Portobello: A Novel [Hardcover]

Ruth Rendell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2010

Ruth Rendell is widely considered to be crime fiction’s reigning queen, with a remarkable career spanning more than forty years. Now, in Portobello, she delivers a captivating and intricate tale that weaves together the troubled lives of several people in the gentrified neighborhood of London’s Notting Hill.Walking to the shops one day, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man plagued by a shameful addiction—and his own good intentions—Wren hatches a plan to find the money’s rightful owner. Instead of going to the police, or taking the cash for himself, he prints a notice and posts it around Portobello Road. This ill-conceived act creates a chain of events that links Wren to other Londoners—people afflicted with their own obsessions and despairs. As these volatile characters come into Wren’s life—and the life of his trusting fiancée—the consequences will change them all.

Portobello is a wonderfully complex tour de force featuring a dazzling depiction of one of London’s most intriguing neighborhoods—and the dangers beneath its newly posh veneer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. London's Portobello Road, a street fabled for its shops and outdoor market, provides the backdrop for Edgar-winner Rendell's superlative suspense novel, which features a cast of colorful characters from varied classes and walks of life. Secretive 50-year-old Eugene Wren, who's addicted to cheap candy lozenges, is toying with marrying his longtime girlfriend, physician Ella Cotswold. Rootless Lance Platt cases the neighborhood for costly homes he can break into, and clashes with his great-uncle, Gilbert Gibson, a former burglar who now preaches the gospel. One man's losing 115 pounds triggers a series of coincidences that brings this disparate lot closer together, toward haphazard violence and death. Rendell (The Water's Lovely) is particularly adept at portraying young people just a dole check away from homelessness as well as the carelessness and callousness of the book's upper-middle-class characters. Her style has become ever more spare while retaining its subtle psychology and vivid sense of place.
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From Booklist

Rendell writes better when she writes shorter. Most of her novels and short stories, for which she is justly acclaimed (she has won three Edgars as well as three Gold Daggers and one Diamond Dagger), have been minimalist works of suspense genius, the kind where you look around the room wonderingly when Rendell sinks in the shiv of surprise. In this novel, Rendell has relaxed a great deal, spending pages on bits of business (for example, the current hero likes a particular kind of snack) that would have been swiftly dealt with in her earlier work. This is a novel that should have been a short story about a man who finds an envelope filled with money. He doesn’t need it—he’s inherited his father’s wealth from a print shop in the Portobello Road—so he posts “Found” notices around the extensive Portobello street market. This act, of course, leads to a series of encounters with other Londoners, some of them dangerous. Rendell fans want to read everything she writes, but this overpadded tale is not among her best work. --Connie Fletcher

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1ST SCRIBNER edition (September 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439148511
• ISBN-13: 978-1439148518
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #442,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Horror and Humor, April 2, 2009

By 

Eileen Pollock (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Portobello (Hardcover)

I imported Portobello from the UK in an excess of impatience to read the new Rendell, and I am thrilled to report it is horrific, claustrophobic, and yes, droll in turns. Rendell's genius still burns brightly, her sharp edge is unblunted, and we readers may rejoice, while compulsively turning the pages in a chill of ever-increasing dread. In this wicked tale, a well-to-do art gallery owner, Eugene Wren, is hiding a secret addiction from his doctor fiancee, Ella. He finds an envelope containing money and posts an ad, whereupon his fiancee becomes professionally embroiled with the owner of the envelope, Joel, whom we realize is, yes, insane. Meanwhile, a petty thief and burglar, Lance, is on the prowl in Eugene's wealthy neighborhood. Lance is living with his parsimonious Uncle Gib, a reformed thief now member of a fundamentalist church. Lance and Uncle Gib provide much of the comic relief. Goodness knows we need it, as Ella the caring doctor becomes disturbingly involved with Joel, whose madness is growing worse. There are burglaries, murders, drowning of a child, the firebombing of a house, and a pilfered chocolate cake. Tragedy is juxtaposed with absurdity, as in Eugene's terrible addiction to - sugar-free sweets, the euphoniously named Chocorange. The well off characters have the luxury of obsessing over imagined ills, while ignoring the unlocked garden gate, which will, we know, lead to real grief. The lower class characters get by on cunning, ruthlessness, and the dole; while the comfortably cocooned upper classes are chattering and, utterly naive about what it takes to survive, are the natural prey of the lowlifes who haunt the Portobello Road area. It is as if Theodore Dalrymple's social commentary were wedded to Ruth Rendell's story-telling talents. All told, a marvelous read, with a richly satisfying conclusion.

50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life (And Death) In Portobello Road, August 9, 2009

By 

Tom S. "filmfan3" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Portobello (Hardcover)

The latest suspense novel from my favorite mystery writer is my favorite kind of mystery. It isn't part of her wonderful Wexford series, but a stand-alone story of a broad cross-section of Londoners who become involved in one another's lives, seemingly by accident (think of her titles like THE KEYS TO THE STREET and ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME). There's something almost Dickensian about this story, with rich and poor living and working in such close quarters, all in or near London's famous Portobello Road. A lost envelope full of cash and a Good Samaritan's spontaneous act of kindness are the inciting actions in this rich tapestry, leading to love, hatred, obsession, and--of course--murder for the huge, varied cast of characters.

Ruth Rendell is more than a mystery writer. In several recent books, she has provided a remarkable social commentary on today's world, and she works her brilliant observations of human nature into her brilliant plots. PORTOBELLO is amazing, start to finish. Highly recommended.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the mustard?, January 5, 2011

By 

David Eubanks (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Portobello: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book was pleasant reading. It was my first book by Ruth Rendell. I found that her writing stays comfortably out of the way while the story progresses. There's quite a talent in doing that, I'll give her credit. She didn't make me set the book down in disgust with the writing. The shortcoming in the book is more serious in that the character's stories are bland.

This tale is not suspenseful nor a thriller, if that's what you're looking for. It is a mildly interesting journey with a few characters leading unremarkable lives, but just interesting enough to keep reading. Though the author gets oddly repetitious, the words flow easily enough not to become frustrating. If you're thinking "feint praise," you're getting my drift.

One might summarize one of the character's life a follows: he was a troubled, unemployed man who finally got the girl he wanted and a job. Nothing very intriguing supports his storyline, but he does have his events. Another character gets hooked on diet candies, and there are endless repetitions of his angst over this. Think about that. It would be quite a trick to get the reader excited about such a dilemma, and she doesn't.

Overall, well, no harm done, and the kind of read one might seek out to relax the mind, not challenge it.