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 A Family Affair (1975) — Nero Wolfe's Final Case 

A Family Affair.
A worthy ending 75%  75%  [ 3 ]
An anticlimax 25%  25%  [ 1 ]
Total votes : 4

 A Family Affair (1975) — Nero Wolfe's Final Case 
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Joined: Wed, 4 Jul 2007, 16:45
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That's another reason why I tend to avoid that 'community' - the excessive hooha over spoilers. If you visit a forum mostly populated by longstanding fans of the books/programmes, and you come across a thread titled with the name of a particular novel or episode, isn't it more than likely that the outcome of the plot will be discussed at some point? How about using your own common sense and discretion, and reading/watching said instalment before joining in the conversation? Plus, the last of Stout's books is over thirty years old, and the 'twist' is pathetically contrived - it's like playing 'Guess Who?' with the supporting cast of an Agatha Christie story, and picking out the least likely suspect to 'throw' the reader.

Grumble over :wink:

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Wed, 20 Feb 2008, 11:52
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We'll just agree to disagree on that one, Adonis. In my instance, it took me over 15 years to find all the Nero Wolfe volumes (not because I was lackadaisical about the search)... So, I'd have to be ignoring quite a lot of online Wolfe-related discussions over the years, just to avoid possible spoilers... :wink:


Wed, 20 Feb 2008, 11:56
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That's the only possible protection, in most cases - I knew about Orrie long before I got to the final novel, and the anticipation lay in how Stout was going to pull it off, not in the revelation itself (needless to say, I was disappointed!) For me, the joy of the corpus is in the characters, not the mysteries, so I didn't have to retire to a cave until I had collected or read all the books - I read Amazon review pages, and visited forums, even though I knew that I might stumble across the odd clue ahead of time. I've never been one for guessing 'whodunnit', I just enjoy following the detective as they close in on the right person.

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Wed, 20 Feb 2008, 12:25
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To me, spoiler warnings are not about the mystery genre... I hate being told in advance about any book or film I'm only about to read or watch.

Yes, before I select a book to read or a film to watch, I read recommendations of them by various critics and fellow readers or viewers – but I hate to be told about any element of the plot. This is equally true of a romantic love novel – I don't want and need to be told about what's happening in the novel before I get to read it myself.

There are various reader temperaments, and yours, Adonis, is obviously different from mine, and that's perfectly fine. 8) I have a friend who decides about whether to read a novel by reading the last page of any novel as the very first thing! :lol: From my perspective, that's pure masochism and spoiling one's own reading pleasure, but not from the perspective of that friend. :)

Otherwise, we agree: I, too, find the identity of murderers in Wolfe stories to be of secondary importance. I believe that these stories are, primarily, superb comedies. Not in the sense of inciting cheap laughs from the audience, but in looking at human lives and our day-to-day travails from a humourous perspective. To be capable of consistently upholding this Goodwinesque perspective for over 40 years of writing the stories is an admirable feat on Rex Stout's part. This skill is prominently displayed also here in A Family Affair – more so than in many of the comparatively drab 1950s Wolfe stories, I'd say. 8)


Wed, 20 Feb 2008, 12:35
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Faterson wrote:
I have a friend who decides about whether to read a novel by reading the last page of any novel as the very first thing! :lol: From my perspective, that's pure masochism and spoiling one's own reading pleasure, but not from the perspective of that friend. :)

I never purposefully set out to glance at the last page ... or flick through the next chapters ... but I sometimes can't help it (I count it as a sign that I've read enough, for the time being!) Occasionally, it helps to spur me on, to read a juicy section of dialogue in context, but mostly I get the wrong idea, and end up wary of what is coming next. Still haven't learned my lesson, though! :wink:

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Otherwise, we agree: I, too, find the identity of murderers in Wolfe stories to be of secondary importance. I believe that these stories are, primarily, superb comedies. Not in the sense of inciting cheap laughs from the audience, but in looking at human lives and our day-to-day travails from a humourous perspective. To be capable of consistently upholding this Goodwinesque perspective for over 40 years of writing the stories is an admirable feat on Rex Stout's part. This skill is prominently displayed also here in A Family Affair – more so than in many of the comparatively drab 1950s Wolfe stories, I'd say. 8)

And this is where I suggest we agree to disagree! :P I think that Archie in particular is of a particular era, and although New York and the main characters not change overmuch in the later novels, he is more agreeable in the 1940s/1950s.

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Thu, 21 Feb 2008, 14:54
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AdonisGuilfoyle wrote:
And this is where I suggest we agree to disagree! :P I think that Archie in particular is of a particular era, and although New York and the main characters not change overmuch in the later novels, he is more agreeable in the 1940s/1950s.

I disagree we need to agree to disagree on this particular account. :lol: We're in agreement over what you're saying here: Archie does change and develop over the years. Just as you, I prefer the earlier Archie over the older, more sedate one. In fact, my favourite Archie is that of the 1930s, as I'm an afficionado of “hard-boiled fiction”, and Archie comes closest to resembling Hammett's Continental Op or Chandler's Phil Marlowe in the 1930s Wolfe stories.

What I meant previously was simply that Archie as the narrator has a humorous view of the world and human tribulations, and that Rex Stout is capable of upholding such a narrative position convincingly to the very last.

I think, Adonis, if you polled readers who have read A Family Affair but don't know anything about its author, and gave them a multiple-choice question about whether the writer of this novel was 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, or 88 years old at the time of writing, very few readers would have picked the correct 88 option.

That's what I meant: the Goodwinesque perspective is as refreshing, although in a slightly modified way, in A Family Affair (1975) and the other late Wolfe novels, as it was in Fer-de-Lance 41 years earlier. 8)


Thu, 21 Feb 2008, 23:30
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I'm suprised at you people. For years I've read people either belly ache about how this book was a bad ending or praise it as the perfect ending.

The obvious answer to this quandery is that it WASN'T the ending. The man died only a month after publication for God's sake. This is like leaving a waiter a bad tip because he got fired on the way to your table. He may have had a dozen more stories waiting if he had been spared.

If anything I see this last story as a misstep by a man who made very few in his lifetime.


Fri, 18 Apr 2008, 21:37
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MagnusMaxJames wrote:
I'm suprised at you people. For years I've read people either belly ache about how this book was a bad ending or praise it as the perfect ending.

Well, neither of the two extreme positions applies to me. I've always praised A Family Affair, yet without going overboard with the praise. I'd rate this novel a B- or C+, which in my rating system translates to an excellent book, but it's not one I'd hold to be essential in terms of the Corpus.


Sat, 19 Apr 2008, 1:01
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