Home early for once. Maybe he'd start getting home early regularly now August had begun, the silly season. Criminals as well as the law-abiding take their holidays in August. As he turned the car into his own road, Wexford remembered his grandsons would be there. Good. It would be light for another three hours, and he'd take Robin and Ben down to the river. Robin was always on about the river because his mother had read The Wind in the Willows to him, and his great desire was to see a water rat swimming.
Sylvia's car was parked outside the house. Odd, thought Wexford. He'd understood Dora was having the boys for the afternoon as well as the evening and that they'd be staying the night. As he edged his own car past his daughter's into the drive, she came running out of the house with a screaming Ben in her arms and six-year-old Robin looking truculent at her heels....
"A Sleeping Life" is one of only two Wexford novels to earn a nomination for a major crime writers' award. (Ruth Rendell as a non-Wexford storyteller fared better.)
I can see why "A Sleeping Life" did well. Its solution is startling, and the process of deduction unfolds easily; you don't feel as if Rendell is asking you to make too many cognitive leaps. The "Sylvia" plot lines up neatly with the detection plot. The main question is: What would lead a woman to dress as a man (in the seventies, in Britain)? Though we never meet Rhoda Comfrey, the woman at the center of the story, we can empathize with her behavior (because we have spent so much time in the presence of Sylvia, who has some of Rhoda's complaints).
I very much like the opening paragraph for a few reasons. Rendell writes with a sense of dramatic irony. She enjoys presenting her characters in a state of great confidence--then showing us all the ways in which her characters are wrong. (Isn't misplaced confidence a main feature of any life?) Wexford believes he will have easy August hours; he is incorrect. He believes that his grandsons' presence is a good sign; he is incorrect. His major assumptions in the first paragraph will have as much weight as a deflated balloon. (And how often have *you* walked into a situation, believing you understand the particulars, then discovering you are completely in error?)
A good story has curses and reverses. Witches turn out to be princesses, and vice versa. A meek young lady, in this particular novel, will actually prove to be one of the main frightening engines of the plot. Additionally, Rhoda, another character, is not at all who she seems to be. And a man in an institution has a convoluted history we can only guess at--and guess at incorrectly--for much of the novel.
Beyond plot-based pleasures, there are the delights of Rendell's psychological insight. This novel has characters saying "I mean" and "you know" with every breath; Rendell, the astute observer, can't help but take this opportunity to comment on shifting standards of self-presentation. A woman uses children as pawns to get back at her husband; Rendell smartly observes the ways in which this woman has deluded herself, and lets us see the impact her actions have on everyone around her. There's a small bit of vanity: calling someone "Darling," in a misleading way, just so you can be overheard and judged to be in possession of a boyfriend (or girlfriend). In one of the finest touches, a police inspector routinely becomes incensed when his colleagues neglect to show excessive gratitude for small favors; only Rendell would stop to notice this very human, very recognizable streak of hypersensitivity within a bureau of investigation.
I like the Wexford novels of this era because they move quickly; they're slender, and they don't waste space. (I also like the later Wexford novels--because those particular novels show Rendell commenting yet more and more on evolving mores, and I enjoy this commentary, and I especially enjoy seeing my particular "early-aughties" world reflected through Rendell's prism.)
I prefer the Wexford stories to the non-Wexford stories because, as others have remarked, Rendell could be excessively misanthropic; something about Wexford's presence kept her at least intermittently warm and relatable. Too little Wexford? Then: just a bit too much chilliness, if you ask me.
I have an eye on "A Demon in My View," and maybe "No Night Is Too Long" or "Live Flesh," in the near future. I'm so happy that this writer existed, and that she made use of her talent so relentlessly, year after year after year.
P.S. I love that this novel, "A Sleeping Life," ends exactly as it starts, with Wexford headed home. But now everything really is settled. Satisfying symmetry. Something the reader might not even notice.
Sylvia's car was parked outside the house. Odd, thought Wexford. He'd understood Dora was having the boys for the afternoon as well as the evening and that they'd be staying the night. As he edged his own car past his daughter's into the drive, she came running out of the house with a screaming Ben in her arms and six-year-old Robin looking truculent at her heels....
"A Sleeping Life" is one of only two Wexford novels to earn a nomination for a major crime writers' award. (Ruth Rendell as a non-Wexford storyteller fared better.)
I can see why "A Sleeping Life" did well. Its solution is startling, and the process of deduction unfolds easily; you don't feel as if Rendell is asking you to make too many cognitive leaps. The "Sylvia" plot lines up neatly with the detection plot. The main question is: What would lead a woman to dress as a man (in the seventies, in Britain)? Though we never meet Rhoda Comfrey, the woman at the center of the story, we can empathize with her behavior (because we have spent so much time in the presence of Sylvia, who has some of Rhoda's complaints).
I very much like the opening paragraph for a few reasons. Rendell writes with a sense of dramatic irony. She enjoys presenting her characters in a state of great confidence--then showing us all the ways in which her characters are wrong. (Isn't misplaced confidence a main feature of any life?) Wexford believes he will have easy August hours; he is incorrect. He believes that his grandsons' presence is a good sign; he is incorrect. His major assumptions in the first paragraph will have as much weight as a deflated balloon. (And how often have *you* walked into a situation, believing you understand the particulars, then discovering you are completely in error?)
A good story has curses and reverses. Witches turn out to be princesses, and vice versa. A meek young lady, in this particular novel, will actually prove to be one of the main frightening engines of the plot. Additionally, Rhoda, another character, is not at all who she seems to be. And a man in an institution has a convoluted history we can only guess at--and guess at incorrectly--for much of the novel.
Beyond plot-based pleasures, there are the delights of Rendell's psychological insight. This novel has characters saying "I mean" and "you know" with every breath; Rendell, the astute observer, can't help but take this opportunity to comment on shifting standards of self-presentation. A woman uses children as pawns to get back at her husband; Rendell smartly observes the ways in which this woman has deluded herself, and lets us see the impact her actions have on everyone around her. There's a small bit of vanity: calling someone "Darling," in a misleading way, just so you can be overheard and judged to be in possession of a boyfriend (or girlfriend). In one of the finest touches, a police inspector routinely becomes incensed when his colleagues neglect to show excessive gratitude for small favors; only Rendell would stop to notice this very human, very recognizable streak of hypersensitivity within a bureau of investigation.
I like the Wexford novels of this era because they move quickly; they're slender, and they don't waste space. (I also like the later Wexford novels--because those particular novels show Rendell commenting yet more and more on evolving mores, and I enjoy this commentary, and I especially enjoy seeing my particular "early-aughties" world reflected through Rendell's prism.)
I prefer the Wexford stories to the non-Wexford stories because, as others have remarked, Rendell could be excessively misanthropic; something about Wexford's presence kept her at least intermittently warm and relatable. Too little Wexford? Then: just a bit too much chilliness, if you ask me.
I have an eye on "A Demon in My View," and maybe "No Night Is Too Long" or "Live Flesh," in the near future. I'm so happy that this writer existed, and that she made use of her talent so relentlessly, year after year after year.
P.S. I love that this novel, "A Sleeping Life," ends exactly as it starts, with Wexford headed home. But now everything really is settled. Satisfying symmetry. Something the reader might not even notice.
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