Post by Nalkarj on Aug 22, 2022 13:56:47 GMT
Finished Ruth Rendell’s Blood Lines: Long and Short Stories (1995).
When I was a kid and first got into mystery fiction, I thought Rendell was the exemplar of everything I hated in modern mysteries, with her psychologically disturbed characters and all those catty remarks she made about Agatha Christie. Now—more mature, or so I hope—I’m a big fan of hers, even though I still think she needn’t have said all those Christie putdowns (Rendell and Christie are more similar than Rendell might have thought—Christie’s Endless Night, for example, reads like a Rendell).
Blood Lines is a short-story collection, and like all short-story collections it’s got some standouts and some stories that make you wonder what the anthologists were thinking. The titular long short story, with Rendell’s recurring sleuth Insp. Wexford, is good: nothing flashy, but a surprising least-likely murderer and a neat twist even after we find out whodunit.
The shorter short stories, which make up most of this book, are not so good. Some of Rendell’s shorts—“The Fallen Curtain,” “The Double,” and especially “The Vinegar Mother”—are among the finest ever written, beautifully mingling the modern crime story with the gothic horror story into a blend I can only call Rendellian. But the Blood Lines shorts, while as well written as ever, lack the oppressive mood and devastating irony of Rendell at her best. “Lizzie’s Lover,” her prose adaptation of Browning’s “Porphyria,” is particularly disappointing—the twist is so minor, you should just read Browning.
Just when I was ready to write off the collection, along came the final entry, the long novella “The Strawberry Tree.” This is Rendell at her best: I’m not sure it’s better than “The Vinegar Mother,” but it’s close—and similar, what with the child narrator on holiday experiencing events she doesn’t understand.
It’s a small masterpiece: ominous (the scene in the haunted house is an object lesson in building tension), mysterious, melancholy, moving. The scenes with the children exploring Mallorca, which reminded me of my and my cousin’s childhood trip to Italy, will stay with me for a long time, as will that final twist.
I highly recommend the collection if only for “The Strawberry Tree” (I wonder if it’s been collected anywhere else). That story is one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve read in a while.
One more comment for any other Rendell fans. I’ll put it in spoilers, though the spoiling is very vague.
When I was a kid and first got into mystery fiction, I thought Rendell was the exemplar of everything I hated in modern mysteries, with her psychologically disturbed characters and all those catty remarks she made about Agatha Christie. Now—more mature, or so I hope—I’m a big fan of hers, even though I still think she needn’t have said all those Christie putdowns (Rendell and Christie are more similar than Rendell might have thought—Christie’s Endless Night, for example, reads like a Rendell).
Blood Lines is a short-story collection, and like all short-story collections it’s got some standouts and some stories that make you wonder what the anthologists were thinking. The titular long short story, with Rendell’s recurring sleuth Insp. Wexford, is good: nothing flashy, but a surprising least-likely murderer and a neat twist even after we find out whodunit.
The shorter short stories, which make up most of this book, are not so good. Some of Rendell’s shorts—“The Fallen Curtain,” “The Double,” and especially “The Vinegar Mother”—are among the finest ever written, beautifully mingling the modern crime story with the gothic horror story into a blend I can only call Rendellian. But the Blood Lines shorts, while as well written as ever, lack the oppressive mood and devastating irony of Rendell at her best. “Lizzie’s Lover,” her prose adaptation of Browning’s “Porphyria,” is particularly disappointing—the twist is so minor, you should just read Browning.
Just when I was ready to write off the collection, along came the final entry, the long novella “The Strawberry Tree.” This is Rendell at her best: I’m not sure it’s better than “The Vinegar Mother,” but it’s close—and similar, what with the child narrator on holiday experiencing events she doesn’t understand.
It’s a small masterpiece: ominous (the scene in the haunted house is an object lesson in building tension), mysterious, melancholy, moving. The scenes with the children exploring Mallorca, which reminded me of my and my cousin’s childhood trip to Italy, will stay with me for a long time, as will that final twist.
I highly recommend the collection if only for “The Strawberry Tree” (I wonder if it’s been collected anywhere else). That story is one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve read in a while.
One more comment for any other Rendell fans. I’ll put it in spoilers, though the spoiling is very vague.
Did she ever write a story with a supernatural ending? I remember reading and liking “The Haunting of Shawley Rectory,” but I can’t remember if the haunting ended up being a real haunting.
Rendell was such an M.R. James fan that I sometimes wonder if she only wrote crime fiction rather than ghost stories because she didn’t believe in, and didn’t want to propagate belief in, ghosts. Many of her shorts seem like ghost stories, certainly create that atmosphere, but have non-supernatural (though horrifying) solutions.
Wait, now that I think of it, “The Double” suggests the supernatural (or at least is ambiguous about it). But in general I think she’s loath to invoke real ghosts, as opposed to specters of the human mind.
Rendell was such an M.R. James fan that I sometimes wonder if she only wrote crime fiction rather than ghost stories because she didn’t believe in, and didn’t want to propagate belief in, ghosts. Many of her shorts seem like ghost stories, certainly create that atmosphere, but have non-supernatural (though horrifying) solutions.
Wait, now that I think of it, “The Double” suggests the supernatural (or at least is ambiguous about it). But in general I think she’s loath to invoke real ghosts, as opposed to specters of the human mind.