The Child's Child - Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)

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The Child's Child

by
Barbara Vine
(Ruth Rendell)

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Child's Child
Author:	Barbara Vine
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2012
Length:	302 pages
Availability:	The Child's Child - US
	The Child's Child - UK
	The Child's Child - Canada
	Une vie si convenable - France
	Kindes Kind - Deutschland

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Written by Ruth Rendell under the pseudonym 'Barbara Vine'

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Our Assessment:

B+ : effectively told and turned, and gripping

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Entertainment Weekly	A	14/12/2012	Tina Jordan
The NY Times Book Rev.	.	23/12/2012	Marilyn Stasio
The Scotsman	D	10/3/2013	Claire Black
The Spectator	A-	16/3/2013	Paul Binding
Sunday Times	.	7/4/2013	John Dugdale

From the Reviews:

"In the hands of Vine, otherwise known as Ruth Rendell, the book-within-a-book strategy evolves into something infinitely more intricate -- a sinister, constantly shifting Rubik's Cube of motives, betrayals, and violence." - Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly

"The Child’s Child is doubly deceptive because its narrative turns on two parallel plots about sexual taboos, each set in a different time frame but dealing with identical themes of love, loyalty, betrayal and murder. (...) In Rendell's chilling view, what goes around comes around, and the injustices of one age are bound to have horrid repercussions, even in supposedly enlightened societies like our own." - Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"The Child’s Child (...) just isn’t very good. (...) It’s not, of course, that there aren’t flashes of skill – deft characterisation, effortless weaving of social history into a narrative that, at times, clips along at a pleasing pace – it’s that these moments are fleeting, encumbered by a novel that feels like a suspense-by-numbers exercise, replete with characters who fail to convince or captivate, literary devices that are heavy-handed and central themes (social prejudice against women in the 19th century and gay men in the 20th) which are yoked together uneasily, never really illuminating each other or allowing Vine to reveal anything other than her own opinions through their exposition. If I sound damning, it’s only because from a writer of such skill, this is a stinging disappointment." - Claire Black, The Scotsman

"All this is Vine/Rendell at her most brilliant and subtle. For what we watch is the deterioration of Maud, from attractive, unfortunate victim into a monster of resentment. And yet no easy judgment is passed. (...) Though we can find interesting parallels between 2011 and the 1930s, including an eruption of vicious homophobia, for me these two outer sections lack the intensity and vitality of the novel proper, and could even deter readers from the main, richly worked excursion into obscure, sympathetically rendered lives." - Paul Binding, The Spectator

"(T)his is a suspense-free literary novel driven by anger about past and present discrimination. Characteristically, though, she paints the victimised characters she champions unsentimentally, even coolly, depicting all as morally iffy and some as repellent." - John Dugdale, Sunday Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Child's Child nests one novel -- (also) titled 'The Child's Child' -- within another.
       The framing sections -- a longer (almost seventy-page) opening one and a shorter concluding one -- are dated 2011, and the novel begins with Grace Easton describing being asked to have a look at 'The Child's Child', a novel by successful author Martin Greenwell (his twelve books: "weren't bestsellers but they were -- well, I think 'widely acclaimed' would be the phrase") that was only privately printed in the early 1950s and never published.
       Twenty-eight-year-old Grace is a lecturer in literature at university and is working on her PhD thesis, the subject of which is the depiction of unmarried mothers and illegitimacy in English fiction, and the stigma of illegitimacy is one of the themes of the 'The Child's Child'; the other is homosexuality -- and, conveniently, Grace's thirty-year-old brother is homosexual, and they live together in the house they recently inherited from their grandmother. The subject-matter of 'The Child's Child' was still deemed highly inappropriate when Greenwell wrote the book -- indeed, homosexual activity was still illegal -- and there was no way it could be published at the time; even Greenwell's widow found herself: "too disgusted to finish it".
       The brother-sister living arrangements gets a bit more complicated when Andrew gets romantically involved with novelist James Derain, who soon moves in with him. It's also through James that 'The Child's Child' comes to Grace: he told Andrew about it, mentioning also that it: "was based on the life of James's uncle or grand-uncle". James and Grace don't hit it off, with James particularly upset when she suggests that the young women who had children out of wedlock suffered much as homosexuals did, back in the day -- tetchy James thinking there is no comparison and that: "You're doing what women always do, claim an unfair share of the world's ills. Victims, as usual" .....
       Witnessing a gay-bashing murder at a Soho club hits both James and Andrew hard, with James then especially worried about having to testify in court when the case comes to trial. James suddenly finds: "All I've done for years is write, and now I can't", leaving him completely at sea. A one-two punch of a slip and then its unintended (but completely predictable) consequences then lead to a break between brother and sister, with Andrew and James moving out. Along the way, Grace finally gets around to reading 'The Child's Child', which she had long put off -- and soon enough she's reading again, at which point the reader is given opportunity to do so as well, the complete novel then presented, without interruption or commentary.
       'The Child's Child' begins in 1929, focusing on John Godwin, a young teacher, set for an interview for a position in Devon that he wants to take up -- thinking that there he will be able to retreat and live a celibate life, not worried about his homosexuality which, if discovered, would be the end of his career, among other things (his family would certainly also be shocked and disown him). John has been having sex with the uneducated but good-looking Bertie, a man he simply can't resist. He hopes distance will make it possible to break his terrible habit: as he explains to Bertie: "I believe that what we do, what all men do who do it together, I believe that's a sin. It's a crime, of course, but it's a sin too and that's worse" and he wants to stop doing it.
       Meanwhile, back home, John's fifteen-year-old sister Maud has been sinning too, getting herself knocked up. The timing is particularly bad, as her father notes when he learns of her condition:

Thanks to this new law which came in, in April, sixteen has become the age for legal marriage. You will not be sixteen until the thirtieth of December. Your mother tells me you expect to be confined in December. Therefore legitimacy is impossible.

       The solution John hits on is both inspired, even noble, -- and very ill-advised: Maud will move to Devon with him, and they will pretend to be husband and wife, rather than brother and sister -- passing off Maud as a few years older than she really is, for appearance's sake. Unfortunately, John does not immediately tell her why he is willing to self-sacrificingly play the role of her husband -- taking himself out of the marriage-market, after all -- and she does not take it very well when he does. Worse yet, he can't let go of Bertie, and they continue to occasionally see each other. Bertie has his claws firmly hooked in John, and he proves to be a costly habit, with ultimately disastrous results.
       Maud has the baby, a daughter she names Hope, and her and John's secrets long remain unrevealed, but it's far from a happy little family they form. For a while Maud can occupy herself with her darling daughter, but between her isolation and resentments Maud grows increasingly bitter and unpleasant; as she eventually pouts: "I never forget and I never forgive" and that adds up to quite a bit fairly quickly. Meanwhile, John can't change his ways -- though he promised Maud more than once that he would ... -- and continues to see Bertie, who enjoys his time with John well enough, but finds fun elsewhere too.
       'The Child's Child' accelerates as it goes on, with big changes as the war comes, and the novel continues well into Hope's teens (with Maud particularly worried when she hits fifteen, that the daughter might follow in her mother's footsteps) and then early adulthood. This transition, from the close detail early on to then longer periods dealt with much more quickly is a bit awkward, as is how some of what happens is only rather summarily dealt with -- notably a murder investigation and the trial that then follows, all treated practically only in the distant background.
       There is some suspense in 'The Child's Child' -- though, surprisingly, less so regarding whether John and Maud's secrets will be discovered -- and Vine maintains a good pace throughout, holding the reader's attention -- despite, for example, the murder that is part of the story being treated rather incidentally. When The Child's Child shifts back to Grace's narration in its short concluding section, Vine also throws in some suspense, as the trial of the gay-bashing murder witnessed by Andrew and James comes into play again -- though it feels like a bit it much to top it all off with. Credit to Vine, that she writes and presents her stories expertly enough to make for a consistently ... compulsive read.
       I use the expression because of another novel that Grace reads that is particularly significant -- Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth. Grace isn't a huge fan of Gaskell, finding:

Her novels all have axes to grind. They aim to set the world right, as many Victorian novels do, but many try to disguise this, which hers do not.

Yet she finds Ruth: "almost a compulsive read, and I raced through the early chapters" -- and finds herself:

rather surprised that I who have read Tess and Oliver Twist without feeling more than pity and wonder could be so affected by a novel written 150 years ago. There was no doubt in my mind, so persuasively honest is Gaskell's writing, that the social scene was really like this, this was the fate of the “fallen woman.”

Vine tries to do something similar in The Child's Child -- an attempt also interesting in her refusal to make John and Maud sympathetic characters. Young Maud seems promising enough, but her circumstances -- despite her fake marriage protecting her from the worst of the shame she would have faced, and then an inheritance ensuring that she can live in decent comfort -- turn her into an unpleasant figure. John, too, proves weak, and is also unable to, for example, play the role of father to Hope in a way that would have helped all three of them. Only some outsiders -- notably local music teacher Elspeth Dean -- are both sensible and sympathetic (though Hope turns out quite well, even if she too can't entirely break out of society-strictures).
The Child's Child is flawed, a bit clumsy even in some ways, but it's still thoroughly gripping -- a good read, despite the reader's frustration with many of the characters (and their poor choices).

- M.A.Orthofer, 28 December 2025

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Links:

The Child's Child:

Scribner publicity page
Penguin publicity page
Le Livre de Poche publicity page
Diogenes publicity page
Profile in The Guardian

Reviews:

Ruth Rendell:

Ruth Rendell at British Council Literature
Ruth Rendell site

Other books by Ruth Rendell under review:

Dark Corners
A Sight for Sore Eyes
Inspector Wexford-series:
- The Babes in the Wood
- The Vault

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
See Index of Contemporary British fiction

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About the Author:

British mystery writer Ruth Rendell -- who also wrote as 'Barbara Vine' -- lived 1930 to 2015.

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