'Grasshopper' by Barbara Vine
Open-and-shut cases of masterful mystery writing: ‘Grasshopper’
Sunday, December 17, 2000
By Robert Croan, Post-Gazette Senior
Grasshopper
By Barbara Vine
Harmony Books
$25.00
British mystery writer Ruth Rendell uses the pseudonym Barbara Vine when writing novels in which mystery is not the primary element. Her latest effort in this genre has several mysteries woven into the plot, but the new book is essentially a coming-of-age story about a young woman afflicted with severe claustrophobia.
Clodaugh Brown, or Clo, is so claustrophobic that she cannot go through any of England’s short underground passageways to cross a street. And she will never take the tube, or what we call a “subway.”
She will walk miles out of her way or take buses and trams that might add hours to a normally brief journey. Worst of all, her claustrophobia is offset by a love of heights. As a teen-ager, Clo and her first boyfriend, Daniel, would scale the pylons -- dangerous electrical towers -- but one day Daniel was zapped by the electrical current. Clo was helpless to save him.
Her parents, the whole town, in fact, blamed Clo for Daniel’s death. As an adult, Clo blames herself as well and writes her thoughts in a diary, which -- now, more than a decade later, she is updating for a particular reader. We know that Clo has survived it all, though not without mental and physical scars. She is married and has become a successful electrician, living in a luxury apartment.
The part of her life that she (and we) are most concerned with, however, is the time -- at the age of 18 -- that she went to London to take a business course at Grand Union Polytechnic. Soon Clo finds a lover, a neighbor called Silver because he’s an albino. He makes his apartment available to a variety of occupants, including a mysterious Dutchman named Wim who has discovered the secret of traveling through the neighborhood on rooftops.
Other residents include a Swedish girl named Liv who has a phobia just the opposite of Clo’s: She cannot bear to go outdoors. Liv takes up with Jonny, a very bad egg who uses the roofs in his trade as a burglar.
Things get even more tangled when Liv becomes infatuated with Wim and Jonny takes violent steps to keep Liv for himself.
Furthermore, Clo and Silver -- in a naive attempt at altruism -- help a childless couple trying to abduct a mixed-race child who has been refused for adoption.
All this comes together in a tale that shows Vine’s mastery of plot and character. We hardly know what the mystery is until it is solved, although Clo gives us hints that one thing will work out and another will end badly. Characters develop in ways that are unpredictable but ultimately believable. Vine’s prose is quite beautiful, not only in her furthering of the plot but also the atmosphere she creates of two Londons: one class-bound and wealthy, the other Bohemian and poor.
By the end, the reader can’t help wishing it were possible to join in just once for one of those wild romps on the roofs.
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