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Transcript

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast, where we talk about mysteries in all of their forms from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies. I’m mystery author Sara Rosett and this is season one, episode five. And it’s all about Enola Holmes and the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer. It’s book one of six in a completed series which is set in 1888. It’s a spinoff in the Sherlock Holmes world. And it was published, it’s trending more towards the YA side on a continuum of the middle grade into YA. I think it’s of sort of straddles both subgenres, but I think it’s more, more YA than middle grade, mostly because of the themes.

There’s some very serious themes in it and it has a really unflinching look at the gritty life of London’s poor; it’s very realistic. But it’s a shorter novel and the protagonist is 14. So, you know, kids usually tend to read up. Not exactly sure what the marketing strategy was on this, but I know that I enjoyed it. It’s a book that adults could read and enjoy very well because there’s the themes and the characters are interesting and the writing is really well done.

We’ll get more into the themes later.

Book Blurb

Here’s the blurb: “When Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of detective Sherlock Holmes, discovers her mother has disappeared—on her 14th birthday no less—she knows she alone can find her. Disguising herself as a grieving widow, Enola sets out to the heart of London to uncover her mother’s whereabouts—but not even the last name Holmes can prepare her for what awaits. Enola must escape murderous villains, free a young, kidnapped nobleman, and perhaps hardest of all, elude her shrewd older brother—all while collecting clues to her mother’s disappearance!”

The first line of this book is, “I would like very much to know why my mother named me Enola, which backwards spells alone.”

Themes and Tropes

We’re going to jump from that right into theme because it brings us directly to the main theme of the book and this whole series, which is Aloneness, Separation, Isolation. Enola is alone. And Enola will spend the majority of this book and the rest of the series searching to find out why she’s alone, why her mother left, and trying to navigate a possible connection between her and her older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft. So Springer did an excellent job of tying the theme into so many parts of this book. First, you have Enola’s name, which is alone, spelled backwards. Then you have the situation: her mother’s left her. And her brothers want to pack her off to boarding school and make her “presentable” so that she can take her place in society as a lady should, basically get married. And then she’s alone socially. She’s had an odd upbringing for that time. She has been alone most of the time. She didn’t spend time with other children that much. She has a dog who’s her companion, but she spent most of her time on their large estate doing whatever she wanted. Her mother let her, you know, run free and pursue the things that she was interested in. That’s a very unusual upbringing for a girl at that time period. And that would be something that would make her stand out and be very different from the other girls of her age. And then this is such a rich series. It’s amazing to me. It’s such a small short book in the series. Each book is very short, but they’re just packed with interesting themes and commentary on the time.

Of course, one of the themes is Independence. Her older brothers want to send Enola off to boarding school and make her, you know, presentable according to what would be considered presentable for a young woman at that time. And she doesn’t want to do that. So you have this struggle between her and her brothers.

Then there’s a theme of Compassion and Charity. You definitely see the dark sides of Victorian London. It’s very gritty and very dark. And Springer doesn’t dwell on these things for a long time, but she certainly mentions it. Enola is very aware of the people that are less fortunate than her. She’s not in a good place, but there are so many more people that are in just incredibly horrific situations. So she sees that and she does something. She tries to help the people she can.

Another theme in this book is the Separation of Spheres between men and women and the expectations and attitudes that comes through in her older brothers. In this book, they just see her sort of as a problem. She needs to be sent off to school, kind of corralled and tamed, basically, and put in this little box that society has decreed for women: that basically she’ll get married. And Enola is not at all interested in that. And a lot of that comes from her mom, who instilled in her this value of freedom and independence and the desire to be herself and not necessarily fit in to this mold that society has decreed for women in that time.

So there’s a lot of exploration of Women’s Rights, the Suffrage Movement, it’s all woven into the theme of the story. And one of the things that I loved about it was the women’s fashion is woven into the story as well. And that’s a pun: woven in. There’s just a lot about how the fashion limited women. It talks about the bustles and these hip expanders, or let’s see, I think they were called “hip enhancers” and “bust improvers.” I think was that was termed. So even if you didn’t have the right body type, you could have these certain undergarments that would give you this shape that was popular. Part of me when I was reading it, I was like, yes, things haven’t changed that much because there’s still a lot of pressure put on women to meet these societal ideals of what our body shape and body type should be like. But Nancy Springer has a lot of fun with this with some of these things, because throughout the story Enola, she co-ops these things. Things that would be used to put her into alignment with the rest of society, she uses them to hide things and store things so that she doesn’t have to carry luggage when she escapes. Because she determined she is not going to boarding school. She just uses women’s fashion to her own ends. And then, of course, when you’re talking about fashions of the Victorian era, you have to talk about corsets. And of course, there’s always people that carry any type of fashion trend too far. There were some, you know, dangers of corsets from people laced them too tightly. It had bad health effects on women, and so that’s mentioned. And Enola is aware of that, and that’s one of the main reasons she doesn’t want to go to boarding school. She doesn’t want to lose her freedom, but she doesn’t want to be controlled in this way. But again, by the end of the book, Enola is using a corset, but she has… She’s put it to use for herself. So I won’t tell you the details on that. I’ll let you figure that out yourself. It’s very interesting how these things Enola turns them on her head and makes them benefit her.

And then one other theme I wanted to touch on before we go on is this; it’s related to the separation of the spheres of men and women. The men’s lives and women’s lives were very separate during this time period, and women were very limited on what they could do. But one of the things that came from that is that women developed, I thought of it as a Secret Society. That they have their own language and their own ways of communicating that men just did not understand. Nancy Springer weaves this into the book and she’s got the language of flowers, the messages, the flowers could communicate. And women knew these things, and a lot of times men did not. In another book, because I’ve read the whole series, I just dove in and binged it in another book, she talks about the language of the fan. How you held the fan, and what you did with the fan. And if you tapped your cheek, it meant one thing; if you tap your brow, it meant another. So it’s very interesting to see this language develop, these different communication methods. Sherlock and Mycroft don’t understand it at all, and they just completely discount it, which Enola uses to her advantage.

OK, so moving on to tropes, this book has a lot of fun tropes in it. It’s got, of course, the Spunky Young Woman who was Enola. In my mind, I sort of thought of her as a 14 year old Amelia Peabody. If you read any of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series, she has the same tone that Enola has. Enola knows what she wants, and she’s pretty confident, and she’s going to try and get what she wants. She’s not going to let people push her down and push her around.

Another trope is Puzzles and Ciphers. So this book contains several ciphers that you can solve yourself if you want. I confess, I didn’t do that, I just waited for them to be revealed to me. But if you’re interested in that, there’s a glossary at the end.

And let’s see, another trope would be the Wicked Older Brothers. It reminded me a little bit of A Series of Unfortunate Events. That’s what it was: A Series of Unfortunate Events. Where you got this sort of evil presence that’s trying to control the protagonist of the story, though in this case, it’s Mycroft and Sherlock. And it’s.. as the series progresses, it’s more Mycroft than Sherlock. Enola and Sherlock sort of developed this alliance. And that’s an interesting progression to see. But they certainly function in the first book as the wicked older brothers who are out to make Enola go to boarding school, and it sets up her need to escape.

Another theme is Missing Persons. That’s even in the the blurb that her mother disappears, just walks out one day. It’s the launching point for the series that will drive Enola and her desire to find out what happened to her mom, and to find out why, you know, she left. And one of the interesting things is Enola finds a lot of clues within the clothes that her mother wore when she left and the clothes and the things she left behind. The fashion is again playing into the storyline.

Another trope are Disguises. Lots of Sherlock/Sherlockian tropes. Enola is very good at disguising herself. And I will read a little bit of her reasoning behind the disguises that she chooses, one of her disguises.

There’s also the trope of Being Incognito. She’s masquerading as something she’s not. And there’s a tension and a fun that comes with that. And she’s using her disguises and her incognito status to evade the greatest detective of all. Irony.

Story Behind the Story

All right. Let’s look at the story behind the story and some fun facts. Springer was a long time Sherlock fan. She said her mother had the complete works of Doyle. And she read and reread them. In an interview on a blog called Bookyurt. That’s Book-yurt. She said that his mom was based on her own mother, who was also watercolor artist. She says, “Enola’s mum is largely based on my mom, a professional artist who did indeed paint exquisite watercolor flowers.” In the same interview, she discusses Sherlock’s usual attitude toward women as, “hopelessly vapid, hysterical and illogical.” And she goes on to say, “I exploited with glee Sherlock’s complete ignorance of the feminine sphere of Victorian society.” So we’ve talked about that with the language of the flowers and the messages that they could convey and the fan and the fashion and all those things that Sherlock just completely misses.

Movie Adaptation

Now, there is an upcoming adaptation of this. It’s going to be on Netflix. And as I’m recording this, it’s not out yet. So I’m going to pause this. And then after I’ve watched it, I will come back and add my thoughts on adaptation.

OK, I am back after watching the movie, and I have some thoughts for you. First, I’ll say that I think that the movie did a great job of capturing the spirit of the book and of Enola and her mom, as well as Sherlock and Mycroft. The overall feeling of the movie I think is similar to the book. So if you enjoyed the book and the series, I think you’ll enjoy the Enola Holmes movie.

I was happy to see that they kept the ciphers that were so important in the book. They’ve transferred that to the movie in a very visual way, in a clever way to show how Enola solves these codes that she gets from her mother and how she sends her codes. I thought that was handled really well. And the thing about the language of the flowers and how the women are communicating without the men realizing it is included in the movie as well. I think they could have played a little bit more that Sherlock and Mycroft are just completely oblivious to what’s going on there. But they did include those details from the book, and I was happy to see that.

And then there’s also the mentions about the clothing and the Journal of Dress Reform. You know, things that are very critical in the book are also included in the movie. As far as the elements of fashion and the importance of fashion. They did make some changes. They aged her up to 16 and they added a romantic subplot. And it also gave Enola somebody to bounce ideas off of and talk to, which is a problem, in that she’s on her own quite a bit in the book. So I can see why in the movie they added this subplot so that she would have somebody to talk to and bounce her ideas off of more.

The other thing they did that was very unusual is that she speaks to the camera, so she breaks that wall between the actors and the audience. I think that’s really tricky to do. And a lot of times I’ve seen it done and it just doesn’t work at all. I think it worked in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It worked really well there. Enola has that same sort of irreverent kind of cheeky attitude that I think you need to pull it off like, yes, “I know I’m breaking this rule. I know you’re interested, though, so you’ll go with me while I do it.” So I thought that was very well done and very unusual. Sort of a risky thing to do. But I enjoyed that part of the movie.

And another change I didn’t really care for as much was that Enola has been trained in the martial arts and she knows jujitsu. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just wasn’t in the book. And it’s a trend that I’ve seen. You know, you’ve seen it in more and more Sherlock Holmes movies, having these fisticuffs and fight scenes. And for me, those are like car chase scenes. For me, I tend to check out; I’m not really interested in the fighting, in the hand-to-hand combat. But apparently, someone thinks that moviegoers like that, so they keep including that in these more cerebral type mysteries. So it’s interesting that a trend is going on. I’m not sure why they feel they need to do that.

And let’s see, they also filled in this story in many places. Enola actually goes to boarding school. So we see how awful it really is. And I think that was a good choice because you can visualize it and see why she wouldn’t want to go there, why she would rebel. And in the book, it’s all described. You know why. But in the movie, I can see why you would need to see that.

And in the movie, there’s also, I feel like a better motivation for her mother’s disappearance than in the books. Unlike the books, you don’t get the resolution on “what happened to my mom. Where did she go” until the end of the book series. And you get a resolution on that in the movie versus being more episodic and pulling you through to book six. If this had been a television series or like a short one season series, I could see how they might have waited.

But because it was a movie, it makes sense to have that resolution at the end of the movie. At least enough of a resolution that you’re satisfied as a viewer. They have the possibility of continuing this cinematic version of the Enola Holmes book. They’re set up well enough that they could do that. So I hope that they do, because I would certainly watch another Enola Holmes movie.

Quotes

We need a quote to end with now. And I’m going to read you a section of the book where you get Enola’s point of view on how she decides which disguises to use and sort of her thought processes. So this is right when she’s setting off on her own in escaping going to boarding school. “By tomorrow, I imagined my brother, the great detective Sherlock Holmes, would be attempting to locate a missing sister as well as a missing mother. He would expect me to flee from him. Therefore, I would not. I would flee towards him. He lived in London. So did Mycroft. On that account, and also because it was the world’s largest and most dangerous city, it was the last place on Earth either of them would expect me to venture. Therefore, I would go there. They would expect me to disguise myself as a boy. Very likely they had heard about my knickerbockers. And anyway, in Shakespeare, in other works of fiction, runaway girls always disguised themselves as boys. Therefore, I would not. I would disguise myself as the last thing my brothers would think I could. Having met me as a plain beanpole of a child in a frock that barely covered my knees, I would disguise myself as a grown woman. And then I would set out about finding my mother.”

I think that quote gives you an excellent example of Enola, the way she thinks. She’s very logical, but there is also a sense of fun about her as well. Even though she’s in this situation that, you know, is heart wrenching–her mother has left her, and her brothers just want to pack her off to boarding school–but she’s not going to buckle under all this pressure, and, you know, society’s pressures and the expectations of her brothers. She’s going to do what she wants, and she’s going to set about it in a logical, well-thought-out way. And she’s going to take care of what needs to be taken care of. She’s going to find her mother. And there’s that sense of fun in it as well. She’s going to do the opposite of what they expect, and she’s going to outsmart her brothers.

What are your thoughts on Sherlock Holmes spinoffs? Do you have any favorites? And have you seen the new movie? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I hope this podcast has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helped you discover a new author to try. If you enjoyed it, I hope you’ll tell a fellow mystery reader. Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you next time.

Links:

Nancy Springer’s website