Fire and brimstone (The Brimstone Wedding - Barbara Vine)

Member Name: sunmeilan

Product:	The Brimstone Wedding - Barbara Vine
Date:	13/11/08 (159 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Really compelling story

Disadvantages: A bit slow in the middle

When Stella comes to stay at the old people's home where Jenny works, she immediately becomes a favourite of Jenny's. Jenny senses in her a kindred spirit, and as time progresses, it soon becomes clear that they do have something in common - they have both had affairs with married men. Jenny's is still on-going, although she is married herself, but Stella's ended many years before, seemingly in tragedy and with someone's death. Then Stella hands Jenny the keys to a secret house, one her family know nothing about, which Jenny uses as a lovers' tryst. Will Jenny pluck up the courage to leave her husband for her lover? And will she find out about Stella's own tragic love story?

Barbara Vine, the author of this book, is a psedonym for Ruth Rendell, well-known for her Wexford mysteries. As Barbara Vine, her books tend to have a more mysterious aura - this one, for example, delves into mysticism and charms - and they tend to be more psychological, so that, although this is still a mystery, there is nothing of the police procedural about it. And the mystery does seem to be buried rather deeply in this book - at first glance, it seems to be a story of two women's affairs, and certainly much of the book is taken up with this. There is a mystery though, and it is one that burns slowly, involving the missing wife of Stella's lover.

This slow-burner of a mystery did make the middle of the book pass rather slowly for me - once the characters had been introduced, I found the descriptions of Jenny's affair in particular a bit cumbersome and largely unnecessary to the story as a whole. Thankfully this didn't last for long though, and by the end of the book, I could barely put the book down because I was so desperate to find out what happened. I can imagine that some less patient readers may stall in the middle though.

Jenny tells the story in the first person, although occasional chapters are about Stella, either in the third person or in the form of transcriptions of tapes that she recorded. Jenny is particularly well-drawn. Stuck in a loveless marriage to a childhood sweetheart, she is desperate for some kind of release, which she unexpectedly finds in Ned, who rents a cottage in Jenny's village with his wife and daughter. I couldn't always completely sympathise with her actions, but I did understand them, and her devotion to Stella is very endearing - she really cared for the old lady.

We find out much less about Stella, for obvious reasons - it would have given too much of the mystery away. We do find out that she, too, had a loveless marriage, and had an affair with a man who was married to an actress. Despite this, it always seems as though she is the victim in what happened, and that she has long suffered for the mistakes she made. I found her intriguing, as I'm sure Barbara Vine intended, and, through her affection for Jenny, we get to see her softer side.

Barbara Vine really is good at descriptive work, both of her characters and the setting in which the story takes place. The Brimstone Wedding is set in Norfolk, and we have loads of description of the flat surroundings, the burning stubble in the fields, the rural nature of the village and the buildings that provide the backdrop for the story. All this really helps bring the story to life in a way that most authors of crime fiction can't carry out because they are not good enough writers. Even Jenny and her mother's superstitions are carefully described, which helps set the tone of the story.

I have read a number of books by Barbara Vine (and her alter ego Ruth Rendell), but I think that this is the best that I have read. It really is a slow-burner of a story, but, once hooked, I couldn't put the book down. The last few chapters are particularly good because they hint at what might be explained in the next chapter, but without giving away too much, so that I just had to read on to find out what happened. We then really have to wait until the last few pages to find out the truth. Even better, just when we think that everything is know, there is a final twist on the very last page that sends a chill down the spine.

What impressed me most about this book was that it stayed on my mind while I was reading it and for a few days afterwards. I read a lot of mystery novels like this, once read, immediately forgotten, but I think I am likely to remember this one for quite some time. I am certainly glad that I have my own copy to dip back into when I feel the need. Highly recommended - just don't be put off by the slow it in the middle.

The book is available from play.com for £5.49. Published by Penguin, it has 320 pages. ISBN: 9780140252804

Summary: A slow-burner, but compelling story