Customer Reviews

Portobello

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I've read many of Ruth Rendell's books, both the mysteries and the horror stories. She has a deft hand at plotting and atmosphere. Her characters are perhaps not the strength of her work; she gives them enough development to involve the reader, but rarely makes them interesting enough to care about. This book is all character studies and unfortunately Rendell doesn't show to her best advantage in it. There's nothing about these people that makes me want to know what happens to them. They're not likeable or interesting as people; the only thing unusual about them is their foibles, and the author describes those over and over again in excruciating detail.

I give the book 2 stars instead of one because Rendell does give a vivid impression of the market itself. That's fine, but it's not worth getting the book to read about the market. Go there yourself- you'll probably find this book on one of the second-hand stalls.

When Ruth Rendell sinks her writer's pit bull teeth into a juicy psychoses, neuroses, obsession, or addiction, she'll gnaw on it, fret with it, and with great glee hook her readers into her abnormal mystery world view. In "Portobello" her character Eugene Wren has an addiction to the diet sweet Chocorange, and his habit becomes so detailed and so frequently dwelt upon in the book, that the reader almost feels compelled to noodge Rendell and say, "Tone it back, babe." Of course one wouldn't because she is a baroness who sits in the House of Lords. She'll be 81 in February of 2011. Prolific, you bet, 24 novels, 22 Inspector Wexfords, and 13 as Barbara Vine.
In this one she does a beautiful job of recreating London's Saturday and Sunday street market and the everyday life of this sometimes seedy and creepy street. Rendell says, "Eccentricity is the norm in the Portobello Road" as it is in her writing.
Eugene finds a wad of money in the street, advertises it, but doesn't say the amount he has found. When Eugene gets a call, he stupidly invites the supposed owner, Lance Platt, a petty crook and female abuser, to his house to tell him the correct amount. Lance gives the wrong amount, is ushered to the door, but not before Lance is able to case the joint for a future break-in.
Eugene's girlfriend is Ella, a doctor, who is a chump for a sob story. Joel Roseman, a phobia-ridden neurotic correctly identifies the amount of money, and Ella brings the money from Eugene to Joel in the hospital. Joel's a very needy person so she becomes his personal doctor. Meanwhile Eugene scours all of the local stores for his addictive treat Chocorange, and we, as readers, go with him on many, too many, of these quests. He feels very guilty about buying bags of the stuff, and he can't get enough of it. It seems like a harmless addiction, but with any addiction it monopolizes his waking moments. To Eugene it's a more "dignified" addiction than other habits.
Lance is living in a wreck of a house with his Uncle Gib, a reformed crook who has adopted a religious cult. Lance stalks Eugene and eventually breaks into his house. In this book there are a lot of fascinating interconnections among characters and plot lines.
Rendell's skills are great character delineation and the ability to breathe life into her people, her smooth readable style, her masterly narrative flow, and her great facility with plots. Once you get into her world, weird as it is, you thrive in it.
In a Ruth Rendell book there's almost always a feeling of impending menace or dread like living on the lip of an active volcano cone (something like the mood in a Pinter play). It can be upsetting and unnerving, but it also get you hooked on her books. Her characters are neurotic or criminal or incredibly naïve or a combination of these elements.
Could a Rendell book have a happy ending? It's worth reading this fine book in order to find out. Great stuff as usual!

Rendell gives us fascinating characters, fully rounded and complex -- I enjoyed the antique dealer and his guilty secret, even though I would most certainly have found him laughable in real life. His foibles were very believable. There's not much mystery here, however, as we already know the culpable parties. The fun is in the descriptions and the book's humor and insight.

In several dozen previous novels, Ruth Rendell has demonstrated equal facility in writing police procedurals (with her beloved Inspector Wexford mysteries) and sinister psychological suspense (in her novels written under the pen name "Barbara Vine"). She also has continued to craft superb suspense novels under her own name, and the latest such book is PORTOBELLO.

Named for (and set largely in the neighborhood of) one of London's most famous roads and markets, PORTOBELLO begins --- as the best suspense novels often do --- innocently enough, with a colorful description of the neighborhood's equally lively milieu: "You can buy anything there. Everything on earth is on sale: furniture, antiques, clothes, bedding, hardware, music, food and food and more food. Vegetables and fruit, meat and fish, and cheese and chocolate... You can buy a harp there or a birdcage, a stuffed bear or a wedding dress, or the latest bestseller.... The moment you turn out of Pembridge Road or Westbourne Grove or Chepstow Villas and set foot in the market, you feel a touch of excitement, an indrawing of breath, a pinch in the heart. And once you have been, you have to go again.... Its thread attaches itself to you and a twitch on it summons you to return."

Like many of the most colorful, historical and fascinating neighborhoods, though, Portobello Road is suffering something of an identity crisis. Living cheek-by-jowl with long-time residents --- shopkeepers, blue-collar workers and petty criminals --- many of them are young up-and-comers, gentrifying their adopted neighborhood and expecting certain levels of both comfort and safety that its more historical denizens might not be willing to grant them yet.

For the most part, these varied populations manage to ignore each other, but sometimes circumstances draw them together in surprising ways. When a young man named Joel Roseman, estranged from his wealthy father, loses a cash-filled envelope on the Portobello Road, a well-to-do art dealer named Eugene Wren finds the money when out on his daily quest to fulfill his addiction to a particular brand of sweets. He places an advertisement and receives two responses: one from a small-time crook who needs the cash to stave off the thugs who are threatening him, and the other from Joel Roseman himself, who quickly develops a bizarre fixation with Eugene's beautiful girlfriend.

As circumstances escalate and coincidences generate surprising connections, these characters from very different backgrounds and with very different agendas soon find themselves being drawn together --- as if by that invisible thread again --- in unlikely and potentially explosive ways. Old habits die hard, apparently, and the neighborhood's new inhabitants soon discover that Portobello Road, despite its skyrocketing rents and film-set geography, still retains more than a bit of its gritty past.

What makes Rendell's novels gripping, besides her facility for portraying characters with truly unsetting quirks, is the contrast between the razor-sharp precision, and the crispness and care of her language, with the truly disturbing situations and ugly motivations about which she writes. This juxtaposition between her text's dispassion and her characters' varying obsessions is chilling to read and fascinating to consider. And although readers will come away from PORTOBELLO with a certain understanding of this famous London neighborhood, they'll not soon forget its darker side.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

I have admired Ruth Rendell's novels of psychological suspense for years and have read all of them including those she writes under her pseudonym Barbara Vine. PORTOBELLO is as expertly written as her previous works but I didn't find any of the characters or their situations particularly compelling and a few of the plot points even seemed a bit forced and unlikely.

Set somewhere around the present day in London's Notting Hill the book is comprised of several different personalities from divergent social groups who unexpectedly interact. We meet a middle aged wealthy art dealer, his medical doctor girlfriend, an elderly ex convict turned religious devotee, the mentally unstable son of a famous businessman who has disowned him, an unemployed man in his twenties living off the dole while supplementing it with some illegal activities and a self-sufficient eighty something woman who surprises her neighbors by having a male companion plus quite a few more. All these characters somehow have a connection and the catalyst for all this is some money found that the bored finder decides to complicate for his amusement.

Since I am a dedicated Rendell fan I am glad I took the time to read this novel as I enjoyed it more than a lot of "thrillers" currently being published. However I do not recommend this novel to people new to Rendell. So many of her other novels feature more compelling plot lines and believable characters to engage prospective readers not yet hooked on her writing.

Portobello is set in Notting Hill and adjoining areas of London. It is a novel very rich in "local color." I seek out and enjoy contemporary novels about London since I can't afford to travel there any longer. This novel satisfied my need to feed my "London nostalgia." I would almost be content to describe Portobello as a kind of less literary Mrs. Dalloway.

Basically, the novel weaves together the troubled lives of a wealthy art dealer who lives in Chepstow Villas, his GP fiancé, and several low-life petty criminals that lurk about Portobello and Golborne Roads. There is little troubling violence, no icky sex scenes, and nothing, really, to disturb your sleep. This novel is a kind of a toned down Ian McEwan. But I enjoyed it, I found it absorbing, and in fact clever in the inter-weaving. Bits were implausible to me, but in the end it all worked. I also enjoyed Rendell's subtle satire and humor. British doctors function very differently from US doctors, at least with private patients, if Rendell's descriptions are accurate.

If you are looking for a good read that won't disturb your equanimity, that's not great literature, about contemporary London, with interesting characters, and lots of the sense of Notting Hill, Ladbroke Grove, and nearby areas, this novel will do just fine. I recommend it.

I found that viewing the areas with Google Street View helped me enjoy the book even more. Chepstow Villas looks like a really nice area.

Cheers!

"Your wickedness affects a man such as you,
And your righteousness a son of man." -- Job 35:8 (NKJV)

Portobello is an eloquently written novel built around wanting to demonstrate how much we affect one another's lives through simple decisions and small contacts. While we tend to see ourselves as firmly in control of our lives and our fate, it isn't necessarily so. Part of Ms. Rendell's subtext is to suggest that those who are better off materially may, in fact, be more pitiful than their poorer counterparts who make the best of whatever hand has been dealt them.

Because of the heavy slant towards portraying how "neighbors" affect one another, the details of the story seem almost beside the point at times. That approach doesn't make for the most compelling story, but rather gives the reader room to re-examine his or her own life.

I must admit that I found the physical descriptions in the book to be stunningly well written. The character development seemed shallow and not-quite credible in comparison. As a result, the story didn't quite convince me to suspend my disbelief.

If you enjoy stories that make you identify with one or more of the characters, you probably won't like this book as much as I did.

If you are a Ruth Rendell fan, you may be a bit disappointed in comparison with her earlier works.