Asta's Book - Softcover

Vine, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140176616 ISBN 13: 9780140176612

Publisher: Penguin Uk, 1994

Synopsis

This work is set in 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to east London from Denmark with their two sons. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal, for they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder, to the quest for a missing child and to the enigma surrounding Asta's daughter, Swanny. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. Viking have published all her previous novels, including A Dark-Adapted Eye, which won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award. Ruth Rendell sits in the House of Lords as a Labour peer. She lives in Maida Vale, London.

From AudioFile

Written by Ruth Rendell under the pen name of Barbara Vine, the diary of a lonely Danish immigrant at the turn of the century became a bestseller in England. Asta offers keen interest in life, zest for storytelling and acerbic views of humanity, as well as a mystery for subsequent generations to unravel. Walter's considerable acting skills keep the long process moving. As most of the central figures are female, her very feminine voice presents few gender problems. She occasionally shows strain with dialects, but this is mitigated by her understanding of inner motivations. Indeed, it proves to be the personal quirks of the characters that both create and solve the mystery as denouement follows denouement to a surprising conclusion. S.B.S. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Uk
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0140176616
• ISBN 13: 9780140176612
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448