DDC/MDS
| 823/.914 |
Publication
Markham, Ont. : Viking, 1988.
Original publication date
1988
Description
Fiction. Mystery. HTML: From a New York Times�bestselling author: A novelist pieces together the murderous past of an old friend�"smoldering suspense . . . literally unputdownable" (Time Out). When writer Lizzie Vetch has tea with her old friend, Bell Sanger, the women are reunited for the first time in nearly two decades. Limbo years, Lizzie calls them, full of "all the terrible things" that passed between them. Specifically, a murder for which Bell served time, and has only recently been released from prison. Seemingly out of kindness, Lizzie agrees to let Bell move back into the House of Stairs, the five-story Notting Hill boardinghouse where, seventeen years ago, a dreadful crime was committed. Maybe here, among the other odd residents, Lizzie can help pull Bell's life together again. But is it compassion or something else? Because the more Lizzie's long-suppressed memories are stirred, the more her motives for keeping Bell close are called into question. As for Bell, she has her own reasons for moving back into the House of Stairs with Lizzie. It's not to put the past behind them. It's to confront it, step by step. "Revealed in baleful flashbacks, a chilly obsession takes shape, a convicted murderess and a cruel design sidle out of the shadows" (The Observer) in Edgar Award winner Ruth Rendell's "compelling and disturbing" psychological thriller (The Sunday Times)..… (more)
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Available
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Collection
User reviews
LibraryThing member lsh63
Early on in this book it is established that a murder has taken place., as well as the identity of the murderer. The actual act and the victim's identity are not revealed until the very, very end.
Elizabeth moves in with her widowed aunt Cosette to escape her home life. The house that she eventually
Cosette's generous nature leads to her being taken advantage and surrounded my a variety of freeloaders. She is oblivious to this of course, as she tries to recapture her youth and find true love at last.
Elizabeth moves in with her widowed aunt Cosette to escape her home life. The house that she eventually
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moves into is known as "The House of Stairs" complete with a long winding staircase and upstairs windows that reach to the floor, only there are no balconies.Cosette's generous nature leads to her being taken advantage and surrounded my a variety of freeloaders. She is oblivious to this of course, as she tries to recapture her youth and find true love at last.
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
Interesting that I could see that Bell and Mark were setting up Cosette, but I couldn’t see the method of his demise. Of course she had to push him out the window of her room, the one at the top of the 106 steps. When Mark actually fell in love with Cosette, instead of just pretending to be, Bell
Elizabeth’s undying attachment to this sociopath is interesting. They meet at a friend’s house where Bell and her husband are living in a nearly broken down shack on the old estate. A day or so after Christmas, Bell enters the house and tells everyone that her husband has shot himself. There is no blame, no suspicion of her. How could there be? Silas Sanger was a restless and dissolute artist with a penchant for booze and a gun collection. Bell’s story of Russian roulette is never questioned.
Only at the very end of the book are we told that Bell was committed to a prison when found guilty of strangling her baby sister when she herself was 12 years old. Her parents divorced themselves from her and she was adrift. Cool, aloof and frank, she is taken for a helpless woman, incapable of falsehood. Elizabeth finds an antique portrait of another woman and buys it, hanging it in her room at The House of Stairs. One night Bell sees it and a few days later, dresses like the Italian woman of old in the portrait. That night, they begin an affair that Elizabeth believes is built on mutual love.
Only after a few months and having insinuated herself into the life of the House of Stairs, Bell tires of Elizabeth and scarcely acknowledges her presence. Elizabeth still has fantasies of a great love coming to fruition after a tortured separation. In the mean time, she has abandoned affairs and watches life in The House of Stairs grow more frenetic.
Finally, Bell introduces Mark to Cosette as her brother. For some reason, she thinks that Cosette has cancer and will die soon, leaving her money to Mark (who marries her) and then after her death, Bell and Mark will enjoy his inheritance. Mark’s folly of actually falling in love with Cosette and his mistake of telling Bell is his downfall.
The story is woven together in sections; some taking place in the present and the rest told as flashbacks. In the present, Elizabeth has run Bell to ground and begun a relationship. Unlike the one of old, it is not physical. Like the one of old, Bell is entirely dependent on Elizabeth’s bounty. It’s disgusting when Bell repeatedly accuses others of “sponging” when she has never supported herself or paid her own way for one day of her entire life.
Elizabeth’s real tragedy is her separation from Cosette. When the truth comes out, and Cosette knows that Mark is not Bell’s brother, she is crushed at the deception. Even though she appears langorous and slow, she knows exactly what was perpetrated there. She and Mark work it out but he has put the blame squarely on Elizabeth (presumably to cut her out of any part of Cosette’s fortune even though he no longer following the original plot). He says that Elizabeth put the idea into Bell’s head. The next day, Mark is killed and the last Elizabeth sees of Cosette is when the police pull her from Mark’s crushed and bleeding body. Later, Elizabeth refuses to take The House of Stairs as offered by Cosette in place of Cosette herself.
In the end, we find Bell and Elizabeth living together, in disharmony, in Elizabeth’s 4-room house. In a moment of bravery, Elizabeth writes to Cosette, now married and living out her old age in the country. We never know if Cosette ever contacts Elizabeth but we are hopeful.
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snapped and when Cosette came into the room, she pushed him. It was best to kill him in front of Cosette, so that the pain would be deeper and perhaps crush the life out of her yet.Elizabeth’s undying attachment to this sociopath is interesting. They meet at a friend’s house where Bell and her husband are living in a nearly broken down shack on the old estate. A day or so after Christmas, Bell enters the house and tells everyone that her husband has shot himself. There is no blame, no suspicion of her. How could there be? Silas Sanger was a restless and dissolute artist with a penchant for booze and a gun collection. Bell’s story of Russian roulette is never questioned.
Only at the very end of the book are we told that Bell was committed to a prison when found guilty of strangling her baby sister when she herself was 12 years old. Her parents divorced themselves from her and she was adrift. Cool, aloof and frank, she is taken for a helpless woman, incapable of falsehood. Elizabeth finds an antique portrait of another woman and buys it, hanging it in her room at The House of Stairs. One night Bell sees it and a few days later, dresses like the Italian woman of old in the portrait. That night, they begin an affair that Elizabeth believes is built on mutual love.
Only after a few months and having insinuated herself into the life of the House of Stairs, Bell tires of Elizabeth and scarcely acknowledges her presence. Elizabeth still has fantasies of a great love coming to fruition after a tortured separation. In the mean time, she has abandoned affairs and watches life in The House of Stairs grow more frenetic.
Finally, Bell introduces Mark to Cosette as her brother. For some reason, she thinks that Cosette has cancer and will die soon, leaving her money to Mark (who marries her) and then after her death, Bell and Mark will enjoy his inheritance. Mark’s folly of actually falling in love with Cosette and his mistake of telling Bell is his downfall.
The story is woven together in sections; some taking place in the present and the rest told as flashbacks. In the present, Elizabeth has run Bell to ground and begun a relationship. Unlike the one of old, it is not physical. Like the one of old, Bell is entirely dependent on Elizabeth’s bounty. It’s disgusting when Bell repeatedly accuses others of “sponging” when she has never supported herself or paid her own way for one day of her entire life.
Elizabeth’s real tragedy is her separation from Cosette. When the truth comes out, and Cosette knows that Mark is not Bell’s brother, she is crushed at the deception. Even though she appears langorous and slow, she knows exactly what was perpetrated there. She and Mark work it out but he has put the blame squarely on Elizabeth (presumably to cut her out of any part of Cosette’s fortune even though he no longer following the original plot). He says that Elizabeth put the idea into Bell’s head. The next day, Mark is killed and the last Elizabeth sees of Cosette is when the police pull her from Mark’s crushed and bleeding body. Later, Elizabeth refuses to take The House of Stairs as offered by Cosette in place of Cosette herself.
In the end, we find Bell and Elizabeth living together, in disharmony, in Elizabeth’s 4-room house. In a moment of bravery, Elizabeth writes to Cosette, now married and living out her old age in the country. We never know if Cosette ever contacts Elizabeth but we are hopeful.
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LibraryThing member jayne_charles
Distinctly average, I thought. I started well, with the narrator pursuing a mystery woman through the streets of London, but it all got rather tedious when we got started on reminiscing about the house of the book's title, lesbianism and the narrator's medical background. Yawn. I guessed the
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'twist' too. I tend to dislike Vine's books about bohemian types, and this fits right into that category. Show Less
LibraryThing member MicheleBW
I adore Ruth Rendell. I really do. But...
This book took me forever to read. In this first person narrative, the main character recalls some years of her tragic life. The reader is told very early on that there is a murder and who the murderer is and strongly hints that it involves an open window at
And yet the tragedy is something quite other. The tragedy is the threat of Huntington's chorea.
This would have been a more compelling story if I could understand the motivation of the main character. Her actions, her continued support for another so clearly (even to her) unworthy, just seems so alien to me. Are there really people in the world like that?
And while I've given the story just three stars, I find myself still thinking about it. Still wondering.
This book took me forever to read. In this first person narrative, the main character recalls some years of her tragic life. The reader is told very early on that there is a murder and who the murderer is and strongly hints that it involves an open window at
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great height but leaves unanswered until the end just who and how.And yet the tragedy is something quite other. The tragedy is the threat of Huntington's chorea.
This would have been a more compelling story if I could understand the motivation of the main character. Her actions, her continued support for another so clearly (even to her) unworthy, just seems so alien to me. Are there really people in the world like that?
And while I've given the story just three stars, I find myself still thinking about it. Still wondering.
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LibraryThing member JimPratt
The house of the title serves as a framework for the novel: endless climbing and descending (106 stairs, and the 104th creaks) with multiple rooms where different lives unfold. Except that it’s not that straightforward—for one there are numerous and pointless flashbacks which serve to distract
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rather than entrance—and for another the writer resorts to what seems to be cheap deception, deliberately foreshadowing (right down to phrases like “the last time I ever saw her”) only to pull a switcheroo and kill off a different character. Again, it makes the reader feel used rather than entertained. Long, tedious and very unsatisfying. Show Less
LibraryThing member moonshineandrosefire
Who is the sad, reflective narrator and what mysterious illness does she suffer from? What is the strange hold that the tall, dark woman named Bell has over her, and whatever happened at the carefully described House of Stairs in London that sent Bell to prison? The answers are gradually revealed
The narrator of the story is a middle-aged novelist named Elizabeth Vetch who, ever since she learned of her grim heritage at age fourteen, has lived under the threat of inheriting the fatal disease known as Huntington's chorea, which she refers to as "the terror and the bore." Years before, during the late '60s and early '70s, she and Bell and several other vibrant people lived in the House of Stairs, owned by Elizabeth's recently widowed, newly Bohemian aunt Cosette. The story begins with Elizabeth's chance sighting of Bell; someone whom Elizabeth hasn't seen in fourteen years.
Remembering their past friendship, Elizabeth feels compelled to understand her own reawakened emotions, as well as the events that initiated her and Bell's parting and caused both Cosette and Elizabeth untold pain. Despite "all the terrible things" that passed between them, Elizabeth makes overtures to rekindle their friendship, with terrifying results...
I thoroughly enjoyed this book; although, the story being told entirely in flashbacks was slightly confusing to me. I was so eager to know what happened, that being pulled into a flashback scene was at times a little annoying. I still would give The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine - who is actually Ruth Rendell - an A+!
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as the intricate knots of this mystery are untied. The narrator of the story is a middle-aged novelist named Elizabeth Vetch who, ever since she learned of her grim heritage at age fourteen, has lived under the threat of inheriting the fatal disease known as Huntington's chorea, which she refers to as "the terror and the bore." Years before, during the late '60s and early '70s, she and Bell and several other vibrant people lived in the House of Stairs, owned by Elizabeth's recently widowed, newly Bohemian aunt Cosette. The story begins with Elizabeth's chance sighting of Bell; someone whom Elizabeth hasn't seen in fourteen years.
Remembering their past friendship, Elizabeth feels compelled to understand her own reawakened emotions, as well as the events that initiated her and Bell's parting and caused both Cosette and Elizabeth untold pain. Despite "all the terrible things" that passed between them, Elizabeth makes overtures to rekindle their friendship, with terrifying results...
I thoroughly enjoyed this book; although, the story being told entirely in flashbacks was slightly confusing to me. I was so eager to know what happened, that being pulled into a flashback scene was at times a little annoying. I still would give The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine - who is actually Ruth Rendell - an A+!
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LibraryThing member niquetteb
Lizzie is the main character. The book is written through her perspective and flashes back throughout the novel. I had a hard time putting this book down, but I won't describe, so I don't ruin it.
LibraryThing member Iambookish
This book was excellently written and deserves a high rating, but if I'm rating it based on my enjoyment then 3 stars is accurate. I struggled getting through it, mostly due to the characters and my lack of interest in their story.
LibraryThing member CatherineBurkeHines
It's not fair to give only two stars to this and the other book by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) - they are what they are: the very definition of psychological thriller. You know immediately whodunit, and where and when; the only question explored is why. These books just aren't to my taste; I'm not
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one for unreliable narrators. Show Less
Subjects
Physical description
281 p.; 23 cm
ISBN
0670824143 / 9780670824144
Other editions
The house of stairs by Barbara Vine (Hardcover)