The Water's Lovely

Once again Rendell has created a dark world, intricately and richly layered; one fashioned of her own design breaking free from the tight constraints of the genre. This is an admirable, unique novel; one you can really grab ahold of in your imagination. Characterization at its finest.

Ismay Sealand always suspected her sister, Heather, had murdered their step-father to protect her. They never talked about it, though Ismay thought about it often and the suspicion had driven their mother mad. The girls are close, sharing an apartment in their childhood home, which had been renovated into two flats, one upstairs for their mother and aunt, and one downstairs for them. Heather abhors Ismay's snobbish and philandering boyfriend, Andrew Campbell-Sedge, who looks like their dead stepfather and he treats her with contempt. When Heather--a quiet, plain and practical girl--becomes seriously involved with Edmund Litton, Ismay is torn between a desire for her sister's happiness and a compulsion to inform him of her suspicions. This, coupled with Andrew's peevishness toward Heather and Edmund, sets the stage for further complications in the lives of the sisters. Other characters--Edmund's domineering and hypochondriac mother; Marion Melville, a bungling and avaricious manipulator, and her bin-pillaging brother, Fowler, chief among them--add to the mix and promise more turmoil. Rendell unveils these complications with the precision of a surgeon and keep us turning pages to discover what will happen next. It's vintage Rendell and highly recommended to her many fans. But don't expect a happy ending.

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.

I was so eager for Ruth Rendell's latest that I ordered The Water's Lovely from Canada last year before it was published in the U.S. I tried to read it slowly to make the pleasure last, but midway through I was gripped and abandoned myself to a pell mell pace. The book is at once wrenching and poignant and funny. Marion is my absolute favorite character, an often blundering but eventually triumphant manipulator. She dances through the storyline, alighting on each character for a pas de deux, before skittering away, always with a new plot and ploy, never discouraged. The theme of these intermingled tales - and tales they are, disparate lives that intertwine - seems to be a search for home. So many of the characters are motivated and defined by seeking a place to live. From the homeless beggar who keeps returning to his sister's flat, to the duplex where Ismay and Heather live, many of the plot twists turn on living circumstances. Perhaps the intermingling of the characters' fates has more than a touch of coincidence - but then our lives are full of coincidence, and maybe it is not just coincidence, but fate. Rendell is brilliant as ever, indeed diabolical. Once again, as in Thirteen Steps Down, she leaves the zinger for the last sentence. Don't look!

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.