A Judgement In Stone [Paperback]

Eunice, the housekeeper of the Coverdale family, seems to be merely a dull woman with an insipid personality. She is cold and quite solemn, but not violent, at least she doesn't seem to be. However, events would prove otherwise, as the reader is informed from the very first page of "A judgement in stone": "Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write".

This is the story of how an apparently normal person is ridden by the all-powering obsession of protecting a secret she deems shameful, that she is illiterate. How far will she go to avoid the disclosure of that fact is something you will learn if you read this book, although you already have a pretty important clue...

On the whole, I can say that I highly recommend this book. The main character isn't likeable ("A stone that breathed was Eunice, as she had always been"), but the story is engaging and well-written. Moreover, the writer managed to write a convincing psychological study of Eunice that allows the reader to look into the mind of a cold-blooded killer. Those are the main reasons why you won't be able to stop reading this book once you start it :)

This is a descriptive and insightful literary stunner about how an illiterate, middle aged women gets to the point that she wipes out a family one fateful evening. The book takes the reader, step by step, through the events that lead up to this crossroad. It explores the mind of Eunice Parchman, a woman so limited in her world view and so robotic in her actions that she is almost repellent. The reader marvels at her very existence and is sure to find her fascinating character study.

Ms. Parchman's interactions with the well educated Coverdale family, who employs her as a housekeeper, are intriguing and always interesting, as she struggles to keep her illiteracy a secret. How Ms. Parchman circumvents its discovery for as long as does, the lengths to which she goes to maintain a facade of literacy, and her socially inappropriate responses to every day situations, paint an intriguing psychological portrait for the reader. The eventual discovery of her illiteracy results in a ghastly outcome, which makes for some gripping and chilling reading.

Ms. Rendell is masterful in her storytelling, infusing mundane situations with an understated horror that is all the more chilling because of the common denominator that strikes a chord with the reader. Written is well-nuanced, taut, spare style, this book is a literary gem that will keep the reader riveted to its pages. Bravo!

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write", is its famous first line, and a brilliant one it is too. The crime writer Henning Mankell has said that it is his ambition to write a crime novel where, from the beginning, the reader knows exactly what is going to happen, but continues to read the rest of the book for a desperate need to find out more details such as why and how. In time, Mankell may well achieve that, but with A Judgement in Stone Rendell already has.

Despite that the reader knows what's going to happen, there is more compulsion to turn the pages even than in a normal detective story. The psychological insights and the gradual movements towards the foreshadowed events are absolutely gripping - this novel is possibly Rendell's most focused depiction of a mind driven to madness, mad actions, despite not being inherently "mad".

It's also told in a wonderful style. A retrospective one, looking back on events as if you are being told a story by a person in the room with you. It's almost delivered as a true-crime case study, a proper scientific rendering of murder.

It is truly superb. Only Rendell could write a novel where the psychoses of an illiterate lead to catastrophic murder. The writing is brilliant, the description of colliding classes is inspiring and very well-done indeed. Tension and suspension fill the pages until the very last, as the two women (Eunice and her friend Joan, follow down this terrible path.) How did it happen? What exactly set it off? Why? All questions the reader desperately wants to know. Also particularly chilling is the way that, throughout the book, the characters have so many opportunities to escape their fate, but they never take. There is always a possibility for escape, but we know they don't take it. Rendell snatches it away before long in any case.

An excellent book. It's only 200 pages, but it says so very much about people and society that it'd be easy to re-read it as soon as you finish it the first time.