Krishna
An assistant director of a property company Madam de Beumont, comes to inspect the apartment that was taken into her possession and assess the upgrades needed to bring it back to a marketable condition.
In her house is a grand piano and a jigsaw puzzle. (In the intro they talk about jigsaw puzzles, how a hand crafted thing is superior to the machine cut junk available these days). Fernand de Beumont is tuning the piano. His father(?) was an archeologist investigating the location of the Arab capital in Andalusia when Spain was conquered by Arabs – the city is called Lebtit and its current location is disputed. After several radical pronouncements which were appreciated by the archeologists, he suddenly committed suicide.
Each room has a story. In another room, there is a cult whose initiation rites are quite painful. Sittin on their haunches with a sharp metal dice under their feet (which they cannot touch), they should solve a task and stay like that for six hours.
Some rooms have very little to tell. Some have vignettes. Like the grandchildren of the archaeologist’s wife being orphaned in a murder and her bringing them back to this building and how the younger one is clever and is studying to get to a French ivy leage school (Ecole something or the other)
Not much to tell – there is a story about putting together a puzzle so that the piece becomes a seamless picture and the helper, an experimenter being expelled after several explosions in his room. There is one about a girl who is an au pair to a rich man but who has pictures of herself in her college plays in her room.
There is a butler who travelled the world with his master; all disjointed little pieces, right up to the very end.
There is a painful description of all the products in a shop founded by an old woman. There is a story about all the people the oldest resident in the building meets on the stairs occasionally.
There is a long story of the collector of unique things being obsessed with obtaining the goblet that was used to catch the blood of Christ when he was crucified. He falls victim to an elaborately executed swindle.
You have a woman who loves simple life but made her company famous and so adopted (sometimes) a glamorous persona. There are tedious descriptions of books or pictures in a room with no point to it at all.
The crossword maker spent something like 10 years and a fortune to learn water colour painting, even though at the start he had no talent for it. He is the same person who went on that world tour with his butler. Yawn…
More and more of the same till the end. The pity is that many of the pieces are well narrated and hold your interest – except when he takes inventory of stuff in the room. Having no aim for that skillful description seems to me such a waste of talent.
If, like me, you are looking for coherent pieces, you will only give it a 1/10 at most.
– – Krishna (March 2020)