ISBN: 9780091793685 - 'piranha to scurfy' and other stories (1 Ergebnisse)

Paperback. Zustand: Good. 248 pages. Cover wornRuth Rendell's seventh collection of short stories also includes two unpublis hed novellas. The title story is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book. There are shelves in every room, packed with titles which Ambrose Ribbon has ch ecked pedantically for mistakes of grammar and fact. Life for Ribbon, without hi s mother now, is lonely and obsessive. He still keeps her dressing table exactly as she had left it, the wardrobe door always open so that her clothes can be se en inside, and her pink silk nightdress folded on the bed. There is one book t oo that he associates particularly with her - volume VIII of the Encyclopedia Br itannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very significant moment in their relati onship. The second novella, High Mysterious Union, explores a strange, erotic u niverse in a dream-like corner of rural England, and illustrates very atmospheri cally what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer. In the other stories, Ruth Rende ll deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful, some mysterious, all precisely observed.…