Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
COMPELLING......., 26 Jun 2005
Here is Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) doing what she does so brilliantly, drawing the reader into the labyrinthine ways of a seriously dysfunctional family.
The fact that the narrator is a stranger to the country, who observes carefully and describes minutely but objectively, creates the atmosphere which we project onto it, and that is a very gripping one.
Asperger's Syndrome has been dealt with by Mark Haddon already, but here it is not the narrator but one of the family members who has it, and we become fascinated by how it manifests itself.
The time is the Sixties in rural England, but there are references to, and similarities with, Victorian novels.
It is a very clever piece of writing indeed, and one which we become so absorbed in, that I would suggest not opening it unless you have a whole weekend in which you can do nothing but read.
|
|
|
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Another fantastic addition to the Vine Library, 13 Mar 2006
As with the previous reveiwer, I cannot praise Barbara Vine's latest work enough. As is often the case with Vine's books, this ia a true slow-burner, and the real action does not occur until the latter parts of the book, but the build up and characters are so compelling you are gripped from the outset, feeling, perhaps like Kerstin that you are an outsider given a privileged but disturbing vantage point to observe the family in the Hall. The Cosways are a superb creation, sinister, grotesque, comedic and pitiable by turns, certainly a dysfunctional family to rival the dynamics of the Hilliard/Longley family in A Dark adapted Eye (One of my favourites from her earlier works). The clues and pointers are placed strategically from the start, from the characters reaquainted with Kerstin at the start and those they mention, to the Roman vase, the library and Lydstep Old Hall itself, leading you compulsively onwards to the shattering conclusions. I was slightly concerned at one point that developments toward the end would result in a cheap pastiche of events in Jane Eyre and Rebecca, but Vine creates her own set of circumstances, and by references to both, she deftly avoids this.
I have thoroughly enjoyed and wholeheartedly reccommend The Minotaur
|
|
|
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
I would give it 6 stars if I could, 8 Nov 2005
I so agree with one of the previous reviewers that Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell is the best writer in her genre. She is streets ahead of anyone else in the field. The plot has been dealt with by several reviewers so will not repeat it here. What is so marvellous about Vine's writing is her building up of the story to a great (and usually unexpected climax). True, the plot was fairly obvious but it was the way she approached the story that made it so interesting. I also have the problem of wanting to gallop ahead and yet rationing myself so that I don't finish the book too quickly. I have read all her books and most of them twice. Her ability to deal with and develop the characters in her books is just amazing. Each and every one of the Cosway children as well as Mrs. Cosway and the outside characters were made so human and so believable. This book deserves 6 stars
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
(16)
£5.49
(6)
£5.49
(32)
£5.99
(7)
£5.99
(33)
(
