A Sight for Sore Eyes [Mass Market Paperback]

Ruth Rendell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2000

Teddy was born in squalor. Now he is a craftsman determined to banish ugliness from his life. Harriet is a beautiful, bored trophy wife who employs a series of repairmen for her sexual satisfaction. And Francine is a college student who witnessed her mother's murder and now must free herself from her father's manipulative second wife. Connected by strands of chance, their lives intersecting in the strangest of ways, these three people are on a journey that will bring them to each other--and to a beautiful ivy-covered home with at least one dead body in the basement....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nobody does North London squalor better than Ruth Rendell. Describing in vivid detail the cultural sewer in which a monster named Teddy Brex grows up, she uses hideous furniture, slovenly housekeeping habits, even his mother's diet while pregnant to root us in the setting's hopeless ugliness. In contrast, Rendell introduces people and places of stunning beauty: Francine, a mentally fragile girl who became mute after witnessing her mother's murder; and Orcadia Cottage, scene of a famous painting that is at the center of much of the story's anguish. "It was far and away the most beautiful place he had ever seen," Rendell writes when Teddy--a gifted woodcrafter--first views the cottage. "The proportions of this hall, this room... the windows, the walls, the carpets, the flowers, the furniture, the paintings, all of it dazzled him."

Teddy is another of Rendell's frightening moral cripples, a seemingly ordinary person capable of the vilest crimes. When he becomes obsessed with Francine after meeting her at art school, we know to expect murder--we just aren't sure when, or who will be the victim. Equally vile is Julia, Francine's stepmother, a psychologist of such immense and malevolent ineptness that we would swear she couldn't possibly exist if real life hadn't taught us otherwise. Other important characters are Harriet, a faded beauty who connects the past to the present; Teddy's uncle Keith, who first recognizes the boy's madness; and a bright red, lovingly restored Edsel, which becomes a hearse.

Like all of her books, Rendell's latest is really about the secret acts of insanity that occur behind closed doors. Among her best books available in paperback are From Doon with Death, A Guilty Thing Surprised, The Keys to the Street, and, from the excellent Inspector Wexford series, Kissing the Gunner's Daughter, Road Rage, and Simisola. --Dick Adler --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

A pair of English teens, Teddy and Francine (who have grown up in dysfunctional families where common parenting faults are taken to extremes), meet and think that in each other they might find the beauty and freedom their own lives are lacking. Their troubled affair takes a while to get going, but once it does, Rendell's sharp characterizations and idiosyncratic descriptions are riveting. Though several deaths occur in the book, the only real mystery is that of the murder of Francine's mother, which Francine overheard (near the novel's beginning) when she was seven. Instead, Rendell (Road Rage, etc.) focuses more on how a few sedately bizarre ticks can build exponentially into insanity. Francine's stepmother, for example, progresses from simple worry about her stepdaughter's well-being to obsessive anxiety that borders on dementia. Rendell follows the story's principal objects as closely as she does its characters: the diamond and sapphire engagement ring that Teddy's indifferent mother finds in a public bathroom; the video case in which Francine's mother hid her love letters, the painting of two young lovers that shows Teddy the perfect beauty he would kill for. Rendell leaves nothing and no one unaccounted for, from the looks given by the neighbors over the fence to the idle thoughts that pass through characters' minds when they scan a room. A tour-de-force of psychological suspense, the novel culminates in a dramatic climax that's as unforgettable as what has preceded it. Mystery Guild main selection; Literary Guild featured alternate; simultaneous audio and large print editions; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Dell; First Thus edition (March 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440235448
• ISBN-13: 978-0440235446
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Psychological & Suspense

More About the Author

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Rendell's masterpieces, February 28, 2004

By 

RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sight for Sore Eyes (Mass Market Paperback)

A Sight for Sore Eyes is a crime novel that is also literature; it's a grim fairytale about corrupted beauty, a twisted yet beautiful love-story about two damaged people gradually moving together, with catastrophic consequences. I had read several of Rendell's books before I came to this several years ago, but this one was the first one I fell I love with. Normally, whenever anyone says "I couldn't put it down", that's just a stock sentence to convey some sense of the quality of the book, they don't actually MEAN that they physically couldn't put the book down. True cases are very very rare indeed, and they are nothing to do with physicality. Sometimes, though, books like this do come along, which cause you to suddenly realise it's five in the morning and you should have slept long ago. In these cases, yourself and the book have actually melded, briefly, into a whole. The book is an extension of the self, so remarkable as to almost seem forged in the mind, to seem, perhaps, to be only created as you are reading it. This is such a book. A book that is so gripping, whose universe is so totally convincing that you, in a sense, become it, to the ignorance of all other external stimuli.

It is the story of the lives of a group of people, most notably Francine Hill - who was in the house while her mother was shot by a man at the door, and who hid in a cupboard, only coming out to discover the bloodied body - and Teddy Grex - a young man who comes from a squalid, loveless family, who reveres beautiful objects and fine craftsmanship and tends to ignore the fact that other people exist around him. While, after his parent's deaths, Teddy lives in a world of almost unlimited freedom, Francine is virtually imprisoned by her obsessive, over-protective stepmother Julia. From childhood, they grow into young adulthood, and the two damaged souls somehow find each other, with traditionally Rendellian consequences.

This book is remarkable. It's one of those books that words to describe simply don't exist for. If you are a Rendell fan already, I don't know why you haven't already bought this. If you are new, this is probably a great place to start. It is beautifully twisted, complex and resonant piece of work, and she displays all her talents: Her sharp, ironic, Austen-esque wit, her ability to construct plots which mesh in with one another in a way that leaves your jaw dropped in admiration, her ability to draw a cast of wholly human characters, some of whom are dangerously damaged, and her ability to make the skewed logic of those damaged characters seem so perfectly plausible. Her prose style is so tempered, so plain yet beautiful, that she can convince the reader of anything she wants. We would believe, implicitly, anything she tells us.

The story moves at such a suspenseful pace, the characters collide like comets. There are wonderful touches, here; for example, in one of the final scenes the beautiful diamond ring which Teddy's mother found in a pub lavatory in the 70's, and served as their engagement ring, ends up once again lost and forgotten on the basin in a pub lavatory 30 years later. It is simple, but it's beguiling, wondrous touches like this, of bringing the story of the characters full circle, that make the book sparkle so. There's something bizarre and twisted about it all (especially the remarkably creepy ending!) , yes, but there is also something magical and beautiful in the ruins of Rendell's character's psyches.

I've said very little of all that could be about this book, but there is simply not enough space to expound upon the brilliance of this book. Too, there aren't really enough adjectives - excellent, brilliant, etc - to do it justice. It's a book that should be read by all.

A Sight for Sore Eyes is one of Rendell's masterpieces. It is a piece of fiction so beautifully and impeccably crafted that it almost beggars belief to consider Rendell's craftsmanship of it. Certainly, I feel sure that any Rendell fan will treasure its beauty and beguiling intricacy, as, probably, would Teddy.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best new novel I've read in a long time., June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Sight for Sore Eyes (Hardcover)

I read this book because a friend practically forced me to read it. At first I was skeptical, but it took me only about twenty pages to get hooked. It is an artfully constructed narrative, complex yet never making a show of its complexity, full of dramatic irony and deadpan humor. I was surprised to find that one reviewer took this book to task for not having a good plot; on the contrary, it is one of most skillfully executed plots I've read in a long time. Rather than just give us the sketch of a plot - as so many writers do - Rendell seems to lavish infinite care on each turn of the narrative. I doubt there's a wasted word in the book. I swear I didn't know how it would end until the last twenty pages. Be warned, however, this isn't a mystery of the whodunit variety - it's almost a sort of tragedy, a study of the stifled lives of its two main protagonists. Rendell's vision of humanity in this book isn't reassuring: most of her characters aren't terribly sympathetic, and yet I couldn't help feeling a horrified pity for Teddy Brex. In many ways, this book is more horrific than most horror novels I've read. I've heard some people say this isn't her best - well, if that's so, I can't wait to read her other novels.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hero for whom only Ruth Rendell could make you empathize, November 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Sight for Sore Eyes (Hardcover)

If your only know Ruth Rendell though TV versions of her twisted tales you have been cheated. The best part of her books is the interior mindscape of her characters - especially the criminal ones. The perfectly delicious A Sight for Sore Eyes gradually threads together three different stories, each with their own domestic horrors. A young girl who probably would have long since recovered from a childhood trauma if it wasn't for the 'help' of a failed child psychologist (unfortunately her stepmother), seeking freedom from her dull life. An emotionally vacant young man with a nasty secret in the boot of his car, seeking beauty for his drab world. A slightly raddled former rock groupie, with an elderly husband and a lovely house, seeking youth in the arms of young men. This author really knows how to twist a plot till it squirms, sqeals and shrieks. I way prefer this kind of Ruth Rendell creation to the slightly over-done Inspector Wexford series.