The birthday present

by Barbara Vine

Paper Book, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Collection

Publication

London : Penguin Books, 2009.

Description

Ivor Tesham is a handsome, single, young member of Parliament whose political star is on the rise. When he meets a woman in a chance encounter - a beautiful, leggy, married woman named Hebe - the two become lovers obsessed with their trysts, spiced up by what the newspapers like to call "adventure sex." It's the dress-up and role-play that inspire Ivor to create a surprise birthday present for his beloved that involves a curbside kidnapping. It's all intended as mock-dangerous foreplay, but then things take a dark turn. After things go horribly wrong, Ivor begins to receive anonymous letters that reveal astonishingly specific details about the affair and its aftermath. Somehow he must keep his role from being uncovered - and his political future from being destroyed by scandal. Like a heretic on the inquisitor's rack, Ivor is not to be spared the exquisitely slow and tortuous unfolding of events, as hints, nuances, and small revelations lay his darkest secrets hideously bare for all the world to see. The Birthday Present is a deft, insightful, and compulsively readable exploration of obsessive desire - and the dark twists of fate that can shake the lives of even those most insulated by privilege, sophistication, and power. From the Hardcover edition.… (more)

Media reviews

New York times
A typically cruel and subtle piece of work by Ruth Rendell, writing under her Barbara Vine pseudonym, the novel charts the calamitous career trajectory of a Conservative member of Parliament when he tries to evade the consequences of a sexual misadventure that results in two deaths, including that
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of his married lover…Ivor can't avoid becoming ridiculous; but because Vine leaves out nothing in portraying him, he remains likable—never admirable, but likable.
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1 more
The Washington Post
Within the first five pages of The Birthday Present, you know you're in the hands of a mystery/thriller writer who's in perfect control of her material. In addition to that fabulous control, Rendell/Vine maintains a matronly, almost magisterial tone that lends unexpected dignity to the goriest,
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creepiest material. It is her trademark.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member smik
MP Ivor Tesham's secret affair with stunningly beautiful housewife Hebe Furnal comes to an abrupt end when she is killed in a car accident. Hebe was only in that car because Ivor had her snatched from the streets in a mock kidnapping, designed to spice up their encounter later that night. The
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kidnapping/adventure is Hebe's birthday present.

The police investigation after the accident comes to the conclusion that Hebe is the victim of mistaken identity. There is no linking at the time between Ivor and Hebe although there are those who know bits of the truth. For the moment Ivor's meteoric rise in Parliament is unchecked, even when his next girlfriend is the the former lover of the other passenger in the car, who was also killed. But five years later things start to unravel.

The main narrator of THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT is Rob, Ivor's brother in law. I actually found him a very annoying narrator, taking far too long to spill the beans, parsimonious with the truth. He is telling the story retrospectively, there is no doubt that the whole story is all over, but he goes about it in an exasperatingly long winded fashion.
There is a secondary narrator, Jane, Hebe's girlfriend, the source of her alibis when Hebe, a married woman with one child, has an assignation with Ivor. Jane has a sense of foreboding and keeps records on sheets of paper which she keeps in a shoebox in her flat.

There was a point about 70 pages from the end when I wondered why I was still reading THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT. There is a lot of minutiae that feels like the basic story is being padded out. I think perhaps it would have made a good short story or even a novella, and I understand that Barbara Vine wanted to explore the intertwining of relationships between the characters, but I think she really milked this scenario for all it was worth. There's a lot of detail supplied by Rob, in keeping with his pedantic longwindedness, about his family, his children, and how he and his wife Iris are devoted to Ivor. The second narrator Jane, a rather unstable character, similarly supplies details about her relationship with Hebe, and then later with Hebe's widowed husband.
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LibraryThing member lsh63
The birthday present refers to a gift of role play kidnapping from Ivor Tesham to his married girlfriend Hebe. The little kidnapping ploy goes horribly wrong and Ivor's career as a member of Parliament becomes jeopardized as more and more people learn of his affair and the birthday present.

Ivor
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begins to receive anonymous notes from someone who knows all ths details and he rapidly attempts to cover his tracks, although not wisely.

I love how Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell weaves murder and insight into the human psyche together.
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LibraryThing member Kasthu
It’s the early 1990s, and Ivor Tesham, Tory MP, is in the middle of an affair with Hebe Furnal, a glamorous housewife who shares his taste for S&M. When the car Ivor’s arranged to kidnap Hebe crashes and she dies, Ivor decides to hide his involvement in the affair from the police. Over the ten
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years or so, as Ivor’s fortunes rise and fall, he is terrified that things will come to light and his political career will be over.

The story is told from two points of view: Ivor’s brother-in-law Robyn; and Hebe’s best friend Jane, a sad, pathetic, obsessive, and mostly deluded librarian (she’s a classic Vine character) who provides Hebe with an alibi while she’s out at her trysts with Ivor. Jane is easily the best character of the bunch; at once, you feel sorry for her and revulsion at the things she thinks and says. The real strength of the novel, however, lies in the psychological suspense, which kept me interested the whole way through.

There are a couple of things that seemed anachronistic to me, however (would an unemployed woman with no money have owned a cell phone in the early 1990s?), and the ending is a bit predictable. And for people who aren’t really into politics, Vine does get a bit into the subject here. The Birthday Present isn’t quite as good as, say, The House of Stairs or The Minotaur, but it comes very close.
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LibraryThing member nikkipierce
Not my favourite Barbara Vine book, this seemed to lack something compared to some of her other books. The book tells the story of an MP whose married mistress is killed in the course of staged abduction arranged for her as a birthday present. Although initially the story is not connected with him,
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it was quite obvious from the start that the story was going to come out at some stage, and the only real mystery was how. I also found the character of Jane a bit too overly pathologically sad, lonely and bitter. Overall, I was disappointed by this as I am usually a fan of Barbara Vine.
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LibraryThing member Scratch
Excellent psychological exploration from Barb, aka Ruth Rendell. The complex plot rolls out slowly, and there are numerous characters to keep track of. All become clearer with every detail the narrator methodically reveals. I am, however, disappointed that Vine chose to resurrect the hackneyed
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"sexually repressed spinster librarian" stereotype. I expect better from her. Nevertheless, as absorbing and enjoyable as anything she's written.
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LibraryThing member Romonko
Ms. Rendell’s reputation as “The best mystery writer in the English-speaking world” is truly deserved. Whether she is writing as herself, or whether she is writing one of her truly wonderful psychological thrillers as Barbara Vine such as this one, she does an absolutely wonderful job of it.
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This book reverts back to the 1990’s in England. It is a time when England is dealing with IRA bombings and the first Gulf War. The unsettled atmosphere of this era is reproduced in the characters of Ms. Rendell’s book. We meet some truly strange people between these covers, but that does not make them less real. The story is about the very public downfall of well-known politician, and all the sleaze and hypocrisy that goes along with these stories as we read about the true-life ones in the tabloids. I found the book totally compelling.
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LibraryThing member Mumineurope
Psychological thriller about an MP and scandal
LibraryThing member jayne_charles
This tale of kinky Tory MPs (they're always Tories aren't they?) gets off to a tremendous start, The standard of the writing is right up there with Barbara Vine's best. The two narrators - one a stuffed shirt, the other a self-pitying self-obsessed woman, are written with the sort of attention to
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detail that it's hard to believe she didn't know them personally.

My only gripe is that I was expecting the plot to live up to the standard of the writing. OK so there were some moments of drama along the way, but I was expecting some hidden fact to emerge, someone to be other than what they seemed, or in some way to be surprised close to the end, whereas in reality it was a case of starting on a high and coasting gently downhill to a tame conclusion.
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LibraryThing member nocto
Catching up with a big backlog of read books, hence very short writeups.
I very much like Barbara Vine and this is precisely why.
LibraryThing member jasonlf
As one would expect from Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, this novel is well written and at times quite absorbing. It tells the story of a rising Tory MP whose lover dies in a car crash that was organized as part of a mock abduction / sex game. Given the circumstances, including the fact that the woman
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is married, he doesn't report it to the authorities and it takes several years before all the different strands pointing to him come together -- largely the self-fulfilling result of his attempts to bury the truth (or, more to the point, his behavior which is explicable pretty much only as the actions of a person who wants to be caught).

The weakness of the novel is that after a promising start it never comes together in any sort of satisfying manner. The ending is essentially stated at the opening of the novel and the unfolding of the events leading to it contain little in the way of surprise or a satisfying conclusion. Still, it remains interesting to the very end -- although some of that comes from the expectation that Rendell/Vine is going to deliver something different than what she ultimately did deliver.
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LibraryThing member picardyrose
I never saw one minute of this coming.
LibraryThing member daddyofattyo
Although a great main storyline, it is made difficult by constant references to British political hierachy (which is meaningless to most American readers); also difficult is the constant change of narrators (sometimes one has to be a page into a chapter to realize if it is Jane, Rob or Ivor
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speaking). On the positive side - an excellent description of guilty and obsessive behaviors - Ivor seeing threats once none exist; Jane inventing lovers and keeping obsessive scrapbooks and a diary - all of which eventualy lead to their undoing.
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LibraryThing member Melanielgarrett
Although I was gripped by this while I was reading it, and I have often thought of bits of it again, I wasn't *quite* as gripped as I have been by her other novels. But it must surely be time for another one soon!
LibraryThing member nosajeel
As one would expect from Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, this novel is well written and at times quite absorbing. It tells the story of a rising Tory MP whose lover dies in a car crash that was organized as part of a mock abduction / sex game. Given the circumstances, including the fact that the woman
Show More
is married, he doesn't report it to the authorities and it takes several years before all the different strands pointing to him come together -- largely the self-fulfilling result of his attempts to bury the truth (or, more to the point, his behavior which is explicable pretty much only as the actions of a person who wants to be caught).

The weakness of the novel is that after a promising start it never comes together in any sort of satisfying manner. The ending is essentially stated at the opening of the novel and the unfolding of the events leading to it contain little in the way of surprise or a satisfying conclusion. Still, it remains interesting to the very end -- although some of that comes from the expectation that Rendell/Vine is going to deliver something different than what she ultimately did deliver.
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LibraryThing member CathrynGrant
I've never read a Barbara Vine novel that didn't intrigue and satisfy me with insights into the darker twists and turns of the human psyche. The Birthday Present is no exception.

Although Barbara Vine's novels are quieter than those written under Ruth Rendell's name, they are equally filled with
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the quirky, disturbed, often amoral characters that I love. This one kept me turning pages even when I knew it was time to turn out the lights.

Compared to her other books, the end dragged on a little longer than usual and longer than necessary.
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LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
The Birthday Present is by Barbara Vine which is a pseudonym for mystery writer Ruth Rendell. Vine seems to be her darker, more psychologically complex self. The Birthday Present tells of ambitious politician Ivor Tesham and his affair with married woman, Hebe. I found Ivor both unlikable and
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unsympathetic. He considered asking his lover to leave both her husband and her young child and allow herself to be set up in a flat. He had no intention of living with her or marrying her, this would all be for his convenience. When he was told she would most likely bring her child with her, he abandoned the idea.

Ivor arranges a birthday present for Hebe, an ‘adventure sex’ episode that goes horribly wrong. The story unfolds from two separate viewpoints, first Ivor’s friend and brother-in-law and then that of Jane, Hebe’s best friend and the person who provided her with alibis to cover her absences from her family. Jane’s version comes in the form of diary entries. I actually found Jane to be the most interesting person in the book, very much a Barbara Vine character, solitary, lonely, bitter and self-pitying.

Although not a bad book, I ended up being slightly disappointed with The Birthday Present, it didn’t seem to have any deep psychological statements to make and compared to other Barbara Vine books that I have read in the past, this one was lacking. I thought the author could have explored the theme of ‘adventure sex’ in a more exciting way, instead this book was rather dreary, sad and unsurprising.
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Language

Original publication date

2008

Physical description

273 p.; 20 cm

ISBN

9780141036212

Barcode

91100000177205

DDC/MDS

823.914
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