How the Westing Game Holds Up Over Time

A friend and I are reading The Westing Game aloud over the phone, alternating chapters.  We just finished 13 (his) and 14 (mine) so we’re about midway through.  As I’m reading, and listening to him read, I notice foreshadowing and plot points.  I’m doing a decent job, I think, of muffling my laughter.  I think I haven’t revealed any major plot points by giggling knowingly.  I hope.

As I’m reading, I also notice some small ways the book was definitely written in the late 70s.  And published the year I was born.  So, it’s timely to blog about.  30th Anniversary Celebration!  Little touches of description, about shag carpet, or soon-to-be married Angela embroidering for her trousseau.  I think Angela’s embroidery, and her tapestry bag,  are meant to seem dated, even contemporary to the 70s, because she’s a symbol of the conflict between marriage and college/career.

Some of the terms have changed.  Calling Judge Ford, who is African American, a Negro woman, and having social-climbing wannabe heiress Grace Windsor Wexler be proud of her liberalism for shaking the judge’s hand.  Flora Baumbach has a “Mongoloid” daughter ( a word for Downs Syndrome which I remember having to look up, when I was a kid reading this for the first time.)  Chris Theodorakis, a kid in a wheelchair, has some kind of unspecified genetic disease that slurs his speech and causes seizures.  I can’t help thinking that a 21st century answer to this book would have named Chris’s disorder specifically.

And something that feels dated in a black-humor sort of way.  Junior high school student Turtle Wexler plays the stock market.  She listens to updates on her transistor radio.  The stock market fluctuates.  Some of her stocks drop.  SEA, purchased at $15 a share, drops to $8.  She’s miserable when the stock market drops 20 points.  Heh.

Even with these moments giving me pause, I love this book so much.  The mystery is so well crafted, so well foreshadowed, that it’s fun to read.  And even more fun to read with someone who is reading it for the first time.