The Water's Lovely

I have a long history with Ruth Rendell and she has the ability to either astonish and delight me, or frustrate and disappoint me. In The Water’s Lovely, she manages to do all four. No one is better at building a story, layer by layer than Ruth Rendell, and here she takes a group of people, some virtual strangers to each other, and weaves her magic, blending each character with one another, slowly exposing secrets, and eventually allowing the truth to emerge. You feel the tension mounting but are never sure if a murder has happened, if another one it going to happen, or even who will be the victim and who the killer.

I don’t want to discuss the plot in any way as I wouldn’t want to spoil it for a future readers, but be assured that show more Ruth Rendell is a master at the craft of psychological mysteries. The pacing is excellent as she brings the story to a slow boil, and her characterizations are spot on. Unfortunately, there were couple of flies in the ointment for me, firstly so much of the story revolved on people not talking to one another which would have been believable with some of these very private people, but using the same plot device with all her characters made me feel as if the author was being a little lazy. Secondly, I really hated the ending and felt she cheated the reader out of seeing certain characters get their just rewards.

So for me, a very good read and one that held my attention but even as I was willing to forgive her the repeated plot device, the ending just didn’t satisfy me. show less

As usual, Rendell puts me into the heart of modern British life and I found the story engrossing and her characters interesting. But this was like Rendell light. There weren’t any clear-cut monsters unless you count Marion who I found more pathetic and annoying than dangerous. Things tended to meander to a fairly soppy conclusion more worthy of Maeve Binchy than Ruth Rendell. It pains me to admit that this novel was pretty weak even though I could barely put it down. Anticipation of a great, crackling Rendell ending kept me going. Alas, I got a tacked-on Binchy ending.

Spoilers below-

Marion’s duplicity had hints of the usual deliciously creepy quality Rendell brings to her sociopaths, but she wasn’t scary. I’ve seen her do show more subtlety to much better effect. Marion’s efforts to worm her way into the affection (and wills) of the elderly were more creepy than harmful. When she ended up with Ismay’s taped “confession” of her suspicions against sister Heather, I wondered why Ismay gave in at all. Marion’s ability to bring her threat to any kind of harmful conclusion was nil and it made me write Ismay off as a moron.

Which I was already half way to over her relationship with the feckless Andrew anyway. What a creep he was. Cheating, unfeeling and a bully Ismay remained loyal and as much in love as her needy psyche would allow. There must be something deficient in her personality since she actually longed for her stepfather’s sexual overtures when she was 15.

Which brings us to the crux of the mystery here; Guy’s apparent murder at the hands of his step-daughter Heather, only 13 at the time. His illness must have REALLY depleted his strength and Heather must have REALLY been a pre-adolescent Amazon to have pulled this off. His bathtub drowning really pushed the limits of plausibility. When late in the story, Heather reveals to Ismay her motive for the killing I wasn’t surprised at Ismay’s misapprehension. All these years she’s believed Heather was protecting her from Guy, not perceiving that she craved his attentions. In reality, Heather was protecting herself and Guy using Ismay as a deflector to his real intent; the younger sister.

It’s this delusion that helps Ismay believe that Andrew’s new girlfriend’s death came at the hands of Heather as well. Especially after she finds out that Heather was trying to convince Eve to leave Andrew so he could return to Ismay (who, dolt that she is, would take him back).

But even this emotional situation seems out of focus and vague. Ismay seems more a caricature of a doormat than an actual doormat. Her declarations and actions are de rigueur for novelists writing a weak and man-obsessed woman. She does nothing unique. Heather’s attempts to separate Eve from Andrew are unique though.

The only intensely real seeming relationship in the whole thing was that of Edmund and Heather. They came together at just the right time and it was good to watch Edmund separate himself from his overbearing mother, Irene. Her guilt trips had no affect on him after a while and he got away. Their love seemed real to me and must have been to Andrew as well since he blamed his desertion on their presence. I guess he didn’t want Ismay to make any comparisons and realize that what he offered her was a lame imitation of real devotion and esteem.

Desperation takes many forms in this novel as we see Pam pursue a relationship whose only merit seems to be a change from the usual routine of taking care of Beatrix (Pam’s sister and Ismay and Heather’s mother) and some non-revolting sex. When she finally decides that this lackluster “partnership” as Ivan calls it is not working, Ivan attacks her, rapes her and throws her out of his apartment where she falls down the stairs breaking many bones. No police charges are brought and she sinks quietly back into her old life, reuniting with an old flame who left in the wake of Guy’s death. This was one of the Binchy moments as was Andrew’s proprietary return to Ismay. It came out of nowhere and seemed tacked on and false.

Marion’s marriage to Irene’s neighbor Barry was weird, too. As was the fact of his being the original investigating officer in the case of Guy’s death – a convenient coincidence that was stretching things. It came in quite handy when Ismay had to extricate herself from Marion’s blackmail scheme. She escaped her life of scheming and duplicity and even the torments of her homeless brother, Fowler. It didn’t seem fair, but then again, she hadn’t done anything really so bad. show less

Nine years ago Ismay Sealand and her mother came back from a shopping trip to find her stepfather drowned in his bath. Ismay and Beatrix provide a false alibi for Ismay's sister, Heather, who they think murdered her stepfather (who else could it have been?). Now Heather has a boyfriend she wants to marry. Should Ismay tell him?

A claustrophobic, suspenseful, unputdownable thriller with a rather disappointing ending.

Compulsively readable "psychological suspense." I might even call it "quiet horror." Excellently written, with an entertaining cast of characters who range from the disturbingly quiet to the obsessively neurotic, "unrepressed criminal," and just plain crazy.

My first experience with this writer, and I'm not sure whether to recommend her or not. I found the novel enthralling, and missed reading it when it was over. Yet Rendell's vision is so dark, her world so sad, I don't think I'll plan on re-entering that world any time soon.

Ismay has always thought that her sister Heather was responsible for the drowning death of their step-father. Now that Heather is likely to be married, Ismay struggles with whether or not she should reveal her suspicions. This novel is more of a psychological thriller than a mystery like the author's Inspector Wexford series. This got off to a very slow start, but once it got going it picked up. Unfortunately, the ending was disappointing for me. If I read more Rendell novels, I think I'll stick to her Wexford series.

For those mystery readers that favor in-depth character development with just a hint of suspicion thrown in, The Water’s Lovely will be just the refreshing dip that’s called for. Rendell, the three-time Edgar Award-winning author of the Wexford series, has created a stand-alone gem that reads like literary fiction foremost and mystery-to-be-solved secondly. The story evolves slowly with multiple characters being developed. Central to the story is the relationship between sisters Heather and Ismay and the dark secret they share – a secret so dark it has driven their mother, Beatrix, to a life of restless insanity. Along with these two complex sisters we meet their boyfriends, Edmund and Andrew, two men whose outlook on life is so show more vastly different they can hardly be in the same room together. In fact, Andrew’s intolerance drives the sisters apart causing reverberations to the other characters in the story. Pam, Beatrix’s sister and live-in care-giver, is spiraling downward toward spinsterhood as a succession of online dates prove unsatisfactory and Marion, the conniving gold-digger, feels spurned by Edmund and is more driven than ever to reap the rewards she hopes her fawning attention to her coterie of doddering old folks will provide. If only her panhandler brother, Fowler, hadn’t tossed out her coveted vial of morphine. Although there is a random murder, the story really isn’t about who-done-it, it’s really about developing the characters well enough that we understand why-it-was-done, and Rendell has certainly resolved that task with eloquence and imagination.
No sex scenes, no graphic violence. The reading by Rosalyn Landor is perfect. show less

Ruth Rendell, perhaps best known for her twenty-one Chief Inspector Wexford novels, is also a master of psychological suspense as she has shown time after time with stand alone novels written in her own name or as Barbara Vine. The Water's Lovely, another of those suspense filled novels, is a worthy addition to a body of work that now numbers almost seventy volumes of novels, novellas, short stories and non-fiction.

Ismay Sealand has lived with a terrible secret for twelve years and she knows that, if she is to continue to protect her sister, there is no one with whom she can ever share what she knows about the day that Guy, her stepfather, drowned in his bath. Since that day, when she was fifteen years old and Heather was only thirteen, show more she has believed that Heather killed their step-father in order to protect Ismay from his sexual advances. The sisters have never spoken of that day but, now that their mother has gone mad and must be kept sedated at all times by her own caretaker sister, Ismay finds herself more and more compelled to finally have the conversation with Heather that will confirm, one way or the other, the suspicions that she has carried for so many years.

But as reluctant as Ismay is about forcing the conversation to actually happen, things would have remained unlikely to ever change if not for the men who entered the sisters' lives, two men who could barely tolerate each other and who would forever change the relationship between the women. The Water's Lovely is a story of relationships and loyalties, one that compares the strength of blood relations and family ties to that of sexual attraction and the security of marriage. Ismay and Heather have to decide which pull is strongest and just how much compromise they are willing to make in order not to lose the men in their lives.

Rendell has created a world filled with interesting people who directly or indirectly impact the lives of the women living in the Sealand household, vividly flawed characters who are struggling to find their own happiness and who share all of the weaknesses that we recognize so well in ourselves and those around us. This is not a fast paced thriller that leaves the reader exhausted at its end. The Water's Lovely is much more than that. It is the work of a master suspense writer with the skill to build that suspense slowly, layer by layer, sucking the reader into a situation that he wonders how he would have handled if confronted with similar circumstances. It is the kind of story that stays with its reader long after its covers are closed for the last time.

Rated at: 4.0 show less