A Sight for Sore Eyes

I finished A Sight For Sore Eyes during my summer vacation this weekend with excitement and an overall positive feeling over the pleasure this author gives me. Ruth Rendell does not only creates an original, smart and unpredictable thriller that makes you full of excitement and your heart beating, she also creates colourful characters that you either sympathize with or want to see defeated in such way that you almost bite your tounge(in this book some of them makes you wanna do both). I don't want to get in to much to the story (many reviewers probably already have done it, and personally I don't like to know all the story before I read a book or see a movie) but it evolves around three main characters; 19 year old Teddy and his personality which as a result of his dysfuncional family who doesn't give him any attention and caring during his growth, 19 year old Francine who has seen her mother being killed in her own house when she was a kid and now is being imprisoned in her own home by her overprotectng stepmother. Their lives are being brought together by destiny and creates a marvelous story that can't be anything other than worldclass reading.

A Sight For Sore Eyes is a tense psychological thriller which is both sensitive and shocking. It is one of my absolute favourite books and when I reread it I am always astounded again by just how good it is. The plot is fantastic and it is amazing how seemingly different parts of the plot converge so all the characters are linked and meet up. The language Rendell uses is simply beautiful and very descriptive.The characters are believable and masterfully created. Teddy has been neglected by his parents and he grows into a cold, vicious young man who has no conscience. He could have turned into another freakish serial killer straight out of Hollywood but instead Rendell convinces us to do the impossible: actually feel sorry for him and step into his shoes. Francine is smothered by her obsessive step-mother who barely wants her to step outside their house alone. When the two meet and Teddy falls in love with Francine we know that the slide into disaster has begun. The result is, inevitably, murder.I would recommend A Sight For Sore Eyes to anyone that has a love for psychological thrillers that delve deep into the minds of their flawed characters. I thought that the dénouement was fitting and satisfying and there is even a neat little twist about a subplot in the final pages. Overall this book is highly, highly recommended!JoAnne

A Sight for Sore Eyes is a crime novel that is also literature; it's a grim fairytale about corrupted beauty, a twisted yet beautiful love-story about two damaged people gradually moving together, with catastrophic consequences. I had read several of Rendell's books before I came to this several years ago, but this one was the first one I fell I love with. Normally, whenever anyone says "I couldn't put it down", that's just a stock sentence to convey some sense of the quality of the book, they don't actually MEAN that they physically couldn't put the book down. True cases are very very rare indeed, and they are nothing to do with physicality. Sometimes, though, books like this do come along, which cause you to suddenly realise it's five in the morning and you should have slept long ago. In these cases, yourself and the book have actually melded, briefly, into a whole. The book is an extension of the self, so remarkable as to almost seem forged in the mind, to seem, perhaps, to be only created as you are reading it. This is such a book. A book that is so gripping, whose universe is so totally convincing that you, in a sense, become it, to the ignorance of all other external stimuli. It is the story of the lives of a group of people, most notably Francine Hill - who was in the house while her mother was shot by a man at the door, and who hid in a cupboard, only coming out to discover the bloodied body - and Teddy Grex - a young man who comes from a squalid, loveless family, who reveres beautiful objects and fine craftsmanship and tends to ignore the fact that other people exist around him. While, after his parent's deaths, Teddy lives in a world of almost unlimited freedom, Francine is virtually imprisoned by her obsessive, over-protective stepmother Julia. From childhood, they grow into young adulthood, and the two damaged souls somehow find each other, with traditionally Rendellian consequences. This book is remarkable. It's one of those books that words to describe simply don't exist for. If you are a Rendell fan already, I don't know why you haven't already bought this. If you are new, this is probably a great place to start. It is beautifully twisted, complex and resonant piece of work, and she displays all her talents: Her sharp, ironic, Austen-esque wit, her ability to construct plots which mesh in with one another in a way that leaves your jaw dropped in admiration, her ability to draw a cast of wholly human characters, some of whom are dangerously damaged, and her ability to make the skewed logic of those damaged characters seem so perfectly plausible. Her prose style is so tempered, so plain yet beautiful, that she can convince the reader of anything she wants. We would believe, implicitly, anything she tells us. The story moves at such a suspenseful pace, the characters collide like comets. There are wonderful touches, here; for example, in one of the final scenes the beautiful diamond ring which Teddy's mother found in a pub lavatory in

If your only know Ruth Rendell though TV versions of her twisted tales you have been cheated. The best part of her books is the interior mindscape of her characters - especially the criminal ones. The perfectly delicious A Sight for Sore Eyes gradually threads together three different stories, each with their own domestic horrors. A young girl who probably would have long since recovered from a childhood trauma if it wasn't for the 'help' of a failed child psychologist (unfortunately her stepmother), seeking freedom from her dull life. An emotionally vacant young man with a nasty secret in the boot of his car, seeking beauty for his drab world. A slightly raddled former rock groupie, with an elderly husband and a lovely house, seeking youth in the arms of young men. This author really knows how to twist a plot till it squirms, sqeals and shrieks. I way prefer this kind of Ruth Rendell creation to the slightly over-done Inspector Wexford series.

I read this book because a friend practically forced me to read it. At first I was skeptical, but it took me only about twenty pages to get hooked. It is an artfully constructed narrative, complex yet never making a show of its complexity, full of dramatic irony and deadpan humor. I was surprised to find that one reviewer took this book to task for not having a good plot; on the contrary, it is one of most skillfully executed plots I've read in a long time. Rather than just give us the sketch of a plot - as so many writers do - Rendell seems to lavish infinite care on each turn of the narrative. I doubt there's a wasted word in the book. I swear I didn't know how it would end until the last twenty pages. Be warned, however, this isn't a mystery of the whodunit variety - it's almost a sort of tragedy, a study of the stifled lives of its two main protagonists. Rendell's vision of humanity in this book isn't reassuring: most of her characters aren't terribly sympathetic, and yet I couldn't help feeling a horrified pity for Teddy Brex. In many ways, this book is more horrific than most horror novels I've read. I've heard some people say this isn't her best - well, if that's so, I can't wait to read her other novels.