Customer Reviews

The Birthday Present

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Writing as Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell's "The Birthday Present" is an extended flashback in which two narrators look back at a sordid incident and its tragic aftermath. Ivor Tesham, a handsome and ambitious graduate of Eton and Oxford, becomes a Tory MP at thirty-one and seems destined for political stardom. However, his self-centeredness and desire for sexual excitement propel him to take foolish risks, and when things go terribly wrong, he becomes an emotional wreck. Ivor's cautionary tale is narrated by Rob, an accountant and Ivor's staid brother-in-law, and Jane Atherton, the dowdy and resentful best friend of Ivor's married mistress, a beautiful twenty-seven year old named Hebe Furnal who shares her lover's kinky tastes.

Rob and his wife, Iris, Ivor's sister, serve as a mini-Greek chorus. Although they bear some blame for enabling Ivor to carry out an imprudent scheme, no one could have foreseen how fate would turn a sick charade into a catastrophe. Instead of presenting the facts in a linear manner, Rendell allows Rob and Jane to report their version of events with their biases intact, forcing us to figure out who did what to whom and why. Rendell uses black humor and complex plot machinations to shine a spotlight on human frailties, with an emphasis on obsession, greed, and egotism. Ivor jeopardizes his career and reputation for the sake of a tawdry adventure; Hebe puts her marriage and her son's welfare at risk to carry on a clandestine liaison with an attractive and wealthy man. Jane Atherton is a homely and dejected woman, one of a "faceless tribe" who "go to bed alone and get up alone." She is a perpetual victim whose low-paying job, manipulative and nagging mother, and solitary existence fill her with bitterness and self-pity.

"The Birthday Present" is laced with surprises and last-minute plot twists. Unlike other works by this author that are almost painfully misanthropic, this book encourages us to understand and feel compassion for the characters, most of whom want a better life for themselves and someone with whom to share it. It is too bad, she implies, that so many of us have a penchant for self-destruction. It is almost as if we are tempted to stand on a cliff just to see how close we can come to the edge without falling off. Even if we play by the rules and try to do the right thing, however, life can be horribly unfair. "The Birthday Present" is an original, edgy, and deliciously ironic mystery in which Rendell tempers her usual cynicism with a welcome dose of empathy.

I do not think this is Barbara Vine/ Ruth Rendell's best book, and I have read all of them. But I am giving this 5 stars, because even a flawed work from her is usually far better than most mystery suspense novels out there. This is no exception, and it is a fast-paced, suspense-filled story.

Brief summary, no spoilers:

The setting is London, in the early 1990s, just at the end of Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister. The story tells the tale of Ivor Tesham, a young member of Parliament who had ambitions to rise much higher. He is having an affair with a married woman, and decides to plan a "surprise" for her birthday.

Needless to say, it goes wrong. And that starts a series of events that results in the destruction of many lives.

One of the things I love about any Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell novel is that you know you are in for a page-turner, and this book is no exception. She is also the best author I've ever read in describing damaged, or eccentric characters, or those with obsessive compulsions, delusions, or mental defect of all sorts. And again, this novel doesn't disappoint in that regard.

So my problems with the story? Without giving away any spoilers - I was riveted throughout most of the story, and I thought that the sense of impending doom and disaster was palpable. It seemed like we were all set up for a spectacular finish - and indeed, this author has come up with some of the great finales and twists of all time.

But not here, in my opinion. Saying this, I still recommend this book. It is a pager-turner, and has the great classic bizarre cast of Barbara Vine characters. If you are in any kind of a reading slump, this is as good as any of her books to get you going again.

So, recommended. But if you've never read her before, I recommend starting with some of my favorites - like A Sight for Sore Eyes, Or Adam and Eve and Pinch Me under her real name, Ruth Rendell. Or Anna's Book or No Night is Too Long under the Barbara Vine pseudonym.

I've been a fan of Barbara Vine for years, ordering her books from amazon.uk so I can get them as soon as they come out rather than waiting until they're released in the U.S. For some reason, I didn't on "The Birthday Present," and I am glad.

Usually Vine writes multi-layered, multi-faceted intense psychological narratives that take place in one time but explore a past history. Her protagonists are flawed, often deeply, but the reader cannot help either liking them or at least being sympathetic towards them. Not in this novel. For one thing, the chapters shift back and forth between the narrative of Rob Delgado, an amoral, spineless observer, and the diary of Jane, an increasingly-disturbed young woman. However, there is nothing to mark (other than chapter breaks) that the narrators are switching back and forth so it takes several sentences of each chapter to figure out who is talking. How hard would it have been to add a label "excerpt from Jane's diary" to her portions? In addition, the main character, Ivor, is despicable. How this unfaithful, caddish, shallow snob can get women to love him so deeply is an inexplicable mystery. He does not have one redeemable quality.

In previous Vine books, the suspense builds to a very satisfying denouement--again, not in this book. She reveals her hand basically at the beginning of the book, and that's all there is. I enjoy the Ruth Rendell/Wexford novels, but the Ruth Rendell standalones often leave me cold. That is what this Barbara Vine novel reminded me of--particularly the point of view told from an extremely unreliable narrator. It's disappointing that for a number of reviewers here, this was their first Vine novel. I highly recommend many of her previous offerings: A Dark-Adapted Eye (perfection!), House of Stairs, The Brimstone Wedding, The Blood Doctor, The Minotaur, or Anna's Book. Try any of those, and you'll have a much more satisfactory Barbara Vine experience than "The Birthday Present."

factor is the nauseating brother-in-law holier than thou narrarator...and the absolute sickeningly sweet stuff about how he loves being a daddy-which have nothing to do with plot and do nothing to advance the story-have no idea why the writer would keep pushing this theme-

also as other readers have said it was all to easy to guess the real murderer and there is only a mild surprise rather than a shock at the end-way too much build up throughout the novel-every other sentence is telling you what a disaster lies ahead...and is it does not live up to all of that...still, could have given it a better rating without the perfect-daddy telling too much of the tale...

I'm sad that I had to give The Birthday Present only four stars. Every other Barbara Vine book (or Rendell book) I've ever read warranted five stars. Make no mistake, this is better than 99% of the suspense fiction written today, but it seemed to me to suffer from the same flaw so many novels by popular writers today do - a rushed ending. I feel like Rendell came to a point in this book where she had to finish it, so she just added a plot "twist" at the end and called it a day. Maybe writers today are so pressed to put out "product" that they don't have enough time to wrap things up properly; publishers are breathing down their necks for more. But it makes me sad that so many of my favorites are falling prey to this (and yes Patricia Cornwell and Martha Grimes I'm still lookin' at you!).

What I found really shocking and annoying was the book jacket. The plot outlined is NOT what happens in the novel. For a major publisher of a major author to make an error like this is inexcusable. Don't editors exist anymore?

OMG - you don't suppose they hired Harriet?

A slick, up-and-coming Conservative MP, Ivor Tesham, contrives a kinky birthday present for his married lover, Hebe Furnal, and it all goes badly wrong. The woman ends up dead, an apparent kidnapping victim. One of the "perpetrators" also dies and the third languishes in a coma.

This latest psychological thriller from Vine (aka Ruth Rendell) begins dark and grows inevitably darker. It's told in two voices, Ivor's brother-in-law Rob, a dedicated family man, and plain Jane, glamorous Hebe's embittered spinster friend and alibi.

Naturally Ivor hopes to cover things up and succeeds too. But he can't quite leave well enough alone. And there's Jane, of course, who knows all about him. Not that she's interested in blackmail or revenge. All she really wants is to be the next Mrs. Furnal.

We're told from the start that things don't end well for Ivor, not that there would be much doubt. It's the journey that's so riveting. Vine takes us there through character and class, expectations and ambitions, hopes and disappointments.

There are no evil people in this one, just plenty of selfishness, half-baked guile and self-destructive haplessness. Vine winds her way through the human psyche serving up surprises and inevitabilities with spellbinding precision. A page-turner to savor.

If this were a true story, a roman a clef in the style of Dominick Dunne, it would probably be interesting. As it is, a work of fiction, it is a well-written eventual bore, as if Vine had challenged herself to make a suspenseful story out of an ordinary event that occurs at the beginning of the book and takes years--in which little happens--to work its unsurprising way through a plot. Its strong points are good writing, interesting and true characters, and a peek into the workings of party politics in England during the Major era. Borrow it from the library, so you can skip through the pages without feeling resentment at money spent on suspense that isn't.

It's the early 1990s, and Ivor Tesham, Tory MP, is in the middle of an affair with Hebe Furnal, a glamorous housewife who shares his taste for S&M. When the car Ivor's arranged to kidnap Hebe crashes and she dies, Ivor decides to hide his involvement in the affair from the police. Over the ten years or so, as Ivor's fortunes rise and fall, he is terrified that things will come to light and his political career will be over.

The story is told from two points of view: Ivor's brother-in-law Robyn; and Hebe's best friend Jane, a sad, pathetic, obsessive, and mostly deluded librarian (she's a classic Vine character) who provides Hebe with an alibi while she's out at her trysts with Ivor. Jane is easily the best character of the bunch; at once, you feel sorry for her and revulsion at the things she thinks and says. The real strength of the novel, however, lies in the psychological suspense, which kept me interested the whole way through.

There are a couple of things that seemed anachronistic to me, however (would an unemployed woman with no money have owned a cell phone in the early 1990s?), and the ending is a bit predictable. And for people who aren't really into politics, Vine does get a bit into the subject here. The Birthday Present isn't quite as good as, say, House of Stairs, the or The Minotaur, but it comes very close.

An old scandal comes back to haunt an ambitious politician in Barbara Vine's latest novel of psychological suspense. Years ago, this Tory rising star in Britain's Parliament was involved in a kinky "birthday present" encounter that ended tragically. Now, someone is using blackmail to derail his plans for higher office....

Barbara Vine is a pseudonym of Ruth Rendell, my all-time favorite mystery writer, and her "Barbara Vine" novels are always literate, exciting, and thoroughly enjoyable. Because the author herself is so involved in Brit politics, it was probably inevitable that she would use that rarefied world as the background for one of her novels. Well, now she has--and her own Labour leanings (in America, that would translate as "left wing") are all-too-apparent in this cautionary tale. Her Tory ("right wing") victim's decline and fall provides the reader with a mini-history of British politics in the last few years, with much emphasis on some very real, very high-profile sex scandals like the one in her story. I usually give her books an automatic 5-star review, but her preoccupation with backroom politics gives THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT a preachy quality that I (for one) could have done without. Still, it's an interesting story, and her writing is vivid, as always.

PS: Her new "Ruth Rendell" novel, PORTOBELLO, is terrific.

I am a big, big fan of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and have read and enjoyed about 3/4 of her books. This one is almost a stinker. Right from the first page we are bombarded by names of people we know nothing of, too many names to remember, let alone care about. The writing is ponderous and heavy with foreshadowing that gets really annoying. And worst of all, I guessed what was going to happen and even who killed "the alibi lady," not a good thing in a mystery. I do hope Rendell/Vine will give us an excellent read next time as she has so often before.