A review by rsurban
The Child's Child by Barbara Vine

2.0

A surprising disappointment, Barbara Vine's new novel reads like a first draft, or even worse, a work in progress that needed to be re-thought. The book is comprised of a story within a story, with the tale in the past being a novel based on real events that the main character in the framing story is reading. Both narratives deal with an unwed mother, her brother, and the brother's male lover. The framing narrative takes place in the present, with the historical story taking place between the world wars in the English countryside. One of the drawbacks of the book is that Vine seems to favor polemic over plot: the main themes of the book deal with the social intolerance affecting her characters in the past, when social strictures were more rigid and judgmental, while the present-day characters seem to be freed from this oppression. The problem is, that observation was made in one sentence, and yet Vine seems to think it is somehow worthy of embroidery across the span of a full length novel. Unfortunately, beyond this obvious fact, and the "coincidence" of the relationships of the trio of characters in each story (which can't really be said to be coincidental when this is the deliberate construct of the author), any further comparison of the parallel narratives seems forced and unbelievable. This being Vine/Rendell, I fully expected some sardonic plot twist to tie the twin stories together across time, and the truncated and bewildering ending left me doubly disappointed with the novel. This is a dully plotted and thematically obtuse book peopled with unsympathetic and unpleasant characters. A rare misstep from a usually reliable author.