Where Was Rebecca Shot? Puzzles, Curiosities and Conundrums in Modern Fiction

John Sutherland

One of the best features in the marvellous IMDb database is the section devoted to movie "goofs". Microphones creeping into shot, continuity errors, an entire camera crew reflected in a shop window, that kind of thing. John Sutherland does something similar with literature.

This is the third book in his series. Earlier books dealt with classic and Victorian literature; this one brings his detective work up to the present day, snapping at the heels of John Grisham (why are there no computers in The Firm?), P.D. James (why do her murderers always wait decades before striking?) and some 40 others arranged in 3-5 page chapterettes.

One of the most enjoyable goofs spotted by Sutherland is in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. In one paragraph, the psychotic hero loosens a "Matisse inspired blue silk tie", only sentences later to find himself removing a "knit tie from Paul Stuart". And there is the famous example in Lord of the Flies by William Golding of Piggy's glasses. Piggy is short-sighted, and so it will have been impossible to use them to start a fire, as the book describes. Sutherland admits that this goof was pointed out as long ago as 1965 but still fleshes it out with some interesting extra background.

There is fun to be had in this kind of analysis, although admittedly it does rather depend on whether you know the book in question. Although Sutherland on the whole chooses only well known works, I have to admit if I had neither read the book nor seen the film I generally skipped the chapter.

Sometimes, however, the author appears to have run a bit short of material. Admittedly the book doesn't claim to focus exclusively on errors but also on "curiosities". But the chapter on Frederick Forsyth's 1972 novel, The Odessa File, observes merely that Forsyth sort of predicts the 1997 furore over nazi gold hoarded in Switzerland. It's hardly a fiendish puzzle nor a spectacular curiosity.

Even in the cases of genuine errors, like the two ties in American Psycho, or the hero in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient managing to dust off and crank into immediate life a plane that has been rusting in the desert for ten years, Sutherland prefers generally to let his quarry off the hook with his final paragraph. In American Psycho, according to Sutherland, the entire story is the erratic ramblings of a narrator who is "off his head", hence the entirely appropriate continuity error. And in The English Patient, the errors are again, deliberate according to Sutherland, and in keeping with a narrator who is delirious with pain and ... er ... off his head. It's almost as if Sutherland enjoys skewering a novel's plausibility but comes up with a more academic and generous interpretation right at the end, perhaps because the "goof-hunt" in itself is too much of a trivial party-trick, perhaps because he fears being labelled a pedant.

If you turn to the last chapter you'll find the section devoted to the replies Sutherland received from authors or agents in response to his detective work. It's here that I expected (and perhaps hoped) to find a bit of mud slung back at Sutherland himself. I was thinking something along the lines of "get a life", at the very least, from some of the grumpier authors featured. But generally Sutherland and his authors appear to have enjoyed a rather jolly correspondence. Last word perhaps should go to Jeanette Winterson. In his chapter on her autobiography, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, he dwells on an intriguing paragraph that half suggests Winterson's prim churchgoing mother is herself a closet lesbian. The chapter is entitled "Is Jeanette's Mother Gay?".

The terse reply from the author is on a postcard. "Dear John Sutherland. Who knows? Best wishes, J.W."