"The Chimney Sweeper's Boy", Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell)
Martin Underwood
Ruth Rendell). The story concerns the daughter of a famous novellist who is
commissioned to write an appreciation of him after his recent death. During
the course of the book, she discovers that he wasn't all he appeared to be.
Most of the book make perfect sense, but there's a curious twist at the end
that I don't understand - maybe other people who have read the book can tell
me what conculsions they've come to.
SPOILER BELOW
Sarah Candless disovers that her father Gerald Candless wasn't born with
that name and only assumed the identity at the age of 25. He was the eldest
son of a chimney sweep and took the identity of the dead person, the son of
one of his father's "clients" who died as a young boy.
So what had driven him change his identity? Sarah Candless finally pieces
together the mystery, uncovering some very unsavoury facts about her father,
such as that he had latent homosexual tendencies and that his younger
brother had been brutally murdered.
Finally Sarah sends her completed manuscript off to her father's publisher
who commissioned the book. Another manuscript arrives on the same day at the
publisher's office, written by an author, Titus Romney, who vaguely knew
Sarah's father and who appears very briefly in the opening scenes of the
book.
The publisher reads one of the manuscripts which describes how a man has a
homosexual "encounter" with a younger man in the steamy environment of a
Turkish bath, and is utterly mortified to discover afterwards that he has
unwittingly just screwed his younger brother, the one who was later
murdered. There are all sorts of references to Candless's former life in the
manuscript which lead you to believe that this is an excerpt from Sarah's
biography of her father.
But Barbara Vine then reveals that this is the manuscript sent in by Titus
Romney, the author who appeared briefly at the beginning of the book. The
book ends as the publisher "began to consider ways of telling Sarah Candless
and Titus Romney what he had discovered".
Now I'm lost! What had the publisher discovered? How did Titus Romney, a
bit-part character in the book, know all about Candless's former life? What
conclusion are we, the readers, expected to draw: that Sarah had asked one
of her father's casual acquaintances to write up this passage as a work of
fiction, because she found it too painful to include in her biography?
shog...@mindspring.com
>SPOILER BELOW
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At the beginning of the book, Gerald gives Titus a manuscript, his
"autobiography," because he's going away for a few days and doesn't
want anyone to find it and read it in his absence. Titus is supposed
to mail it to Gerald's office, but Gerald dies later that day.
Titus, I guess, has thus plagiarized Gerald's autobiography and sent
it in as his own work of fiction.
This all makes sense to me, but it's a little hard to believe that
both Titus's and Sara's manuscripts would arrive at the same
publisher's on the same day. Not one of Rendell's better plots.
Hogan
Martin Underwood
<3759448c....@news.mindspring.com>...
>"Martin Underwood" <martin.u...@virgin.net> wrote:
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>At the beginning of the book, Gerald gives Titus a manuscript, his
>"autobiography," because he's going away for a few days and doesn't
>want anyone to find it and read it in his absence. Titus is supposed
>to mail it to Gerald's office, but Gerald dies later that day.
You're right. I didn't read the book all in one sitting and I'd forgotten
that Gerald gave Titus the manuscript. I'd dismissed that scene as being
irrelevant to the story - I ought to know with Barbara Vine / Ruth Rendell
that nothing's wasted!!
>Titus, I guess, has thus plagiarized Gerald's autobiography and sent
>it in as his own work of fiction.
>
>This all makes sense to me, but it's a little hard to believe that
>both Titus's and Sara's manuscripts would arrive at the same
>publisher's on the same day. Not one of Rendell's better plots.
As some time had elapsed between the end of the previous chapter and the
final chapter where the publisher receives the manuscripts (in the meantime
Hope has got married), I'd assumed that Sarah had discovered the details of
her father's and her uncle's "encounter" and added them to her
autobiography, without her actual discovery being described explicitly. So
much for assumptions!
Now that I realise that the two halves of the story were written by
different people, I see that the publisher was indeed in a unique position
of knowing more that either Titus or Sarah.
But, as you say, it's stretching the bounds of credibility when both
manuscripts arrive at the publisher's on the same day!
Hilary Garrett
Candless gave Romney a manuscript to keep and I think we were supposed to
assume that this what this manuscript.
Martin Underwood wrote:
> I've just finished reading "The Chimney Sweeper's Boy" by Barbara Vine (aka
> Ruth Rendell). The story concerns the daughter of a famous novellist who is
> commissioned to write an appreciation of him after his recent death. During
> the course of the book, she discovers that he wasn't all he appeared to be.
>
> Most of the book make perfect sense, but there's a curious twist at the end
> that I don't understand - maybe other people who have read the book can tell
> me what conculsions they've come to.
>
> SPOILER BELOW
>
> Sarah Candless disovers that her father Gerald Candless wasn't born with
> that name and only assumed the identity at the age of 25. He was the eldest
> son of a chimney sweep and took the identity of the dead person, the son of
> one of his father's "clients" who died as a young boy.
>
> So what had driven him change his identity? Sarah Candless finally pieces
> together the mystery, uncovering some very unsavoury facts about her father,
> such as that he had latent homosexual tendencies and that his younger
> brother had been brutally murdered.
>