This is not your typical Ruth Rendell novel as it is not really a crime novel as the crime is done and dusted within the first couple of chapters. Rather it centres on the lives of a group of friends who used to meet in their den during 1944 and then 60 years later on a grizzly discovery brings them back together.
Basic Plot:
Michael’s mother and her lover have been murdered, not that
his dad tells him this as he sends him to live with his aunt……
At least 60 years later a tin containing two severed hands
has been discovered where a ‘den’ where Michael and his friends used to meet in
1944 was once located…..
Due to this, Michael and his friends reunite and find out
how their lives have changed over the years and how their meeting continues to
change their lives – not always for the better.
What I thought of it:
In two words – not much. I have to say I did not enjoy this
book at all. It never really went anywhere, and it was like an episode of
Emmerdale from the 1970s with all the fun, humour and action removed. It was,
for me as dull as ditchwater and I did, on more than one occasion, consider
giving up and putting it in the very small pile of ‘not worth the effort’
books. I persisted with it in the hope that it would get better, after all it
was written by Ruth Rendell, it didn’t. It was a chore to get through and it
was a few hours of my life I’d never get back – and it wasn’t worth spending
them reading this.
Yes, There are some recognisable parts of Rendell’s writing
style but it is like it was written by someone imitating her but not doing a
very good job of it. The way the tough times during the war are described in
the first few chapters and how life has changed, not always for the better,
since has been well written but this is a novel not a history book so beyond
how well it was written I felt it added little to the story.
Not to say it was all bad, the characterisation of the main
‘cast’ is well established as in most of Rendell’s novels but a novel can only
survive so long on this which is perhaps the first 100 pages or so. Better use
of the main characters’ children and grandchildren and bits about their lives
would have, perhaps, livened it up a bit or at the very least have the main
characters do something more unexpected. Instead, we have several rounds of
‘let’s meet for lunch’ to contend with it is all a bit too much ‘twin set and pearls’
for my liking. Many characters are irrelevant to the story, such as it is, and
there is no real main plot just a lot of badly woven together sub plots.
Perhaps Michael’s story arc is the only interesting one as
it does attempt to give him closure on what happened when he was a child but
frankly it can’t save the novel overall. Half of this novel could have been
removed and turned into a short story which may have been better in the long
run. Then we have Rosemerry, who is established as a bit of a doormat of a wife
and would fail to make it past the first round of the British sewing bee who, one
day, just snaps but even this does nothing to inject any real life into the
story but you do develop sympathy for her.
Frankly I was very disappointed in this novel and if this
had been Rendell’s first novel I have to question if she would ever have had a
second published. If this novel had been a character on any medical drama its
time of death would have been called by page 100. Compared to other novels by
Rendell that I have read this one makes me wonder if she had gone coo-coo for
cocoa puffs whilst writing this one.
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