Live flesh ruth rendell pdf

Victor Jenner has just been released from prison where he spent 10 years paying for the shooting and crippling of a young policeman. Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell. Live Flesh Ruth Rendell was at her writing zenith during the eighties, but it was during the late eighties that she produced some of her most innovative novels. It's not a great book. That same virtue of relentless psychological immersion inside the protagonist can also make the book feel suffocatingly monochromatic.

It's really dry. And I think Rendell could have eliminated some of the repetitive, mundane details. Honestly the book is boring about half the time. But I think what Rendell's trying is interesting and I'd like to read more of her psychological thrillers.

Aug 27, Bruce Beckham rated it really liked it. In her self-help treatise Patrica Highsmith describes the essence of writing suspense as the constant threat of violence — and this Ruth Rendell achieves through her ex-con gunman, rapist psychopathic protagonist Victor Jenner. Her portrayal from his warped point of view is expertly described.

I have mentioned rape and violence. Free In her self-help treatise Patrica Highsmith describes the essence of writing suspense as the constant threat of violence — and this Ruth Rendell achieves through her ex-con gunman, rapist psychopathic protagonist Victor Jenner. A relationship of sorts now develops between Victor, wheelchair-bound David, and his attractive girlfriend, Clare. But where will it lead?

Read to find out. Actually, I listened to the audiobook. And — on reflection — a master class in narration by Ian Holm perhaps adds a gloss that the underlying, rather mundane story does not in itself possess. Notwithstanding, it is a creepy classic of a very high order. Shelves: fiction , mystery-thriller.

Very much like a Patricia Highsmith psychological thriller. Victor Jenner, in his late 30s, has just been released after a ten-year stint in prison for attempted murder. He shot a police officer, David Fleetwood, paralyzing him below the waist. He is also a serial rapist, but not many people know this; apparently he admitted a few rapes to the court but was not charged for them, weirdly.

Aside from the first chapter, we spend the whole novel inside Victor's mind, which is a horrible place to be, Very much like a Patricia Highsmith psychological thriller. Aside from the first chapter, we spend the whole novel inside Victor's mind, which is a horrible place to be, waiting for him to rape again.

He makes contact with his victim, David, and David's attractive girlfriend Clare, who befriend him and inexplicably actually come to like him. Clare shows herself to be an utter idiot by view spoiler [sleeping with Victor hide spoiler ]. At that point I didn't care what bad things would happen to her, because there is no excuse for that level of idiocy.

Actually that's a lie: I never cared if bad things would happen to Clare or David, because it was impossible to care about them. Then there's Victor's Aunt Muriel. Both Victor's parents died while he was in prison, so Muriel is the only relation he's got left.

She's a hoarder in a dusty house with purses and cases and closets full of money. Inexplicably, Muriel keeps opening the door whenever Victor stops by. He soon discovers the cash and begins to steal it on his regular visits.

One day Muriel view spoiler [makes Victor very angry and he kills her. Before this happens, though, he attempts to rape a girl in a forest, but she slashes his chest with a broken mirror and he gets tetanus.

Left untreated, the tetanus kills him. Victor has zero self-awareness, blaming everyone but himself for everything in his life that has gone badly, rationalizing his rapes, hating his parents for having a lot of sex.

There's nothing wrong with this as a psychological portrait, obviously: what sexual predator is fully self-aware? What murderer or rapist's brain is operating on all cylinders? But it does make the novel difficult to sit through. Contrast a novel like this with a novel like American Psycho , which is a thousand times more grotesque but gives us a charming villain.

View all 4 comments. It speaks volumes to Rendell's talent as an author that she was able to take such reprehensive reprobates for protagonists and make their stories be such compelling reads. This time around, the miscreant is Victor, a man recently freed after ten It speaks volumes to Rendell's talent as an author that she was able to take such reprehensive reprobates for protagonists and make their stories be such compelling reads.

This time around, the miscreant is Victor, a man recently freed after ten years in prison for shooting and paralyzing a cop. This is an older book, one old enough to drink by now, so sentencing must have been very different. Apparently and frighteningly the views on rape were certainly different, because Victor's predilections are definitively that of a sexual predator, it's his primary coping mechanism for dealing with uncontrollable rage.

Upon his release, he struggles to fit into a changed an indifferent society until he decides to reconnect with the cop, his victim. The fascinating thing to watch here is the inept attempts at happiness but someone who simply isn't equipped, emotionally and experientially, to handle it or any sort of normal life.

He tries to buy it, steal it, fabricate it, which all, of course, amounts to the futility of dressing up a turd. And it's doubly fascinating, because this isn't someone from a stereotypically abusive environment, with a stereotypically abusive childhood.

There is a tacit understanding in Rendell's books of psychology being such a delicate mechanism that plenty of things, from grand to minute, can throw a wrench in the works.

Watching it all spin out of order is what makes her books such awesome reads. Highly recommended. A LOT? This was an interesting read.

Masterfully written indeed. But man, it was worth it alright. This is one book that really captures the persona of an accidental criminal with so much context and depth. It shouldn't be considered much of a story but instead an insight of an emotionally-scarred man, and the reasons why he did what he did.

It may be a dull story for some, but it is a kind of different This was an interesting read. It may be a dull story for some, but it is a kind of different read for me. I love how the character is explored - his past, his dreams, his delusions and most importantly his stubbornness.

It touches on his psychological state of mind during his everyday life. If you've read Things Fall Apart, I'd say it is similar in certain ways but told in a modern American concept. Synopsis: Live Flesh tells the story of Victor, an accidental criminal.

The story of a rapist who was never charged , Victor after spending more than a decade in jail, he is finally free - released from prison under the charge of attempted murder of a policeman, David. It was all an accident, he believed. The policeman, David, whom Victor shot in the lower spine, now paralyzed waist down, is going to have a book published about his life, before he was shot by Victor and after.

Victor stumbled on an article about him in the papers and decided to visit him, not knowing the reason that made him do so. His initiative eventually grows into friendship with David and Clare, David's girlfriend But he later fell in love, with Clare. He believes Clare loved him too Live Flesh. Get Books. After fourteen years in prison, rapist Victor Jenner attempts to pick up the pieces of his life but finds himself involved in an awkward triangle whose conflicts resurrect the buried demons of his violent past.

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