Books and Cooks Ithaca -- June 2000

The Daughter of Time

Our rating: 3 cups of tea!

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Discussion date: June 24, 2000

Discussion place: Picnic area, Stewart Park

Menu: Grill-able foods

Amazon.com
Josephine Tey is often referred to as the mystery writer for people who don't like mysteries. Her skills at character development and mood setting, and her tendency to focus on themes not usually touched upon by mystery writers, have earned her a vast and appreciative audience. In Daughter of Time, Tey focuses on the legend of Richard III, the evil hunchback of British history accused of murdering his young nephews. While at a London hospital recuperating from a fall, Inspector Alan Grant becomes fascinated by a portrait of King Richard. A student of human faces, Grant cannot believe that the man in the picture would kill his own nephews. With an American researcher's help, Grant delves into his country's history to discover just what kind of man Richard Plantagenet was and who really killed the little princes.

From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Vickie Sears
Since its publication in 1951, Josephine Tey's insightful mystery, The Daughter of Time has become a major resource on the death of the nephews of Richard III. It opens with a bored Detective Alan Grant, stuck in his hospital bed with a wounded hip and broken leg. His actress-friend, Marta Hallard, notices he is not reading and brings him some portraits to occupy his mind. Alan Grant becomes transfixed with the face of Richard III, which "had that incommunicable, that indescribable look that childhood suffering leaves behind." Thus begins Grant's travel through time to solve a five-hundred-year-old mystery: did Richard III kill his two nephews and have them buried in the Tower of London in order to eliminate all possible contenders for the throne? Initially Grant drafts all his friends to help him research; finally he hires Mr. Carradine as a real research assistant. Real life history is related to the audience through the reading of the characters, especially the frustrated curmudgeon, Detective Grant. Due to the detective's confinement, there is far less of the fast-paced action one often associates with mysteries, but the dialogue and interplay between Grant and Carradine is crisp and wonderful, and the conclusion is fascinating.

The Books and Cooks The Daughter of Time Informal Reading Guide
(member-generated questions in no particular order)

• Are you perturbed by the fact that there isn't much hard scientific reasoning going on? I.e., "He doesn't look like an evil hunchback in his portrait".

• Does this book give a depressing view of historical research given that the same result was discovered once per century yet still the myth pervades?

• The detective pursued the mystery of Richard III because of something he saw in his face in the portrait. Is it more likely the artist captured Richard's true nature, or that the art was a piece of pro-Richard propaganda? And might the detective's ability to lump faces together as belonging to judges or criminals reflect a class distinction as much as a moral one?

• The "message" of the book seems to be that you see in people or events what you have been taught to see. Is the conclusion of Richard III's innocence also tainted by this? How convinced are you the truth has been found?

• Would you put this book in the mystery section of a bookstore? Why/why not?

• Would the book have read differently if the cover art had shown the actual picture that Grant had?

• Most if not all of the action took place in one room. Discuss this and its implications on the story, your perceptions, etc.

This Page Last Revised: November 21, 2000.