I really had no idea what to read first in 2015. I actually felt like I had the reader's equivalent of writer's block, especially when reading others' blog posts and tweets about how the first book of the year should be some significant, symbolic choice that would set the tone for the year to come. I eventually chose The Minotaur almost randomly while reorganising books on my Kindle, feeling it would strike some balance between the 'light' sort of stuff I actually felt like reading, and my vague aim to read a greater range of books (those published prior to the last couple of years, those written by authors I haven't read before). (In any case, I ended up finishing Poor Souls' Light first, even though I started it after this one.)The story begins with Kerstin, the narrator, bumping into an old acquaintance while on holiday. This is Ella Cosway, a member of the formidable family Kerstin came to know in the 1960s, when - aged 24, recently arrived in the UK from Sweden, and newly qualified as a nurse - she spent a year working as carer to Ella's brother, John. After this introduction, the majority of the book is told as a flashback to that time, albeit always from the perspective of Kerstin's present-day self, which results in a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of 'of course, I couldn't have known then...' sort of stuff.The Cosway family consists of matriarch Julia (usually referred to simply as Mrs Cosway), four middle-aged daughters, three of whom - Ida, Winifred and Ella - live at home, and John. The latter, Kerstin's 'charge', is vaguely defined as 'mentally ill' and sometimes referred to by the family as schizophrenic. The other daughter, Zorah, is a wealthy widow who occasionally descends on the family home, Lydstep Old Hall, to hold parties and bestow expensive gifts. With John's care dominated by Mrs Cosway, Kerstin finds herself acting as more of a live-in companion to the sisters, observing their life in the village of Windrose. The place and its inhabitants seem perpetually suspended in a much earlier time, with everything revolving around the church, village gossip, and the excitement among unmarried women whenever a new man turns up - it's all much more Jane Austen than swinging sixties. In the midst of this, Kerstin is a fish out of water in more ways than one.Kerstin reminded me so much of someone I used to know, even the specifics of many of her conversational asides and the things that interested her about other people, that she almost instantly came to life for me and remained a strong, vivid, very real presence throughout the story. How much of this was down to Vine's characterisation and how much was due to me making that personal connection, I'm not sure. Once the comparison was in my head, I found it difficult to detach my perception of Kerstin from existing ideas about the person I couldn't help imagining her to be.The Minotaur may be widely described as a gothic thriller, suspense/mystery etc, but readers expecting it to have the pace typical to the modern incarnations of those genres might find it a letdown. The story does gradually build to a catastrophic event, which is clearly signposted from the beginning, and it's full of references to gothic novels and sinister symbols, but the bulk of the book involves Kerstin simply observing the Cosways' lives and their family politics. The slow burn made it fascinating to me, and I actually really enjoyed reading about the family, but I can totally understand why some other reviewers have dismissed it as boring: the narrative can be repetitive and occasionally lapses into dullness, sometimes feeling as if it's been deliberately stretched out to fulfil a required word count. Kerstin repeats, and repeats again, her observations on members of the Cosway family; some of these facts (Winifred wears too much makeup, Ella has dirty nails) are stated so many times that they feel burned into my memory. (However, I'm not sure whether this is more a deliberately engineered feature of Kerstin's character than padding to make the story longer. The fact that she lacks the obvious eccentricity of the Cosways doesn't mean she is beyond reproach, and she sometimes comes off as quite petty.)Slow-moving it may be, but I found The Minotaur absorbing. As a portrait of a 'dysfunctional' family, it's as carefully detailed as an intricately embroidered tapestry. A dramatic finale wasn't even necessary for my enjoyment of the book to be complete, so when it did come, I was relieved to find it didn't disturb the equilibrium of the rest of the narrative. Not for everyone, I wouldn't recommend it universally, but this was a good book to start the year off for me.
This book was such a disappointment that it makes me seriously reconsider my longstanding policy of choosing books by their covers. The cover, by the way, is composed of an interesting maze-like shape, a labyrinth, so to speak, and on top of the maze is an open book with a drawing of a woman on its blank pages. The back of the book is covered with glowing reviews by authors and magazines who, though I don't exactly respect, at least seem unlikely to be all wrong.While reading this book, I was constantly reminded of that old saying of Sun-Tzu's about war: "Be subtle, to the point of formlessness." The reader starts this book and is informed that the entire reason the book is being written is because of some terrible event that occurred among the characters of the story.This is a classic technique and one of which I whole-heartedly approve. Next, Ms. Vine proceeds to set up the characters in her story, and to illustrate what circumstances caused our somewhat shapeless narrator to find herself among a strange family in England. During this stage, I began to get a little bored, preferring as I do for things to start happening right away. However, I've often heard my wife speak glowingly of the novels of Henry James, and one of the things she seems to like about them is the fact that James spends a little bit of time "setting up his pieces" so to speak. This, according to her, can seem a little boring, but it all pays off when the action starts and the setup that James has carefully created works out in new and fascinating ways. OK, I thought, we have a kind of Henry James setup here. Referring to the back of the book again, I saw that the glowing reviewers had used words such as "mesmerizing," "subtle," "mysterious," "intricate," and "unique." All well and good. Things were going according to plan.The book went on. I gradually found out more things about the family. None of them were really very interesting. This languid person was having a rather languid affair. This other person thought the life of the family was rather boring. Some other person put too much confidence in her own mother, and followed her too zealously. The family as a whole didn't have too much sympathy for someone with Asperger's (a mild form of autism).Finally, at one point, someone got really mad. This led to a completely understandable amount of violence, in which someone else got hurt. That was the end. Our narrator left and continued with her dreary life.Obviously, I am missing something in this book. No one could have set out to write a book as long as this in which absolutely nothing happened. There must have been deep and important things under the surface and, fool that I am, I simply did not see them.Maybe there's something of a male/female dynamic here. I took an online sex quiz a few days ago in which a number of questions were asked and, at the end of it, the program would tell you what sex you were based on the answers. I knew I was in trouble when I tried to answer a whole series of questions asking what emotions were being expressed by various people's eyes. Each question would show a rectangle in which only a person's eyes were visible, and you had a choice of four responses, like "angry," "sad," "delighted," "surprised." I had no idea about any of them.Clearly, even though I was completely in the dark, there must be a whole lot of people who had at least some ability to answer this kind of question. If not, it wouldn't have been on the quiz in the first place. And, for anyone to be good at seeing someone's feelings in their eyes, they must have some interest in eyes, and the correspondence between eyes and emotions. My point is that where I see absolutely nothing of any interest, a large group of people apparently see something fascinating. After reading The Minotaur, I feel the same way I felt after taking the eye quiz: Not only do I not understand what was there, I don't even see anything there to have an opinion about in the first place.
What do You think about The Minotaur (2006)?
The Minotaur is a modern Gothic novel -- set in the late sixties, with all the trappings of normality except within the confines of the novel's main setting, Lydstep Old Hall. Vine sets up a deliciously creepy setting in Lydstep, populated by the not-necessarily-creepy-but-certainly-strange Cosways. We know early on that something terrible happens, but not precisely what. I found that the anticipation of discovering the something terrible was more satisfying than the thing itself; I found the shocking event(s) pretty much predictable.This is not to say the book wasn't enjoyable -- it was, enormously. And although I was not wholly surprised by the denouement, I thought of it more as an homage to traditional Gothic mysteries than a failure on the author's part. I enjoyed Vine's writing style very much; her narrator, a young Swedish woman whose name is constantly mispronounced, was delightful. The Minotaur is a fun read: dark but not depressing; mysterious but not frustratingly so. And call me crazy, but I'd love to have a library like the Cosways'.
—Laura
"The Minotaur" is an interesting book about a nurse hired under mysterious circumstances to assist a man living with his oddball, secret-ridden family. The main character is a Swedish girl living in England in the 60s, but she's describing the events in retrospect. This viewpoint added an interesting dimension to the narrative that didn't necessarily affect the plot but was a nice touch. The Cosway sisters gave me almost a "Witches of Eastwick" vibe as their lives were slowly turned upside down (and their true personalities revealed) by the arrival of a seductive stranger.I think I would have given this book four stars if I hadn't read the inside cover description first. I know, that sounds weird... but the description promised something (Horrifying secrets! Sexual obsession!) that was just a little more exciting than what the book delivered (I was still waiting for the horrifying secret 50 pages after it had been revealed, and the sexual obsession was not what I expected). It's a fine book, with interesting and well-developed characters. I just spent a good chunk of it waiting for the really exciting part to begin, when I could have been enjoying the story for what it really was (more of a slow revelation of character and motivation). This was my first Barbara Vine book, but I'm definitely interested in checking out some more of her work.
—Nicole
This is my new favorite Barbara Vine novel, and she's my new favorite mystery/thriller/creepy situation author. I listened to this one in the car, and it was read by a woman who did a lovely Swedish accent, but also did terrific, yet subtle voices for the rest of the characters. It's a story that reveals early in the book that there was a "situation" (a bad situation), though you don't know exactly what it is and when it's going to happen. And when it finally does, it's even worse than you'd imagined. Which is great for the reader! It's a quiet book with not much action, but it's a page-turner (or an IPod-player) nonetheless.
—Laura
