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Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
 
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Adam and Eve and Pinch Me [Audiobook] (Audio Cassette)

by Ruth Rendell (Author), Jan Francis (Reader)
3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Audio Cassette
  • Publisher: Random House Audiobooks (10 Sep 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1856866858
  • ISBN-13: 978-1856866859
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,367,478 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, Ruth Rendell once again tackles the dark and dangerous side of human psychology. It is this quality that defines her as a writer and distinguishes her from the other British Queens of Crime: PD James and Minette Walters (although some would argue that Val McDermid is now in that category). She take the reader into a more sinister and threatening world than any of her contemporaries, and there is a reason why she remains non-pareil in this territory: a reason demonstrated with disturbing impact in Adam and Eve and Pinch Me.

Rendell's speciality is her ability to enter the psychopathology of her characters and make us not only understand their often murderous behaviour, but also vicariously participate. It's a skill that Hitchcock made his own in the cinema, but he rarely moved into such black waters as Rendell. This new book continues a trend initiated in earlier work by Rendell: the grafting of supernatural elements into a typical Rendellian tale of menace. And what makes the ghost in the new book so disturbing is the total avoidance of cliché: no grey, wispy phantom, this--it is disturbingly corporeal.

Jock Lewis died in the Paddington train crash. Or did he? His fiancée Minty is coming to terms with both his loss and the loss of all her savings, which Jock vanished with. And there is Zilla, who had been married to a man called Jerry Leach. She also received a letter from the railway company telling her that her husband is dead. Other women, too, who do not know each other, have all had relationships with a dark-haired man who disappears from their lives. And when Jock's ghost reappears to Minty at her home and at her work, she begins to carry a knife... but if she stabs him, will he bleed?

Rendell has always been a writer who likes to take risks, and the danger here was that Adam and Eve and Pinch Me would end up as a smorgasbord of supernatural and crime elements, each cancelling the other out. But Rendell is far too assured a writer for this, and the balance between the different aspects of the book is always kept rigorously in place. So many writers fall into dull repetition; here, again, Rendell demonstrates that she's going from strength to strength. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Observer September 9th, 2001
'The suspense is heightened by the clever voices of Jan Francis who makes the characters utterly believable.'

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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (4)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "states of mind are real enough", 7 Oct 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (Hardcover)
i read the book and the customer reviews. what is true: rendell IS the best, what is also true: this one is not one of her best books. but it's still so much better than a lot of stuff that finds a publisher these days.
as always in her novels (as in life)- there are characters in it you don't actually like. that's one of her specialties: you're not supposed to like them, but to understand their actions and see life through their eyes. that's rendell's greatest achievement.
as for the ghost-plot: this is definetely not a supernatural thriller. it's about what joyce carol oates describes as "states of mind are real enough". the whole book is about how one reality sometimes is not enough. the jerry-character only becomes real seen through the eyes of all his women.
there's two subplots i favoured: the one about zillah and her marriage to jims, and the couple with eating disorders. in the latter, rendell again manages to portray that what you see (and maybe consider gross) is not what you get.
appearances (and apparitions) often lead you in the wrong direction.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Rendell is off on the right track (again!), 5 Mar 2002
By Billy J. Hobbs "billhobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
This review is from: Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (Hardcover)
Certainly Ruth Rendell is ONE of the best writers around today, with wide-stretching parameters with character, plot development, intrigue, even brilliance. With "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me" she stays true to form--typically Rendellian in the sheer presentation of a psycho-drama.

Generally, she's shied away from "ghost writing," but this time she marches on stage with a psycho thriller that is almost impossible to put down. Ms Rendell is a master at this, as readers well know. She's able to take the commonplace and transcend these elements into something Beyond.
Her ability to capture completely the attention of her readers here is top form. However, it's not the type (nor ending!) that makes the reader cry for "more," but perhaps more like "uncle"! She's brilliant in this genre (her Inspector Wexford series is no slack either, by the way, but light years away in format and drama).

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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't take any notice of me, 22 Feb 2004
This review is from: Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (Paperback)
If there is one thing you can be sure of when reading these reviews, it is that they are usless. As much as I love reading them, to guage some sense of opinion on books I've read, they are largely useless, and that is hardly more clear than in this case. As soon as you get one star reviews and five star reviews for the same book, there's no point judging a book by them. All they tell you is that some people hate it, some love it. And that your opinion will also fall between those two points. The only reasonable path left open to you is to try the book, see what your own opinion of it is. Mine is that this book is excellent. But, so many people disagree -even though others agree - that that opinion is largely pointless here.

I've read all Rendell's novels, every single one (well, apart form the elusive novella, "Heartstones", which I still pursue avidly) and they have all been of such incredible quality that I am left stunned. I felt the same here. Adam And Eve And Pinch Me is a beautiful portrait of twisted minds, a remarkable exmination of colliding worlds, with results of destruction and catastrophe. The Paddington trrain crash alluded to here is a brilliant metaphor for Rendell's own work. The lives of her characters crash; they go disastrously off the rails, and they even endanger the lives of the others around them in doing so. Kinks in the metal, the mind, send them down paths of disaster and death.

It's a book peopled with fascinting - yet not always likeable - characters that make the reading speed along. As always, the psychological pictures she paints are realistic, disturbing, unsettling, and grippingly compelling. This is not only a book about going off the rails, but of the sometimes catastrophic results of what happens when a person's mental delusions (in this instance Minty's belief that she sees the ghost of her "dead" lover Jock) collide with the true reality. The supernatural elements are mixed with the detached realism to create an effective, unnerving juxtaposition.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me is, actually, my second-favourite of all Rendell's many many titles. This is clearly in contrast to some other people's opinions... I found it a riveting, engaging picture of madness, a wondeful example of Rendell's greatest fiction. Once again, too, Rendell has created a novel entirely different from any other she has written. I applaud.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars What Story!
I have always regarded Ruth Rendell as one of the best authors to have the pleasure of reading; quite what happened here I am not sure. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2006 by jackieg1

2.0 out of 5 stars "Go Away!" she hissed. Wish I'd taken heed...
Minty should have taken her knife to this manuscript. At least half should have been cut. "A&E&PE" is a book both wandering and repetitious. Read more
Published on 21 April 2004 by M. Halpin

1.0 out of 5 stars what the ....?
The last few novels I've read by Ruth Rendell ("The Killing Doll", "The Keys To The Street", "The Tree of Hands" and "A Sight For Sore Eyes") have all been exceptional, and I... Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2004 by S. Hapgood

5.0 out of 5 stars Rendell certainly isn't mellowing with age!
This is another absolute winner from Ruth Rendell, my favourite novelist of all time. Of all her books, this is possibly her very very best. Read more
Published on 5 Oct 2002

1.0 out of 5 stars Her worst book by far
As a reader of many of Rendell's books I was looking forward to reading Rendell's new offering but this one left me feeling disappointed. Read more
Published on 20 Sep 2002

3.0 out of 5 stars Monotonous
This is the first Ruth Rendell book I've read and, to be fair to the author, I won't make it my last. Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars My first Ruth Rendell, but not my last!
I bought it on a whim... never having read anything by her before. I can't get enough of it! I haven't been able to put it down since I started it. Read more
Published on 5 Aug 2002 by H. SEYMOUR

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Stuff
This book is reminiscent of a Victorian freak show. Almost all of the characters have something strange about them, and that is what attracts them to us. Read more
Published on 12 Jul 2002

3.0 out of 5 stars A good read, but not the best
A thourougly engaging read centred around a well drawn womaniser and cad, who meets a bad end, but in an unexpected way. Read more
Published on 10 Jul 2002 by sflg01953

5.0 out of 5 stars Never fails to disappoint
Ruth rendell, Queen of Crime, and an author with enough CWA Daggers to stock an armoury, returns to the psychological thriller after three years.

this is her best book yet. Read more

Published on 10 April 2002

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