The Crocodile Bird - Book review

Five years before Ruth Rendell’s tour-de-force A Sight for Sore Eyes (reviewed here on 29 March), she tackled a similar theme in The Crocodile Bird: here, young Liza is being protected from the modern world, being home-schooled and not seeing any television; in Eyes, it was Francine who was overly protected because of a traumatic event in her early childhood, when she witnessed her mother’s murder. In both cases, Rendell examines how the isolation of the young women affects them, yet that’s where the similarity ends. Both works are highly original and powerfully related.

 

Liza’s mother Eve tells her she must leave their remote country gatehouse, because the police will be coming next day to arrest Eve. For Eve’s protection, Liza must not be found here. It’s a worrying situation, for in all of her seventeen years of life Liza has never been on a bus or a train, had never played with another child her own age, and had never left the extensive grounds of the Shrove mansion; the mansion’s gatehouse was their home. Liza had almost no knowledge of the outside world.

There is one glimmer of light for Liza. She is not entirely alone. Without her mother’s knowledge, she had begun a love affair with Sean, a young man who worked on the Shrove estate.

So begins three months of life with Sean in his caravan, while she learns about the real world. And as they cohabit she pieces together segments of the past involving her mother, her mother’s lovers and the violent death she had witnessed. And finally she learns why her mother wanted to protect her from the outside world…

As ever, Rendell imbues the story with extensive detail to create a sense of realism. The unravelling of the past is cleverly done, subtly building a sense of dread as the ending approaches.

And what of the intriguing title?  During one of her lessons Liza’s mother refers to a Trochilus, a kind of humming bird. Its ‘other name was the Crocodile Bird, so-called because it is the only creature that can enter with impunity the mouth of a crocodile and pick its teeth. It also cries out to warn the crocodile of an impending foe.’ (p190).  And while Eve might have killed a man or three, Liza realised she was never at risk: ‘I was like the bird that lived inside the crocodile’s mouth, I was safe whoever else wasn’t.’ (p243).

Recommended.

A Sight for Sore Eyes - Book review

Ruth Rendell’s 1998 book A Sight for Sore Eyes is an exquisitely plotted crime novel. At just over 400 pages, it is longer than many of her books, but it’s still a fast read, because the reader is impelled to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next.

Like many of her novels, the troubles her protagonists face are brought home to them by events in the past, and this one is no exception.

The Grex brothers – Keith and Jimmy – lived in the family home; then Jimmy married Eileen. They were not imaginative individuals, and there’s plenty of dark humour describing their relationship: ‘in order to be productive ejaculation had to be frequent, lavish and cumulative… a lot of that stuff had to get inside you before anything resulted… like the Grecian 2000 lotion Keith put on his greying hair, which only took effect after repeated applications.’ (p9) The result was an unexpected baby boy, Teddy.

Teddy grew into a handsome youth, but lacked any parental affection and was left to his own devices so that emotionally he was sadly deficient of empathy.

Yet Teddy has one abiding interest: he likes beautiful things, which is fostered by the neighbour, Mr Chance, who is a craftsman in wood and is fond of the phrase ‘A sight for sore eyes.’ (p17, p240)

Rendell’s descriptions are poignant, astute and sometimes amusing. ‘There was something about Keith that suggested a half-melted candle. Or a waxwork left out in the sun. The flesh of his face hung in wattles and dewlaps. It seemed to have waddled down his neck and sagged from his shoulders and chest to settle in stacked masses on his stomach.’ (p21)

The living conditions in the Grex household were decidedly deplorable in Teddy’s eyes, and he was ashamed. ‘Woodworm were devouring the living-room furniture and from the television table had bored into the skirting board… Spiders were in the bath and silverfish wriggled across the floors.’ (p57) ‘The tracks made by moth grubs already showed on the lumpy woollen surfaces and moth cocoons, greyish-white like mildew, nestled between the stitches.’ (p58)  ‘The fly-spotted mirror was losing its silvering in a kind of greenish ulceration round the edges…’ (p59)

Little girl Francine Hill was in her bedroom when her mother was murdered downstairs. She hid in case the murderer was after her as well. And when her father found her she was so traumatised she had lost her power of speech. She became a patient of Julia, a psychologist who eventually married Francine’s father. Francine was finally restored and she grew up cossetted by Julia, as if wrapped in cotton wool, fearful lest the murderer came back…

Francine becomes a beautiful young woman, someone who could easily be idolised by the likes of Teddy.

Inevitably, these characters will interact, their lives dovetailing, and slowly but surely there will be a fateful reckoning.

Rendell’s psychological insights, the depiction of a character’s gradual slide into insanity, her masterful plotting and the grim denouement make this novel a totally satisfying experience.