The Final Solution: A Story Of Detection

Rating:
Summary: SUPERB READING OF IMAGINATIVE STORY
Review:

Acclaimed actor Michael York hardly needs an introduction, as he's well remembered for his fine film performances in "Romeo and Juliet,' "Cabaret" and "Wide Sargasso Sea." With his distinctive slight British accent and resonant voice he brings us a superb reading of Michael Chabon's take on an adventure of Sherlock Holmes (the name is never mentioned, but it's a good guess when the hero is a pipe smoking, bee keeping former detective).

Chabon supposes the famous sleuth is now 89 years of age and living in respected privacy in Sussex where he concentrates on his beloved hobby of beekeeping. It is world War II. The detective's peaceful existence is interrupted when a rather mysterious nine-year-old boy, Linus Steinman, appears. The boy is remarkable for several reasons, the most obvious ones are that he's quite bright and mute. Linus's companion is a chatty African gray parrot - a German speaking parrot at that.

Crackers don't seem to be on this bird's mind as he is insistent upon repeating a string of numbers. One could surmise endlessly on the meaning of these numbers - codes, bank account, identifications? Nonetheless, when someone steals the parrot local police call upon Holmes for assistance.

The master detective can't resist a crack at one more puzzling case. Listen - you'll thoroughly enjoy.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing failure
Review: "A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks." He attracts the attention of an elderly man who has been reading The British Bee Journal. Yes, we are on the Sussex Downs, and Sherlock Holmes meets a mute 9-year-old who has escaped from Nazi Germany, and his African grey parrot, who spouts strings of German numbers.

It's an intriguing idea, but I'm afraid that as a Holmes pastiche, it doesn't work very well. It's very wrong that I should figure something out before Holmes does!

However, Chabon's writing is glorious, as usual. His description of Holmes' decrepitude and fear of the consequences of aging is nicely done. Read it for the writing, not the story.

Rating:
Summary: Holmes' fans beware
Review: "The Final Solution" is a self-indulgent and not very intelligent piece of writing. The title is blatantly misleading: this is not a story of detection. Worse, the Sherlock Holmes character is simply not believable. None of this will matter to those who are admirers of Chabon's writing style (I am not one of them), but those who enjoyed (for instance) Nicholas Meyer's "Seven Per-Cent Solution" will be sorely disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Arrogance of purpose barely supported by a meaningless plot
Review: As a huge fan of Holmes and Conan Doyle I was excited to read this book. Three sorry hours later I'm left with an awful taste in my mouth.

In the first place, Chabon and his Final Solution are caked in arrogance and pompous pretense. From the near masturbatory descriptives that do nothing to enrich the story, to the tangent-filled sentences stuffed to overflowing with endless commas and semicolons, Chabon proves himself a writer more in love with his own vocabulary and reputation than with connecting to the reader. Even after scraping away the cakey layers of New Fiction dalliance, I found the plot itself unworthy of the Holmes legacy. Everything from the backstory to the numerous characters to the big solution itself is over-described and under-explained.

You can barely call this story a mystery, but if not that, then what is it? The characters are cardboard placeholders for real people, so it's not a human drama. There is no action. There is no humor. Perhaps the most fitting description for the book is a handbook for potential beekeepers, confused about how to harvest honey, which Chabon then padded to 131 pages by surrounding it in garbage.

The most egregious offense of Michael Chabon's is his arrogant presumption that somehow he is capable of writing the final Sherlock Holmes story. Even the title speaks of this pathetic pomposity. Perhaps no one told him that Arthur Conan Doyle DID finish Holmes, even finish him off. Twice! Maybe Chabon never read Holmes at all - otherwise he might've have been capable of writing a competent caper.

As it stands, the worst book I've read in 2004, and a sad blight on a great legacy. The recent New Yorker article on the mysterious death of a Doyle biographer was more powerful, engaging, and fascinating than this by a measure of 20. If you want a truly modern take on the influence of Holmes, read A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. Or wait for Kafka on the Shore.

Rating:
Summary: exquisitely compact and realized
Review: Exquisite is the best word I can come up with to describe The Final Solution, in the sense of something whose reward is so much larger than its size- a gem, or one of those delicate hors d'oeuvres whose taste lingers so finely in your mouth you don't want to eat or drink for a while.
It might be best to describe what The Final Solution is not. It isn't "Sherlockian" in the sense of an attempt to write another Conan Doyle story. It isn't a mystery in the sense that solving the "crime" is the focus of the story. Anyone looking for those will probably be disappointed.
It is, however, a beautifully written, often melancholy or elegiac work, with a love of character and language and atmosphere.
The story takes place in 1944. Holmes is a retired 89-year-old beekeeper, the war still drags on in horrific fashion, Hitler's greatest crimes are becoming known. In the midst of Holmes' solitary life drops a mute nine-year-old Jewish boy and his numbers-spouting parrot, both refugees from Germany. When a local man is killed and the parrot taken, Holmes is asked by the local police to assist. He does, but not for possibly great matters involved (the parrot's recitations might be codes, might be bank numbers, etc.) but to reunite the boy and his sole friend. Along the way we see Holmes' fabled mind at work, but also see the slow rebellion of his aging body. We begin to wonder too, with Holmes, if in this world of war and genocide if there remains a place for such order and reason as he symbolizes, if lines can still be traced through application of cause and effect, reason and sense.
The book is just over a hundred pages long, so Chabon doesn't delve heavily into such things for pages and pages, but it is enough to cast a sort of sepia, sad light over the work as a whole. The language is beautiful throughout, and the characterization of Holmes sharply poignant and loving. It is a quick read in its brevity and relative simplicity of plot, but the tone and atmosphere slow you down a bit (in a good way) and the language and characterization make you want to linger even more. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Two Hours Well Spent
Review: First published in the Paris Review in 2003, this charming and wistful little novella is Chabon's own humble contribution to the vast quantity of Sherlock Holmes pastiche that continues to be published each year. While it bears the trappings of a whodunit, the story is rather is sneakily constructed to be a meditation both on aging and the passing of an age. Set in the South Downs of Sussex in mid-1944, we meet Linus, a mute 9-year-old Jewish refugee. He's been taken in by the local vicar and his wife, who also have several other boarders, including Linus's voluble African gray parrot. And while Linus is silent, the parrot has a propensity for rattling off series of numbers in German. One evening the parrot disappears and one of the boarders is killed, and the local plods drag the vicar's no-good son off to the jail.

However, it just so happens that an 89-year-old beekeeper of some repute lives in the environs. Somewhat overwhelmed by the murder and missing parrot, the constabulary ask "the old man" (Sherlock Holmes) for his assistance. Chabon's portrait of the famous detective as a crotchety and yet sharp old man is entirely faithful to the canon and handled with kid gloves. He uses the aging of the old man as a vehicle to explore the notion for all of us. The period manners and speech are very nicely rendered, as Holmes unravels his last mystery. While the murder is the ostensible catalyst, the true mystery is just what the parrot's number sequences are. Nazi codes? Swiss bank accounts? Are there German agents afoot, eager to retrieve--or kill--zee parrot? Of course, the reader has a pretty good idea of what the numbers are, and that's how the book is a chilling reminder of the ending of innocence. Don't expect any truly deep thoughts or a wildly complex mystery, do expect Chabon's usual masterly writing (a chapter written from the parrot's point of view is particularly wonderful) and two hours well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Much to esteem, and little to regret, about this novella
Review: It's true that you can't tell a book by its cover, but you can tell one thing about Michael Chabon's new novella just by looking at it. It's thin. This is not to say that THE FINAL SOLUTION isn't brilliant, or welcome. It's both. But it's very thin, in more ways than one.

By now, if you've been following Chabon's brilliant career with any degree of care, you're familiar with the central conceit of THE FINAL SOLUTION, which is that the mystery of an African gray parrot with an ability to recite mysterious chains of German numbers rouses the one and only Sherlock Holmes out of his aged decrepitude and his uncomfortable retirement as a solitary beekeeper in Sussex.

THE FINAL SOLUTION has something of the air of a tribute about it -- to Holmes, Watson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his own bad self. But it is a tribute that is inclusive. It is not necessary to have any recent experience with the Canon (although why wouldn't you?) to enjoy Chabon's work, which is so intricately written and intensely pleasurable that it can be enjoyed by Baker Street Irregulars and novices alike. (Perhaps even more so by novices, who won't be so quick to pull the work to pieces.)

Just as Holmes --- even at a greatly advanced and frail age --- is a master detective, so Chabon, even in an exceedingly small dose, is a master of prose. Even when told from the perspective of the parrot THE FINAL SOLUTION is somber, heavy with regret, disappointment and tragedy, but it blazes with awareness and a comprehensive sympathy that entwines throughout the work.

However, the construction of the book tends towards the flimsy. The mechanisms of the plot are barely enough to confound Holmes for a brief time. (Holmes is never referred to by name; Chabon deferentially refers to him as "the old man" or, less charitably, "the mad old beekeeper.") It's not enough to fool the astute reader, who --- with a modern understanding of learning disabilities --- will doubtless reach the necessary conclusion far earlier.

But still, even given this one obvious drawback (which, to be fair, doesn't make this tale all that different from Watson's narratives), there is still much to praise about THE FINAL SOLUTION, which manages to make even its unfortunate title work. The description of an aged, almost forgotten Holmes is pitch-perfect. And the illustrations are first-rate. There is much to esteem, and little to regret, about THE FINAL SOLUTION, except that it is thin --- thinner than it ought to be.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds

Rating:
Summary: Who was that "old man"?
Review: Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon displays his impressive vocabulary in the glibly verbiaged detective yarn, "The Final Solution". The books only disappointment was it's brevity.

In 1944 a young mute boy with an African grey parrot perched on his shoulder encounters a gnarled old man while walking along railroad tracks in Sussex, England. We soon learn that the "old man", a 89 year old beekeeper is none other than the retired super sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

The boy, Linus Steinman has escaped Germany and is staying in the boarding house run by the local vicar and his wife the Panickers. The multi lingual and verbose parrot, Bruno keeps on repeating a series of numbers in German. Could these numbers represent a secret code or numbers to a Swiss bank account?

Within short order a suspicious boarder, Mr. Shane, a milking equipment salesman is found dead outside the boarding house with his skull fractured. The parrot Bruno is missing.

Holmes is recruited by the local constable, Inspector Bellows, a grandson of a former colleague to aid in the investigation, endeavoring to solve his final case.

Rating:
Summary: The Old Man...
Review: The Final Solution finds Sherlock Holmes (never named, but always referred to as "the old man") an 89-year-old recluse who lives in the country and cares for nothing anymore except bee-keeping. Then, one day, a young boy with a parrot on his shoulder strolls into his life.

This is a very modest story: the safety of the free world does not rest on the outcome. It does not rely on previous Sherlock Holmes literature: Dr. Watson and Lestrade are not here; we do not find out what happened to the old man since his retirement. Chabon's style is so distinctive, we always are aware that we are reading him and not Arthur Conan Doyle; but, as Chabon is one of my favourite writers, that is not a bad thing. However, he is true to the character: I am sure that he must have read all of the real Holmes stories and gives us valuable insight into his mind at the end of his life. This is an entertaining read and would interest any fan of Sherlock Holmes or Michael Chabon.


Rating:
Summary: A worthwhile read
Review: This is a short story, enjoyable to read. There's a lot of carping over various shortcomings, which have some validity. However, I thought it was generally well written (with some occasional overindulgence in purple prose) and the story moved along well. The numbers the parrot recites are never solved - but what numbers would a little Jewish boy escaped from a concentration camp know and repeat often so that a parrot would remember? My guess is the numbers tattoo'd on his arm. We never learn, but it would be nice to hear from Chabon.