The Minotaur

Barbara Vine

Editions

Review

This novel contains all the elements necessary to identify it as the work of Ruth Rendell’s alter ego – a depressing location, a depressing time and lots of depressing people – oh, and did I mention the depressing plot?  Karen and I really liked it. In fact, we enjoyed this one so much that we began to wonder what was wrong with us…  OK, we didn’t really go as far as that.  But this is a good example of how a clever novelist can produce a compelling and enjoyable piece of writing, no matter what the backdrop is.

A middle-aged Swedish woman, Kerstin Kvist (crucially, a likeable narrator) remembers the time she spent as a young woman working for the dysfunctional Cosway family, in the rural Essex of the late Sixties.  Kerstin has been taken on to ‘help’ with John, the zombie-like son of the family, now in his thirties, whose dull routine must, apparently, never disturbed.  There are also three unmarried daughters in the house, all affected one way or another by the claustrophobic atmosphere. The arrival in the village of a glamorous artist, Felix Dunsford, disrupts the unhealthy status quo – but with even unhealthier consequences…  A truly engrossing novel, which will make your own family seem utterly normal. - review by Dan Fenton