March Book Club: Innocent Blood, by PD James
Hi book club ship mates. For the March book club, we are reading Innocent Blood, by PD James.
I am not sure what to say about it, because I can't find my copy of this book, though I know for certain I have it somewhere. But I can say I haven't yet read any PD James books and I've wanted to for a while, and I know this book is about a young woman called Philippa, who is adopted and goes in search of her birth parents. It's apparently more a psychological thriller than a detective novel, which is why it appeals to me. Anyway, I will either find my copy of it or get another copy, and read it and write some questions on 20th March.
Apologies for this being a couple of days late - I lost track of time and didn't realise it was March already. However, despite my lack of organisation, I am looking forward to reading this book and I hope people will join me in reading it.
I am not sure what to say about it, because I can't find my copy of this book, though I know for certain I have it somewhere. But I can say I haven't yet read any PD James books and I've wanted to for a while, and I know this book is about a young woman called Philippa, who is adopted and goes in search of her birth parents. It's apparently more a psychological thriller than a detective novel, which is why it appeals to me. Anyway, I will either find my copy of it or get another copy, and read it and write some questions on 20th March.
Apologies for this being a couple of days late - I lost track of time and didn't realise it was March already. However, despite my lack of organisation, I am looking forward to reading this book and I hope people will join me in reading it.
Comments
I think it's being used here to describe the inside skin of the lips, that you see when someone is talking. This character has reddish lips, but you see the pale underbleb when he talks. There is quite a bit of focus on his mouth.
I'm still reading the book and can't remember if I've read it before or not. I've just got to the bit where one of the characters doesn't like the idea of living somewhere like Kilburn. That made me laugh as that's where I grew up and I quite liked the place though my mum was never very keen and told everyone she lived in the much posher Maida Vale.
Yes, the descriptions of that character make him seem very unpleasant, almost animal-like with the focus on his mouth. I suppose it is all exaggerated from Philippa's perspective, as she doesn't want him there to begin with.
The perspectives of snobby characters can be quite funny, I find, especially Philippa with her naivity. I laughed out loud at the bit where she said she doesn't read crime novels except for Dostoevsky and Dickens - it felt like meta humour on PD James' part, to have created a character who wouldn't read her novels!
I suppose I like slow books in general, if they are character-oriented, but I'm actually finding this quite suspenseful. Perhaps this is partly an effect of it being an audiobook (read by Katie Scarfe - she's brilliant - does all the different voices and accents). The pace is dictated by the narrator, it's not like reading words on a page where you can slow down to process or speed up to find out sooner what will happen, and I can feel the suspense in my stomach. Maybe it's more emotional suspense - I feel very aware of Philippa's vulnerability and nervous on her behalf, and also just really curious about the lives of these people. I'm only on chapter 10 so far though, so my impressions may change.
For people who like reading reviews, I found a review from the NYT, written in 1980, the year the book was published (archived and therefore not requiring an NYT subscription).
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/29/specials/james-innocent.html
Looking forward to the discussion.
It makes me wonder how much of herself she put into the character of Philippa. Something I find interesting from reading various reviews is that people have very different reactions to this character - some see her as sympathetic, some see her as totally unlikeable, and one suggests she is a sociopath. It will be interesting when we discuss it to talk about our reactions to the different characters. It felt to me like James was deliberately showing different aspects of each character to continually unsettle our responses.
I now have the physical book from the library. I'm going to reread it in this form. I found it a very interesting novel.
I think we'll be in for a really interesting discussion this month.
1. Had you read this book, or any of PD James' books before? If you'd read this book, did anything new strike you on this reading? If you've read other books of hers, how did this compare? If you'd not read her before, did you find her similar to any other novelists you've read?
2. Reviewers seem to be quite divided in their reactions to Phillipa. How did you find yourself reacting to her? Did you sympathise with her, admire her, dislike her? Did your reactions change over the course of the novel?
3. What about the character of Scase? Some reviewers have said they found him more sympathetic than Philippa. How did you respond to him? How did you feel about what he planned to do? How did you feel about how things ended for him?
4. At one point, Philippa observes that she would have found it unbearable if her mother had had an annoying voice, and realises this would bother her more than knowing her mother had murdered a child. Did the fact of what Philippa's mother had done make it impossible for you to warm to her, and were there other, far smaller things about characters that bothered you equally or more? What sort of things made you like or dislike characters?
5. Some have said that the book is very slow. Did you find it so, and did this bother you? What parts of the novel most engaged you? Did you find it suspenseful, despite it not being a whodunnit?
6. Something that struck me is that James seemed to be deliberately showing a human, sympathetic side to all her characters, including murderers and paedophiles, and blurring any perceived line between good people and bad people. Did you get that impression? Were you able to feel some sympathy for all the characters, or were there characters you had no sympathy for at all?
7. Both Philippa's mother and Philippa express the view that the murdered child was somehow to blame for what happened, and there are speculations about how a different child wouldn't have let this happen. What did you make of this, as in why do you think this is an idea James put into the novel and returns to more than once?
8. There are quite a few references to God and religion. Did you feel James had religious or moral points she was making through the novel?
9. Did anything take you by surprise in the novel? Or was anything distasteful to you? Did anything particularly impress you? Did anything feel dull or unnecessary?
10. What did you think of the ending?
1. Had you read this book, or any of PD James' books before? If you'd read this book, did anything new strike you on this reading? If you've read other books of hers, how did this compare? If you'd not read her before, did you find her similar to any other novelists you've read?
I had not read this book before. I read Death at Pemberley, possibly as a previous book club selection, but being a big Austen fan I didn't like how the characters were portrayed in Jame's sequel. The unlikable traits of the main characters were probably the main similarities between the two books.
2. Reviewers seem to be quite divided in their reactions to Phillipa. How did you find yourself reacting to her? Did you sympathise with her, admire her, dislike her? Did your reactions change over the course of the novel?
With modern knowledge of how foster care and adoption can affect people and their relationships and full knowledge of at least some of the abuse she suffered in childhood, I felt sympathetic towards Philippa. I fear in real life she also would have been a victim of her biological father, something Mary Dutton would probably hide from her, and at the very least he didn't stop Mary's abuse.
Philippa may have been cold and uncaring to Hilda, but that may have stemmed from her abuse by her biological mother and she does acknowledge that Hilda was a caring mother to her, even if she couldn't see how much Hilda does care for her. Otherwise she seemed quite caring towards other characters, given all she had been through in life and that she was only eighteen years old.
I found it sickening that Maurice felt inappropriate attraction to her and was disgusted by him seducing her at the end of the book. Through modern eyes it is hard to see this event as anything but grooming, even if it was portrayed as consensual in the book. I really felt this event could have been left out altogether.
3. What about the character of Scase? Some reviewers have said they found him more sympathetic than Philippa. How did you respond to him? How did you feel about what he planned to do? How did you feel about how things ended for him?
Scase, despite spending much of the book plotting to murder Mary Dutton was probably the most sympathetic character, apart from Hilda and her dog. I was glad things turned out well for him in the end and that Philippa helped him evade the police. His character was interesting in that both himself, his childhood family, schoolmates and Philippa saw him as extremely ugly and looking like a murderer, but in reality it seemed he was just an average looking man who had no problem attracting two wives and the romantic interest of one of his colleagues.
Hawley Crippen also was really just an average looking man who seemed to only get his reputation for terrible ugliness because of the ugliness of his murders. https://www.alamy.com/hawley-harvey-crippen-image501361211.html
4. At one point, Philippa observes that she would have found it unbearable if her mother had had an annoying voice, and realises this would bother her more than knowing her mother had murdered a child. Did the fact of what Philippa's mother had done make it impossible for you to warm to her, and were there other, far smaller things about characters that bothered you equally or more? What sort of things made you like or dislike characters?
Mary Dutton's actions and her views of the victim and other women victims of childhood abuse made me unable to warm to her. She seemed kind and caring to Philippa once she was released from jail, but I did wonder how long it would last in the long run if she had lived. I didn't mourn her demise at the end of the book and thought she should have been in jail a lot longer given her other crimes against Philippa.
5. Some have said that the book is very slow. Did you find it so, and did this bother you? What parts of the novel most engaged you? Did you find it suspenseful, despite it not being a whodunnit?
I found the descriptions of settings and Scase's preparation for the murder too long and boring. It didn't help I was listening to an audio book, so couldn't just skim the slow parts.
7. Both Philippa's mother and Philippa express the view that the murdered child was somehow to blame for what happened, and there are speculations about how a different child wouldn't have let this happen. What did you make of this, as in why do you think this is an idea James put into the novel and returns to more than once?
That was the most terrible part of the book, but I'm not sure if James agreed with her characters' viewpoint. Unfortunately it wasn't an unusual view for the time that it was children's responsibility to avoid taking risks that might lead to being kidnapped and worse by a stranger. And the view that certain teenage girls bring abuse on themselves, while others are more innocent and deserving of justice is still current today.
In reality Mary Dutton had to kill Julie Scase to cover up the crime because she likely would tell and would be considered an innocent victim, unlike a girl from a poorer background who had already experienced abuse at home and had lots of boyfriends. A girl like that would likely be blamed and the husband would have got away with it.
I've read a few P.D. James but she isn't an author I particularly warm to. Her world view or at least my assumption of her world view given the tone of her books is very much at odds with mine. I too really disliked what she did with the characters from Pride and Prejudice in Death Comes to Pemberley.
2. Reviewers seem to be quite divided in their reactions to Phillipa. How did you find yourself reacting to her? Did you sympathise with her, admire her, dislike her? Did your reactions change over the course of the novel?
At the beginning I was sympathetic. Phillipa seemed to be absolutely sure she was doing the right thing in tracking down her mother when it was obvious from the social workers reactions it was maybe not a good idea. As it went on she began to annoy me more and more, specially that she seemed to side with Maurice in the putting down of Hilda. Her dramatic flounce at the end and the throwing of the jumper in the canal were the last straw of any sympathy I might have had.
3. What about the character of Scase? Some reviewers have said they found him more sympathetic than Philippa. How did you respond to him? How did you feel about what he planned to do? How did you feel about how things ended for him?
Scase's life seems to have been blighted not just by the death of his daughter but by his own convincement that he was ugly and an outsider. I was glad he didn't actually murder anyone as it wouldn't have helped him come to terms with the death of his daughter. I'm also glad he ended up with Violet one of the few characters I found totally sympathetic.
4. At one point, Philippa observes that she would have found it unbearable if her mother had had an annoying voice, and realises this would bother her more than knowing her mother had murdered a child. Did the fact of what Philippa's mother had done make it impossible for you to warm to her, and were there other, far smaller things about characters that bothered you equally or more? What sort of things made you like or dislike characters?
I actually quite liked Mary Dutton. Yes she had murdered a child, but it sounds like her own childhood was dire and she may well have been trying to protect Philippa by having her fostered even if she found her a difficult child to love. She was an intelligent woman who seemed in those few brief weeks in the flat seems to have been the mother that Philippa was craving. I hope in real life the authorities wouldn't have been so blasé about letting the two of them live together, at least not without a lot of counselling and both being very sure about each others pasts.
5. Some have said that the book is very slow. Did you find it so, and did this bother you? What parts of the novel most engaged you? Did you find it suspenseful, despite it not being a whodunnit?
I rather enjoyed the pace, which I think helped to rack up the tension. I was sure for most of the book that Scase was going to accidently kill Philippa which as much as she annoyed me I didn't want to happen
6. Something that struck me is that James seemed to be deliberately showing a human, sympathetic side to all her characters, including murderers and paedophiles, and blurring any perceived line between good people and bad people. Did you get that impression? Were you able to feel some sympathy for all the characters, or were there characters you had no sympathy for at all?
I think James is a bit of a snob, she seems to be able to forgive the foibles of those she thinks intelligent and upper class far more than others. I really wanted Hilda to leave Maurice, do a cookery course and become the next Prue Leith for instance. Getting a dog didn't really seem to cut it. Again she seems to have very little sympathy for Julie.
7. Both Philippa's mother and Philippa express the view that the murdered child was somehow to blame for what happened, and there are speculations about how a different child wouldn't have let this happen. What did you make of this, as in why do you think this is an idea James put into the novel and returns to more than once?
I think this view may well have been of its time. Keeping clear of certain men was certainly something that I was aware of as a child even if I wasn't sure quite why. It might also be Mary trying to excuse herself and her husband ('it wasn't really rape) and Philippa not wanting to really face what her mother had done rather than James' own views.
8. There are quite a few references to God and religion. Did you feel James had religious or moral points she was making through the novel?
I think she is trying to say that no one is beyond the mercy of God. It seems at the end Philippa has had some sort of conversion experience due to what has happened to her and Scase gets a happier ending than he was expecting. I'm sure there is more to say on this , but though I noted the references, I didn't really think deeply about it.
9. Did anything take you by surprise in the novel? Or was anything distasteful to you? Did anything particularly impress you? Did anything feel dull or unnecessary?
I grew up in this bit of North London so know a lot of the places well, for instance my school was right by the Edgeware Road fly-over. I lived in Kilburn as a child, and though I'd left four years before the date of this story, I could imagine the chip shop and the market that they go to.. The number 16 bus gets a mention too. I thought Philippa's snootiness about where she wanted to live rather funny, Kilburn was not suitable to her mind.
Reviewers seem to be quite divided in their reactions to Phillipa. How did you find yourself reacting to her? Did you sympathise with her, admire her, dislike her? Did your reactions change over the course of the novel?
A lot of my responses centre around Philippa: I certainly didn't find her likable or sympathetic. I also think she might be the least relatable main character in a book I've ever read -- almost nothing she did made any sense to me. At the very beginning, her desire to find out about her parents and even to meet her mother made sense to me - but then the fact that she would concoct this plan to move into a flat with this woman she has never known, who has just served a sentence for murdering a child to cover up a sexual assault ... this seemed like such dangerously irrational behavior it was hard to imagine any real person would ever do that.
I also disliked how cold and impersonal Philippa was with most people, especially her adoptive parents -- Hilda deserved better, though Maurice certainly didn't. I found it very hard to square the warmth and generosity she seems to feel toward Mary with the way she behaves to Hilda. It was also interesting to me that the thing that makes her turn against Mary is not the knowledge of Mary having murdered Julie, or Mary's very detailed confession of the crime and apparent lack of remorse, but the knowledge that she herself, Philippa, had been absued and abandoned by Mary. In other words, Philippa seemed quite unmoved by Mary's brutal crime against another girl, but when it turned out she hadn't been a good mother to Philippa, that was the last straw.
I also found the delayed revelation of that abuse and abandonment very unbelievable. If Philippa was so determined to understand her mother and her own past to the point of setting up this whole living arrangement with Mary, it absolutely strained my credibility that she would be so uncurious about her own childhood, where she was at the time of the murder, anything else connected with that. The fact that Mary doesn't mentioned Philippa/Rosie in her confessional letter, that she never talks to Philippa about her early years, are gaping holes in this new relationship they are developing and I found it very hard to believe Philippa would just let that lie.
If Philippa were a real person living today I suppose she'd be diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder which might explain her extreme emotional distance from everyone; in that light I guess it's good that she turns out as well as she has by the end of the book.
I was so livid about the revelation that Maurice had been seeing Philippa, his adopted daughter whom he met when she was EIGHT, as a sex object all along, that I barely had any horror left to spare for the casual revelation that he slept with her almost as soon as she was legally old enough and that Philippa doesn't see this as a bad thing or view it in any way as abusive or exploitive ... just kind of an inevitable rite of passage. You know, that normal passage into adulthood where you go to Italy and have sex with your adoptive father.
The narrative doesn't really frame Maurice's action as problematic either, which makes me dislike P.D. James a lot more. She doesn't seem to see him as anything like Martin Ducton, but I don't see a huge amount of difference between the two of them. (I agree strongly with the comments above about James's snobbishness). Obviously Philippa gets off easier than Julie Scase because she does get to go on and live her life, but I bet she had three failed marriages, spent the entire time from her 30s to her 60s in therapy, and had children who cut her out of their life once they were adults.
All this sounds like I hated the book but I just hated the author/narrator and most of the characters. It was fascinating to read.
I too couldn't stand the throw-away event "let's have sex with my adoptive father" bit--my son would add the Gen Z comment, "as you do." It felt like that. Like she was checking it off a list of "things I have to accomplish in my life." In the same way, Scase knifing Mary's neck felt like that. I mean, why bother? Why not have him realize she's dead and refrain? Why the added, gratuitous ugliness? There's enough ugliness in the story already...
I don't understand the under-use of the victim Julie. It's as if she doesn't exist to anybody, except Scase--and in his case, she's a motivator for his actions, but not much more. From a literary point of view, I would like to have seen her contrasted with Philippa. Heck, maybe she was and I was too blind to see it--the dead victim and the living one, who nevertheless comes off as dead so much of the time!
Yes, I observed the character of Julie wasn't brought to life in any interesting way in characters' recollections of her. She was portrayed as dull and insipid and weak. In a novel where we were being shown multiple perspectives on, and unexpected insights into, people's characters, I'd thought Scase's memories would show some interesting, likeable, strong side to her, but no.
I actually felt she was being compared with Philippa, in a way that made me cringe. Julie seemed to be portrayed as weak, boring, and conventional as a girl guide, screaming when someone attacked her. While Philippa was portrayed as strong, clever, independent, unique, a survivor, someone who took things into her own hands rather than screaming for help (though there is of course the background info that children screaming caused her mother to freak out and turn violent, so that would be a learnt behaviour).
I found interesting the scene where the cleaner verbally attacks her, when she is a little girl, and she responds by insulting her back, and saying nothing to her adoptive parents about it. And then at the end, the weird part where she casually mentions having had sex with Maurice - it's like she's accepted Maurice's pedophilia and made the choice to let it happen, rather than kick up a fuss. Obviously by now she's an adult, but still, very young, she's been groomed since childhood, and I felt it was being showcased as an alternative to Julie's reaction.
Yes, I liked George, though I can't imagine him being happy with Philippa!
I had a lot of sympathy for Hilda, especially her fear of blushing, as I get that, and I literally blush because of fear of blushing. I'd never seen this written about in any novel before. I wonder if it was something PD James experienced herself, because she wrote about it in a lot of detail.
I’ve read some of the Adam Dalgleish stories, and this one (which I hadn’t read before) is different in not being a classic murder mystery. However Dalgleish too is an intellectual and has an interest in religion, the books are well-written, and they have a compelling quality.
2. Reviewers seem to be quite divided in their reactions to Phillipa. How did you find yourself reacting to her? Did you sympathise with her, admire her, dislike her? Did your reactions change over the course of the novel?
Philippa is a complex character – she’s arrogant, highly intelligent yet naïve, very determined yet adaptable. She’s very young, and her desire to know her origins is understandable, but what she does discover, after the dreams about being the daughter of the lord of the manor, the library etc, is a huge shock. But she persists in meeting her mother (though she should not have been allowed to, IMHO) and does seem to really try to understand her. She wants her mother to be able to give her a past, an identity, information, at least that’s what Philippa tells Maurice – presumably at least in part because the country house fantasy has just come crashing down (though there is, we later learn an element of truth there). She and her mother do seem to bond, find that they have traits in common, especially artistic and literary interests. But right from the beginning Philippa sees this as a temporary interlude, a break before she goes to university; it just seems to be assumed that Mary will find something suitable to move on to come October. So she is using Mary. I found myself reacting to Philippa in different ways as I read; I could identify with her academic ambitions but can see why some find her pretentious, I could understand her desire to find her mother while thinking it unwise, I found her determination remarkable. But she’s a pretty hard women, and I don’t think she would be easy to know.
3. What about the character of Scase? Some reviewers have said they found him more sympathetic than Philippa. How did you respond to him? How did you feel about what he planned to do? How did you feel about how things ended for him?
Yes, in many ways he is a sympathetic character. His thirst for revenge is clear, but it’s also a debt he feels he has to the dead, both Julie and his wife. He’s determined too, and resourceful, and I was very glad he didn’t actually kill Mary. His romance with Violet is delightful.
6. Something that struck me is that James seemed to be deliberately showing a human, sympathetic side to all her characters, including murderers and paedophiles, and blurring any perceived line between good people and bad people. Did you get that impression? Were you able to feel some sympathy for all the characters, or were there characters you had no sympathy for at all?
Yes I think you’re right, and I did feel some sympathy for most of the characters – less so Maurice. I’ve recently read (for the first time) Donna Tartt’s The Secret History – and it raises all the same questions!
7. Both Philippa's mother and Philippa express the view that the murdered child was somehow to blame for what happened, and there are speculations about how a different child wouldn't have let this happen. What did you make of this, as in why do you think this is an idea James put into the novel and returns to more than once?
I found this difficult. Obviously it’s victim-blaming and unacceptable, but we do teach children to avoid obvious danger, and some are better at it, or just luckier, than others. I was interested that she was a Guide in uniform; I was a Guide in the 1960s and I seem to remember there were a couple of high profile murders of Guides in England in those years, which I guess James has picked up on. There were also some odd bits of advice /folklore around about the relative safety of girls in and out of uniform – in all seriousness I remember my class being told we were less likely to be raped if we had our school berets on!
8. There are quite a few references to God and religion. Did you feel James had religious or moral points she was making through the novel?
The Adam Dalgleish novels also have quite a bit of religion in them, but I’m not entirely clear what James is trying to say. Is Philippa’s interest in chapel at the end a form of redemption?
10. What did you think of the ending? Pretty satisfactory except for the one-night stand with Maurice which I found distasteful and unnecessary.
"Innocent Blood"
1 Had you read this book, or any of PD James' books before? If you'd read this book, did anything new strike you on this reading? If you've read other books of hers, how did this compare? If you'd not read her before, did you find her similar to any other novelists you've read?
I have read several other books by PD James, all of which were ‘detective’ crime stories, all of which had the key issues to find out who and why killed the (usually several) murders that successively slowly increase the number of victims. But always PD James always takes a long introduction to the key characters before the first murder. So I was not surprised before the first 20-25% without any actual death. But I was surprised that in this “thriller” that the build-up was > 75% of the story, and the actual death of the story comes out almost at the end (as distinct from the back-story of the child killed for which Mary has been in gaol).
Reviewers seem to be quite divided in their reactions to Phillipa. How did you find yourself reacting to her? Did you sympathise with her, admire her, dislike her? Did your reactions change over the course of the novel?
I can understand Philippa as a young adult asking what was her real background before she was adopted. Many young adults do silly things without inadequate learning of what they are likely would have found as a result. But Philippa, as someone about to go to Cambridge University, such behaviour seems to be unlikely, as they are supposedly chosen to be good thinkers.
What about the character of Scase? Some reviewers have said they found him more sympathetic than Philippa. How did you respond to him? How did you feel about what he planned to do? How did you feel about how things ended for him?
I didn’t find Scase ‘ sympathetic’, but I can understand that some persons do feel themselves dominated against someone who has done a serious damage to them. Unable to never forget who did them wrong is often widespread; although it’s a Christian lesson to forgive, many ‘good’ people still don’t manage it. But it is generally rare (fortunately for the rest of society) ,even for people not forgiving to often systematically set out to murder who did it wrong.
Some have said that the book is very slow. Did you find it so, and did this bother you? What parts of the novel most engaged you? Did you find it suspenseful, despite it not being a whodunnit?
It was me who originally made the comment that the book is “slow”. Indeed there was at least one other ShIpmate who would have given it away at half way unless a ”book of the month”, though her dislike was for a different reason.
Did anything take you by surprise in the novel? Or was anything distasteful to you? Did anything particularly impress you? Did anything feel dull or unnecessary?
I was surprised that Pippa fell into bed with his adopted father ‘Palfrey. Less surprising that he was found in bed by one of his students, as he seems throughout to be a ‘sleaze’. Perhaps the author is taking a bit of a dig at some academics, who were all to ‘up themselves’. His wife Hilda seems to have unfortunately been despised by him, and she should never have married him.
What did you think of the ending?
It is only that much ‘action’ gets into the story of about the last 20%. It made me feel like a rushed up third act of a theatre play.