Customer Reviews

The Water's Lovely (Charnwood Large Print)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Ruth Rendell is one of the best of today's writers and it's hard to imaging her producing anything bad. Although The Water's Lovely is not her best, it's still head and shoulders above most of what's being churned out in this genre. Water begins slowly, with a recurrent dream, and as pages are turned, the reader is drawn inexorably into the mystery. Rendell presents us with two murders separated by more than a decade, but connected with the welfare of two sisters. Did Heather commit either of these crimes? Did she commit both? As is common in British lit, it is populated by individuals who are closely related, yet never have the courage to communicate their fears. As a result, their problems cannot be tackled head on, and tend to grow more and more complicated and hard to resolve with each passing day.

What is missing from this novel is 1) the sharp psychological suspense that permeates most of what Rendell writes, and 2) action and movement. This is a talky book, and its resolution relies too heavily upon facile, coincidental sightings, insights, and discoveries. These flaws prevent Water from achieving the edginess necessary in a story of this type; nevertheless it is a story worth reading and thinking about. After all, it's written by Ruth Rendell....

In a house on a quiet street in London, a wall has been built to seal off an old, disused bathroom. The family that lives there--two troubled sisters and their emotionally shattered mother--never speak of the wall or what it conceals, but they think about it all the time. It's ironic that these women should be so focused on a bathtub, because they constantly wonder--like Lady Macbeth--if they will ever be washed clean of the crime that was committed there....

Welcome to the world of Ruth Rendell. She is my favorite mystery writer, and THE WATER'S LOVELY is one of her best. That's all I'm going to say. Highly, highly recommended.

As a die hard Ruth Rendell fan I am always very excited when a new novel by her is published. `The Water's Lovely' completely lived up to my hopes and is a great addition to Rendell's amazing back catalogue of work.

The two central characters are Ismay and Heather, sisters who share a murderous secret. The novel follows the two women as they both find love and struggle to keep it. The book is about as far from a romance novel as it is possible to get - Ismay's lover, for example, is overbearing and boorish and Heather's lover has a poisonous hypochondriac of a mother. As usual, Rendell turns the thumbscrews to create a novel where the tension builds and builds to a satisfying if quietly horrific climax.

The characters are believable and the plot is twisty and clever. Perhaps coincidence plays rather too big a part in the resolution of a certain plot point, but the book is so well-written and interesting that I couldn't force myself to care very much. Also, some of the dialogue doesn't ring true because ordinary 20-somethings simply do not talk in the way that Rendell writes, but I personally enjoy her use of language so I wouldn't want this to be changed although it is not realistic. The book has some very good subplots, such as the aunt of Ismay and Heather searching for romance and finding something much more terrifying instead and a woman who preys on old people for their money. There is also a real shock on the last page that is very thought-provoking.

Overall, I highly recommend this book and I'm sure dedicated Rendell fans will not be disappointed.

At the beginning of The Water's Lovely Ruth Rendell proves once more that she is a master of psychological suspense. Two sisters live in a flat which was once the first floor of their family home. Upstairs, in a separate flat live their insane mother and her caretaker sister. What trauma has caused this strange situation? Years earlier, a crime was committed, and the family has been living with the after-effects ever since. Gradually, the family's troubles spread to include some of their friends and acquaintances and other more distant connections. These characters are not secondary to the story, but become an integral part of it as their own lives and difficulties turn out to be interwoven.

This buildup which takes place in the first half or so of the book is among the finest writing Rendell has done. Unfortunately, she appears to have lost interest in the book at about the midway mark and from then on seems to be rushing to get things wound up and finished. A major plot segment turns on a coincidence so unlikely that it makes the reader lose confidence in the plot. At the end, what seemed to have been some tantalizing buildups to some shocking revelations turn out to be leadins to rather dull conclusions. At the end, the reader is left hanging as to the outcome of some intended marriages and future developments, which might be tantalizing if we cared more about the characters. Since the second half disappoints, we don't really care much about what happens to any of them beyond a strong desire to kick a few across the room in disgust. That maybe what Rendell intended, but the feeling that she just finished the book to fulfill a contractual obligation is too strong to make that really believable.

I was looking forwward to reading Ms Rendell's new novel when I saw she was an Edgar Award winner. Although the tension built on the first page as one would expect from such an acclaimed author, it dissipated within the next ten. From an opening scene describing what one could only assume to be a murder, this became an interminable account of whining characters who only cared about themselves and, for most, only their love lives.

The main characters all spin off two sisters. One falls in love and marries, happily. The other is lost in love with a man who could not care less. Although the sister and her husband are okay, they are there seemingly only for the sake of comparison. They illustrate keenly what desparate losers the other characters are. The only interesting character, a conniving gold-digger, grew tiresome by mid-book. By a third of the way through, I just kept wanting to tell all of them to just shut up!!

The plot, what little there is of one, is filled with ludicrously improbable coincidences to try and keep the threads of threadbare fabric together. Here's a key example: The conniver's brother is a beggar and trash-picker. He stumbles upon the handbag stolen from the sister of the fiance of the son of a woman the conniver had once tried to fleece. The conniver then uses it for nefarious purposes. A handbag from a dumpster in London just happens to fall into the hands of a beggar so attenuated from the victim? Not surprisingly, that foray took a hundred or so pages to develop.

This does not rise to any kind of study in self-indulgence. It is certainly not a romance or a mystery. I am not sure how to categorize it. Soap opera? Possibly. It dragged through the lives of characters that one would rather not meet or know. The writing is stylistically good and there were flashes when I thought the plot would start moving or the characters would rise above the plodding pace, but they never did except for short bursts.

This was a major disappointment. From the writing I can see how Ms Rendell may have written books better tahn this one. This one just did not work for me.

Ruth Rendell's The Water's Lovely has a delightfully chilling premise. Twelve years before the book begins, Guy Rolland drowned in his bathtub. His stepdaughter Ismay, who was 15 at the time, is still haunted by it: the bleached body floating beneath the surface of the water. But more troubling is that she still doesn't know what role her younger sister Heather played in his death--Heather, who came down the stairs with her clothes wet, strangely calm, and led Ismay and her mother to the scene. Certainly, finding out what happened is impossible without confronting Heather, and confrontation, 12 years on, seems impossible. But if Heather killed once, mightn't she do so again?

In the here and now, Ismay and Heather live together in a flat downstairs from their aunt and mother, who's gone mad. The sisters and their aunt have relationships with various men, and the familial life of Heather's beau Edmund is explored at length. Indeed, his hypochondriacal mother's scheming acquaintance Marion comes to constitute a second thread to the story, and a threat, eventually, to Heather and Ismay.

Unfortunately, The Water's Lovely falls short of being a great book. In part this is because it loses focus, the author getting sidetracked by stories that are tangential to the plot. For much of the book our concern about Heather and what she may or may not have done is forgotten. Too much of the story, too, depends on coincidence. Finally, Rendell's final few pages are a sort of epilogue that comes out of nowhere and serves no purpose in the story. I can see what Rendell was trying to accomplish with the dramatic water-themed ending, but it doesn't work, and it leaves one feeling cheated.

-- Debra Hamel

I've read nearly everything by Ruth Rendell (and works as Barbara Vine), including all of the Inspector Wexford books. The woman is good, very good, but this book is a disaster. The writing of Water's Lovely is forced, the plot depends totally on improbable coincidences, and worst of all, there isn't a single attractive character in the book.

How can this book average four stars? Come on folks, I read comments that concurred with my observations, but were rather generous with the stars. I cannot recommend this at all. Read almost anything else by Rendell and enjoy.

Is the publisher afraid to edit Ruth Rendell? The coincidences in the last third of the novel, which are critical to the plot, are absurd. The characters are good, bad or crazy and this is repeated for the reader over and over. There was no depth or dimension to them. Unconvincing plot turns and one-note characters are not typical of this wonderful and talented writer. I am a fan of Ruth Rendell's work, but her publisher has done her a disservice by not editing this novel.

Whether writing books in her Inspector Wexford series, psychological suspense under her pen name of Barbara Vine or stand alone thrillers like THE WATER'S LOVELY Ruth Rendell is a wonderful writer. Her ability to bring to life several fully realized characters in each relatively short novel is masterful. Unfortunately in her latest books she seems to be renaming and recycling some characters who have appeared in earlier works. Rendell is able to come up with a compelling major plot as well as several subplots for her characters in THE WATER'S LOVELY but the solutions rely on so many coincidences the book seems very contrived by its end. Still, as in many Rendell novels there is a final disturbing twist coming and like real life the reader can't expect evil characters to be punished or sympathetic characters to get their happily ever after ending.

Ruth Rendell's great gift as a writer, along with her wonderful feel for suspense, is her ability to make you accept the implausible and empathize with the creepiest of her characters. In her latest suspense novel, these gifts are stretched beyond their limits almost to the point of ridiculousness. But even given the character and plot flaws of this book, it's still a spellbinding read for those of us who love her wicked plot turns and quick about-face detours. For her most devoted fans only.