Reviews

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell

rouge_red's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

4.25

Slice-of-life, coming of age, with some mystery and tense moments. It does intrigue and suspense in a very interesting way and I really liked it. Most of the novel documents the day to day life of our MC, Clodagh Brown and a group of twenty-somethings that all seem to be stuck in limbo. All of them have their reasons for not being able to live "normal" lives, and it doesn't' help that they're all not able to move forward stuck in this group. All throughout the book, I didn't imagine any of them being able to make it to their 30s because something about each one of them felt like they could only exist in a certain space in time. And except for Wim (we're not sure what happens to him after the hospital), everyone does move on to adulthood. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think Ruth Rendell did a really great job at balancing the tenseness with the mundane parts of these people's lives. Something about the story felt real.

loreabad6's review against another edition

Can’t connect with the characters but might give it a second chance 

pjgal22's review against another edition

4.0

I love Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine's psychological thrillers, and this is a good one. Compelling characters in a page-turning story.

islishmd's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

ambience's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

neppip's review against another edition

medium-paced

4.0

lyndann's review against another edition

3.0

Lots of day to day details, LOTS of foreshadowing. The book seemed really long, and hard to get into in the beginning. I also was distracted by the timeframe jumping. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised with how I enjoyed it in the end. It was more of a love story than a mystery?! It seems it's not her best work. I'll try something else...

wjread's review against another edition

4.0

This novel is about loss and growing up. It has a slightly suspenseful aspect (which I enjoyed) and some good twists. Although it has a bit too much detail, the author weaved the story and moved through time so effortlessly that it was a nice read.

nocto's review against another edition

This seemed a much lengthier read than the actual 400 and something page count would have me believe. It might be that picking it up and putting it down for about three months isn't the best way to read it but it did seem to drag. Altogether too much foreshadowing of the 'if only I'd known then what I know now' type which rather than heightening the suspense leads you to not be surprised by many of the events in the book.

I'm making it sound like I hated it which I didn't. It was a much more interesting, more unputdownable, book in the last hundred pages than it was in the lead up and I enjoyed seeing all the various threads intertwine and play out. Just too much set up for not enough pay off in the end though.

The main spinal theme of the books is scaling heights but the recurring theme of relationships, especially those between parents and children, is more absorbing on the whole. The thing about heights gets your attention but I felt it diverted me from the real matter of the story. Clodagh Brown is the narrator telling the story about eleven years after the events happen when she was 19, mainly when her and her friends lived in Maida Vale and took to gallavanting around the local rooftops. I think it's the looking back narration style that really annoyed me; since she's looking back she can hide things from the reader but it didn't feel artfully enough done. I don't mind being able to guess the ending but there seemed to be too little that I couldn't guess at here.

I love many of Barbara Vine's books but other are just 'eh?' for me. This was one of the second type.

jatridle's review against another edition

2.0

Like other Barbara Vine novels I've read (I've never read any of her Ruth Rendell books) this one isn't paced like a crime novel. Crimes happen in the novel, often in the periphery of the main action of the story, but the book, itself, is about a core group of young people and their eventual evolution into adulthood. It's a frustrating book filled with frustrating characters who expect you to care about some frustratingly asinine things. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to reach through the page and throttle the people this book forced me to hang out with page after page after page. Young people bitching about situations they fought and lied to stay in. There's a lot of (clumsy) foreshadowing and build-up to incidents that really, truly don't matter one iota. But, a small part of me liked the book anyway. In fact, that part of me liked the book BECAUSE these people were so damn frustrating. They're flawed characters. Flawed, young characters. Realistically drawn flawed, young characters-- who drove me absolutely nuts.

As for things I didn't like so much, the clumsy, heavily used foreshadowing. There was a lot of it, like she didn't trust the readers to keep reading on their own (and it seems from many of the other reviews, many readers didn't anyway.) I'm also not sure why Vine chose to begin the book showing how it ends. We get to see two of the main characters of the book grown up and doing well from the get-go, which, to me, took away a lot of the tension the book could have had.

There were some interesting aspects to the book. The kidnapping story-line kept my attention. And, as I've said before, I did sort of like seeing the main characters mature and grow as the book progressed. I liked the way Vine wrote humans instead of villains and victims. But, in the end, if I'm totally honest, I thought the book was a two-star"okay' and not much more.