A dead author turns out to be anything but the blandly successful public figure he’d pretended to be for 40 years, in Ruth Rendell’s ninth as Barbara Vine—a slow-moving, richly textured suspenser. Even as Gerald Candless was making a comfortable living from a long series of novels that reviewers praised as wise and humane, his private life told another story. His loyal wife Ursula, civilly estranged from any intimacy with him ever since the birth of their daughter Hope, deals with his sudden death by snipping the stamps from his voluminous correspondence and discarding the envelopes, then going back to work as a day-care provider. The daughters Gerald was so close to—the obituary they compose describes him as “adored”—are more properly grief-stricken. But when older daughter Sarah agrees to take time from her women’s studies research at the University of London to write a biography of her father, her tears swiftly turn to astonishment that everything he told his family about his early life was false. In the face of the chronicle of his early years that Sarah and Hope had dutifully recycled for his obituary, Gerald Candless hadn’t existed before 1951, when an enterprising young journalist decided to swap his identity for that of a child long dead of meningitis. What made Gerald Candless’s identity so attractive to the young man who went on to reinvent himself in a score of tantalizingly veiled novels—or what made the identity he fled so unbearable? Vine’s many fans will take it as no more than their due to find that Gerald’s mystery is wrapped around a forgotten murder, but even they may be surprised to learn what role Gerald played in the killing. Not at the level of The Brimstone Wedding (1996), this latest excursion into the harrowing past shows Vine at her most weblike, with the murder case that Sarah Candless backs into almost an afterthought in a novel whose people—right up to the final merciful release—all seem long dead, dying, or hopelessly immured in the past.
Pub Date: June 10, 1998
ISBN: 0-609-60287-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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