Book description
The long title story is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book.
There are shelves in every room, packed with titles which Ambrose Ribbon
has checked pedantically for mistakes of grammar and fact. Life for
Ribbon, without his mother now, is lonely and obsessive, filled with
psychoses and neuroses, with the ever-present possibility of a descent
into violent madness. He still keeps his mother's dressing table exactly
as she had left it, the wardrobe door always open so that her clothes
can be seen inside, and her pink silk nightdress on the bed. There is
one book too that he associates particularly with her - volume VIII of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very
significant moment in their relationship. In the other stories, Ruth
Rendell deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful,
some mysterious, all precisely observed. The second novella,
High Mysterious Union
, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream-like corner of rural
England, and illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell
has as a writer, expanding beyond her famous sphere of crime writing.
Ruth Rendell is the Queen of British crime writing. The author of
over 50 novels, she has won many significant crime fiction awards. Her
first novel, From Doon With Death, appeared in 1964, and since
then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new
book.
She has received major awards for her work; three Edgars from the
Mystery Writers of America; the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for
1976's best crime novel, A Demon in My View; the Arts Council
National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981 for The Lake of
Darkness; the Crime Writer's Gold Dagger Award for 1986's best
crime book for Live Flesh; in 1987 the Crime Writer's Gold
Dagger Award for A Fatal Inversion and in 1991 the same award
for King Solomon's Carpet, both written under the pseudonym
Barbara Vine; the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990; and in
1991 the Crime Writer's Cartier Diamond Award for outstanding
contribution to the crime fiction genre.
Her books are translated into 21 languages. In 1996 she was awarded
the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.
