Preview

"The life and crimes of Harry lavender" by Marele Day.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1135 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
"The life and crimes of Harry lavender" by Marele Day.
"Witty, wryly humorous and fast-paced, "The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender" is a thriller with a twist which brilliantly evokes the sleaze below the surface of the city's glittering façade". Is this what the novel is about?

Marele Day's novel, "The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender" explores a large scope of issues related to crime and mystery writing. The use of simple language, symbolism, clever wit and a certain sense of satirical mockery all contribute to composing this witty, wryly humorous and fast paced novel. Through the way in which Day portrays the protagonist, Claudia Valentine, she challenges the stereotypes and ideas set in the readers' minds, in relation to gender issues. Day also succeeds to ruthlessly unmask the bare grit and grime of the cold hard truth, that is, organized crime in Sydney.

"The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender" is a satirical ridicule of the traditional hard-boiled school crime novel. It complies with the basic characteristics of a piece of private-eye detective fiction; however Day has also incorporated a certain extent of irony into the story by choosing the main character/detective to be a woman. Claudia Valentine is not depicted as the typical useless female throwaway- either by being the victim or betrayer. This woman is self-sufficient, gutsy and heroic. Her involvement challenges stereotypes and ideas set in the responders' minds in relation to gender issues. She is equal to any male, completing her job successfully and outwitting anyone in her path. She is also the intellectual counterpart of Harry Lavender, the "evil villain" in the story.

In light of the tongue-in-cheek atmosphere of the novel, through Claudia, Day captures the typically marginalised life-style of a detective that's lacking in emotion, living on the fringes of society, being largely fond of alcohol, cigarettes and modestly enjoying violence in their life. She shows a female character doing what previously only men had done; directly committing

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “Echo Park” is a novel published in 2006 and written by Michael Connelly about a detective named Harry Bosch. In the story Bosch tries to solve a case from 1993 where a girl named Marie Gesto went missing after she walks out of a supermarket in Hollywood and never turned up dead or alive and Bosch has been haunted by the case ever since. Michael puts the readers on the edge of their seats as they read through this crime fiction, mystery.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the prose fiction narrative entitled “The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender,” two main voices are heard; Claudia Valentine and Harry Lavender. The two distinctive voices are represented through different text fonts; Claudia being represented in a regular font as opposed to Harry’s voice being represented through italics.…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Crime Family, written and narrated by Elisa Mala, the narrator discusses her experience with the family and friends of criminals, the criminals who mugged her. Mala describes the two women she encounters at the police station with vivid detail, focusing on their physical appearances and verbal nuances. Contrasting in physical appearance, one of the women is the “grandmotherly type… in a white oxford shirt… silver hair tucked away in a ballerina’s bun” (Mala 99). The other female is a “teenage girl… [with a] moon-shaped face… [a] puffy jacket…. large hoop earrings and [a] hairspray-heavy ponytail” (Mala 99). Not only do the women’s appearances differ, but so do their actions. Mala conveys the older woman as “generous” and “beseeching” (Mala…

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claudia Valentine is the main character of Marele Day's hard boiled crime fiction novel; 'The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender'. Claudia's character is quite significant as there are very few detective novels written and published that have a female private investigator as the main character. For the entirety of the novel, the style is set in first person narrative voice. This indicates the reader with be seeing the events through the character's eyes and hearing about them through her distinctive voice. Through…

    • 1255 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Lavender The Distinctive Voice of Claudia Valentine – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – First person narrative, short sentences, disregard for strictly correct grammar, writing is ‘economical’, her narrative is tough and in the style of chandler school Language: Straight forward, staccato style, tough, clear, ironic, colloquial, unconventional, ‘clipped’ style ‘Hard-­‐boiled’ detective Sustains interest throughout the novel Convincing tone Omniscient (as detective of Sydney) Her distinct voice plays on gender roles, with the reverse of familiar conventions, seen in the first pages of the book. Her voice also leads the reader to assume it’s a man, playing on appearance versus reality. ‘As I got out of bed I realised I wasn’t the only…

    • 4381 Words
    • 142 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    How does Day use Distinctive Voices to portray the main ideas in the life and crimes of Harry Lavender?…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claudia interacts with characters in an authoritative voice to be heard and taken seriously as she is a female. This gender compromise of a detective puts Claudia in the position to take action and be authoritative because she is a female in a man’s world. Being disadvantaged as Claudia strives to be the best she can be, pushing on it times of stress and hardship to solve a case. Claudia’s Distinctive Voice gives the impression throughout The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender that Claudia does not give up, which is ultimately her character.…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender’ by Marele Day and my related text the ‘Sorry…

    • 1700 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender is crime novel about contemporary Australian life, written with all the ambiguity and moral sophistication of most “who dun-nits ".…

    • 533 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A distinctive voice is one in which challenges society’s values and or beliefs within a given context. In the text the life and crimes of harry lavender; Marele day has formed an incredibly distinctive voice in crime fiction. By subverting the elements of the hardboiled detective genre. Day has startled her audience with the distinctive voice of Claudia valentine, a 1980’s female private investigator in Sydney. The composer has used a range of techniques including first person narration and idioms to successfully make this text distinctive, and by doing this she has subverted the chauvinistic male, and changed the way people perceive women, hence changing the way the men, women and general Australians perceive this particular genre. Marele day has also created not one but two…

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claudia Valentine, the protagonist within the text “The life and crimes of Harry Lavender”, is a intelligent female detective who always has her mind set on the mystery, she lives in a room above a bar in a sordid area of Sydney. The drunken image which is presented in the introduction of the novel shows that Claudia Valentine is self depreciating and constantly on the go, this is proven by having the messy apartment and the cramming of vitamins down her throat.…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claudia’s profession as a private investigator as well as her intelligence and confidence subverts the stereotypical role of a woman within the crime fiction context. “Beneath the make-up the face was taut and drawn”, “exterior was cool as her white dress but in the lap of the dress she was shredding up Kleenex” suggests Claudia’s intuitive intelligence, as her keen observation of human behavior allows her to see through Marilyn’s facades. This re-defines the stereotypical private investigator as well as influencing our perceptions of woman’s roles within society.…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Through distinctive voices in both texts the authors are permitting us to think about the sizeable issues, that we may not be able to see. The Life and Crime of Harry Lavender, by Marele Day a crime fiction novel, confronts our perspective of women and men and the ideology of their capabilities and in capabilities by introducing us to characters, Claudia and Harry Lavender, using distinctive voices in different circumstances thus exposing us to their personal information and relationships with others. Also through distinctive voices of Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny, the movie The Help, directed by Richard Lester and written by Kathryn Stockett, it expose us to the corrupted racial out casting of the African Americans in the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. By using distinctive voices to put forth their ideas, both texts allow the reader and viewer to consider significant issues in their world.…

    • 1009 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Harry Lavender

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the crime fiction text, the Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender the main character Claudia Valentine, whose voice is unique and original, is a confident and witty private investigator, living and working amongst Sydney’s seamy underworld crime. Her voice is individual from any other investigator, and isn’t discriminated by the stereotype label that society has on her job, as she comfortable uses the jargon: ‘the crims don’t discriminate anyway: they’ll blow away a woman on their trail as readily as a man’.…

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Film Noir Analysis

    • 1421 Words
    • 6 Pages

    masculine hero, and the he fits right into the dirty world around him. However, with a shift in perspective, we see that just maybe the opposite gender are the ones who are the heroes of the genre. The women are certainly memorable. Through analyzation of the typical hero’s journey and comparison to the stories of the women in film noir, we see that they are the true heroes of the genre. This again begs the question of why it is so often that men rule the grimy world of the film detective. Why are these women demonized in their own narratives, punished for their raw sexuality and delegated to the static sidekicks or to the simple villain role? We can…

    • 1421 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays