Read Birthday Present (2008)

Online Book

Author

Barbara Vine

Genre

Mystery & Thriller

Rating

3.32 of 5 Votes: 3

Your rating

ISBN

0143170252 (ISBN13: 9780143170259)

Language

English

Publisher

Penguin Canada (APB)

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

Free Online

Birthday Present (2008) - Plot & Excerpts

The best Barbara Vine novel, in my opinion. Unusually, it is not so much a mystery, as the reader knows what happened from the start. It's a bit like "light the blue touchpaper and stand well back," a chain reaction, or domino effect series of events leading to a final and inevitable fall from grace. I think it is brilliantly done. (NB: as well as reading this book, I listened to it as an audio book as well, and it was really well suited to that format). Read this on the recommendation of a friend, who raved about it. Vine, the pseudonym for Ruth Rendall, spins a long, convoluted tale of how an innocent prank can go horribly wrong, haunting the the instigator for the rest of his life. I found the use of two voices tiresome and quite often the chronology just didn't add up. I was expecting a mystery here, but really, it is just a story of how coincidences and chance encounters haunt our lives. Kind of dull, actually.