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    Portobello: A Novel
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    Portobello: A Novel
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    Portobello: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Portobello: A Novel

    Written by Ruth Rendell

    Narrated by Tim Curry

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Ruth Rendell is widely considered to be crime fiction's reigning queen. In Portobello, she delivers a captivating and intricate tale that weaves together the troubled lives of several people in the gentrified neighborhood of London's Notting Hill.

    Walking to the shops one day, fifty-year-old Eugene Wren discovers an envelope on the street bulging with cash. A man plagued by a shameful addiction-and his own good intentions-Wren hatches a plan to find the money's rightful owner. Instead of going to the police, or taking the cash for himself, he prints a notice and posts it around Portobello Road. This ill-conceived act creates a chain of events that links Wren to other Londoners-people afflicted with their own obsessions and despairs. As these volatile characters come into Wren's life-and the life of his trusting fiancée-the consequences will change them all.

    Portobello is a wonderfully complex tour de force featuring a dazzling depiction of one of London's most intriguing neighborhoods-and the dangers beneath its newly posh veneer.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 7, 2010
    ISBN9780307877840
    Author

    Ruth Rendell

    Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) 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 spanned a half century, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she was one of the great literary figures of our time.

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    Reviews for Portobello

    3.5/5

    200 ratings27 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I feel like this was an idea book. That after decades of writing novels in which people with psychological issues commit crimes, Rendell thought one day about how many people with bizarre psychological issues never go on to commit crimes, and how most crimes are probably committed by really comparatively ordinary people. And she thought about how people are so interconnected sometimes, in unexpected ways. And so she set this situation up, some people with issues who nevertheless, are leading fairly normal lives, and some people who seem saner, yet who end up in inexplicable situations - and she tied them all together, in ways that we can see as the outside observers, but which they themselves cannot. I don't know that this book is the edge-of-your-seat thriller you may be expecting from Rendell. But it's a brilliant experiment. There's a fictitious painting described in the book, Undine in a Goldfish Bowl - a painting so well described that I thought it was real until a Google Image search told me the sad truth. The painting seems to sum up the book very neatly - a mermaid, trapped in a goldfish bowl, struggling to breathe air and get out - as if she, like some of the people in the book, is more afraid of her own potential weakness than she is cognizant of her ability to breathe underwater. As if she is trapped in the bowl for our viewing pleasure. Like a cast of characters, perhaps.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this examination of obsession in many forms and how the fixation of each character dovetailed with the others. The setting is district of Portobello and its varied residents. I loved the tongue-in-cheek humour. In the new-found dignity of Portobello elite, the pub is to be renamed because no one knows who The Earl of Lonsdale was. The favoured new name is The Slug and Lettuce. This story with its widely diverse characters in an iconic neighbourhood is possibly my favourite Rendell.
    • 1/5
      I thought that I would be reading a crime fiction. At 32 pages, I have only seen intricate character descriptions. This marks the first time that I have considered the negative side of the word intricate. I chose that adjective because it was on the dust cover, and I cannot be bothered to think any more about this work.
    • 4/5
      There's no mystery about the murder, but Portobello is a novel full of interesting characters whose lives intersect. Not everyone will get a happy ending, but enough of them do.
    • 3/5
      I'm a huge fan of Ms. Rendell and hate writing anything critical of her work, but I was disappointed in Portobello.

      As always, I was drawn into her cast of characters, from the quirky to the disturbed. She's a master at weaving the threads of disparate lives to an inevitable conclusion. Because of her brilliant characters that popped off the page and planted themselves in my mind, I gave this book three stars. I enjoyed the ride.

      However, the ending was weak and left me unsatisfied. One story line that had lured me in with hints of a dark outcome fell flat without anything happening. The other threads were too tidy in their conclusions and all conflicts were resolved too quickly. The sense of "happily ever after" made this novel veer toward a fairy tale.

      If you've never read one of her novels, don't start here, but definitely give the rest of her work a try. You won't be disappointed.
    • 4/5
      I was fine with apparent strangers being connected to each other until the doctor's patient turns out to be the lover of the man who tried to convince the doctor's fiance that he (the patient's lover) was the owner of the money found by the fiance, even though the rightful owner was the son of a man to whom the fiance had sold a painting. There are other connections as well. The description of a secret chocorange addiction with the resulting guilt and shame was well done. Only one character seems to actually change and grow (Lance, who comes to realize that he can't trust everyone), the lives of the others follow their natural course. SPOILER: The book has no loose ends and justice seems to be done.
    • 3/5
      I feel like this was an idea book. That after decades of writing novels in which people with psychological issues commit crimes, Rendell thought one day about how many people with bizarre psychological issues never go on to commit crimes, and how most crimes are probably committed by really comparatively ordinary people. And she thought about how people are so interconnected sometimes, in unexpected ways. And so she set this situation up, some people with issues who nevertheless, are leading fairly normal lives, and some people who seem saner, yet who end up in inexplicable situations - and she tied them all together, in ways that we can see as the outside observers, but which they themselves cannot. I don't know that this book is the edge-of-your-seat thriller you may be expecting from Rendell. But it's a brilliant experiment. There's a fictitious painting described in the book, Undine in a Goldfish Bowl - a painting so well described that I thought it was real until a Google Image search told me the sad truth. The painting seems to sum up the book very neatly - a mermaid, trapped in a goldfish bowl, struggling to breathe air and get out - as if she, like some of the people in the book, is more afraid of her own potential weakness than she is cognizant of her ability to breathe underwater. As if she is trapped in the bowl for our viewing pleasure. Like a cast of characters, perhaps.
    • 1/5
      This book was a disappointment. The plot was weak and left me wondering what the point of the story was. The book did not capture my attention, and I felt no connection to any of the characters. This was the first book of Rendell's that I've read, and it did not inspire me to read any other works by the author.
    • 4/5
      Ruth Rendell is not just a great British mystery writer, she is also a plain great writer, whose characters and plots are always a bit off the map. In this one, the Portobello Road in London figures prominantly in the story. There is the art gallery owner who finds money in the street and advertises to find the owner, which starts a rather nasty chain of events. Each of the characters Rendell weaves into the story has a story of his/her own, such as the gallery owner who is secretly addicted to sugarless candies, and is terrified his fiance will find out. The lazy layabout who tries unsuccessfully to claim the money is desperate to get back in the good graces of his girlfriend. The young man who lost the money is the guilt-ridden and mentally ill son of a wealthy business man who casts him out because he has inadvertently caused the death of his sister. He's being treated by the young female doctor who is engaged to the sweet addict. It's un-put-downable. Rendell is best known for her Inspector Wexford novels, and they are great in themselves. But Portobello, one of her many psychological suspense stories, is also great. I want to read more!”
    • 5/5
      I know that a lot of people were just not sure about this Rendell book. But for me, the audio reader Tim Curry was so good that there was just no way you could do anything but thoroughly enjoy this Rendell work. The varying English accents of all of the characters made this a wonderful listening experience. I'm always amazed to listen to a book and realize that reading it would be such a different and probably less enjoyable experience.
    • 2/5
      I love Ruth Rendell. I hated this book. It felt too much like Rendell phoned it in, and lacked the sharp, psychological suspense I've come to expect from her.I've had the feeling from the last couple of Rendell's novels that she's either off her game, or has lost her touch.
    • 5/5
      Another fine Rendell book.
    • 4/5
      The ending was so unlike her. It's terrible to be poor in Britain.
    • 4/5
      Portobello is a sort of detective novel about several widely disparate characters who live in the Portobello section of London. It centers a middle aged antiques dealer who discovers some money on the street near his home. He wants to return it to the rightful owner so he posts an ad inviting the owner of the money to come claim it. As you can imagine this invites all sorts of losers into his life that he wouldn't have otherwise come into contact with.I don't think that I've read any of Rendell's books before but I'm intrigued by what she did in this book as she deals with all the different paths the characters take. The book is somewhat of a mystery but is more of a character study that is very interesting.I give the book three and a half stars out of five, which is good, but not great. It is worth reading.
    • 4/5
      You can help but get all tangled up in the character drama Ruth Rendell creates in her novel, Portobella. Each one walks off the page. Carefully construction and true to their nature, Rendell writes an entertaining novel about their lives. Nobody is extraordinary, but each is realistically portrayed. This is a story about people dealing with their lives. Each character rises above his or her's unique circumstances, though by the end, it has been a long, windy, never-boring adventure to get there. A simple thief, an unwed young mother, a spinster (and reformed) uncle, a young man who loses his mind to save it, a 50 year old upper middle class man and a woman entering middle age --all are just getting started in this new and better phase of their lives. Its not a sappy finish, but one that left me feeling bright and positive about the future of each character and in a way, about myself.I really liked the storyline, which intertwines all these different people by the circumstance of the Portobello Road and open air market thereon. It is a consistent theme throughout and it works beautifully.Ruth Rendell always entertains me. She is an author I will continue to read and enjoy.
    • 3/5
      The idea for the story itself is good, as are the characters, in principle. It's just that, to me, this is children's writing for adults. I couldn't get over the simplistic style. There is no depth. I guess that's why I don't usually read books in this genre.
    • 3/5
      The scene is the Portobello Road in London, home to a sprawling market and to people from all walks of life, the wealthy middle class and those with no hope of a job. A middle-aged antiques dealer finds some cash dropped in the street, and rather than hand it to the police, advertises locally for the owner. Half a dozen lives cross and are entangled as a result, some knowing and some unknowing; setting them all on a path that will change some forever, and leave others dead.Rendall starts with stock stereotypes, and then draws their lives in intimate detail, showing them as rounded characters with a mix of good and bad in their personalities. This is a psychological thriller, but it's about ordinary people living ordinary lives; and how everyday pressures and events can lead into, and out of, tragedy. It has a mostly happy ending, and even the dead get some justice in the end, but these things depend on the small coincidences of ordinary life.There's a very strong sense of place in the book, excellent characterisation, and an engaging story. My own reaction to it was that I thoroughly enjoyed it and am glad I read it -- but I have no desire to read it again, and no urge to go out and buy more by the same author. I'm not quite sure why this is so, as the book certainly doesn't rely on the shock value of seeing the events unfold for the first time.
    • 5/5
      Rendell is well known in certain of her novels for painting many of her characters as odd and somewhat frightening.'Portobello' is no exception to this. As is self-evident in the title,the action takes place in the area of the Portobello Road in London.It relates the lives of various diverse characters who become entangled with each other. Eugene Wren is the well-off owner of a local art gallery,who finds a quantity of money on one of his walks. Instead of taking it to the police,he leaves a notice on a lamp-post asking anyone who has lost it to contact him.In doing this,he brings about a series of regrettable events which affect not only himself,but several other too.It is in the final stages of the story where the reader should be really surprised (I know that I was) with what happens to all of the characters in this skillfully told tale.
    • 3/5
      I don't read a lot of mystery/crime fiction, but given Rendell's huge popularity and prodigious output, I was interested to read this (especially as I've just visited London and am familiar with the Portobello area). However, it was not at all what I was expecting (a whodunit). I enjoyed the way she wove together the stories of all the different characters, and her characterisation of a wide swathe of social classes was well-done. The tale of Joel/Mithras, in particular, was genuinely creepy. Overall, however, the book was a little aimless - and I don't think I'll be rushing to read more of Rendell's work.
    • 4/5
      Rendell has a real talent for creating common place characters that live bizarre turns. In this novel she focuses on obsessions: Joel obsessing on the past, Gib on religion, Eugene on mints (by far the most bizarre and most intriguing) and Lance on Gemma. Rendell creates a web spun around Portobello Road which gives a very solid structure to the novel with the various characters weaving in and out. This is a psychological thriller rather than a murder mystery - it's the evolution of the characters' mindset that keep the reader wanting more. Well done and original, it's a great weekend read.
    • 5/5
      One of her good ones
    • 4/5
      Anybody who has visited London is familiar with the Portobello Road and its markets. Some of the families, rich and poor, who live in the streets off Portobello Road have lived in the district for generations. Eugene Wren's very successful art gallery of fine arts in upmarket Kensington Church Street for example, is the successor to the one his father had in a glossy arcade quite a long way up the road. Gene, seemingly a confirmed bachelor now in his 50s lives in the more fashionable Chepstow Villas.In contrast is the Gibson family, once market stall holders, now most of the family either lives on the dole or on the products of breaking and entering. Lance, unemployed, lives with his step-uncle Gib,an elder of the Church of the Children of Zebulun. His girlfriend has thrown him out, and his parents won't let him in. Lance needs instant money to repair his girlfriend's teeth after he knocks her front tooth out, and burglary provides afeasible option.When Joel Roseman has a heart attack in the street he becomes a patient of Eugene's lady friend Ella, who is a GP in a nearby practice. Ella soon realises that Joel's problems are as much psychological as they are physical, and outside her capabilities. And in an illustration that the problems right on our own doorstep often go unrecognised by our nearest and dearest, Eugene has an addiction he doesn't dare tell Ella about.Ruth Rendell has taken the lives of three principal characters and the circles within which they move, and played with the concept of degrees of separation, forging connections between them that we would never have expected.In a sense, although several crimes take place in the novel, this isn't really a crime fiction novel. For me, it is more like those novels that Rendell has written under her Barbara Vine pseudonym. I've felt that with the last couple of Rendell stand alones, most recently in in THE WATER'S LOVELY. It is almost as if she has changed her mind about what goes under what name. As others have commented, this isn't Rendell at her best. She struggles with a couple of plots to make them interesting, and I found the one involving Eugene Wren particularly tedious. However she still writes well, but the crime fiction strands are really not tensioned enough.
    • 4/5
      I am a devoted fan of Ruth Rendell having read her novels steadily for 20 years and more. She is in my category of "can't wait for the paperback" authors and I enjoyed Portobello thoroughly. It is not as heartstopping as some of her other books which can actually badly frighten the reader and for some strange reason we do like to be frightened. As the Sunday Times (UK) commented, "The suspense is genteel , but palpable.....". There is murder and mayhem in this book but it is also a fine love story and a harrowing tale of the devastation of mental illness. The character developement is suberb and that is what makes this book a fine novel, not just another thriller. There is humour throughout. The newly religious former thief, Uncle Gib and the neurotic art gallery owner, Eugene Wren are just two of the finely drawn characters who will make you laugh. Human foibles and obsessions are exposed with understatement and very mild sarcasm but still cut to the bone. And then there is the story which is the usual tangled web created by Ms Rendell and enjoyable in itself.I highly recommend this book
    • 4/5
      I deeply enjoyed reading Portobello. Ruth Rendell has taken a small and ordinary corner of the world with people who you'd pass on the street and not give a second glance to and draws us into their lives. Calling this a page-turner is so cliche, Rendell takes the time to make the characters so very real that even though there are no dark intrigues or heart-stopping action you can't help but feel like a part of the neighbourhood, and like a nosy neighbour you just HAVE to know what's going on.
    • 4/5
      At her best - in fits and starts - Ruth Rendell is like Graham Greene without the Catholic guilt. But it's a bit frustrating how cack-handed this book is in ways, considering how subtle it can be in others. Dame Rendell has a brilliant touch with human darkness when she wants to - her treatment of Eugene Wren in Portobello and his addiction and the way it's not really an addiction but springs out of his existential dread of being boxed in by human relationships is masterful, and she plays it satisfyingly light, not spelling out what's happening behind his face. And it helps keep him a sympathetic character. And she pulls off the same trick with Ella and Joel/Mithras and the old neighbour who gets burgled, high-strung thoroughbreds all.But - I hesitate to set myself up as a rival authority on the behaviour of the English lower classes, but I can't believe they are all this dull and insensate. Like, you feel like the poor characters in this are all semi-developed lumps of flesh - sensory organs not fully emerged yet - eyes just knots of nerve endings hissing and retreating from the light. Social justice is a work in progress and Gini coefficients are increasing everywhere, but are we really to believe that the London working classes cheat, steal and kill this readily? And have zero or next-to-no self-consciousness or reflection about it, so that the novel's central plot twist depends on a poor person having an ounce of remorse? If that was Rendell's view of he world, dog eat dog like, fine, but her upper- and middle-class characters are mostly all decent people well aware of their overdeveloped neuroses, and that is not a cool contrast to draw.Still, it has a lot of spills and thrills, and Eugene Wren is well compelling, and Rendell's touch with everyday deets can be inspired, as long as she eschews hubris and sticks with the world she knows. One thing I should mention: this is hardly crime fiction, and less creepy than, um, psychological, I guess. Her oeuvre and the way this is being promoted might give you other ideas.
    • 4/5
      This book wasn’t as dark and scary and mysterious as I had hoped. I heard many things about Ruth Rendell (but this was my first to try and read her), and this didn’t seem to fit the description of her type of writing. I was wondering if I had got my authors mixed up, but then I read other reviews that said this wasn’t typical of her style. I found this book a tough start. The first night I tried to read Portobello it was late, and I had to put it down and sleep, I couldn’t follow it at all. The second time, I was still confused at the end of the first chapter, but chose to disregard it and press on. There was a lot of history, and new characters in those first few pages, many or which were not consequential, except for being ancestors of the characters in the story and isn’t it funny, in a small world kind of way.It was not a mystery as I was expecting (or at least a suspense) but more of a funny how small details and decisions affect ours and so many other lives in big ways. And how everybody’s life is intertwined with everybody else’s in some way.If one thing drove me crazy, it was one of the main characters obsessions with a candy called chocorange. I get it. He is addicted. But do I have to hear HOW addicted, and how this is affecting the way he goes to work or eats his sandwich or drinks his sherry every 5 pages in great detail? I really felt like it was getting ridiculous toward the end the amount of words wasted on this candy, and if there was anything that would have made me put down the book, that would have been it.On the most part I liked the ending, but I’m a sucker for an ending where everybody gets what I think they deserve. This was the case for all but one person, so I guess I’ll have to take what I can get. I think I’ll have to try one more Rendell book to see if I like this author or not.
    • 4/5
      In 'Portobello', Rendell creates an elegant tale of interwoven lives. Readers are shown the profound impact that strangers can, without realization, have on one another's lives.The setting of Portobello Road and Notting Hill is vividly rendered, almost to the point that it is another character.The suspense is extremely subdued. I repeatedly found myself expecting it to peak higher than it did. Having not read Rendell's work before, perhaps this is a feature of her writing for which I was not entirely prepared.