Portobello - Hardcover

Rendell, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1439148511 ISBN 13: 9781439148518

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2010

Synopsis

INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS

Ruth Rendell is widely considered to be crime fiction's reigning queen, with a remarkable career spanning more than forty years. Now, in Portobello, she delivers a captivating and intricate tale that weaves together the troubled lives of several people in the gentrified neighborhood of London's Notting Hill.

Walking to the shops one day, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man plagued by a shameful addiction--and his own good intentions--Wren hatches a plan to find the money's rightful owner. Instead of going to the police, or taking the cash for himself, he prints a notice and posts it around Portobello Road. This ill-conceived act creates a chain of events that links Wren to other Londoners--people afflicted with their own obsessions and despairs. As these volatile characters come into Wren's life--and the life of his trusting fiancée--the consequences will change them all.

Portobello is a wonderfully complex tour de force featuring a dazzling depiction of one of London's most intriguing neighborhoods--and the dangers beneath its newly posh veneer.

About this title

Review:

As well as Ruth Rendell’s customary expertise with the narrative demands of crime fiction, Portobello provides a colourful and eccentric portrait of one of the most distinctive areas of the capital, the Portobello district of West London. To both Londoners and visitors, the areas is lively and exciting, but there is a level of criminality here which Rendell handles as adroitly as ever. The book is something of departure for the author, less plot-led than customarily.

Eugene Wrenn, who lives modestly despite his wealth, has inherited an art gallery from his father. But Eugene moves to a more upmarket location in Kensington Church Street. He is 50, but looks older than his age, and is plagued by an addictive personality (currently, he finds himself unable to give up an addiction to low-calorie sweets). Despite this, he has a reasonably happy relationship with a GP, Ella, who finds herself able to put up with these quirks -- at least, those she knows about. Eugene discovers an envelope containing money, which he picks up in the street. But instead of doing the logical thing and taking it to the police, he sticks a note on a lamppost near his house, asking whoever lost it to claim the money (but withholding information only known to the real owner) The first to apply is a small-time criminal, Lance (recently thrown out of his house for domestic violence), who is thinking of casing the house of his benefactor -- even if he is initially unable to get the money. But the genuine owner of the money is the disturbed Joel, who lives in a self-induced darkness and shares his life with a phantom companion.

Utilising this disparate and eccentric cast of characters, Rendell forges a discursive but compelling novel that (as always with her work) keeps us reading inexorably. Some may find the characterisation broader than they are used to with Rendell, but this is still seductive fare. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"In her trademark matter-of-fact prose, this clear-eyed, quietly brilliant writer examines the ties that ensnare her small cast of characters -- people linked in ways that are sometimes random, sometimes not."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times

"No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence, but in Portobello she has surpassed herself. Invisible wires draw seemingly disparate characters closer and closer until this reader actually felt them under his skin. The clarity and reason of her prose stand in perfect contrast to the escalating madness in the tale. Portobello is a brilliant novel."--Stephen King

"A thriller steeped in psychological intrigue . . . Rendell's prose style is as succinct and accessible as ever."--Daily Mirror (UK)

"Impossible to put down. . . . Portobello is as brilliant as anything she has ever written."--The Evening Standard (UK)

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1439148511
• ISBN 13: 9781439148518
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304