Forgotten Book Friday – The Minotaur
Posted on October 16th, 2009
The Minotaur by Barbara Vine
Shaye Areheart, March 2006
ISBN 0-307-23760-5
Hardcover
The irrepressibly prolific and consistently impressive writer Barbara Vine (a.k.a. Ruth Rendell)—“the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world” (Time) and “a writer who is at the height of her powers” (Daily Mail)—has now given readers one of her most disturbing and provocative mysteries, The Minotaur.
First, let us consider the name that serves as the title of Barbara Vine’s mesmerizing novel: The Minotaur of ancient Greek mythology, as readers will recall, was an unpleasant creature with a bull’s head and man’s body. It seems that King Minos of Crete had failed to make a required sacrifice of a bull to the god Poseidon, and that unforgiving god was so perturbed that he had caused the king’s wife, Queen Pasiphaë, to lust after the previously required sacrifice. Well, the troubled offspring of that divinely ordered but admittedly unseemly union was the Minotaur (which must have been fair enough warning to the Greeks that they should neither defy gods nor engage in unseemly behaviors with other species). Eventually confined in the infamously difficult labyrinth, the voracious monster regularly devoured sacrificial human beings until it was finally stopped by Theseus (whose own life—not coincidentally—was also complicated by plenty of relationship problems).
Now, as for the enthusiastically recommended novel, The Minotaur, consider the following: Kerstin Kvist, visiting England from her home in Sweden, takes a job at Lydstep Old Hall, a singular estate with plenty of atmosphere and entirely too many mysteries. Julia is the impatient matriarch who presides over the Cosway family which includes four daughters—Zorah, Ida, Ella, and Winifred—and a son, John—the person for whom Kerstin has been hired as nurse and attendant. When she is introduced to John, she is told simply that he has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, he will not tolerate any physical contact or any deviations from his obsessive schedule, and—regardless of any other problems that might arise—he must take his daily medications (otherwise John’s behavior may become a bit—different).
“There’s madness in the family,” Kerstin is told. “And of course what John wants John gets,” she hears from someone else. She also soon realizes that the Cosways keep some of the rooms shut up and locked in the old homestead; the most closely guarded room, it seems, is the library (which, as it turns out, has a rather intricate floorplan). The Cosways, as Kerstin discovers, are a fractured family entrapped in their own labyrinth of family secrets, vanities, and prejudices. They cannot escape the past, they are mired down in the present, and they cannot accept the inevitabilities of the future. And the more Kerstin learns about Lydstep Old Hall and the Cosways, she worries that she may have made a frightening mistake in taking the job. Then, when people begin dying—suddenly and violently—Kerstin is even more concerned.
Barbara Vine pulls out all the stops in The Minotaur and deftly uses the conventions of the 19th century gothic novel to deliver a chillingly vivid tale of greed, passion, and murder. Find out why P. D. James says that “Barbara Vine has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche.” Discover why Scott Turow says that Barbara Vine is “surely one of the greatest novelists presently working in our language.” Find out why I offer this promise: Readers will not soon forget the monstrous personalities and the dark secrets that threaten to destroy Lydstep Old Hall!
Tags: Ancient Greek Mythology, Barbara Vine, Daily Mail, Forgotten Book, Four Daughters, God Poseidon, King Minos Of Crete, Many Mysteries, Matriarch, Mesmerizing, Minotaur, Mystery Writer, Relationship Problems, Ruth Rendell, Shaye, Theseus, Visiting England, Wife Queen, Winifred, World Time
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