Dear mother, I'm fine ...

Dear Mother, I'm fine ... (Original American title: Beast in View ) is a crime novel by the Canadian-American author Margaret Millar , which was published in 1955 by Random House in the United States . The following year the novel won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the category Bester Novel - Best Novel . In 1967 the book was first published in a translation by Elizabeth Gilbert in German-speaking countries by Diogenes Verlag .

description

general structure

The novel Dear Mother, I'm fine ... is entirely fictional. The German edition has 240 pages and is divided into 16 numbered chapters that do not have their own title. The entire book is reproduced from the position of a narrator in the past tense, who has both insight into the concrete plot as well as into the thoughts and memories of the people. The story takes place in Los Angeles , with the locations changing. However, these are largely existing urban districts, streets and buildings. The main strand of the plot accompanies the protagonist Helen Clarvoe and Mr. Blackshear, whom she has commissioned to clear up her problems. Other shorter strands begin or end with other people, but are closely interwoven with the main strand. At the same time, Evelyn Merrick's activities are repeatedly described.

action

The novel begins with a phone call that Helen Clarvoe takes in her hotel room. The caller is an old friend named Evelyn Merrick, but whom she cannot remember and whom she verbally attacks. Miss Clarvoe had withdrawn completely into the hotel after the death of her father, and she fell out with her mother and brother Douglas. After the phone call, she asks the operator at the hotel to give her the number of the caller, but she cannot find a call. She calls Mr. Blackshear, her father's asset manager, and asks him to help her find Mrs. Merrick. Based on hints from the telephone conversation, he tries to find clues about her via a model school and then via the unsympathetic photographer Jack Terola and the painter Harley Moore. Evelyn Merrick was with all of them and wanted her to be immortalized through a portrait. While Blackshear is with Moore, his wife Bertha gets a call from Evelyn Merrick and invites her over. Shortly afterwards her husband calls her and warns her about Mrs. Merrick, who arrives shortly afterwards, but is not admitted. She persuades Mrs. Moore through the locked door and tells her about her husband's sexual relations with the painting models and that she too could have a baby from him soon. She disappears just before Mr. Moore and Mr. Blackshear arrive.

Helen Clarvoe's mother Verna calls Helen and tells her that Mr. Blackshear has contacted her and wants to meet her, at the same time invites Helen to dinner on the occasion of Douglas' birthday and reminds her that one is not to a small amount of money would be a good gift. While Verna Clarvoe waits for Mr. Blackshear, she asks her son to get dressed better and, most importantly, to remove his earring. Both argue about his lifestyle, then he withdraws and leaves the house through his window. When Mr. Blackshear arrives, he informs Verna about her daughter's harassment and asks if she knows Evelyn Merrick. Verna tells him that Evelyn was Helen's childhood friend and later the wife of Douglas. He gets from her the address of Evelyn's mother, whom he would like to visit to find Evelyn. When Mr. Blackshear leaves, Verna gets a call from Evelyn Merrick, who tells her that her son Douglas is homosexual and has a relationship with the photographer Jack Terola. She describes "some of the things that are going on in the back of Mr. Terola's studio."

Helen Clarvoe begins remembering Evelyn as her old school friend the following day. The two girls had done almost everything together and in their memories a ball scene emerges in which Evelyn joked and danced with all the other guests, while Helen locked herself in the toilet the entire evening. She later lied to her father and told him that she had had a good time and, most importantly, described her friend's activities as her own. The lie was exposed the following day and she had to tell her father the truth; later in the evening she was able to overhear her parents talking about her, whereby her mother was particularly careful that it was not her fault: “You just can't make a rose out of a thistle.” She ends with “It's a pity that we don't have a daughter like Evie. ”After that, Helen began telling lies about Evelyn. Mr. Blackshear visits Annabel Merrick, Evelyn's mother, in Westwood that day .

Mrs. Merrick tells him about the marriage between Douglas and Evelyn and especially about how it ended immediately after the honeymoon and Evelyn suffered psychologically afterwards. Meanwhile, Verna Clarvoe confronts her son Douglas and asks him whether he is actually gay. He reassures her by denying it and she believes him first, but then gets into her son's "illness" and wants to confront Terola, whom she claims to have "seduced" Douglas. When confronted with this, he confesses to her that he has had relationships with men for years and asks her not to go to Terola because he is "his wife"; Verna collapses and leaves him in disgust. When she has left, Douglas goes into the bathroom; he takes sleeping pills and tries to open his wrists, then passes out and hits the sink with his skull. There he is later found dead by his mother.

Mr. Blackshear visits Helen Clarvoe at the hotel and informs her of her brother's death and his conversations so far. He also informs her of Evelyn's phone call to her mother that led to her brother's death and asks her to go to her mother's house and support her. At the same time, he offers her support in overcoming her fears and returning to society. He also talks to her about Evelyn and their former relationship with one another. They both try to understand why Evelyn tries to destroy her environment. Helen agrees to go to her mother's house, but doesn't get there even after a long time. Blackshear, meanwhile, drives to Terola's studio and finds his model, Miss Rath, upset and murdered himself with scissors. He persuades Miss Rath to call the police and drives back to the Clarvoes' house, knowing that Verna wanted to go to Terola's studio at noon and confront him. However, she did not dare to come to him and stayed in the car to drive back without having achieved anything. Verna had also called Annabel Merrick, berated her daughter and accused her of murdering Douglas; then Annabel came into the house and there was another argument in the course of which it emerged that Evelyn could not have called Verna at the time mentioned the previous evening.

In the next scene, the supposed Evelyn remembers the death of Jack Terola. She had gone to him to talk to him and ask him to make her immortal. He rejected her and called her crazy, whereupon she attacked him with the scissors. She calls Verna again while Mr. Blackshear is with her. They ask her where Helen is and Evelyn replies that Helen has changed her mind and is now working in a brothel. Mr. Blackshear then visits Claire Laurence, with whom Evelyn lives according to her mother. He tells her about the calls and his suspicion that she might have a split personality. Evelyn herself comes home shortly afterwards and Blackshear also talks to her, but she denies any contact with the Clarvoes and especially with Helen. Meanwhile, Helen wakes up in a brothel, where she is woken up by the operator Madame Bella and the prostitute Molly. She had come to the house drunk and was found unconscious; Madame Bella assumed that, like other women, she wanted to work as a prostitute. Helen denies this and says that Evelyn brought her here - when Bella does not give in, she escapes the house into the street and, after wandering around and almost being run over, pulls up a taxi to take her back to her hotel. Once there, she goes into the hall and wants to go back to her suite, but she is intercepted by Evelyn Merrick, who she urgently wants to speak to. They talk and Evelyn denies all conversations and meetings Helen had with her. Helen withdraws into the elevator and leaves Evelyn standing; In the elevator she irritably asks the elevator boy to call her Evelyn rather than Miss Clarvoe. Shortly afterwards, Blackshear also arrives at the hotel and together with Evelyn he drives to Helen's suite to talk to her. In the room, Helen's second personality Evelyn argues with her and rejects Blackshear, who has meanwhile recognized Helen's schizophrenia, behind the door with Evelyn's voice. Together with the real Evelyn he persuades Helen to open the door and she describes the real Evelyn as a cheat. Still confronted with Blackshear and Evelyn, she runs to the mirror, begins to remember both personalities and sees a "Ferris wheel of faces" and hears their voices. As Blackshear slowly approaches, she takes the letter opener she is holding and stabs it in the throat. The novel ends openly with the words

"She felt no pain, only a slight surprise at how beautiful her blood looked - like bright red, endless ribbons that could never be tied again."

main characters

The main characters in the novel are:

Helen Clarvoe is a young woman who retired to a hotel after the death of her father and cut off all contact with her family and other people. She communicates with her mother and brother as well as with her father's asset manager mainly by letter. As the main heir, she is rich, but her withdrawal means that she has hardly any expenses other than the cost of her accommodation. Helen climbs into schizophrenia , in which she increasingly takes on the role of her old school friend Evelyn Merrick and in this role harasses other people around her and beyond through calls and visits.
Verna Clarvoe is the mother of Helen and Douglas. She was a model and enjoyed her husband's wealth, but mostly focused on the trivial and always preferred her son to her shy daughter. She lives in the house of her deceased husband, but can no longer afford the maintenance and much more because Helen has inherited her husband's money. Verna is an alcoholic and disappointed in Helen and Douglas, who are both unrelated and unable to give her grandchildren. As part of the story, she learns that her son is homosexual.
Douglas Clarvoe is the brother of Helen. He is a bon vivant who hardly cares about his livelihood. Instead, he studies various art styles and music and maintains relationships with men, most recently with the photographer Terola.
Mr. Paul Blackshear is the financial advisor to Helen's father and hers too. After being asked by Helen to deal with the harassment and other incidents, he tries to solve the case and help Helen.
Evelyn Merrick is a childhood friend of Helen who was always envied by Helen. She was married to Douglas, but separated from him after discovering he was gay and the marriage was only entered into as a cover-up. She studies herself and has hardly any contact with the Clarvoes.

Other people only have a peripheral role in the course of the story, for example as witnesses to the activities or as people who come into contact with the main characters.

reception

Beast in View was the Canadian-American author Margaret Millar's first international success. The book won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the category Bester Novel - Best Novel in 1956 and was subsequently translated into numerous languages. In 1967 Diogenes Verlag published a German translation as the first German edition by Elizabeth Gilbert , and by February 2015 Diogenes had published it 17 times.

expenditure

Margaret Millar: Beast in View Random House, New York 1955 (first edition)
Margaret Millar: Dear mother, I'm fine ... 1st edition, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1967 (German first edition)
Margaret Millar: Dear mother, I'm fine ... 17th edition, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 2015 (current edition)

Web links

Book portrait at Diogenes Verlag