The Fiction of Ruth Rendell

Praise for The Fiction of Ruth Rendell…

An illuminating journey that should make Rendell devotees appreciate her even more. -Publishers Weekly

Aside from Ruth Rendell’s brilliance as a fiction writer and her appeal to mystery lovers, her books portray a compelling, universal experience: the intrafamilial stresses generated by the nuclear family. Even those who experience the joys of family life will find in Rendell the conflicts that arise among members of the closest families. Barbara Fass Leavy analyzes the multilevel treatment of these themes in Rendell’s works. Rendell, who also writes as Barbara Vine, draws on ancient Greek narratives and on the psychological theories Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung derived from them to portray the disturbed family relationships found throughout her books. Leavy’s analysis considers what distinguishes mysteries as popular entertainment from crime fiction as literary art. Leavy also looks closely at the Oedipus and Electra complexes and how they illuminate Rendell’s portrayals of the different pairings within the nuclear family and considers the importance of gender differences.
Barbara Leavy has written three books on supernatural femmes fatales and demon lovers in folklore and literature. Her book on epidemic diseases as a literary subject, To Blight with Plague, paved the way for her analysis of how Ruth Rendell treats disease as a theme in her fiction. In the field of mystery writing, her study of The Woman in White and the history of psychology in nineteenth-century England is a resource for Wilkie Collins scholars. www.barbaraleavy.com