Writing as Barbara Vine, crime novellist Ruth Rendell has produced some deeply unsettling and gripping standalone thrillers – the best of which is this dark tale of sisterly envy. It’s narrated by Faith, whose aunt Vera murdered her aunt Eden years before, and was hanged for it. What happened to bring death between these formerly loving sisters? Faith tells the story of the family and her secretive, fussy aunts, throughout the war and after, the secrets they shared, the lovers, and possibly even the child…
You should read it because it uses first-person voice so brilliantly, and is a great example of a narrator who’s as much in the dark as we are, and also for how to do an unresolved crime ending which leaves us profoundly unnerved. You’ll be thinking and wondering about this book for years to come, and the impending sense of doom, carried on through twenty years of narration, is expertly done.
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