The Chimney Sweepers Boy, Barbara Vine
The Chimney Sweepers Boy, Barbara Vine
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

Author: Barbara Vine

Narrator: Jenny Sterlin

Unabridged: 15 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 11/04/2011


Synopsis

A daughter’s research into her father’s life unearths shocking family secrets in this “frightening” novel (Express on Sunday). After celebrated English author Gerald Candless dies of a heart attack at his clifftop home above Gaunton Dunes in Devon, his eldest daughter, Sarah, is commissioned to write his biography. Ever-present in her life, her father was generous, passionate, and talented, yet always a bit of a mystery. Who’s to blame for his chilly relationship with her mother that seemed to survive something unspoken? Why, in each successive novel, did he seem to reinvent himself, never settling for one public persona? What of his odd little parlor games for which only he knew the rules and purpose? And was it really true that he had no living relatives? What begins as an admiring project becomes an obsession. For Sarah’s first discovery is a stunner: Gerald Candless was not his real name. The more she uncovers, the deeper Sarah’s fear and fascination grows. Her father’s life was nothing more than an ingeniously plotted work of fiction. As each lie gives way to another, her journey into the past of a familiar stranger gets so dark that seeing the truth could be last thing she wants. From the New York Times–bestselling author of Dark Corners and three-time Edgar Award winner comes a novel “about the power of taboos, transgressions, guilts, deceptions, horrors, atonements, upsets and upheavals” (Independent). And it’s “as jolting as a flash of lightning” (Sunday Times).

About Barbara Vine

Ruth Rendell, writing here as Barbara Vine, has won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writers’ Association. Her remarkable career has spanned more than forty years, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she lives in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Pam on June 13, 2023

This Barbara Vine novel has a couple of themes under an umbrella of general family dysfunction. It works pretty well but gets a little lost towards the end, where one is supposed to be getting the “why.” A noted author with a distinctly cold attitude towards his wife and an overly loving attitude tow......more

Goodreads review by Ann on May 13, 2009

I'm a huge Ruth Rendell fan, and I love her Barbara Vine persona novels the best. This one is classic Barbara Vine. You know the "mystery" right away. It's the way the mystery is solved and how the story unfolds that's intriguing. You can see it coming about 100 pages from the end, but the way she ho......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on March 26, 2022

A long plodding family saga rather then a crime and thriller (I thought) A clever plot that basically reminds us that we never really, truly know our parents! The book though sadly is filled with highly unlikeable characters and this for me made it a really unengaging read.......more

Goodreads review by Sandra on November 04, 2009

This was a pretty good book. At times I felt it dragged on just a little bit. I found myself feeling irritated by the two very selfish daughters who treat their mother like she doesn't exist, and I'm bothered that by the end of the book, they STILL don't realize what their mother went through. I woul......more

Goodreads review by Mardi on September 14, 2022

Barbara Vine is the pseudonym for Ruth Rendell. I had never read any of Rendell’s work and this book hasn’t encouraged me to read more. It’s an average story, a bit predictable, not strong characters and possibly not my choice of genre. aka Gerald Candless is a writer, has 2 daughters Sarah & Hope,......more