was going to happen.
The text is full of wry observations, some quite poignant, some very funny. Here, from the very first page, we have a bit of dialogue as the two little Ashby girls are coping with a dish of vermicelli:
“Don’t eat out of the point of your spoon, Jane.”
“I can’t mobilise the strings out of the side.”
“Ruth does.”
Jane looked across at her twin, negotiating the vermicelli with smug neatness.
“She has a stronger suck than I have.”
While I was reading this novel it struck me for the millionth time that, although Tey is generally talked of as a writer of detective novels, the four books for which she's most renowned are the ones that really don't properly fall into the category of detective fiction at all:
[] Miss Pym Disposes, about a know-it-all receiving the just deserts for her vanity (my account of this novel seems to have vanished from Goodreads);
[] The Franchise Affair, a study in mob rule and bigotry, often daftly listed as part of Tey's "Allan Grant" series, even though he makes barely an appearance and plays no real part in the plot (hm: coulda sworn I wrote about this one here, too);
[] The Daughter of Time, in which, although he's assuredly the central character, Grant is investigating not a new case but the historical mystery of the Princes in the Tower; and
[] Brat Farrar.
Of these four, I'd be hard-pressed to decide which I like the best. They're all really quite exceptional.
Returning to Brat Farrar, while I can imagine some people might find it irksome in that it's set in a sort of golden England that never was, and is quite smugly content to be set there, I found it to be -- again -- marvelous entertainment. The glorious conceit that it should be the Claimant who's trying to set things aright carries the novel a long way, but in the end it was the portrayals of the various characters, and their interactions, that made the pages go by in a blur: I really cared about what happened to these people.
March 2, 2018
Is it a scam, if not even the scammer is sure it is actually a scam? A good fast paced mystery with just enough deception to keep me guessing as to who was the victim and who was actually the villain.
May 29, 2022
Great characterizations (including of several horses). Crime and a whiff of romance--and did I mention horses? I've read it to shreds.
June 21, 2015
Entertaining, postwar British mystery. It had elements that were compelling but there was no surprise about the culprit. I can imagine there was a b&w Rank movie with a young Dirk Bogarde - just guessing about that angle. Witty and enough well described British upper crust comforts, tea, tweed, steeple chases for me to see it through to the end. How long lost twin Brat ends up in the right place and time for the story - a coming of age inheritance for his twin brother, is I think this story's weakest thread./coincidence.
January 20, 2009
From the very outset, the reader knows that Brat Farrar will not turn down the offer (made for $$, of course) to turn him into Patrick Ashby, the long-missing heir to the Ashby fortune. Patrick was one of a set of twins, his brother Simon, within the next few weeks, will become the master of Latchetts, the ancestral home of the Ashbys, with all the financial perks that go along with its ownership. So Brat is carefully groomed and tutored in the life of the missing Patrick, and when he's ready, he introduces himself as such to the Ashby family attorney. Eventually, he arrives back at Latchetts, and is put to the test. But soon he begins wonder what actually happened to the real Simon.
I'm really not going to say more about this book because I don't want to give away anything to anyone who may be reading it.
Josephine Tey is one of my favorite writers, and probably would have gone on to more greatness had she not died. Brat Farrar is not my favorite of her works, but it is quite good all the same. I can recommend it to mystery readers, especially those (like me) who enjoy a good British mystery. Not a cozy by any stretch!
I'm really not going to say more about this book because I don't want to give away anything to anyone who may be reading it.
Josephine Tey is one of my favorite writers, and probably would have gone on to more greatness had she not died. Brat Farrar is not my favorite of her works, but it is quite good all the same. I can recommend it to mystery readers, especially those (like me) who enjoy a good British mystery. Not a cozy by any stretch!
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