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Lädt ... Tigerlily's Orchids (2010)von Ruth Rendell
Books Read in 2022 (3,086) Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. I'm still not entirely sure what it is about Rendell's writing that is so appealing. Undoubtedly she writes well. She also has interesting characters and plot lines but none of these elements by themselves is remarkable or exceptional. Yet mix them together and her books are interesting and perhaps that's her gift. I think the jacket blurb does this a disservice, it presents the story as something other than what it is. It is an ensemble piece, with the focus being a block of 6 flats in reasonably well off London. The occupants are a varied lot, along with the caretaker & his wife, Duncan over the road and the house next to his. this is where the Tigerlily of the title resides, but she is a barely visible presence. It starts with the life of Stuart Font, a curiously unlikable character who is all style and no substance. He's living off an inheritance and is taking a year out, with no clear plan of what to do, apart from gaze narcistically in the mirrors and continue his affair with Claudia. She's married (one suspects older) and her husband's not too impressed. He starts the book by planning a flat warming party, to which the residents and neighbours are invited. This is the piece that gets them all together, what happens sets up the murder with likely suspects, but it's not the climax of the piece. The thing I liked about this was the way that it's not one story, it's a series of intermingled stories. Very often you hear one person's internal monologue on viewing a situation, followed by the person they've been watching's thoughts on the subject. It presnets a picture of how people leap to conclusions about a situation, and can be wildly wrong. The relationship between Tigerlily and the older man is mentioned by at least 2 characters, neither of which get the true state of affairs. There are clues to the true state of affairs, but they don;t all necessarily fall into place until later. There are a multitude of sins in here, theft, drink, drugs, violence, murder, domestic violence, pedophilia. All of which get discussed and gone over by the neighbours over and again. It's a psychological portrait of a neighbourhood, how we interact, why we do or don;t do certain things and what the consequences of that might be, for ourselves and others.
Ruth Rendell's novels of London amount to a modern cultural history of the city – a fictional urban archaeology of Holland Park in the hippie-chick era, redbrick terraces before and after the attentions of the "property ladder". Now she turns her sharp powers of observation on to a small suburban block of private flats, very precisely located in the social scale, too far away from the centre to be really expensive, just a cut above council housing. Rendell charts the local changes in sharp detail: the closure of the local off-licence, the problems of Mr Ali's corner shop. ....Rendell juggles with several mysteries. As well as the problem of Stuart's murderer, and that of the strange oriental characters, we follow the thread of a young woman drawn into petty crime. A fourth strand is supplied by a tenant who was an admirer of the handsome Stuart and finds herself homeless, reduced to living with an unsavoury young man in an attic. Out of this spider's web of interwoven lives emerges the truth of Stuart's murder – a beautifully disguised and manipulated surprise, set amid the jittery background of the restless city. A quietly sardonic study of life in one of London’s cheaper outer suburbs, the novel deploys its characters to illustrate that, however much we think we know what’s going on, we don’t know the half. This being a Rendell book, it’s a deft example of sociological miniaturism, albeit less affecting than some of her earlier works. The author, now over 80, is known for tackling the issues of the day; during her remarkably prolific career (nearly 100 books), she’s taken on domestic violence, poverty and homelessness.
When Stuart Font decides to throw a house warming party in his new flat he invites everyone in his building. The party will be one everyone remembers; but not for the right reasons. Living opposite, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman, christened Tigerlily by Stuart. As though from some strange urban fairytale, she emerges to exert a terrible spell on the occupants of Lichfield House. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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Tiger Lily's orchids are marijuana plants!!! Of course, nothing of import is properly named is book so we must go back to the beginning. I thought the book was about the spoiled young man having the affair. Then I thought it was about everyone in Lichfield House. It is, but it keep in mind it is told with the limitations of Duncan, the bored man across the building. When the reader goes over the story again with this view in mind it changes things. Very good. ( )