Customer Reviews

The Face of Trespass

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Two years ago Gray Lanceton was a promising writer with one successful novel under his belt. But, then he met Drusilla, a bored, rich, unstable yet magnetic young woman, and his life was changed forever.

Now he lives in quiet exile in a small messy cottage, with only the surrounding trees and his own obsessive destroying thoughts for company. Their affair is now over, and he hopes that maybe now he can be free. But, unbeknownst to Gray, tragedy lurks still above him, the shadow of Drusilla and her violent desires will soon threaten to rob him of any of that freedom he thought he had clawed back...

This short book is a little piece of genius. It is a great great shame that many of these early novels of hers remain out of print, because they really are excellent. This one in particular is a wonderful yet chilling character study, which is what several of them tend to be, their lengths being what they are. While her later books are longer and can probe the psychological depths of many characters with greater ease, these early short gems tend to focus their intense insight on one major character, and she manages with effortless ease to present a completely whole, completely real, somewhat disturbing, portrait of a single fascinating character, in this case the reclusive, eerily human writer Graham Lanceton, who is actually quite likeable, which is rare for Rendell. It is a tale of desire, violence, freedom and of obsession, with each element explored wonderfully within a riveting plot.

She has a wonderfully polished writing style, and creates a tale that is both claustrophobic and atmospheric. All the aspects of the plot click together wonderfully. No event is superfluous, every occurrence has its purpose and its effect, which creates a wonderful whole and round effect to the book. Book with stories that weave and interlock so well are a joy, they are more fulfilling and the effect makes the writer seem darn clever, and this is a prime.

The Face of Trespass is dark, compelling, and psychologically brilliant. The final cataclysmic events are shocking and yet sensible. In fiction, this is becoming very rare.

Finally, this early Rendell masterpiece is available on Kindle! This short novel is classic Rendell: beautifully plotted, engrossing, written in Rendell's hallmark style that one can recognize among hundreds of authors. Rendell is adept at creating nueanced and complex characters her readers are not likely to forget for years to come.

In THE FACE OF TRESPASS, she takes us deep into the mind of a man obsessed with the loss of a woman he loves. Almost the entire first half of the book Graham stays in an abandoned hovel in a tiny village, speaking with no one and seeing no one. Still, every page of his story is fascinating. There is very little action here, and definitely no car chases, gory details of murders, dismembered victims, and order things today's authors love to pile up in order to attract their readers. Rendell's talent is such that she doesn't need these gimmicks to make her novels impossible to put down. She offers an unrivalled psychological insight into the personality of her main character. The seemingly benign setting of her novel conceals a dreadful sense of impending disaster.

In short, this is a great novel that can be read and re-read as many times as one wishes and still remain enjoyable.

THE FACE OF TREPASS falls into that category of early Rendell classics that have since fallen out of print. A pity--this is one of Rendell's most enjoyable, involving, and finely tuned performances. An author, obsessed by his memories of a passionate but dangerous love affair, shuts himself up in a filthy hovel for months and months, willing himself to forget...it's a wonderful setup for Rendell's typically inventive plot twists, peppered with dead-on psychological insight.

Rendell's boundless strengths as a mystery writer and an anatomist of the human condition are fully in evidence here. She demonstrates once more her perfect mastery of tone and pace, as well as her gift for wicked wit--THE FACE OF TRESPASS is not just a superior thriller; it can also be an extremely funny book in certain places. And like all of the author's novels, there is a wonderfully effective buildup of psychological tension, a sense of inevitable tragedy that is brilliantly sustained--impressive, considering that THE FACE OF TRESPASS doesn't feature a single gunfight or car chase. Nothing here but delicious prose, shrewd social observation, marvelous character study, and a deft plot that serves up surprise after surprise. The story is marred only by a contrived conclusion that offers a false sense of security, usually absent in Rendell's bleak novels. Still, a wonderfully rich choice for fans of intelligent suspense fiction.

I leave to other reviewers to explain the plot of this earlier work of the master storyteller. Obsession and gloom pervade this one, but it has all the hallmarks of Rendell's work, and will keep the reader guessing and, then, wondering when the axe will fall. Not like the Insp. Wexford stories, but really, really fine reading.

A off-beat writer, somewhat reclusive by nature, discovers how little he knows of himslef, his lover and life in general. Again, a wonderful Rendell story of obsession, and betrayal, particularly self-betrayal. Interesting sub-plot involving main characters mother and step-father. Good ending, and good begining, with everthing tying in together, and the character wondering to himself, at the bitter end, as always, why was I so blind, and Rendell showing someones real life is always one heartbeat away from what he thinks it is. Another fascinating exploration of loneliness, the need to love, the treachery one encounters thereby.

This book was excellent. I had not read anything else by the author prior to this point, but look forward to reading more of her works. The plot twists are amazing. I knew that something was going to happen, and it was going to be bad...but didn't know what. Which is surprising nowadays because so many books are so easy to figure out half way through. The characters are wonderful too.

This book gets going very, very slowly, as if it were a twentieth-century imitation of Crime and Punishment (which it in some ways resembles). I would have abandoned it long short of the ending if I hadn't already read enough Rendells to expect it to pay off in the end. And it does pay off, though I'm still not sure I would have begun to read it had I known how long it would take to hook me. The protagonist's long brooding is a good fifty pages too long for my tastes; this is a short novel that would have worked just as well, if not better, as a short story. I was about to say, "I don't care what happens to the main character, let alone about anyone else in this story," when the impending twist finally popped up. So if you've started this one, hang in there; the good part does finally arrive. If you haven't started this one, read Judgement in Stone instead.

This is the first stand alone book without Inspector Wexford written under Ruth Rendell's name that I've read, and I am astonished at the different style of writing as compared to the police procedurals with Wexford and to the novels under the Barbara Vine psuedonym. I did find the main character unsympathetic to begin with, but warmed to him as the story progressed and as I caught on to what was truly happening. And I was quite satisfied with the final epilog. This definitely is a book worth searching for.

This is my 12th Ruth Rendell book and I think each is better than the last. They are not as good to me when I listen to them on audio book. I wonder why? Gray loves Druscilla so much but cannot bring himself to commit the crime she requests. Then he has to go to France to see about his dying Mother. It is so hard to write a review of this very complicated novel which is so good. You know something bad is going to happen to someone but you don't know who, when, where or why. I love that type of novel. Read it, you won't regret it. I am going to get all her works, if it's the last thing I ever do!!!!!!11

Alfred Hitchock would have filmed this story of deceit and obsessive love. Although the book begins slowly, the plot quickens to a double twist of fate. Highly recommended. This book is out of print and hard to find. Excellent BBC adaption available of video.