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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 177 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 177, July/August 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
No Night Is Too Long
Barbara Vine
Viking £15
That Ruth Rendell can write a string of the most readable and original detective books and then, under the name of Barbara Vine, take you a world away from the domestic lives and local murders of Inspector Wexford, shows how easy and mistaken it is to pigeonhole writers.
For those only familiar with the Wexford tales, opening up one of the Barbara Vine novels can be a shocking experience. The worlds she describes are not in themselves out of the ordinary – bedsit land or students at college. But the actions, motives and imaginations of her characters shock all the more effectively for their everyday appearances.
Her latest novel is no exception. A young man in a small seaside town on the coast of Suffolk tells the story through his account of the previous two years. He is haunted by a murder – a murder he has committed. Two years on, someone else may have discovered his guilt. He receives sporadic letters, newspaper cuttings and stories, all with the same Robinson Crusoe desert island theme, all anonymous.
He writes to, in some way, banish the nightmarish memories of a cruise and an island the letters connect him to. The plot unfolds both through the description of past events and their effect on the present.
This is a story of repressed and confused sexuality. The writer had only slept with two women by the time he was 20 and felt he was odd. When his student girlfriend comments in passing that he talks about things like fashion, decor and hairstyles the way gay men do, he is horrified.
Yet he is soon to become obsessed and involved with a man. He initially glimpses him through the open doorway of a flat in the house where his tutorials in creative writing are held. We see how his new found passion is both a thrill and a torment as his relationship with this man is revealed through the pages of his diary.
The exploration of sexuality is not new for Rendell and some may be unhappy at how she portrays this individual’s feelings towards men and women. But Rendell is never a writer who sets out to satisfy preconceptions or expectations.
Like other Barbara Vine novels this is a disturbing book that leaves the reader distinctly unsettled. It is not simply about good versus evil in some abstract sense nor is it a straight ‘crime’ story. Instead it portrays a view of society and its pressures and how individuals cope in a harsh and contradictory world.
Few books have you turning the pages with your breath held in anticipation and suspense or gasping audibly as you read. This is one of them. A great holiday read, unless, that is, you plan to go on a cruise around Alaska ...
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