Synopses & Reviews
As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel. A young nurse fresh out of school, Kerstin has been hired for a position with the Cosway family, residents of the Hall for generations. She is soon introduced to her charge, John Cosway, a thirty-nine-year-old man whose strange behavior is vaguely explained by his mother and sisters as part of the madness that runs in the family.
Weeks go by at Lydstep with little to mark the passage of time beyond John's daily walks and the amusingly provincial happenings that engross the Cosway women, and Kerstin occupies her many free hours at the Hall reading or making entries into her diary. Meanwhile, bitter wrangling among Julia Cosway and her four grown daughters becomes increasingly evident. But this is just the most obvious of the tensions that charge the old remote estate, with its sealed rooms full of mystery. Soon Kerstin will find herself in possession of knowledge she will wish she'd never attained, secrets that will propel the occupants of Lydstep Old Hall headlong into sexual obsession, betrayal, and, finally, murder.
Review
"One of the most remarkable novelists of her generation." People
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"The best mystery writer in the English-speaking world." Time
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"Her clear, shapely prose casts the mesmerizing spell of the confessional." The New Yorker
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"One of the finest practitioners of her craft in the English-speaking world." The New York Times Book Review
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"Surely one of the greatest novelists presently at work in our language." Scott Turow
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"Those who haven't read her books have missed something unique and wonderful." Tony Hillerman
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"Barbara Vine has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche." P. D. James
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"Unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time. She magnificently triumphs in a style that is uniquely hers and mesmerizing." Patricia Cornwell
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"Elegant and gripping..." Washington Post
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"...Vine presents as satisfying a family of monsters as you're likely to find. It's like watching a house of cards collapse in exquisite slow-motion." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Renowned mystery writer Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine) draws on the conventions of the 19th-century novel to tell a chilling and suspenseful story of cruelty and murder in a bitterly divided family.
Synopsis
Barbara Vine is the author of such acclaimed novels as A Dark-Adapted Eye, Anna's Book, Grasshopper, and The Blood Doctor. She has won many awards for literary accomplishment, including three Edgar Awards and four Gold Daggers.
Reading Group Guide
1. Kerstin Kvists status as an outsider and her fascination with human nature help her provide insight and detail to her narration of the story. What other characteristics make her an effective narrator? Do any of these inhibit her narrative, or color it in a negative way?
2. Why do you think one particular daughter was murdered, instead of one of her sisters? Were her sisters ever in danger?
3. Do you think there is any truth to Julia Cosways claim that John requested a nurse because he wished to marry? What do you think John hoped to accomplish by bringing in a caregiver?
4. Why do you think Zorah returns again and again to the Cosway home? Does your opinion of Zorah change over the course of the book? If so, how?
5. Why is Felix Dunsford so appealing to the Cosway sisters?
6. When Kerstin arrives at Lydstep Old Hall, she notices how the thick covering of ivy makes the building look alive. Indeed, the appearance of the house changes during the story. Discuss the ways in which the physical characteristics of the house and its rooms reflect the drama inside. How much of the story do you think a visitor to the house could infer purely by exploring its rooms?
7. How does the death of Selwyn Lombard affect the Cosway family, both in terms of its individual members, and the habits and rituals of the family as a whole?
8. At the beginning and at the end of her Lydstep recollections, Kerstin notes how similar her situation seems to a nineteenth-century gothic novel: The heroine arrives at a country manor to care for a family member, is caught up in family intrigue, and is eventually cast out. Kerstin indulges her own fondness for fiction by reading voraciously and her literary impulses by recording her observations of the Cosways in her diary. Do you think this fondness for fiction and character affects her way of viewing her own situation in the house? Does her fascination with the strangeness of the family prevent her from seeing the danger the Cosways present?
9. Kerstin notes in hindsight that much of her Lydstep Hall tenure would have been very different had it happened in more recent times. Indeed, the settingand also the old-fashioned mind-set of the Cosways within that settingis carefully chosen by the author to help shape this story. What factors do you think drew Barbara Vine to this particular era and location as a setting for The Minotaur? What are its advantages as a backdrop for the story? Are there any disadvantages?
10. What do you make of Eric? Do you think there is any truth to the rumors of his homosexuality? When Kerstin, years later, asks Ella whom she married, Ella responds, Eric, of course. Why of course? Do you think it is strange that Eric was romantically linked with Ida, Winifred, and Ella? Was it inevitable that he be tied to the Cosways?
11. Although their father hoped that Ida, Winifred, and Ella would marry to secure their futures, none of them successfully does so until Ella is wed in middle age. Given their fathers intentions, how does this failing affect each of them? Do you think their lives would have played out differently if not for their fathers clear design that they become wivesand little if anything more? If marriage is truly a priority for the Cosway daughters, how could one explain Winifreds sabotage of her engagement to Eric?
12. Ellas sometimes shockingly callous remarks include the surprising declaration that her sisters death is no great loss. Describe the relationship between the sisters. Why do they seem so uncaring toward one another? Do you believe that Ella is being completely honest when she acts as though she is unmoved by her sisters fate?
13. What do you think really happened on the day that murder was committed at Lydstep Old Hall?