Goodreads: August 8, 2024
Joseph Ferguson
Once again Pasco's meticulous ground-up creation of characters who play out important, heart-wrenching themes, coupled with Dickensian wordplay and view of human foibles, adds up to yet another thoroughly enjoyable read. Like Joyce's The Dead, characters in Aileen's Guesthouse are haunted by pasts that affect their present and future to the extent that those who died have a greater influence on the living than perhaps the living themselves. The repeated use of the song, Que Sera Sera hammers home the theme, “what will be will be,” and what will inevitably be, is death; like as not, death dispensing guilt to the living. Part of Pasco's genius is that despite rather weighty existential themes, her real-life, every day, empathetic characters, the use of epigrams and wordplay worthy of Oscar Wilde, and allusions to everything from pop music to Ben Franklin, make for pleasant reading completely unencumbered by the serious subject matter. Perhaps the best example of her skills is her description of actions prior to the dreadful event that is the crux of the novel. “Indeed, Aileen fought her own Battle of the Bulge, sparring with a blowhard snapping in the breeze and slapping her in the face. The high-spirited bedsheet defied her efforts to put the bite on it with a pair of wooden jaws held between her thumb and the side of her pointer finger.” Aileen's Guesthouse is a must read for fans of Pasco's work and future Pasco fans. I only wish I could give more than five stars.
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