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THE MINOTAUR has all of the elements of the classic English gothic. A young woman arrives at an isolated estate to care for someone. The household is filled with strange characters and an air of foreboding hangs over everything. There is, perhaps, a mad person. The dwelling itself is an eerie place, covered entirely in vines. There are many locked rooms in the upper story, including a labyrinthine library in which one of the inhabitants spends an inordinate amount of time. There are whispered secrets and illicit, obsessive sex. Greek myth and Roman objects exist in unlikely places. In short, THE MINOTAUR is Barbara Vine's love letter to the gothic tradition, and it is wonderful. In the 1960s, Kerstin Kvist, a young Swedish nurse, arrives at crumbling, vine-covered Lydstep Old Hall to care for a 39-year-old man, John Cosway, whom she is told is schizophrenic. The Hall is also occupied by John's three sisters: Ida, the put-upon housemaid for the family; Ella, the school teacher without romantic prospects; and Winifred, a prim and proper caterer who is betrothed to the village vicar. The household is ruled by their relentlessly tyrannical and self-absorbed mother. Another sister, Zorah, is rich and divorced and arrives at intervals to bestow gifts and judgments on the family. Kerstin observes John's shuffling gait and tremulous hands and realizes that he is being drugged into a stupor by his mother who is, in collusion with the family doctor, feeding him a powerful anti-psychotic drug that should not be administered over a long period of time. Worse, John does not exhibit any of the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia and Kerstin becomes certain that John's illness was misdiagnosed. Since this book exists in the 1960s, in a time when mental illness was something to be ashamed of and autism not yet well defined or understood, it is easy for the modern reader, but hard for Kerstin, to see that John very clearly exhibits the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome, a kind of high functioning autism characterized by a fear of being touched, a failure to empathize, and a wish to hide in small places during stressful times. Except for the glamorous and elusive Zorah, the family is quite poor, and the theme of their financial distress arises throughout the novel. Of course Mr Cosway left a will when he passed away and the terms of the will fuel much of the tension in the story. Cosway left the house and all of the family assets solely to John. Moreover, to ensure that his widow did not somehow wrest the fortune away from her son and in order to ensure his welfare, Cosway set a group of trustees in charge of the administration of the estate. The trustees make every decision about every expenditure for the family and must be applied to for even such things as eyeglasses. If John should die, however, or be admitted to a mental hospital by specialists (and not by his mother) then the money passes to the others. Suddenly the motive for the drugging seems very clear. While their mother occupies herself with the subjugation of her children, the sisters industriously snipe at and undermine each other. Although dysfunctional family was not a popular phrase in the 1960s, this family personifies the concept. Vine adds to this already combustible mix an oblivious vicar who is engaged to one of the sisters and an artist who has just arrived in the village and eagerly beds two of them. The stage is now set and the trajectory is a sure path to destruction. But the bare bones of the story can't do it justice. The genius of Vine's writing isn't in the plotting, although that is very well done indeed, it's in the telling, the structure, the voice and the characterizations. Kerstin's remote, matter-of-fact narration intensifies her psychological portrait of these damaged characters and their dysfunctional relationships. The characters are, like cartoons, exaggerated and yet recognizable as believable people. (Not coincidentally, we learn that Kerstin becomes a cartoonist in later life.) The contrast between the sympathy with which Kerstin views John and the completely heartless way in which the rest of the household treats him creates a tension that ratchets up to unbearable levels as the story progresses. The intensifying sense of dread is layered throughout the book so that there are no stray details in this story. Each one serves the subtle purpose of Vine's suspense until they combine in the end in a strange and terrifying twist. When the first drop of blood appears, it is more horrifying than a mass murder might be in other hands. This is Vine at her weird and scary best. THE MINOTAUR is a breathtaking book, and I have to believe that Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell) had a very good time writing it. Written to include every one of the elements of the classic Victorian gothics and then surpassing them, THE MINOTAUR is a precisely-drawn jewel deserving of a place on the bookshelf next to its cousin in English literature, Jane Eyre. A note of warning: don't start reading this book unless you have the time to finish it. I raced through the pages until I came to the end, utterly unable to figure out who would be murdered or what tragedy would befall the house of Cosway, and I couldn't stop reading until I turned the final page.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, February 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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