Carolyn G. HeilbrunRecensioni

Musings on aging, a new house and unforeseen pleasures while aging.

When she was a young, distinguished author and critic Carolyn Heilbrun's solemnly vowed to end her life when she turned 70. But on the advent of that fateful birthday she realized that her golden years had been full of unforeseen pleasures. Now, the astute and ever insightful Heilbrun muses on the emotional and intellectual insights that brought her "to choose each day for now, to live."

I have read so many of her biographies and those of the people she surrounded herself with, that I really enjoyed this addition to my collection.

“A frank, passionate plea for us to move away from sexual polarization and the prison of gender toward a world in which individual roles and modes of personal behavior can be freely chosen. . . . An interesting, lively and valuable general introduction to a new way of perceiving our Western cultural tradition, with emphasis upon English literature.” ―Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review

Maybe even 4.5*, just because I do so love an academic setting for a mystery!

An academic mystery which deals with the internal politics & struggles of the faculty of a major (unnamed) New York city university is the kind of mystery I would have loved to write myself. Written in 1970, student unrest provides the background to the situation but as anyone who has been a college or university professor knows, the factions & committees etc. could have been taking place at any time. I had a few laughs (such as at the doctoral dissertation defense meeting & the professor describing a recent play he had attended) as well.

I loved the Auden quotes at the start of each chapter & throughout the text; I will have read his poetry for myself sometime soon!

One of the lingering mysteries of Kate Fansler’s life is how she came to be so utterly unlike her older brothers. When her oldest brother Laurence is visited by a man claiming to be Kate’s natural father, it is with some surprise that Kate agrees to DNA testing, which in fact proves the man’s claim. But why has he come back into Kate’s life when she is in her mid-50s and he is in his 70s? And what does he want from the Fansler family?.... This is the last of the Kate Fansler mystery series and, unlike the previous book, Kate is all over this one. As is Shakespeare, as each chapter has an epigram (most, I think, if not all from The Tempest). The relationship between fathers and daughters is the overarching theme, and unlike other books in the series there are no murders to investigate here; the very idea of the self-aware and hyper-conscious Kate working to deepen her understanding of herself will either please or infuriate readers, depending on their relationship to the character. For myself, I’m glad I read it, and equally glad to finally be done with the exasperating Kate. Mildly recommended.½

Kate Fansler, la catedrática y detective aficionada -tan erudita como chispeante- que protagoniza las novelas de amanda Cross, aconseja a una de sus alumnas que acuda a un famoso psiquiatra neoyorquino con quien mantuvo en tiempos una relación amorosa. Meses más tarde, la chica aparece asesinada en el diván de la consulta. Demasiados sospechosos: el psicoanalista, su mujer, la propia Kate Fansler... ¿Podrá con todos el pintoresco psicoanálisis policial de la detective?

Private detective Estelle “Woody” Woodhaven is asked by a small college to investigate the death of an English professor there; widely disliked, there is little doubt that he was murdered. Woody turns gratefully to Kate Fansler for her insights both into academia and crime, but while she enjoys their conversations, Kate’s frequent detours into esoteric musings, particularly on the professor’s favourite poet Tennyson, serve more to baffle Woody than to enlighten her. And the interviews she has with the potential suspects serve only to muddy the waters even further…. This is the next-to-last Kate Fansler novel and she herself is barely in it - although it is, of course, Kate who ultimately solves the crime. Woody is a decent character, although her constant harping about how fat she is gets tiresome very quickly. I’m just not sure why Kate was even in the book and, frankly, the solution is lazy, but there are some nice quotes along the way. Really for completists only.½

As a young woman, Carolyn Heilbrun made a resolution not to live past "three score years and ten." Taking her own life at the age of seventy, she reasoned, would lend clean closure to a life well lived, and would keep her from the many tragedies of aging--becoming a burden to her children, witnessing the deterioration of her body, falling prey to a crippling disease. But on the advent of her seventieth birthday, she looked back on the past ten years and found, to her surprise, that her sixties had been the happiest decade of all: after fifty years, her marriage had matured into a happy balance of companionship and respect for solitude; she had developed deep friendships with her grown children and a small circle of peers; she had mastered a highly successful career as a scholar and writer. In the poignant, essayistic writing that best showcases her elegant talent and provocative mind, Carolyn Heilbrun celebrates the many pleasures of a mature life.
Filled with wisdom, knowledge, wry humor, and literary allusion, "The Last Gift of Time" is a moving book for all women invested in the pursuit of leading a woman's life to its fullest capacity.

Kate Fansler uncharacteristically falls apart when her husband is kidnapped and she is told that he will not be released unless she publishes an essay retracting everything she has ever written or said about feminism; fortunately for Kate, friends are able to figure out who has kidnapped Reed and to free him quite quickly. But the worry remains: the plotters of this action clearly have Kate in their sights, evidently for her outspoken feminist beliefs; unless, perhaps, their wrath is a little more personal than that…. “The Puzzled Heart” was published in 1998 and rails against various right-wing figures of that time, such as Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. The thing that got to me in this, the 12th book in the Kate Fansler mystery series, is that some 24 years later, things are so much worse for women in the US than they were when this was published, which is just depressing. Also, we are introduced to Kate’s “best friend” Leslie, a character who has never appeared in the previous 11 books, which I found quite jarring, to say the least. I would recommend the book for those (like me) wanting to read the complete series, otherwise give it a miss unless you want to wallow in frustration over the current state of the world.½

Kate Fansler is asked to co-teach a course on the law and literature at a not-very-good law school, while her husband Reed is leading a project there to aid women in prison in filing appeals for wrongful convictions. The school is unfortunately very sexist, with the only female law professor having recently died, ostensibly from a fall in front of a truck in New York City’s chaotic traffic; an older staff member, however, thinks this might not have been an accident and she asks Kate to investigate. The more Kate digs into the culture of the school, the more misogynistic she finds it, but whether that in itself is reason enough for murder is another question…. This novel, the eleventh in the series, was published in 1994 and to me was chiefly memorable for its bleak view of gender politics in the 1990s; I certainly don’t remember that time as being so very misogynistic, but then I was in San Francisco at the time, not NYC, so perhaps that accounts for it. In any event, Kate and Reed are also going through a rough patch in their marriage, which seems to stem from boredom more than anything else; I found that subplot kind of irritating. Each chapter is prefaced with a quote from John LeCarré’s work, involving espionage, but since I haven’t read those books, the allusions were lost on me. After the gem that was “The Players Come Again,” this one is a bit of a disappointment for me; mildly recommended, but really only for completist readers of the series.

Kate Fansler is at a bit of a loose end having just published her more recent academic work, so when a publisher invites her to lunch in order to pitch a new investigative job to her, she is intrigued. Particularly so once she learns that the publisher wants her to delve into the life of the wife of a Great Author of the modernist period, a man who achieved high acclaim by centering a novel on the interior life of a woman, who most people suppose was modeled on the wife. As she begins to contemplate the work, Kate is eager to meet and talk with three women whose lives were all intertwined with the Foxx family, but they all have secrets of their own to keep…. I’ve been reading the Kate Fansler mysteries a bit at a time, sometimes feeling exasperated with the character and sometimes cheering her on. This, the 10th (of, I think, 14 in total) in the series is actually far and away my favourite so far, largely because Kate meets her match in the three women she encounters and so her tendency toward archness is sharply curbed. I also liked the second part of the novel, which is in the form of a memoir of one of the three women and which is completely different from the usual tone in these books. I don’t know that it’s necessary to have read the earlier books in the series, but certainly a basic knowledge of the myth of Ariadne and Theseus is helpful; very highly recommended!

disappointing, not a tradiotional mystery;
dispose of the book

One more that I don't know how to rate, but which feels true, and in many ways, reassuring.

When a Middle Eastern Studies professor is found dead from a fall from his office window, it is quickly determined that the incident could neither be suicide nor accident and Kate Fansler is asked by the administration to look into the matter, as she had been known to solve seemingly unfathomable crimes in the past. But the more she investigates, the more she finds herself burdened with numerous unconnected bits of information - about the professor’s general unlikeability, the grants received to create a department of Middle Eastern studies, the agitation of Black students on a quest for more Black professors, the way that the roles of women in administration and scholarship had changed and not changed over the years - and the more difficult it becomes to see a solution…. This is the ninth Kate Fansler novel, published in 1990, and it’s a short one this time, only 142 pages. As sometimes happens with these books, I found Kate very annoying this time around, far too intent on making witty remarks and only coming to an answer through an intuitive leap that is not adequately described at all (although I guessed the guilty party fairly early on). But mostly I was irritated by this edition, from Bello (an imprint of MacMillan) published in 2018, because there are tons of errors scattered throughout, ranging from an arbitrary profusion of commas (Ms. Cross used a lot of them, but she used them correctly, not for example by “I, was…” and the like), missing words (“I would not want know”) and other errors that would have been easily fixed if anyone had proofread the thing. Most of all, though, is this disclaimer found on the copyright page: “This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear out-of-date to modern-day readers. Bello makes no apology for this, as to retrospectively change any content would be anachronistic and undermine the authenticity of the original.” I mean, seriously? The publisher felt a need in 2018 to remind readers that the book was originally published in 1990 and therefore may not reflect 2018 attitudes and mores? How insulting to modern readers is that?!

When Kate Fansler’s niece Leighton becomes interested in the disappearance of a woman from her usual haunts, Kate agrees to look into the matter, especially as there is a connection to modern English writers. Tracing the woman’s path through her diaries and the novels of the author with whom she was associated, Kate is soon led into a tangle of intrigue, passion and the importance of the solitary life in the modern world….I had difficulty getting into this novel, the eighth in the Kate Fansler series, this time set around the mid-1980s. I’m not sure what put me off, but the story felt disconnected somehow, more a collection of anecdotal meetings and events than an integrated novel. The writing is as crisp and sharp as ever, however, and I will continue my quest to read the entire series; this one so far stands as my least favourite, unfortunately.½

Patrice Umphelby, a history professor and novelist, has killed herself by walking into a lake with stones in her pocket. Unfortunately this occurred on the campus of an East Coast women’s college, which is unhappy about the notoriety ithas caused, and Kate Fansler is recruited to look into this event with an eye toward restoring the school’s reputation. When Kate learns that Patrice was indeed planning to commit suicide, only not just *then*, she decides that something rather more sinister must have been going on…. As usual, this seventh novel in the Kate Fansler series is replete with quotations and pithy moments, especially with regard to the need for women’s colleges, the pros and cons of womens’ studies programs, and the overarching theme of death and perceptions about death. I especially enjoyed the discussions of womens’ studies because so many of the rants against the idea ring so hollow (and did when this book was written in the early 1980s). Kate herself is always engaging and although I’m getting tired of the frequent drinking/smoking scenarios, at least the author acknowledges those by making wry comments about how old-fashioned Kate’s habits are! Quite fun overall; recommended.

When Harvard University reluctantly hires a full-time female professor in the English Department, there are many objections to the move in spite of the unquestioned qualifications of the first appointee, Janet Mandelbaum. So nobody is terribly surprised when she is found drunk and passed out in the ladies’ bathroom; however, when she is subsequently found dead in the mens’ bathroom, it becomes up to Kate Fansler, visiting professor at the Radcliffe Institute, to discover what happened. Throw in a handful of misogynists, another handful of radical feminists and the victim’s ex-husband, and well, there’s no end of suspects to contemplate….This is the sixth novel in the Kate Fansler series, which I’ve been enjoying as I come across them. This one was published about five years after the fifth book and is set in 1979; I myself was in university in 1980 (though not, of course, at Harvard) and so find it difficult to believe that at that time, any university would be as against female professors as is exhibited here. However, once past that puzzle, the story itself is quite entertaining and Kate, as ever, is able to get to the heart of the matter with great insight and wit. Unfortunately, these books are not that easy to find and I don’t know when I might obtain a copy of the next book; in the meantime, this one was quite enjoyable on its own. Recommended.½

Professor Kate Fansler is flattered and curious when her friend, the urbane and extremely snobbish Max Reston (“younger son of a younger son of a duke”) asks her to accompany him to the home of a recently deceased literary author, whose literary executor he has become; it turns out that neighours have sighted intruders at the cottage and Max is afraid to go by himself. When they reach the Maine house by the sea, Kate is determined to climb the rocks down to the beach, but her determination is shattered when she comes across a corpse in a tidepool; worse, it turns out to be the body of a student she knew, who was working on a doctorate somewhat related to the deceased author. In spite of herself, Kate is drawn to further inquiries to resolve the matter, even if she must travel to Oxford to do so…. This is, I think, the fifth novel in the Kate Fansler series, and as ever it gleams with tidbits about the academic life, along with feminism in the 1970s - and, in this case, we also get a look into prep-school level basketball! I enjoyed this outing, although the actual mystery didn’t require much work to figure out; as a slice of life in that time period, it’s a very compelling and enjoyable read. Recommended!

Professor Kate Fansler reluctantly agrees to take on a seminar at the Theban, the private girls’ school she had attended some 20 years earlier, although she has very little faith in her ability to “relate” to adolescent girls in 1970 New York City. When the mother of one of her seminar students is found dead at the school, the day after the brother of that same student was found unconscious there, naturally Kate’s curiosity is piqued - but she may have to dig deeper into familial relationships than she is comfortable doing…. I must admit that I had to look up Sophocles’ play “Antigone” before starting this book; I can retell Celtic myths for days, even some Greek, but Greek tragedies never figured too much in my schooling; that said, one doesn’t really need to know the play to get this novel as enough of it is brought into the story for context. The Vietnam War is a recurring theme in this novel, along with caustic mentions of the then-current Vice President (Agnew) who is never mentioned by name; to many modern readers these will seem as interjections of history unless, like me, they are old enough to remember those entities first-hand. I am enjoying this series, although sometimes flabbergasted by how much social attitudes and societal norms have changed since the books were written; I only wish I was as erudite as the author supposes her readers to be! Recommended.½

There has been a lot of upheaval at the College in recent months, and Kate Fansler is reluctantly drawn into various groups trying to effect change in the light of student revolts. One change in particular is to bring University College, a former extension program now including degree courses, into the fold of the College as a whole. A reasonable idea, Kate thinks, but there are powerful people at the College who oppose it vehemently. When one of those people dies unexpectedly as a result of an allergic reaction, Kate and assistant district attorney Reed Amhearst, her fiance, try to determine whether that death was purely an accident or if there is a more sinister explanation…. This is the third Kate Fansler novel, published in 1970 and set against the backdrop of student activism in that era. I felt that the whole “student revolution” theme was treated very dismissively, although the students themselves were very earnest about their demands in the real world, but I suppose long-serving academics might well have felt that way. In terms of the infighting and politics of the school itself, all rings especially true in this story, at least with respect to what I know about such situations (having worked in an academic setting myself and also knowing numerous people more deeply ensconced in that environment). All that said, though, somehow Kate came across as rather more waspish in this novel as compared to the earlier ones, and I found myself not liking her very much for most of the book. Not enough to prevent me from reading further into the series, but I’m a little more impatient with her at the moment; therefore, mildly recommended.

Professor Kate Fansler takes over a house in the countryside to sort through the correspondence between a deceased publisher and the luminaries he published, including James Joyce. She also reluctantly takes on her nephew, a troubled young boy who, it is hoped, will thrive with the undivided attention of a tutor. She also has an assistant in her literary work, and a visitor in the shape of assistant district attorney Reed Amhearst, along with two invited guests, both female professors at the end and the beginning of their careers respectively. When a local woman who is notorious for her unpleasant personality dies, accidentally shot to death by the tutor using a gun that had never previously held live bullets, Kate feels that she must find out who loaded the gun in order to save her household from ignominy at the very least….This is the second Kate Fansler mystery, published in 1967, and it’s quite a delight, especially in terms of the language. The characters spend pages chatting about obscure stories by James Joyce, the realm of academia and other esoteric matters. At the same time, the difference in attitudes between the 1960s and the 2020s is striking: for example, after Reed has proposed to Kate (and been turned down), and they have an argument about how best to deal with the legal situation, he notes that they should marry because “if it’s not exactly legal to beat your wife, it’s less illegal than to beat a woman to whom you’re not related in any way.” This is presented as banter, but it is also an example of how such treatment of women was condoned in the United States in 1967. Chilling. Such commentary on my part aside, however, this is quite a fun read; recommended, keeping in mind that the world was indeed a different country then.

Professor Kate Fansler spends her days teaching English literature to graduate students and researching 19th Century authors, but that does not mean she isn’t sociable and au courant with contemporary life. When one of her students asks her for a referral to a psychoanalyst, she sends the young woman to her friend and ex-lover Emmanuel Bauer, but when seven weeks later the woman is found dead on Dr. Bauer’s therapy couch, Kate knows she must investigate, for the police are surely ready to assume that the most obvious suspect is the killer…. The Kate Fansler books were written between the 1960s and early 2000s, by an author who herself was a university professor and feminist scholar (real name Carolyn Heilbrun), but I had never come across them until a friend recently recommended this series to me. I liked the intellectual content of this book, the first in the series, in that the author assumes a certain level of education in her readers, but at the same time this is by no means a dry academic tome, instead it sparkles with wit and humour. I don’t know if the secondary characters here (Dr. Bauer and his wife, and Reed Amhearst, Assistant District Attorney) will be present in future books, but I hope so as I like them all and they work well together in the sleuthing business; recommended!

This book seemed much more dated than it did the first time I read it, shortly after its publication, but the fundamental message remains relevant despite the fact that today's women have far more socially legitimate options than those who provide Heilbrun's examples.

The main reason for the ongoing relevance is the fact that even exceptional women of times past often told their own stories in ways that would conform to the socially acceptable standards of their time rather than tell the blunt truth about what they did. Among other things, Heilbrun exposes the gap between the active, assertive steps women such as Florence Nightengale, Golda Meir and Jane Addams took to advance their goals, as revealed in their personal letters and journals, and the soft-sell story they told in their autobiographies of how their vocations and their achievements somehow found them. They have re-cast themselves as passive rather than the active champions of their own lives. Biographers, female as well as male, have also struggled to reconcile the truth of women's extordinary lives with their own sense of convention, often writing judgements into their histories.

The other message, the one which I have carried with me since my first reading, is that we can only envision futures for ourselves that we have stories to describe. The more honest stories which are told by and about real women and their struggles and achievements, the more possibilities will open up for those who read them.

Heilbrun, an English professor, is also mystery writer Amanda Cross. Her story of how she decided to write those books, and why she chose to do so under a pseudonym, adds a valuable personal element to the book.

Kate turns out to be bastard when her real father appears