Items related to Grasshopper (Paragon Softcover Large Print Books)
Grasshopper is an enthralling, chilling novel by the bestselling queen of crime Barbara Vine
'They have sent me here because of what happened on the pylon'
When Clodagh Brown writes these words at the age of nineteen, she believes that she is leaving behind the traumatic events of her youth. But Clodagh soon learns that you can never entirely escape your past.
In the aftermath of the incident on the pylon - a gargantuan electrified grasshopper - Clodagh goes off to university, moves into a basement flat arranged by her unsympathetic family, and finds freedom trekking across London's rooftops with a gang of neighborhood misfits. As she begins a thrilling relationship with a fellow climber, however, both Clodagh and the reader are haunted by the memory of the pylon and of the terrible thing that happened there - and by the eerie sense that another tragedy is just a footfall away.
Grasshopper is a modern crime masterpiece that will have you gripped from the first page to the last. If you enjoy the novels of P.D. James, Ian Rankin and Scott Turow, you will love this book.
'The Rendell/ Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together' Ian Rankin
'A superb and original writer' Amanda Craig, Express
Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fifteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. Her other books include: A Dark Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs; Gallowglass; Asta's Book; No Night Is Too Long; In the Time of His Prosperity; The Brimstone Wedding; The Chimney Sweeper's Boy; Grasshopper; The Blood Doctor; The Minotaur; The Birthday Present and The Child's Child.
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Review:
Grasshopper is the tale of Clodagh's recovery from the death of her best friend and liberation from the guilt her parents have imposed on her for the pylon-climbing that led to it; it is also the tale of new mistakes, and their disastrous consequences. In the London of the late 80s, Clodagh finds her own level--and it is way above the streets, with a roof-jaunting group of disaffected young people, each with a trauma of their own. For Swedish Liv, it is the nightmare of au-pairing; for Silver, it was abduction as a small boy; for the sinister young thug Jimmy, it was sexual abuse on a massive scale. When they graduate from merely clambering around to trying to do good, and help a couple on the run from the social services with a foster child, that is when the trouble starts... The audiobook adaptation is taut and passionate; Frances Barber's range of voices and characterisations adds immediacy to the strong characterisation and never becomes a mere series of comic impersonations, she retains a sense of this story's urgency even in the chunks of back-story that punctuate the main action. Duration: 5 hours--Roz Kaveney
Review:
"Mesmerizing. . . . A teasing narrative of fatal obsession."--Orlando Sentinel "The Vine novels are sublime works of psychological suspense...Grasshopper is as skillful as anything this wonderful writer has done."--The Seattle Times"A typically elegant, and typically elegiac, turn from the woman with two award-winning names. And one superlative voice."--Fort Worth Star Telegram
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherChivers Large print (Chivers, Windsor, Paragon & C
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0754023532
- ISBN 13 9780754023531
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages584
- Rating
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