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The Child's Child (2012)

par Barbara Vine

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3442374,686 (3.3)35
When their grandmother dies, Grace and Andrew Easton inherit her sprawling, book-filled London home, Dinmont House. Rather than sell it, the adult siblings move in together, splitting the numerous bedrooms and studies. The arrangement is unusual, but ideal for the affectionate pair--until the day Andrew brings home a new boyfriend. A devilishly handsome novelist, James Derain resembles Cary Grant, but his strident comments about Grace's doctoral thesis soon puncture the house's idyllic atmosphere. When he and Andrew witness their friend's murder outside a London nightclub, James begins to unravel, and what happens next will change the lives of everyone in the house.… (plus d'informations)
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Affichage de 1-5 de 23 (suivant | tout afficher)
The Child's Child: the novel's novel. In the novel's novel, the conclusion is all's well that ends--regardless of familial relationships. Whereas in the novel things don't end well for everybody, but families come together and heal. It was a thinking reader's book. Good job, Ruth Rendell- RIP
  nab6215 | Jan 18, 2022 |
The Child’s Child, published in 2012, was the last novel Ruth Rendell wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. After that, she would write only one Inspector Wexford novel and two standalones before her death at age 85 in 2015. One of the most interesting things about The Child’s Child is that it is presented as a “novel-within-a-novel,” a construction that readers only rarely encounter. The book opens in the present (2011) and transitions to a separate novel that begins in 1929 before finally returning to its original characters and plot. The 1929 novel, in fact, accounts for roughly two-thirds of the total length of The Child’s Child.

The novel begins just after brother and sister Andrew and Grace Easton have inherited their grandmother’s large London home. Andrew and Grace surprise everyone when they decide to live together in the home rather than selling the valuable property and splitting the proceeds between them. They divide the house right down the middle, with one of them taking possession of the left side, the other the right side, while sharing the kitchen between them. And for a while everything goes well. Then, Andrew decides to move his boyfriend James, a handsome novelist, into his side of the house. The animosity between James and Grace is immediately obvious, but after the two men witness the brutal beating death of a friend of theirs outside a London nightclub and James becomes needy and fragile, the relationship between Grace and her brother’s boyfriend becomes closer…and closer.

Now, not wanting to face her brother with the truth, Grace escapes into an unpublished manuscript from 1951 called The Child’s Child that she has promised to read as a favor to a friend. The novel, even though it was written by a respected author, has never been published because its sexual depictions were considered to be too frank for respectable 1950s readers. The book, a story about John and Maud, two siblings who find themselves in a situation somewhat similar to the one that Andrew and Grace are now in, is an easy one for Grace to lose herself in. She can only hope that her story doesn’t end like the one in The Child’s Child.

Bottom Line: The unusual structure of The Child’s Child caught me my surprise, and at first, I was irritated at so drastically having to shift gears a third of the way into the book. But just a dozen or so pages into the “new” novel, I was intrigued by the plot and its similarity to what I had already read. In fact, I was even a little disappointed when that section of The Child’s Child ended and it was time to pick back up with the original characters and plot. Rendell does a remarkable job here, I think, of capturing the tone of an older novel trying to push the limits of what was acceptable at the time it was written, so the two plots, despite their similarities, are presented very differently. ( )
  SamSattler | Jul 14, 2021 |
I usually like Ruth Randall's writing but I didn't really care for this one and confess that i almost quit reading several times. It was more like reading a text book than a fiction novel. The Child's Child gets right to the very misery of life for an unmarried mother and her gay brother in the mid 20th century. To further confuse the plot the story starts in the 1930's and switches to more modern times with a brother and and a sister that fit the descriptions and mirror the antics of the earlier couple. Redemption in a minor form is presented at the end...but it's out of place and contrived. For me...the entire thing just didn't work. ( )
  Carol420 | Dec 19, 2019 |
Two fairly parallel stories, history repeating itself. Also a novel about how social conventions have changed over a century. For example our attitudes to homosexuality have changed, as they have to unmarried mothers. There is a suggestion made that the attitudes changed around the same time.

The structure is a book within a book, a challenge for any author. We begin in the modern day and are then transported to a plot within the plot. In my opinion the "inner book", the manuscript that Grace is reading, is just a bit long, and almost turns into a family saga. But just in time we emerge back into the modern day.

Is it crime fiction? Well yes, there is a murder: the culprit is brought to trial and executed. But, by the laws of the day, there are other crimes for which penalties are not applied.

It wasn't my favourite Barbara Vine book, and I don't seem to have found it as fascinating as other reviewers but it is certainly clever. ( )
  smik | Oct 31, 2019 |
There are two stories here, both about unplanned pregnancies and homosexual relationships, one in modern times and one a few generations back. The older story was far more interesting, but I didn't like it much. Vine seemed to actually enjoy tormenting her main characters while condemning the societal attitudes that created the situation. We are supposed to see Maud as someone who selfishly gives into her own weakness, a professional victim. But I just saw someone who really needed some antidepressants and a good therapist.

It was, however, highly readable. I blasted through it on a hot summer afternoon. ( )
  JanetNoRules | Sep 17, 2018 |
Affichage de 1-5 de 23 (suivant | tout afficher)
ajouté par gsc55 | modifierReviews by Amos Lassen (Jan 1, 2014)
 

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When their grandmother dies, Grace and Andrew Easton inherit her sprawling, book-filled London home, Dinmont House. Rather than sell it, the adult siblings move in together, splitting the numerous bedrooms and studies. The arrangement is unusual, but ideal for the affectionate pair--until the day Andrew brings home a new boyfriend. A devilishly handsome novelist, James Derain resembles Cary Grant, but his strident comments about Grace's doctoral thesis soon puncture the house's idyllic atmosphere. When he and Andrew witness their friend's murder outside a London nightclub, James begins to unravel, and what happens next will change the lives of everyone in the house.

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