The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell
I have been reading Ruth Rendell all my adult life – as with
many of my favourite authors, I came to her via my mother, to whom I also owe a
lifetime allegiance to P.D. James, Lynne Reid Banks and Alison Lurie.
I read and re-read Ruth Rendell with such pleasure. She never wastes words but creates a
completely believable cast of characters who move in and out of each other’s
lives, weaving a plot and story that captivates.
This is probably a third reading for me of ‘The Tree of
Hands’, I’d forgotten some of the details of the ending, but the main thrust of
the story of the loss and replacement of a child came back to me as soon as I
started the novel again, but Ruth Rendell is such a skilful writer that it
doesn’t matter how many times you hear the story, you are still carried away by
the words. I think one of the
things I admire most about her as a writer is that she creates characters that you
feel you have met, I always feel that they are floating at the edge of my
subconscious, that woman in the dry cleaners or the doctor I sat next to at a
party, and you get sucked into their world so that every action and decision
that they take seems completely rational and understandable.
To call ‘The Tree of Hands’ a crime novel is to sell it
short, it is more of an exploration of people’s lives, how they get into
messes, how disaster occurs and
how people cope with the spreading repercussions.
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