A Fatal Inversion

by Barbara Vine, William Gaminara (narrator)

In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms.Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Suspense, British Literature

Audio Cassette

First published March 1, 1987

About the author

Pseudonym of Ruth Rendell.

Rendell created a third strand of writing with the publication of A Dark Adapted Eye under her pseudonym Barbara Vine in 1986. Books such as King Solomon's Carpet, A Fatal Inversion and Anna's Book (original UK title Asta's Book) inhabit the same territory as her psychological crime novels while they further develop themes of family misunderstandings and the side effects of secrets kept and crimes done. Rendell is famous for her elegant prose and sharp insights into the human mind, as well as her ability to create cogent plots and characters. Rendell has also injected the social changes of the last 40 years into her work, bringing awareness to such issues as domestic violence and the change in the status of women.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed several Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendel crime/psychological stories in the past few years. I don’t completely understand her pen name’s (Barbara Vine) use for psychological stories as the Rendell stories are often similar. She does write as Rendell for her Detective Wexford stories that I have not read.

Something I have noticed in her books is that she often deals in families, whether those families are actually related or not. That is the case here and the main characters are not blood relatives. We know right away that a body of a young woman and a baby are found on a rural estate a few hours from London. There goes the idea of a happy family.

Scroll back 10 years and a young man has inherited (to the rage of his own aggrieved father) the family estate. He and a few other unmoored young people live there in a commune sort of way. Vine reminds us it was the summer of the historic 1976 heat wave.

Move forward ten years and the “family” have split apart and don’t communicate. The police have an investigation to conduct. Vine is terrific with handling plot. After a slow start with lots of beautiful prose, she builds tension. She makes you wonder how any adults manage to survive bad choices and the confusion of growing up.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh wie liebe ich diese A-Z Autorinnenchallenge. Beim Buchstaben V habe ich erneut eine für mich komplett neue Schriftstellerin entdeckt, die mir sehr gut gefallen hat.

Barbara Vine kann wahnsinnig gut fabulieren, die akuraten Landschaftsbeschreibungen, die atmosphärische Dichte des Plots und die intensiven Figurenentwicklungen fallen zuerst ins Auge. Sehr schnell war ich als Leserin gemeinsam mit dieser Kommune auf diesem geerbten Landsitz in der Nähe von London.

Die Story weist eine sehr spannende Konstellation auf. In einem Haus werden zufällig die Knochen einer Frauenleiche und anschließend auch noch eines Babies entdeckt. Dieser Roman ist nun vordergründig die Geschichte jener fünf Personen, die mehr oder weniger gut mit dem Trauma der Vergangenheit, das dem Leser erst nach und nach enthüllt wird (Mord Totschlag Unfall), zurechtkommen. Die Handlung springt sehr schnell und unvermittelt permanent zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit, was ein bisschen herausfordernd zu lesen aber punktgenau konzipiert ist, denn die drei männlichen Protagonisten haben dieses mehr als zehn Jahre alte Trauma noch nicht wirklich verarbeitet, das schlechte Gewissen und die Selbstvorwürfe holen sie immer wieder ein, trotz aller Vertuschugnen gelangen die Wahrheit und alle verdrängten Fakten allmählich an die Oberfläche des Bewusstseins. Das ist auch psychologisch sehr gut konzipiert, durch den Fortschritt der polizeilichen Ermittlungen werden die Herren der damaligen Kommune allmählich nach und nach nervös, weichgeklopft und offenbaren sich selbst und dem Leser das Geständnis, die Beichte, was wirklich passiert ist.

Auch beim Kriminalplot wurde ich am Ende des Romans noch einmal gehörig überrascht, was mir sehr viel Vergnügen bereitet hat, denn ich werde sehr gerne ein bisschen and der Nase herumgeführt.

Fazit: Ein psychologisch klug konziperter, sprachlich und inhaltlich anspruchsvoller Roman mit einem spannenden Krimiplot. Warum ich nun speziell bei diesem Buch nur 4 Sterne vergebe (eigentlich sollten es 4,5 sein), weiß ich auch nicht so genau, aber es könnte daran liegen, dass sich die Geschichte zu Beginn ein bisschen zu gemächlich entwickelt. Vielleicht liegt es aber auch wahrscheinlich daran, dass ich zusätzlich 2 Bücher von der Autorin gekauft habe, die möglicherweise auch noch viel besser sind. 🙂

[Barb H · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of Barbara Vine's earlier richly crafted novels. Her writing is elegant and skillfully constructed. "A Fatal Inversion" is not an ordinary mystery with a familiar plot, it is a chilling psychological study which gives the reader insight into a horrifying murder. It is compelling and certainly thought-provoking.

A landowner in the English countryside discovers an old pet cemetery on his vast property, where he finds human bones also buried. This fact and the subsequent police investigation set this story into motion. The manor house had been previously inherited by a nineteen year old young man . During an idyllic summer, he and a group of young people lived a carefree, irresponsible existence there, selling household contents to provide money for sustenance and entertainment. It was here that the murder occurred, which is evident at the outset of this book. Vine has masterfully woven this suspenseful tale back and forth from that summer to a dozen years later when the surviving members fear revelation. Character development is richly drawn, adding to the atmosphere of tension.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably not the best Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell book to get started with. For me, it didn’t flow as well as I could have hoped. Plus, although I certainly don’t require likeable characters to keep me engaged, I have to care about who did what and why. I found all of the characters in this novel to be unpleasant (to say the least) and I couldn’t care much about how they ended up.

It was odd—gathering the details gradually and making assumptions about who the woman and the child found in the pet cemetery could be and how they got there. I’ve read books where I’ve known the perpetrator from the beginning, but still was intrigued by the story, but this book didn’t grab me the same way. It wasn’t until the very last pages that I found myself engaged. That’s a long time to wait.

I was reading AFI largely on my work coffee breaks. It helped to have no alternative reading available, as I found myself reluctant to pick up the book and yet anxious to get finished and move on to something more rewarding. Truly, cognitive dissonance.

Perhaps I was just in the wrong mood for this mystery—I’m a bit off of mysteries right now, I think perhaps I’ve read a few too many of them in the last while. But it was one of the books that I chose for my 2018 reading list and so I forged ahead with it. Your mileage may vary.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third Barbara Vine book I've read (after Asta’s Book and The Minotaur), and I love the richness of her stories. I've definitely said this about other books, but A Fatal Inversion strikes me as such an old-fashioned mystery – slow-moving, painstakingly detailed. It really made me think about how quickly our (readers' in general) perceptions of genre shift; I struggle to imagine this being published under the banner of 'psychological thriller' or even 'crime' these days; too many scenes that drag and meander, too much about the stuffy lives of upper-middle-class Brits. Yet those were the things I liked most about it.

The plot is of a type that sounds unoriginal now, but doubtless was more of a novelty when A Fatal Inversion was published: the 'group of hedonistic young people inhabiting an old country house' setup. It's the unusually hot summer of 1976, and 19-year-old Adam Verne-Smith has inherited his great-uncle Hilbert's mansion, Wyvis Hall – much to the chagrin of his father, who had been toadying to Hilbert for years in the hope of securing the house. (This is the sort of detail A Fatal Inversion has in spades. There are pages and pages devoted to this family spat, which has nothing much to do with the main plot, but adds fascinating texture to the characters.) On a whim, Adam decides to stay at the Hall over the summer with his friend Rufus. They are eventually joined by a hippyish couple, Shiva and Vivien, and a strange girl named Zosie, whom Adam falls in love/lust with. Ten years later, things are very different: the former friends have sworn never to speak again, and think of the house with horror, guilt and fear.

We have an idea of why, because in the opening scene, the couple now inhabiting Wyvis Hall uncover a human skeleton while burying their dog in what is ostensibly a pet graveyard. We learn early on that the body was a woman's, so the story is necessarily told from Adam, Rufus and Shiva's perspectives; Vine must keep us in the dark about what becomes of Vivien, Zosie and a handful of incidental female characters. This is the weakest aspect of A Fatal Inversion, as the narrative sometimes ties itself in knots trying to explain why none of the men will countenance the idea of contacting [unspecified female character]. Nonetheless, the story overall retains its strange fascination.

The characters are an awful lot; even the nicest of them are no more than vaguely likeable. Most are either downright obnoxious (the men) or annoying (the women). And yet the way Vine writes them is so persuasive that I wanted them to get away with it! The scenes of that summer at Wyvis Hall – dubbed 'Ecalpemos' ('someplace' in reverse) by Adam – are peculiar and hazy, befitting the status this short period of time holds in the characters' minds. Vine depicts the power of memories with stunning precision: there are several fantastic moments in which a scene is suddenly interrupted, the perspective snaps back to reality, and we realise that what we have been reading is an individual's recollection, not objective fact.

It often seems like nothing much is happening in A Fatal Inversion, or things are moving too slowly, or the story is looping back on itself. The writing is so good, though, that I was happy to go along with whatever it was describing, even if it (seemingly) did nothing to advance the plot. This slow-burn approach also makes it all the more effective when a twist or revelation does come. The ending is delightfully satisfying, too, with a little sting in its tail.

TinyLetter

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is always up there among my favorite "Top 5 Vines" along with ASTA'S BOOK, BRIMSTONE WEDDING, A DARK-ADAPTED EYE and HOUSE OF STAIRS - and, like those, it's one I've pretty much lost count of how many times I've read.

As with most of the other Vines (of which this was the 2nd), "old sins have long shadows" that cast themselves on the present, and Vine moves effortlessly between 1986, when the skeletons of a woman and child are discovered buried in the pet cemetery of a country estate, and 1976, when a diverse group of young people (some of them college students) sets up housekeeping there for one carefree summer that will ultimately have tragic consequences and cast those "long shadows".

Mystery writer and historian Julian Symons wrote that A FATAL INVERSION had the most brilliant ending of any mystery he'd ever read.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a fan of the writing style. The plot was slow moving, but did pick up toward the end. None of the characters were likeable. Although this was probably intended by the author, it still was tedious to read, as they were shallow and self-absorbed. I skimmed some of this book (especially in the first half) just to get to the explanation of the murder. There's a bit of a surprise at the end, which made me give the book 3 stars instead of two. An OK read.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Vine / Ruth Rendell - I hadn’t read any of her books before, under either name, and I have never watched Inspector Wexford so I really didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t expect this.

In the opening chapter, two bodies are found in a shallow grave on a country estate. I expected we would then follow the police investigation to find out who they were and who murdered them but no! Instead, we were taken back 10 years to the legendary summer of 1976. Ah yes, I remember it well! Instead of a police procedural, we follow the story of the people who lived on the estate at the time, their stories both then and now (1986), until we find out who the bodies belonged to and how they died. I really enjoyed how the story slowly evolved and although the ending might seem a little too pat, it was nevertheless quite satisfying.

The style in which it is written is quite dated, I think, the syntax reminding me very much of Alan Bennett. That said, it’s intelligently written and I enjoyed the language used. I was horrified to be reminded that you could still book a seat in the smoking section of a plane in the mid 1980s, and the racism experienced by Shiva was crass and uncomfortable, as was some of the language used to describe it, but sadly it will have been very true for the time.

Although it was maybe a little long-winded, I’m interested to read another of this author’s books some time.

[Noella · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Wyvis Hall, in Engeland, is het hondje van de bewoners gestorven. Ze hebben een kleine dierenbegraafplaats ontdekt in een dennebos op hun landgoed, en willen daar het diertje begraven.
Maar bij het graven van een grafje, worden er menselijke beenderen blootgelegd. De politie wordt er natuurlijk bijgehaald. Het blijken de beenderen van een jonge vrouw en van een baby te zijn.

Daarna gaat het verhaal verder over degene die in 1976 de eigenaar van het landgoed was. Het was een 19jarige jongen, Adam, die het van een oudoom geërfd had. Samen met een vriend en later enkele andere mensen die er wel een tijdje wilden verblijven, hebben ze daar toen de zomermaanden doorgebracht. Er is toen heel wat gebeurd, rampzalige dingen ook, en de vrienden zijn toen halsoverkop vertrokken met de belofte nooit meer contact met elkaar te zoeken, en zelfs als ze elkaar zouden tegenkomen, geen blijk van herkenning te geven.

Maar alle herinneringen aan toen steken weer de kop op nu de skeletten gevonden zijn. En allen leven ze min of meer in angst dat zou uitkomen dat ze toen een tijd op Wyvis Hall verbleven hebben en dat ze zouden verdacht worden van betrokkenheid van de dood van deze twee mensen.

Het boek springt dus heen en weer tussen het heden en het verleden, en van de ene betrokkene naar de andere. Maar ik vond dit niet echt verwarrend.
De spanning is echt te snijden, en eerst op het allerlaatst komen we de ware toedracht te weten, en het laatste hoofdstukje brengt nog een verrassing met zich mee!
Ik vond dit echt een topboek!

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Fatal Inversion is about When bodies of a young girl and baby found buried in Wyvis Hall animal cemetery. This incident sparks memories for four friends Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie when they use to camp at the hall on hot summer nights. The readers of A Fatal Inversion will continue to follow the investigation into the death of the woman and the baby. Also, the readers of A Fatal Inversion will be surprised with the ending of this book.

A Fatal Inversion was the first book I have read of Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine. I enjoyed reading A Fatal Inversion. However, I do prefer books written has Ruth Rendell better because I engage more with the plots and characters better. A Fatal Inversion is well written and researched by Barbara Vine. I did like Barbara Vine portrayal of her characters and the way they interacted with each other. The readers of A Fatal Inversion will see the devastation of kleptomania has on the sufferer and everyone around them.

I recommend this book.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second of Vine's psychological suspense novels. The word mystery just doesn't describe what happens in this book. The central event occurs in 1976 but is discovered with the uncovering of human bones in an animal graveyard 10 years later. The most recent owners of this suburban estate have begun a process that will lead to the unraveling of several lives.

Vine/Rendell is expert at the slow disclosure of facts and feelings, the essence of the psychological novel. This particular novel is written so well that the unraveling is slowly reflected in the structure of the story itself. Wonderful!

I was on the fence about 4 vs 5 stars as I seem to be giving many 5 star ratings lately. But of the book deserves it, why hold back.

Highly recommended.

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark, brooding and twisting sum up this book!

Well written with characters you instantly know (and hate in some cases) who plot their web of lies so their past can't find them out!

Good methodical thriller!

[Ahtims · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn into this murder mystery. It was a great experience - listening to the book during my daily jogs. Am glad that I listened to the audio version because otherwise I would have just rushed through the book, in my usual speed-reading mode, sometimes even missing certain aspects. A wonderful psychological thriller, which shows how even gentle, normal people can commit crimes, if circumstances arise. I loved the descriptions of Acalpamos (not sure of the spelling) and wished i owned it. I would have loved a remote bungalow in the wilderness as a holiday home. I was drawn into the lives of Adam, Rufus, Zosie, Shiva and Vivian for the past few days.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. It has been sitting ok my coffee table for weeks, every time I look at it it frustrates and annoys me.

[Bruce Beckham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a really excellent novel, a very skilfully woven tale of suspense – not least since you are more or less told at the outset what dreadful outcome to expect.

Set in East Anglia, the skeletons of a young woman and a child are unearthed in the grounds of a country house; the interment coincides with the long, hot summer of 1976, when a bohemian group of students lived by their wits at the property.

The narrative switches smoothly between past and present – and, while the professional thirty-somethings today pursue respectable careers, they carry with them the dark shadow (and indeed, the weighty secret) of their youthful misdemeanour.

There are a couple of flaws in the plot – scenes when, faced with certain dilemmas, the characters behave, well... out of character. Their decisions are necessary for the tale to progress, but undermine the credibility of the author’s proposition. You just have to buy into these.

There is a clever twist at the finale – actually quite explosive if you happen to have got the wrong end of the stick (mentioning no names!) – which also neatly brings the tale full circle, to reconnect with the otherwise somewhat detached opening chapter.

Also striking is Ruth Rendell writing as ‘Barbara Vine’ – it is like chalk and cheese – imagine a painting by numbers, not filled in, austere, bleak, flat (that’s Ruth Rendell); compare to the finished article, a three-dimensional, burgeoning cornucopia of colour (that’s Barbara Vine). I’m not sure which is the chalk and which is the cheese – but they each have their merits!

[Zac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best Barbara Vine novel I have read. It was also the first of her books I read. The almost palpable sense of time and place she created was so convincing I can clearly remember the feeling I had reading this book. She always features such detailed and convincing characters it is apleasure to follow the story which often involves a mystery or curious event. This book was thoroughtly satisfying if you enjoy this type of book.

I have given this 5 stars becasue of the pleasure it gave me and I admit it inspired in me an interest in this novelist and this genre for a good while.

[Ruthiella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this book on my TBR years ago because I read somewhere (in a blog or goodreads maybe) that this was a better, more realistic version of Tana French’s The Likeness. My assumption was that this was also a mystery with a doppelgangers (a la Brat Ferrar), but it’s not that.

The book opens with the remains of a human skeleton being found buried on the grounds of a country home in Suffolk. Naturally the police investigate. The story then slowly unfolds in flashbacks and forwards between 1986 London and 1976 Suffolk.

Fatal Inversion is an intense psychological suspense story. There is a murder but the focus is less on who did it and why (although that is eventually revealed) and more on how this murder has poisoned the lives of those who were witness to the crime and its cover-up. I can see the Tana French comparison a bit, you have young adults (18-25) living in a house which is sheltered and suspended from the outside world and a lot of emotional manipulation going on in that close environment. But personally if I had to compare this book to any other that I have read, it would be Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger because of the ever building sense of dread and the way the survivors are figuratively haunted in the aftermath.

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like this at all. The later half of the book was slightly better, when we actually had some dialogue and not just endless descriptions. It wasn't suspenseful enough for me and I honestly didn't even care to find out who murdered whom by the end of it.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listen Here

Description: A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 14th December 1991. The year of the long, hot summer: 1976. Adam and some friends spent it in idyllic circumstances. But when the weather at last broke their lives had been wrecked.
A dramatisation of Ruth Rendell's Gold Dagger award-winning crime novel.
Dramatised by Michael Bakewell
Directed by Jane Morgan.

Adam Verne-Smith: Andrew Wincott
Rufus: Matthew Morgan
Zosie: Siriol Jenkins
Shiva: Tariq Alibai

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the long hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. In short, they exist. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery.

[Joyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite Ruth Rendell, who really wrote this. A convoluted and sad plot. A collection of people that coulda/shoulda known better. No real admirable person in the bunch. I kept waiting for someone to act heroically, and they didn't.

[DeAnna Knippling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the book was a three--but the ending was a five, such that it reframed the rest of the book. Not the kind of story I normally go for.

[Liliakb · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ich habe das Buch bis zur Hälfte gelesen und schon bis dahin, musste ich mich immer wieder aufraffen weiterzulesen. Einerseits hat es mich interessiert, was nun damals geschehen ist, aber der nicht endende beschreibende Schreibstil hat mir den Rest gegeben, sodass ich es letztlich abgebrochen habe.
Schade. Ich glaube, die Idee des Buches ist super, aber der Schreibstil war nicht meins.

[Anneliese Tirry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Echt een tussendoortje, maar geen dat ik goed vond.
Wanneer ik rugzakgewijs een paar dagen wegga, neem ik graag lichte lectuur mee, zowel letterlijk als figuurlijk.

Dit boek kwam traag op gang, is soms nogal warrig en kent dan een met de haren bijgetrokken einde.
Wie deed wat met wie blijkt dan toch nog verrassend te zijn, maar voor de rest ben ik blij dat het uit is, en dat ik dit boek nu zonder pijn in het hart kan achterlaten.

[Lyn Battersby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read all the Ruth Rendell in my local library and was feeling rather down. I love Rendell's different take on the crime genre and wanted more*. In my trawling the catalogue system, however, it became obvious that all was not lost. Rendell also writes crime under the name Barbara Vine. I was a little worried about heading into unchartered territory, after all, writers rarely use pen names without reason, so I wondered what she had done to this titles to mark them as 'different' from a Rendell work.

In the end I shrugged, picked up A Fatal Inversion and took it home.

And devoured it.

Yes, it is somewhat different, but in a good way. Grittier and more clue driven than your typical Rendell, Vine nonetheless relies upon characterisation and human motive to drive her plot rather than the crime itself. We know the crime is coming, we know who did it and how they're going to handle it. What we need to know is the hows, whys and wherefores involved.

In "A Fatal Inversion" we are immediately introduced to a crime; the bodies of a young woman and baby are discovered in an animal cemetery attached to a manor. Next we meet Adam, Rufus and Shiva, three men who share a past but have gone their separate ways with the understanding that they'll never contact one another again. This decision is overturned when the bodies are found and they begin to work through what happened that fateful summer 10 years ago...

These aren't spoilers. It's all there pretty much in the first chapter. Vine doesn't play whodunnit in this novel but instead takes us on a journey through the past and how that past both changes and catches up with the individuals concerned.

Very satisfying, very rewarding.

*When discussing Ruth Rendell's style I'm not including the Wexford novels which are far more traditional and 'hard boiled' than her other fiction.

[Pushpa Menon (silvervixenreads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Barbara Vine book, after The Chimney Sweepers Boy and I loved it. I could not put the book down.

The murder which is revealed in the very first chapter had taken place at Wyvis Hall aka “Ecalpemos”, a fatal inversion of the word, “Someplace”. This inversion of the word “Someplace” sets the manner in which the book is written, which is, an inversion of the events, the murder first and then the whodunit, the whydunnit and the howdunnit, revealed slowly through an almost confusing backwards and forwards into time.

It is called a psychological thriller but to my mind, it is not a thriller in the true sense of how the genre is understood. This book is a slower paced and deliberate unraveling of events and the characters and motives of the people involved. It is a well written psychological mystery.

The ending is absolutely superb. I did not see it coming and was fooled completely. It was crafted brilliantly, saying, but not saying enough and leaving us to figure it out.

I will give it 4 stars.

The only thing that I could not understand was why Shiva and Lili should die. It did not do anything for the plot. The only reason I can think for it is to justify the belief that Shiva had in the concept of retribution. He thinks that his son died due to placenta praevia because of retribution. So, the only explanation is that his death is also a retributive action by God for his part in the murder. Having said that, why wasn’t the actual murderer struck by the retributive action of God? Food for thought.

[Janet Mahlum · Rating 1 out of 5]

My goal today was to finish this book no matter what else got accomplished. This is one of those books I'd like to give a big fat zero to. The only reason I finished it was curiosity. I just had to know how it ended. To quote Elliot, it ended not with a bang but a whimper. The ending was as flat and as lifeless as the book. The characters were all horrible. There wasn't a single character you could like. Not only were they without any moral or social value, but they were as flat and lifeless as could be. They appeared as cardboard cutouts or paper dolls that the author picked up and moved from place to place. They were set down in their appointed place with thought bubbles appearing above their heads. Very large thought bubbles. The only character with any dimension at all was the house. The words in the book went on as dull and listless as the characters and the plot. On, and on, and on. They did little to move the story along, merely prolonged the agony. A tedious example: "Like a half-drowned kitten, Zosie looked, a rescued creature for whom there is yet no hope." The writing was just too many words, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. I had read one Ruth Randolph book before and decided to never read another. The blurb about this book sounded intriguing and I thought maybe as Barbara Viner, the writing would be better. No such luck. I would not recommend this book to anyone. If I were stranded on a desert island all alone and this was the only thing available, I would use it as firestarter.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since my last encounter with the novels of Barbara Vine (the pen name used by Ruth Rendell for a series of psychological crime novels), I’d forgotten just how good they were. I’d previously read Asta’s Book, one of the most gripping stories I’ve ever encountered, and King Solomon’s Carpet, both at some time in the Nineties. It was an article by Flora Watkins in the Winter 2024 edition of Slightly Foxed that rekindled my interest. Her description of A Fatal Inversion (1987), was so enticing that I had to get hold of a copy. I’m pleased to report that Ms Watkins hadn’t oversold the book; the story it tells of a group of young people who idle away the long hot summer of 1976 in a Suffolk mansion that one of them had unexpectedly inherited, and the double tragedy that ensues, is completely gripping form the first page to the last. Vine’s prose is subtle, tricksy and a joy to read, but her plotting and mastery of character, particularly when it comes to damaging power and class relationships is something else. Seamlessly combing the events of the summer of 1976 and the slow and messy unravelling of long kept secrets a decade later, with shocking plot twists and commentary on the long term corrosive effects of past criminal activity on mental health and family relationships, A Fatal Inversion showcases a writer at the peak of her powers.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific. Evocative of Robertson Davies & John Fowles, to a lesser degree, in both tone and spirit - wonderfully done until the very last chapter where the resolution is formulaic & one sighs at the predictable, pat ending but so what - it's a fascinating and absorbing novel that I highly recommend. Psychological suspense - top of the line.

[Biggus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing about Ruth Rendell is that her books all seem to start at chapter 2, some at chapter 3. Give them some time though, and they unfold and draw you in. I hated this to start (typical) and loved it not much later (also typical). :)

Ruth Rendell is one of my all time favourite authors.