When I first started reading this book I was interested, then I lost my interest but kept reading and then BOOM, I was hooked. A very unusual story with a cast of misfit characters living in an old schoolhouse where the owner Jarvis, rents out rooms to people in need. The school is situated on a rail line(s) and the school house shakes when the trains roll by. Jarvis is obsessed with the London Transportation System, aka the subway or 'tube' system. He is so obsessed that he is writing the history of the London Underground and has travelled the world to ride on other subway systems. So the novel is filled with facts about the building of the London underground, which was a herculean effort and engineering marvel. And is a truly fascinating history in my mind.The 'underground' is essentially a character in the story, the underground figures prominently in all the characters lives within the novel.Jed lives with his beloved hawk Abelard in the headmaster's study. Jed volunteers with a group of concerned citizens who ride the subways to keep them safe for travellers.There is Tom, living in classroom 5, a promising young musician, close to getting his degree when he is injured in a motorcycle accident and undergoes a personality shift due to an undiagnosed head injury. Tom busks in the tube stations, with an assortment of musicians, they are quite good, but are constantly being moved on, and don't make a living wage.There is Tina and her two children Jasper and Bienvida and there is Tina's mother Cecilia. Cecilia doesn't live in the schoolhouse, she lives nearby and it was her brother who was the original owner of the schoolhouse when it was an actual girls school, and who later hung himself with the bell rope, and the bell subsequently tolled his death. The bell has not rung since that time decades earlier.Tina's ten year old son Jasper spends his days in the subway trains with a small gang of boys instead of going to school. Eventually he becomes a subway roof surfer. There is no standing up on the London underground, he must lay flat out on the slippery roof of the train and find a way to hold on as the train zooms through the thick darkness of the tunnels.There is beautiful Alice, a young woman who wants to be a concert violinist and has a tragic back story which I won't reveal as I think it's a spoiler. She moves into a classroom in the school.And we meet a man and a man in a bear costume who are fixtures in the underground. Cecilia meets them on the train and they frighten her, and Jasper meets them in an unexpected way in a tube station. Events start to move quickly and a mystery and a love affair build. And all of a sudden the reader is totally caught up in what is going to happen next.This book is quite an accomplishment when I think back on it. All the characters are well drawn, and there are numerous plots running concurrently involving different characters. We are given a view of life through the elderly Cecilia's eyes, through ten year old Jaspers and youngish adults Alice, Tom and Tina. All the stories become interwoven in fascinating ways. Barbara Vine, aka Ruth Rendell is a terrific writer and while this novel had its bumps in the beginning, it was well worth the time to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was very surprised at the ending, which was satisfying.
I have read Ruth Rendell's novels, and those under her pen name Barbara Vine. Like The Bridesmaid, I found this novel quite bleak and gothic, and yet, also like The Bridesmaid, I couldn't stop reading it. The author takes us into the lives of broken families, disturbed and frightened runaways, and musicians who busk on the London Underground wondering if they've thrown away their last chance to be great. Along the way, the reader learns a lot about the London Underground and is treated to some of the most harrowing passages I've ever read, when some kids playing hooky come up with a VERY BAD WAY to pass the time. I don't think of myself as someone who always indulges in the darkest of dark stories, and yet what fascinated me was how each of these characters was a train wreck in a different way (pardon the expression), and you just had to find out how bad the wreck would get. Pretty bad. And yet there are also friendships and relationships which are lovely, if melancholy. Loved it.
Do You like book King Solomon's Carpet (1992)?
Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, certainly fills her books with strange, dark, and twisted people!!! This story deals with the London Underground (the Tube) and the various obsessions that the characters have with it. The focus of the story revolves around a group of disparate young people who reside in an old school with a tragic past and their relationships with each other and the Underground. You are never sure where the story is going but it wraps up most of the questions in the last two chapters. This may not be one of the best of the Vine books but it holds your interest and illustrates the dark side of modern London.
—Jill Hutchinson
If you have ever been in any underground system then you know the mystery. Okay, maybe it lacks the history of London’s – for instance, my city’s underground system(s) has never been used as a bomb shelter - , but it has many similarities – “lost” stops, a schedule only a psychic can figure out, a what is that smell feel, an in comprehensible map.tYou get the ideatKing Solomon’s Carpet is book where the subway system plays an important part. In fact, it’s the central character. Don’t let the blurb on the back cover fool into thinking otherwise. The star of the show is neither Alice nor her lovers. It’s not Tina and the kids. It’s not Jarvis.tIt’s the UNDERGROUND!tIt’s the threatening nature of the Underground, any underground really, that makes the book work. It makes all users equal, and it has its own rules that you don’t really know until after a while.tAnd then I’m sure that SEPTA (my local public transit) is using its underground to call forth the dreaded Schuylkill River Monster!tGo ahead, laugh at me, but when Philly is taken over by the hideous monster, flooding the tunnels, ringing the Liberty and making me head of the library system, we’ll see whose laughing at whom then, won’t we? Especially when we take over the cheese steak market!tSeriously, no Philly Cheese steak is authentic unless you got it in Philly.tSeriously, though, the Underground and mood are the stars of the novel. It is curiosity and familiarity that compels the reader to finish the book. Not Rendell’s best work, but not bed.
—Chris
Vine's books are always more about the who and why rather than the how and this also has that emphasis on character. However, this story about an assortment of lonely and floundering souls sharing a house takes a very long time to get going. Jarvis, the owner of the house, is writing a book about the London Underground while his very young cousin Jasper is getting to know the system in very foolhardy ways. Their storylines end up being more interesting than that of the weird love triangle who drive the action in the last quarter of the book when the threads finally pull tight.
—Cynthia
