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14th out of 60 books
—
10 voters
Tigerlily's Orchids
by
Ruth Rendell
From the incomparable, award-winning Ruth Rendell— "the grand dame of British crime fiction" (The Gazette)—comes her latest psychological thriller.
When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat he invites everyone in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons....
Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is...more
When Stuart Font decides to throw a house-warming party in his new flat he invites everyone in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers. But not for the right reasons....
Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is...more
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published
December 28th 2010
by Doubleday Canada
(first published 2010)
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Rendell uses one of her tried-and-true formulas here, which to her credit never seems formulaic: Throw a group of disparate individuals, each with various obsessions, even psychoses, together, in a house, an apartment building, the same street or neighborhood, and see what happens. She knows how to handle a large cast of characters effectively, though here I think there was at least one couple too many.
I didn't find this one of her best, though it's not one of her worst either. (Except for the...more
I didn't find this one of her best, though it's not one of her worst either. (Except for the...more
Oct 02, 2011
Barbara
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Barbara by:
BOSTON GLOBE BOOK REVIEW
Shelves:
mystery
Although I recently read another book by this author, the library notified me that I should pick up my copy of this, her latest book. I'm always pleased to read Rendell!
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Despite my previous statement and my fondness for her books, this was not one of Rendell's best efforts. There was an interesting, unusual collection of characters, but the story did not sustain my interest. Perhaps it's my current mood.
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Despite my previous statement and my fondness for her books, this was not one of Rendell's best efforts. There was an interesting, unusual collection of characters, but the story did not sustain my interest. Perhaps it's my current mood.
I do enjoy Rendell but I'm not sure about this one.I was kind of wondering where it was all going but she manages to pull it together. It's about a group of people who live in an apartment building and how they connect (or disconnect) with each other and society.
It starts with a housewarming party and goes from there. Rendell adroitly handles a large cast of characters and everyone has their "time". There's the foppish Stuart, the alcoholic Olwen, three young students, the couple, the caretaker...more
It starts with a housewarming party and goes from there. Rendell adroitly handles a large cast of characters and everyone has their "time". There's the foppish Stuart, the alcoholic Olwen, three young students, the couple, the caretaker...more
Mar 06, 2012
Doreen
added it
This is not a classic mystery; the first body appears in the second half of the book and there is no detective. This novel weaves together psychological portraits of several people, all neighbours in a London suburb: a young, non-practising doctor who writes poorly researched medical articles, a reclusive woman who is determined to drink herself to death, an apartment caretaker who spends his free time near schoolyards, a narcissistic "pretty boy" carrying on an adulterous affair, two former hip...more
In this novel, Ruth Rendell, introduces us to the residents of a swish new apartment block in Islington. An interesting device as they collide and briefly connect with each other without ever really getting to know them.
Foppish, vain Stuart Font and his married lover, Claudie, Marius Potter and Rose Preston-Jones ,Dr and Mrs Constantine, Olwen, the 3 young female flat sharers, a doctor writing dodgy medical columns for newspapers and the surly and very unpleasant caretaker Wally Scurlock. We be...more
Foppish, vain Stuart Font and his married lover, Claudie, Marius Potter and Rose Preston-Jones ,Dr and Mrs Constantine, Olwen, the 3 young female flat sharers, a doctor writing dodgy medical columns for newspapers and the surly and very unpleasant caretaker Wally Scurlock. We be...more
Ruth Rendell is getting less dark and edgy - but no less good. This story follows the inhabitants of an apartment house in London. The "Tigerlily" of the title is one of the people who live across the street, and there's a surprise in their house. I was actually disappointed that the surprise wasn't something worse. There's an oddly innocent couple of leftover hippies; three college girls who are fairly typical of girls that age (hey, I was one once, I should know); a good-looking guy with a big...more
Ruth Rendell novels are a study in human relationships, and this book is no exception. It takes a look at an assortment of tenants living in an apartment house block in London, particularly one building, but also a couple of homes across the way.
An inordinate amount of space is devoted to one tenant, a young, handsome youth, Stuart Font, who recently inherited some money and bought his apartment. He decides to have a housewarming and invite all the other tenants. His married lover forces him to...more
An inordinate amount of space is devoted to one tenant, a young, handsome youth, Stuart Font, who recently inherited some money and bought his apartment. He decides to have a housewarming and invite all the other tenants. His married lover forces him to...more
I enjoyed this, was delighted to pick it up at the airport on my way to a holiday with no internet access in a remote house in the Costa Brava hills. With hours and hours of uninterrupted reading time, I ploughed through it. It wasn't however her best, not quite as atmospheric or with as dark characters as some of Ruth Rendell's other books, hence the three star rating. I found, for example, the Keys to the Street to have far more of a sense of place. Also, I guessed pretty early on what Tigerli...more
Jul 10, 2011
Tony
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction-crime-detection
Rendell, Ruth. TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS. (2011). **.
This is not truly a novel; don’t be fooled by the notice on the jacket front. It is the collected stories of the tenants of a coop in London that has six flats in it. They are either rented or purchased outright by the tenants. We get to follow the six individuals, or groups, through a relatively short period of time, and wonder why we continue reading. There is no main plot, per se. Most of the tenants are stereotyped, but even these are pushed to...more
This is not truly a novel; don’t be fooled by the notice on the jacket front. It is the collected stories of the tenants of a coop in London that has six flats in it. They are either rented or purchased outright by the tenants. We get to follow the six individuals, or groups, through a relatively short period of time, and wonder why we continue reading. There is no main plot, per se. Most of the tenants are stereotyped, but even these are pushed to...more
As Newsday said re this author’s novel Portobello, “Rendell has long been the queen of the psychological crime.....A novel that glides along Portobello Road like the lime in a gin and tonic. It’s intoxicating.” So true! I’ll admit my bias up front - I’ve long been a fan of Rendell and when she releases a new book it tops my reading list. She’s never disappointed me and that certainly holds true of TIGER LILY’S ORCHIDS.
As always we’re treated to intriguing characters whom we follow with rapt a...more
A quiet little corner of London may look like the kind of place where nothing ever happens. But Ruth Rendell knows better in her latest stand-alone novel, Tigerlily's Orchids. Not much is as it seems, other things are what they seem, only more so, and it never pays to make assumptions.
The story takes quite some time to get rolling and is busier than a Kate Atkinson novel when it comes to following various threads: There's the young man who came into a bit of money, quit his job and bought a flat...more
The story takes quite some time to get rolling and is busier than a Kate Atkinson novel when it comes to following various threads: There's the young man who came into a bit of money, quit his job and bought a flat...more
I had the privilege of learning the title of this book from Ruth Rendell herself when I met her in November 2009, shortly after she finished it and months before her publisher officially announced it. Two days short of nine months later it's in my hands, one of the first copies to be received in the U.S. from England (love those pre-order prices at Book Depository, and no shipping charges, even on Transatlantic purchases!)
Fifty pages in, I can tell you that's it's the typical Rendellian mixture...more
Fifty pages in, I can tell you that's it's the typical Rendellian mixture...more
Whilst similar to the awful Saint Zita, this was better. It had the same basic set up of multiple characters living in close proximity, a format which Alexander McCall Smith pulls off so much better in his Scotland Street and Corduroy Mansions serial novels. In Tigerlily's Orchids, you do get Rendell's trademark sinister sense and eventually there is a murder.
There is very little appeal in any of the characters, although there is quite a sweet love story. I also found Olwen, the retired woman w...more
There is very little appeal in any of the characters, although there is quite a sweet love story. I also found Olwen, the retired woman w...more
This was a disappointing book because I have high expectations of Ruth Rendell, although I wasn't that impressed with her previous novel, Portobello, either.
There are six flats in Lichfield House and the assorted tenants and a few residents across the way get to know each other a bit better when Stuart Font, the new tenant in Flat 1 decides to throw a house-warming party. He's young, and narcissistic, and carrying on an affair with the trophy wife of a lawyer. The lawyer, Freddy Livorno, crashe...more
There are six flats in Lichfield House and the assorted tenants and a few residents across the way get to know each other a bit better when Stuart Font, the new tenant in Flat 1 decides to throw a house-warming party. He's young, and narcissistic, and carrying on an affair with the trophy wife of a lawyer. The lawyer, Freddy Livorno, crashe...more
Oh, what a tangled web we weave—and who better to unwind the skeins and get to the root of the situation than Rendell. Once more the mistress of the psychological tale offers an engrossing example of the devious depths to which the human animal can go in pursuit of obsession.
Stuart Font is a narcissistic young man obsessed by a beautiful Asian neighbor. When he throws a flat-warming party, his goal is more about learning more about the girl he dubs Tigerlily than an interest in getting to know o...more
Stuart Font is a narcissistic young man obsessed by a beautiful Asian neighbor. When he throws a flat-warming party, his goal is more about learning more about the girl he dubs Tigerlily than an interest in getting to know o...more
If you are a person who enjoys purchasing the occasional “grab bag” at a local fund-raiser because you find it exciting to open the bag to see what potential treasures lie inside, then you will definitely enjoy TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS by Ruth Rendell. This well-crafted psychological mystery explores the lives of the tenants residing in a block of flats in the Kenilworth Avenue section of North London. The neighborhood is inhabited by a microcosm of humanity whose fatefully intertwined lives are a co...more
This is a less complex Rendell, but that doesn't diminish its value, nor my enjoyment of it. Another reviewer wrote that this is less a novel than a collection of short stories about intertwined characters, connected only by the geography of living quarters and then circumstance. Rendell has done this with intent, perhaps even to provide a sense of life to the block of flats themselves. I got the distinct impression that this series of "stories" was sliced from the larger story of the building a...more
It's hard to find words for the absolute amazingness of Ruth Rendell, one of my all-time favorite authors. I hope she lives forever, and continues to write books, so that I can continue to read them. Like so many of her other novels, Tigerlily's Orchids isn't a traditional murder mystery, though it does contain a murder, as well as several mysteries. And like all of her books, this one is full of deeply believable, though not always likeable, characters, who are quirky, sometimes bizarrely so, b...more
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one! I thought originally that it was following a formula that Ruth Rendell sometimes follows, with all the dysfunctional people trapped together in one setting. But then, the story grabbed me and did not let go. It is not a long novel, only 257 pages, so it is easily readable in a short span of time.
It is the story of the residents of Lichfield house, all of them with various problems. Stuart Font is extremely good looking and extremely vain and is ha...more
It is the story of the residents of Lichfield house, all of them with various problems. Stuart Font is extremely good looking and extremely vain and is ha...more
At first I wasn’t overly convinced by this Ruth Rendell novel. It creates its own little world, focusing as it does on the middle class residents of a block of flats (and some of the people who live in the surrounding houses), but my initial impression was that this was just a slight collection of short stories interweaved together. There’s the good looking young man having an affair with a married woman; a Latin scholar who has a connection with his new age neighbour; a trio of student girls sh...more
Oh, how I adore Ruth Rendell. And the RR I love is back. There's no one quite like Rendell at observing the way that people think about themselves, particularly when they are vain or self-satisfied or totally delusional or just very lucid about their place in the world. She does plenty of it in this novel that chronicles the lives of a bunch of residents of a London apartment building. One of them, of course, is murdered by the time it's all done (the particularly beautiful one; I think RR has i...more
Oct 08, 2011
Linda Branham Greenwell
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction
I'm not sure what kind of book to call this book ...
It is the story of several inhabitants of an apartment building - all of them with secrets and some rather unsavory habits
I found all of her characters interesting, particularly Olwen, the lady who is a drunk, and whose goal is to drink herself to death. Olwen's pursuit of gin is an overwhelming dilemma for her; the many ways she obtains her bottles are quite astonishing and sad.
There is Stuart Font, a narcisstic and shallow man who is having...more
It is the story of several inhabitants of an apartment building - all of them with secrets and some rather unsavory habits
I found all of her characters interesting, particularly Olwen, the lady who is a drunk, and whose goal is to drink herself to death. Olwen's pursuit of gin is an overwhelming dilemma for her; the many ways she obtains her bottles are quite astonishing and sad.
There is Stuart Font, a narcisstic and shallow man who is having...more
Dec 30, 2010
Trowzers
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
observational,
suburbs
Tigerlily's Orchids is book that observes the goings-on around a block of flats in a London suburb. The characters and situations could really be in any street anywhere- just imagine however that all the exciting bits over several decades have been compressed into a shorter period - relationships, alcoholics, assaults and even mysterious deaths are all observed from the various points of view of different residents. The differing points of view of the same events reflect interesting things about...more
I was disappointed and surprised by this book. Surprised because it is written by such an accomplished author who has a wealth of awards for her writing and is well known for her elegant prose, intricate plots and insights into the human mind - particularly when it comes to the socially isolated and disadvantaged. Disappointed because I found Tigerlily's Orchids somewhat lacklustre and I hate to say this, a bit boring. Apart from a handful of characters, notably Olwen, I found it hard to picture...more
I have been reading Ruth Rendell's novels for well over 20 years, and was originally a fan.I would give this book a 2.5/5 rating because Rendell is such a good writer. But lately, I find her books somewhat tedious, and very light on the "mystery". And that would be OK, except there tend to be too many characters (at least in this book), and these characters usually have many flaws and obsessions which are referred to again and again as the story reverts back and forth. I found this a meandering...more
While reading the first 50 or so pages of this very odd book, I had to remind myself that Ruth Rendell is one of my favorite novelists...and to wonder what on earth was going on. Repetitive and heavy handed were two of the descriptions that came to mind, but the story was intriguing so I kept on. (One of the repetitions, which I thought was not-too-subtle foretelling, comes to absolutely nothing...which makes me wonder about the need for good editing.) A lot of characters--most unlikeable--weave...more
I didn't know that this book existed and then there it was on the library shelf. I thought I had read all of Rendell's works....maybe now I have.
It has certainly received mixed reviews but I liked it. It is not really a mystery and although a murder shows up late in the story, the book really is more of a character study of the people in a small middle-class neighborhood. And there is a lot going on behind closed doors........child pornography, alcoholism, drug deals, theft, etc. etc. All the ch...more
It has certainly received mixed reviews but I liked it. It is not really a mystery and although a murder shows up late in the story, the book really is more of a character study of the people in a small middle-class neighborhood. And there is a lot going on behind closed doors........child pornography, alcoholism, drug deals, theft, etc. etc. All the ch...more
Even when Ruth Rendell is not at her best, she's better than most. "Tigerlily's Orchids" has so many of the things we love about Rendell--the fascinating characters, the fabulous readability, the mystery. What happens in "Tigerlily" is that once the murder happens, we're so engrossed with everything else happening in this block of flats that it's hard to shift focus. I knew what tigerlily's "orchids" were from the start (live on the west coast of the U.S. and you read these stories all the time)...more
Ruth Rendell rules the world of psychological thrillers. She populates her novels with nondescript characters that lead quiet, sometimes desperate lives. Rendell always manages to entwine their stories as she works towards an inevitable tragedy. I love her books, they've provided me with hours of enjoyment over the years. Having said that, this is not her best book. It didn't have that underlying dread that Rendell's books are known for. I also felt that she didn't accurately capture the vernacu...more
I've read many of Ruth Rendell's novels over the past decades, tho not for a while now. I expect to be searching the library shelves over the next few months, for any I've missed, after reading 'Tigerlily's Orchids'.
Just learned that Rendell is 81 years old - hasn't lost her touch!
There's a murder mystery here, and a surprise ending; but more important are the characters, of varying ages, interests, ethnic groups, occupations, coming together because they all find themselves living in the same N...more
Just learned that Rendell is 81 years old - hasn't lost her touch!
There's a murder mystery here, and a surprise ending; but more important are the characters, of varying ages, interests, ethnic groups, occupations, coming together because they all find themselves living in the same N...more
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Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an acclaimed English crime writer, known for her many psychological thrillers and murder mysteries.
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She is a 'life peer,' so that's a perfect word to use, Barbara! ;)
updated Mar 25, 2012 10:08am
Mar 25, 2012 03:54pm