Minotaur [Import] [Paperback]

BARBARA VINE (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 455 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141025239
• ISBN-13: 978-0141025230
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All The Rendell/VIne Characteristics, But Not The Best Of Her Work, April 4, 2006

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Minotaur: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Minotaur is the latest production by Ruth Rendell under her alter ego of Barbara Vine. The Vine novels concentrate on "why" rather than "who" or "how" in exploring the psychological reasons for crimes which take place in the past and are slowly revealed to the reader by narrators who witnessed some or all of the events. At Vine's best, as in her first two novels A Dark Adapted Eye and A Fatal Inversion, this technique produces an engrossing read which is difficult to put down and leaves one with much to ponder.

Unfortunately The Minotaur, while satisfying, is not on the same level as Vine's earliest work. This book contains many of Vine/Rendell's signature plot elements: a character from Scandinavia, a dysfunctional family, psychologically disturbed individuals, other individuals who are autistic, and an East Anglian setting with one or more old houses covered in Virginia creeper. In The Minotaur these characters and settings aren't as well developed and tend to be more stereotypical than illuminating. The story also doesn't jump back and forth from the past to the present quite as much as other Vine works do. Some readers might like that, but one of the things I myself find most appealing about Vine is that shift from time period to time period.

Despite these disappointments, I did enjoy The Minotaur. It is a satisfying little mystery which in typical British fashion leaves much unsaid and the reader with much to sort out for himself. I also liked the glimpses back to British life in the late 1960s and the comparisons with life thirty five years or so on.

I recommend The Minotaur unreservedly for Vine/Rendell veterans. If you are just discovering Barbara Vine, you will get a more developed introduction to her work by first reading the two books I mentioned above or by reading some similar in spirit Rendell works like The Crocodile Bird or A Sight For Sore Eyes.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In the House of Murdoch, March 29, 2007

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Minotaur (Paperback)

Ruth Rendell's latest novel under her other name, Barbara Vine, is one of her best efforts to date. As with all the books under the Vine name, the question here is not so much whodunnit as how did something awful come to happen: in this case, we know that the heroine, Kerstin Kvist, went to an Essex manor house called Lydstep Old Hall in the Sixties to help care for a disturbed adult man who libes with his arrogant old mother and four slightly unhinger sisters, and that something awful happened while she was there. We spend the rest of the novel waiting to find out what exactly happened.

This is Vine's most Gothic novel in quite some time, and though the gigantic Virginia creeper-entwined Lydstep Old Hall reminds the heroine of Brontë and Du Maurier, the novelist whose work this novel seems really closest to is Iris Murdoch. The Cosways, with their unusual first names, short tempers, love of sex and high-handed behavior, seem to recall the Britons from Murdoch's novels, and the novel's fine sense of place will call to mind some of Murdoch's most striking books from the early 60s like THE TIME OF THE ANGELS and THE UNICORN. The characterization is quite strong, although the character of Ida Cosway never comes as fully to life as those of her sisters, and the intelligent narrator's inertia when faced with the Cosways' rude behavior to her is often hard to believe (although Vine keeps trying to explain it to us). The other characters, however, are quite intriguing, particularly the Minotaur himself, John Cosway.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine maze you got me into!, August 4, 2005

By 

Cielledee "cielledee" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Minotaur (Audio CD) (Audio CD)

This is a very compelling read narrated by the story's protagonist, Kerstin Kvist who is working in England. The story takes place in rural England in the 60s, a village that has not been touched the 'revolution' sweeping other parts of the country. Kerstin is employed by a dysfunctional and sinister family made up of the tyrannical mother, four sisters and one brother who is supposedly mad. Family secrets threaten to spill over onto everyone that knows them, including Kerstin, making for a very dramatic ending. Barbara Vine has carefully constructed a tale that absorbs, twists, entangles and finally leaves you wishing for more. Her characters are psychologically profiled and one can almost feel the goosebumps, not knowing what to expect. More please, Barbara (aka Ruth Rendell)!