Piranha To Scurfy And Other Stories

Product Description

The long 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 checked pedantically for mistakes of grammar & fact. Life for Ribbon, without his mother now, is lonely & obsessive. He still keeps her dressing table exactly as she had left it, the wardrobe door always so that her clothes can be seen inside, & her pink silk nightdress on the bed. There is one book too that he associates particularly with her
- volume VIII of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy. It marked a very significant moment in their relationship. In the other stories, Ruth Rendell deals with a variety of themes, some macabre, some vengeful, some mysterious, all precisely observed. The second novella, High Mysterious Union, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream-like corner of rural Engl&, & illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer. ' If the crime short story is an endangered species, Ruth Rendell is one of the few courageous environmentalists fighting for its survival. She presents irrefutable evidence that the genre deserves not merely to survive but to flourish.' The Times