She sees dead people (Adam and Eve and Pinch Me - Ruth Rendell)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Adam and Eve and Pinch Me - Ruth Rendell
Date:	04/10/01 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An engaging easy read, amusing and poignant

Disadvantages: It's not exactly Tolstoy.

"Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?"

About two years ago I read Ruth Rendell's last book (Harm Done) and I hated it. A depressing book full of misery and murder which no-one could possibly have found entertaining. I wanted to tell the whole world what I thought of it, and authors who make money by peddling a picture of society that says: it's a horrible world full of rotten people and so you had better lock your doors and stay in with one of our books...

Well now I can! So, t'was with malice aforethought, I read this...

It's not set in Kingsmarkham, so there's no Inspector Wexford, which is good, 'cause he's a bit of a pompous old plod isn't he?
Instead we see unconnected people's lives topple like dominoes.

Minty (Araminta) is a 37-year-old with a social life Eleanor Rigby would think sad. She also has one of those compulsive obsessive disorders, which drives her to wash and clean constantly.
Minty is also being stalked by the ghost of her fiancé Jock Lewis, who she believes died in the Paddington Rail Crash and who she had fallen for in every way - he bled her dry, taking her virginity, her life-savings, and her inheritance.

Meanwhile, Zillah (Sarah Leach) agrees to marry her childhood friend Jims (James Isambard Melcombe-Smith) "the nicest man she knew." Jims is a gay Tory MP for a right-wing constituency, worried about being outed in the run-up to the general election.
What Zillah (she chose a Romany name in her teens when she found out she was blood group B, like many gypsies. What?) What Zillah (nothing to do with Japanese monster movies then?) What Zillah has neglected to tell Jims, is that she isn't actually divorced from her "ex" (Jerry Leach).

We are also introduced to Michelle and Matthew Jervey. She's fat, and he is a faddy food-hating anorectic. No
w that rings a bell... Jack Sprat and his missus anyone? Anyway, Michelle's pal Fiona has a boyfriend called Jeff Leigh... do you see a pattern emerging here? Jock Lewis, Jerry Leach, Jeff Leigh, it's the same bloke innit!

[If you don't want to know the half-time score, look away now]

Minty is so disturbed by her ghostly visitations that she starts carrying a knife with which to attack the awful apparition...
All the lonely people, where do they all belong, huh?
In a nuthouse in her case.

[You couldn't resist it could you? Ah well, it's nothing that isn't
given away by the blurb inside the front cover - as always!]

I'm not sure what to make of a book with characters resembling Eleanor Rigby, Jack Sprat, and a stereotypically sleazy Tory MP... But okay, I admit it, it was quite entertaining. In fact, I found it very amusing - it's almost a farce. I read it expecting to condemn Ruth Rendell for spreading misery, but I can't. Maybe next time.


¶ pp375 ¶ ISBN: 0-09-179434-X ¶ Paperback September 2002 ¶
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