A Judgement in Stone

“A Judgement in Stone” by Ruth Rendell started out with one of the most incredible and creepiest opening sentences I’ve ever read in a novel. I thought it was a great way to start this murder mystery with that out of the way and then try to figure out exactly what happened. When you start out with the murder of an entire family, needless to say, it immediately draws you right in.I’ve never read anything by Rendell before but I will say, I very much enjoyed her classic and elegant way of writing. It’s old-school and fascinating all at the same time, especially with the characters she created.Needless to say, this novel is all about Eunice. She was terrifying and I loved reading about what went through her mind during all the events and situations she found herself in due to being illiterate. It really puts things into perspective how someone can go their entire life without knowing how to read or write and how they handle everything that comes their way.This angle around illiteracy and what Eunice conjured up in her mind in every interaction was what I enjoyed most in this novel. It’s a crazy psychological look into the mind of a murderer but unfortunately, there were various parts while reading that dragged on a bit.It took me out of the reading experience to a degree and at times, with the main angle of this novel being around illiteracy, it didn’t feel all that believable. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be for an adult that isn’t able to read or write but to murder an entire family due to it doesn’t make sense to me. It just didn’t feel real and was too hard to believe once everything started falling into place.As I said, it’s an interesting novel and Rendell is a solid writer but that and combined with some mundane parts while reading just didn’t check all the boxes for me. The writing is solid but there were too many parts that were boring to me, unfortunately. Eunice was the star of the novel but in the grand scheme of things, this was just an overall decent read. When it comes to the ending, I did enjoy how everything ultimately went down to finally explain the murder so that was another highlight that bumped up my final rating an entire Star.I give “A Judgement in Stone” by Ruth Rendell a 3/5 as I wanted it to be more of an exhilarating murder mystery ride and not just bits and pieces of it here and there. I enjoyed the writing style, the incredible opening, and even the first 25% of this novel. It started to get dull from that 30% - 70% mark as it interrupted the kind of natural flow I enjoy in mystery novels. This wasn’t a terrible read but it wasn’t an extraordinary one in my opinion. It was original, interesting, and even some parts downright scary but it wasn’t enough to make this anything higher than a 3/5 for me.

Big Rendell fan here. I've lost count of how many of her books I've read, but I've enjoyed them all, especially the way she gets into the psyches of her killers. It's another amazingly crafted suspense/thriller novel by Ruth Rendell. It isn't a "whodunnit", in that the reader knows, but the characters in the book don't. But the reader doesn't know how it will all play out, and that's what makes the story so suspenseful. It is beyond me how she weaves such a tight, complex and detailed story and creates such a complete psychological picture of her unique characters.As an aside, I learned about A Judgement In Stone when I started to watch an old 80"s French movie on TCM titled Ceremonie (with Jaqueline Bisset). The credits at the beginning stated that the movie was based on this book, so I stopped the film, and got a copy of the book to read first. It was exciting to watch the film version after reading the book, and while some characters and some story details were omitted (as usual), it was still pretty true to the book and a good movie.

You might think there'd be no suspense in this novel, because the crime, the perpetrator, and her general motive, are all revealed in the first sentence. However this novel is actually taut with tension. We want to know the exact way in which Eunice Parchman's pathology spins out the fate of her victims.There is a quality about this novel reminiscent of Dickens, without Dickens' often archaic words and complex sentences. For one thing, the names of the main characters tend to be aptly suggestive of their natures. The victims are the Cloverdales, evoking their sunny, favored social position. Miss Parchman's name suggests the dry, impersonal quality of parchment, something that will passively let you write your heart out on it, but that doesn't engage with you at all, and that will too soon put an end to your ardent expressions by crumbling them to dust. The village near which these characters so fatefully meet is "Greeving." The book draws you into the eerie inevitability of the funeral procession that becomes the Cloverdales' shared destiny.Rendell in fact explicitly pays homage to Dickens by bookending her novel with a quote from his "Bleak House." She quotes the unlikely retinue of names that one of Dickens' Bleak House characters attaches to her caged birds: "Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace... Jargon, Gammon, Spinach." This parade of nouns forms the hinges on which Rendell's book opens and closes.I was left wondering what such a series really had to do with Miss Parchman's crime. But like Miss Parchman's name itself, it does seem resonantly apt. It runs through the novel like an incantatory thread. Perhaps because it proceeds from the loftily abstract to the stolidly mundane, it mirrors the fate that Miss Parchman inflicts on her employers. It parallels the incantatory series of village family names that Rendell rattles off here and there, like a train chugging along its prescribed track to a dreadful terminus.I had one reservation about this generally brilliant novel. Rendell perhaps gives too much weight to the fact that Miss Parchman is illiterate. Rendell shows her own parochial prejudice in favor of advanced literacy for everyone when she explains Miss Parchman's stolidly uncommunicative nature as the result of her inability to read. Rendell states that without being able to read, a person is likely to be inarticulate as well, and to have few words with which to express herself. That's hardly true. Most societies throughout human history have been and are illiterate, and yet they are characterized by rich oral traditions. A great many of the illiterate people in the Unites States (of which there are actually very many) - can run expressive rings around those with "book learning."In fact, a number of thoughtful authors make a good case for just the opposite view about the presumed advantages of literacy. Writers such as Joseph Chilton Pearce  Magical Child (Plume)  and Ivan Illich  Deschooling Society (Open Forum)  make a good case that, far from expanding one's expressive capacity, literacy stunts one's memory and too often ends in spoon-feeding one pre-digested ideas and forms. Just as some of the greatest jazz and blues musicians have resisted learning how to read music, saying that would limit their spontaneity, so these authors see some parallel harm in our modern insistence that everyone conform by achieving a certain standard set of reading skills.So although Miss Parchman's illiteracy may have been the trigger for the climactic tragedy of this novel, it wasn't the gun itself. I read this novel, not as a lesson against illiteracy, but more as a lesson against Shaw's idea that every Eliza Doolittle can be advanced into society as a fair lady.

I first read my mum’s copy of this book when I was a teenager and it made a real impression on me. I guess it was the first psychological thriller I ever read and opened up for me a whole new perspective on the crime novel. I initially read this at a time when I was just becoming interested in human nature and what makes people tick and A Judgement in Stone had a pretty profound effect on me. It has been a book I have never forgotten and I wanted to see if, twenty-odd years later, it would still have the same impact on me.‘Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.’This first line blew me away when I first read A Judgement in Stone and blew me away again. You really can’t beat a killer first line and Rendell pretty much nails it here. This was the first opening line I fell in love with and it made me realise what an impact the initial line of a book can have. It raises so many questions – why would being unable to read and write result in the murder of a whole family? – and it perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the novel. This was the first time I had ever read a crime novel in which the perpetrator is known from the outset. From the very start we know who committed the crime, how the murders were carried out and when Eunice was arrested. This book is all about the why and it makes for a fascinating read as, let’s face it, who doesn’t want to know the motivations and thought processes behind those who commit murder?A Judgement in Stone is very much a character study. We get to know Eunice Parchman in a way that those around her don’t as we are privy to her secrets, thoughts and feelings. She is a character that has little to no redeeming features. I love a character I dislike and quite often I do find something in them with which I sympathise, however, I’m not sure I do in Eunice.Eunice isn’t the only dislikeable character. Her one and only friend Joan Smith is, quite frankly, unhinged and the Coverdale family are snobbish and assured of what they consider to be their elevated status. The only character I had any real positive feelings towards was Melinda Coverdale. This melting pot of difficult, disagreeable characters is one of the things that makes A Judgement in Stone such a great read for me.While the characters are central to the story, Rendell also uses the decisions we make and the actions we take as a central theme. There is the overriding sense of ‘if only’ throughout the book and it gets you questioning how much control we have over our own destiny. Every action each character takes results in a trajectory that will end in their eventual downfall.‘In that moment … an invisible thread lassoed each of them, bound them one to another, related them more closely than blood.’Rendell also fully considers the impact of illiteracy on the psyche and self-esteem of a person along with the views that others have of them. I remember how A Judgement in Stone made me re-think about my ability to read and I found myself considering this ability all over again while reading it for the second time. How we take reading for granted and use it without even thinking about it, how books and the written word open us up to experiences and emotions we have never had and how it can make us rounded individuals by aiding us in considering things from a different perspective. Rendell also made me really consider how those who are unable to read and write navigate a world in which the written word is so dominant;‘The advantage of being illiterate is that one achieves an excellent visual memory and almost total recall.’Rendell’s prose is considered and stunning and had me underlining so many sections of text. She has a real way with words as she manages to perfectly craft sentences that set the dark and catastrophic tone and you find yourself re-reading sentences more than once in order to fully appreciate their beauty and meaning. First published in 1977, there are some expressions and words that are quite shocking and offensive to our modern sensibilities but they clearly give a feel for the time and the less politically correct world we live in.A Judgement in Stone is one hell of a book and I enjoyed it as much, years later, the second time around. It stands the test of time and, in my very humble opinion, is a classic. If you enjoy psychological thrillers and haven’t read this book get it on your bookshelf as soon as possible.

The story itself is fairly short only 220 pages long with relatively short chapters designed to keep the pages turning at a fast rate.Ruth Rendall starts this book with the words 'Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.' giving the reader the murderer, the victims and the motive straight away, but this book kept me gripped as the story of Eunices early life, her work for the Coverdales and her friendship with Joan Smith, a zealot and wife of the village postmaster.Ruth Rendall gives us sharp observations about not only Eunice but the Coverdale family headed by George, a pompous managing director and his younger wife Jaqueline, who prefers meeting with friends and having her hair done, to keeping on top of the cleaning at the manor house they lived in Lowfield Hall.This is a stand alone story, not one of the Wexford mysteries and show cases her psychologically based stories very convincingly. The setting of a small village in England in the early 70's fuelled by gossip in the local shop and the pub, The Blue Boar, all add to the bewiderment when the family is slayed.

An early Ruth Rendell novel exhibiting her hallmark mastery of depicting alienated outsiders. Though loosely falling into the category of detective novel the book turns the genre on its head by having the crime and perpetrator revealed in the first few pages. Most of the narrative describes the background to the killings and the personalities involved. The story is a forensic analysis of the social divide between a servant with little education and the privileged family who rely on her to keep their home running smoothly. Resentments and misunderstandings build up until the final explosive confrontation. Ruth Rendell often has characters with extreme behavoural abnormalities, and the servant, Eunice Parchman, certainly falls into this category, but this makes her a powerful central character.An altogether engrossing book.

The premise of the story is well set out in other reviews. This is my first Rendell novel although I have read some Barbara Vine stuff. This is excellent and she has gone up higher in my estimation. Some other reviewers do not give full credit to her dry wit having Eunice and Joan dressed, 'like standard issue prison warderesses' and her description of the local Church zealots who, 'were delivering the Epistle....to famine-stricken people too weak to resist'.For me, the descent into 'madness' by Joan was a slightly false note and, with hindsight, the modus operandi does take a bit of believing. Once again we were in Ms Rendell's comfort zone of an upper/middle class Suffolk family, rural, white, all super educated but this is still top class British crime writing and highly recommended.

As always with Ruth Rendell, a compelling and addictive read, but also one of her very best novels. With such a prolific author, it can be difficult choosing which of her books to buy if you are just starting out with reading her work. A judgement in stone, however, should be at the top of anyone's list.The character portraits here are as fascinating as ever, from the damaged Eunice Parchman to the hyper-religiosity of Joan Smith with her murky past and long-suffering husband. Here also is the eminently likable Coverdale family, the quiet and scholarly Giles Mont, a bubbly and compassionate Melinda as his step-sister, and their fair and sensible parents, George and Jacqueline.From a modern-day perspective, the mid 1970's setting of the story, when this was published, also adds to the nostalgic ambiance of this book. Highly recommended.