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jeanm333's review
3.0
Barbara Vine is really Ruth Rendell, British mystery writer. Rendell writes as Barbara Vine for the non-mystery books. I was caught up quickly in the story of Grace and Andrew Easton, brother and sister. She's writing a PHD dissertation on a history of the treatment of unwed mothers in Britain and he brings his male lover to their (Andrew and Grace's) house. The lover, James, is very sensitive to the treatment of gays in Britain.
A child's child is their story, but it's also another book-in-a-book, the story of John and Maud, another brother and sister, who have many parallels to Andrew and Grace.
Good book, with much to think about in society's treatment of both unwed mothers and homosexuals, and interesting characters, but the ending was abrupt and not well done. It seemed Rendell/Vine was trying to make a social statement, and just ran out of interesting things to say about her characters.
A child's child is their story, but it's also another book-in-a-book, the story of John and Maud, another brother and sister, who have many parallels to Andrew and Grace.
Good book, with much to think about in society's treatment of both unwed mothers and homosexuals, and interesting characters, but the ending was abrupt and not well done. It seemed Rendell/Vine was trying to make a social statement, and just ran out of interesting things to say about her characters.
rsurban's review
2.0
A surprising disappointment, Barbara Vine's new novel reads like a first draft, or even worse, a work in progress that needed to be re-thought. The book is comprised of a story within a story, with the tale in the past being a novel based on real events that the main character in the framing story is reading. Both narratives deal with an unwed mother, her brother, and the brother's male lover. The framing narrative takes place in the present, with the historical story taking place between the world wars in the English countryside. One of the drawbacks of the book is that Vine seems to favor polemic over plot: the main themes of the book deal with the social intolerance affecting her characters in the past, when social strictures were more rigid and judgmental, while the present-day characters seem to be freed from this oppression. The problem is, that observation was made in one sentence, and yet Vine seems to think it is somehow worthy of embroidery across the span of a full length novel. Unfortunately, beyond this obvious fact, and the "coincidence" of the relationships of the trio of characters in each story (which can't really be said to be coincidental when this is the deliberate construct of the author), any further comparison of the parallel narratives seems forced and unbelievable. This being Vine/Rendell, I fully expected some sardonic plot twist to tie the twin stories together across time, and the truncated and bewildering ending left me doubly disappointed with the novel. This is a dully plotted and thematically obtuse book peopled with unsympathetic and unpleasant characters. A rare misstep from a usually reliable author.
spygrl1's review
2.0
Two stories are told: one the 2011 experiences of Grace, her brother Andrew, and Andrew's boyfriend James, the other a tale of hidden homosexuality and unwed motherhood from decades past, as written but not published by an author who allegedly based part of the tale on James' ancestor. I found the 2011 tale frustrating -- Grace's actions were reprehensible, and Andrew's acceptance seems unearned, contrived even. The story told in the novel-within-the-novel is fairly well drawn, but again the female character Maud is so unpleasant that it's difficult to spend so much time with her. Her brother is an effectively tragic character, but the novel continues on well past his death, and from the moment he drowned my interest waned.
I might rather have read Grace's thesis about unwed motherhood in fiction.
I might rather have read Grace's thesis about unwed motherhood in fiction.
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