A FATAL INVERSION by Barbara Vine reviewed by Linda Newbery

"Not only does Barbara Vine keep you hooked; she makes you feel complicit, caught up in the same tightening mesh as her characters ..."

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review. 

I'd planned to review something else today, but because of the recent heatwave I'm revisiting, instead, my favourite Barbara Vine novel, which takes place during the exceptionally hot summer of 1976.

The TV adaptation in 1992, in which the young Jeremy Northam played one of the leads, introduced me to Ruth Rendell as her Barbara Vine alias. The novels written under this pseudonym are notable for their creeping sense of menace, and the way in which ordinary, not particularly ill-intentioned people become involved in terrible events through their circumstances or obsessions. If you start on a Barbara Vine, you'd better have plenty of time at your disposal; she will soon have you thoroughly hooked. Even on a re-reading, knowing the main thrust of the plot and the breathtaking twist at the end, I couldn't put this one down.

Unremitting summer heat contributes to a powerful sense of place and atmosphere. The 'inversion' of the title refers to Ecalpemos - some place in reverse - the name given by Adam, one of the viewpoint characters, to Wyvis Hall, the Suffolk mansion he unexpectedly inherits from a grumpy uncle. Intending just to visit and take stock of the place before heading to Greece for the summer, he and a friend, Rufus, decide to stay there in secret. The slightly shabby mansion, its lake and grounds and woodland, seem cut off from ordinary life; the 'drift', the long avenue leading in from the public road, marks this separation. We experience the place as the young men do, freed from studies and parental expectations, with no one to please but themselves: "He and Rufus, like sultans, had reclined on quilts and smoked hashish, the pungent trails of smoke rising into the dark air and mingling with the scents of the summer night"; and also as Adam views it later, remembering that Shiva, who joins them, called it Eden: "as if a necessary condition of being in this paradise was the commission of some frightful sin or crime that must result in expulsion."

The novel moves back and forth in time, starting ten years on from that summer. Burying a dead spaniel, the current owners of Wyvis Hall unearth human bones from the pet cemetery in their pine woods; inspection reveals these bones to have belonged to a young woman and a baby. When this gruesome find is reported in the press it unsettles, separately, Adam, Rufus, and Shiva, who have never met or communicated since the day they left in 1976. Each of them, knowing exactly what happened though with varying degrees of involvement, dreads further investigation. Both Adam and Rufus are now well-established professionals, Rufus a gynaecologist, Adam a computer designer; Rufus fears for his reputation, Adam for his marriage and his baby daughter. Approached by police, Adam unwisely denies having lived at Wyvis Hall that summer, a claim that can easily be disproved by a number of locals: the 'coypu man', the dismissed gardener, the post-girl.

Of course we don't at first know who the young woman might be, nor the baby, but possibilities unfurl as the 'commune' Adam needs to finance his hedonistic summer begins to assemble. There are girls; first Mary, Rufus's girlfriend, who soon leaves, then two casual pick-ups, and - the one on whom the plot hinges - Zosie, a childlike but sexily appealing waif brought back by Rufus and seemingly with nowhere else to go. Soon Zosie finds dubious ways of providing cash, and goes from being Rufus' lover to Adam's. The 'commune' is completed by Shiva and Vivien, brought there on the recommendation of a mutual friend, and expecting - Vivien especially - a place of spiritual enlightenment and practical self-sufficiency. Earnest, orderly and principled, seeking the stability missing from her childhood, Vivien soon takes charge of domestic arrangements, becoming a mother figure to Zosie.

As each of the three men reluctantly recalls the events of that hot summer, the tragedy unfolds for the reader with awful inevitability. I had forgotten many of the details from my earlier reading, but appreciated this time how cleverly everything is woven into the whole: the 'coypu man'; Vivien's blue dress; Zosie's small gold ring; Uncle Hilbert's shot-gun; Vivien's background in a care home that's resulted in her love of children and her career as a nanny. The hints and foreshadowings are all there, hidden in plain sight.

What Vine / Rendell does so successfully is to engross the reader in the lives of characters who aren't particularly likeable. Adam is careless of his good fortune, inconsiderate of others and casually racist towards Shiva, remembering him only as 'the Indian' despite sharing the house for several weeks. Rufus, a medical student, is ambitious and arrogant, treating young women as possessions: when Zosie appeals to him to take her side in a crisis, he responds: 'I'll tell you whose side I'm on. Rufus's. And that goes for always.' Zosie, vulnerable and dependent, frequently likened to a small, timid animal, is the one whose actions precipitate catastrophe. Even Shiva, anxious for respectability but too keen to win approval, contributes to the mounting disaster; years later he has confided in his wife, but kept this final secret to himself. All three viewpoint characters are tormented by guilt, remorse and the need for self-preservation, in various measures. Not only does Barbara Vine keep you hooked; she makes you feel complicit, caught up in the same tightening mesh as her characters, imagining that you're there in the kitchen on the fateful morning, sharing their dilemma.

Recently, I've read high-profile thrillers that depend on a major plot twist meant to snatch the rug from under the reader's feet. Without exception they have left me feeling dissatisfied, resenting the time I've invested in reading - the cleverness of the twist isn't enough to make up for thin characterisation, implausible motivation or a denouement that falls flat once the revelation has been made. Revisiting this darkly enthralling masterclass has reminded me just how good, how superbly good, Barbara Vine / Ruth Rendell was. That ending, so surprising, so absolutely right ... well, you'll have to read it for yourself, if you haven't already done so.

I haven't read all the Barbara Vine titles yet, but this one remains at the top of my list, with Asta's Book, The Brimstone Wedding and The Blood Doctor as runners-up. If you're a fan too, which is your favourite, and why?

A Fatal Inversion is published by Penguin.

This is an adapted version of a review which first appeared on my website blog, Between the Pages.

THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP by Joanna Cannon, reviewed by Linda Newbery

"An engaging page-turner, full of charm, its lightness of tone both highlighting the absurdity of adult behaviour and concealing sinister impulses beneath apparently ordinary lives."

Like Barbara Vine’s A Fatal Inversion, reviewed on my own website, this is set mainly during the hot, hot summer of 1976, the stifling heat adding to the claustrophobic atmosphere of this unusual domestic mystery. The main narrator is a precocious and purposeful child, Grace Bennett, whose observations of adult behaviour and the goings in and out of neighbouring houses on a middle-class avenue give something of the flavour of a sitcom, like Are You Being Served? and The Good Life, both of which shape the weeks of Dorothy and Harold Forbes (the names, too, are redolent of constrained, conventional lives). But there are nasty stirrings beneath the respectability, as we gradually discover in the aftermath of a disappearance. Mrs Margaret Creasy, married to the apparently autistic John, has vanished without trace, and several residents of The Avenue have theories to air or secrets to hide. Ten-year-old Grace and her friend Tilly decide to devote the otherwise uneventful summer holidays to a search for both Mrs Creasy and God, who they trust will keep everyone safe.    
 

A large part of the novel’s charm comes from Grace’s distinctive voice, and the tactics she learns in order to encourage adults to reveal themselves. “I waited. I had discovered that, sometimes, if you held on to the silence, people couldn’t stop themselves from filling it up.” Grace’s knowingness often veers too close to cuteness, and sometimes the childish aperçus are underlined for the reader by coming at the end of a section, as when Keithie, told by Grace that his sense of belonging to a football team is only in his head, responds, “But that’s the only place that really matters.”

 

This sense of belonging or not-belonging is a central theme, indicated by the sheep and goats of the title. Grace, to Tilly’s disapproval, wants to emulate the clothes and mannerisms of teenage Lisa; a newly-arrived Indian family is treated with condescension; the neighbours, hardly plausibly, collaborate in a joint delusion that a creosote stain on a wall is the face of Jesus, assembling daily to pay homage to it. But at the chilling heart of the novel is the hardening of opinion against Walter Bishop, the lonely man viewed as ‘outsider’, and the gathering of something resembling a lynch mob as rumours accumulate. Neighbourliness gives way to ugly prejudice in scenes that call to mind Kristallnacht or the Ku Klux Klan; those characters uneasy about the rising hostility tend to be the quieter ones, whose misgivings are ignored by others bent on drastic action.

The structure is ingenious, focusing our attention on the build-up to a tragedy. In 1976, the ‘present’ of the novel, we move through sweltering days towards the inevitable cathartic break in the weather, while in the past, nine years earlier, we begin on December 21^st and work backwards.  Known to various parties, the events of that decisive night are relayed to the reader in a succession of hints, while exposure and repercussions threaten. Each household, it seems, is hiding a secret; some shameful or even criminal, others touching. The author cleverly plays with our assumptions and sympathies, making us reassess the characters as the plot unfolds.

In several ways this novel reminds me of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Both authors have a way of expressing insights with simple, poignant clarity: widower Eric Lamb reflects that “the past often broke into the present like an intruder, dangerous and unwanted. Yet whenever the past was invited in, whenever its presence was requested, it seemed to fade into nothing, and made you wonder if it had ever really existed in the first place.” The two novels share a kind of innocence and openness; in Harold Fry's case, in his impulsive decision to set off on his walk, trusting in chance and the kindness of strangers to sustain him; here, in the counterpointing  of Grace and Tilly's speculations with adult guilt and sorrows. Joanna Cannon's ending, though, suffers from a last-moment deus-ex-machina revelation and a number of unanswered questions and improbabilities. 

If there’s such a thing as a Reading Group novel, this is it - in fact, that’s why I read it, as the September choice of a member of the group I'm part of. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is an engaging page-turner, full of charm, its lightness of tone both highlighting the absurdity of adult behaviour and concealing sinister impulses beneath apparently ordinary lives. And, usefully for any discussion, it’s likely to divide opinion. 

Linda Newbery
www.lindanewbery.co.uk