Ruth Rendell (as Barbara Vine), No Night Is Too Long
Tim Cornish is a young English man whose life has been altered by a tragedy in which he played an important part two years before. As he begins to receive strange letters telling accounts of castaways on deserted islands, Tim feels that he needs to write his story…
Educated in a school for boys, Tim has never had a satisfying relationship with a woman… or a man. One day he meets Ivo Steadman, a paleontologist, who rents rooms in his creative writing teacher’s house. Between Tim and Ivo, who is older than Tim, a passionate love affair begins, until Tim progressively distances himself from Ivo. The relationship begins to falter, with Tim cheating on every possible occasion and Ivo becoming increasingly patronizing.
Before embarking on an Alaskan cruise with Ivo, who gives conferences on the ship, Tim stays 10 days alone in a hotel in Juneau. He meets a woman from Seattle, Isabel, whom he falls in love with… Tim is adamant that he will see Isabel again in Seattle after the cruise. But how can he tell Ivo, how can he leave him without drama? Tim’s dilemma will lead to dramatic events unfolding over the following two years…
Although No Night is Too Long is not a traditional whodunit (none of Barbara Vine’s books correspond to this definition anyway), there is a lot of suspense. The novel draws the reader in from the beginning, due mainly to Rendell’s enormous talent as a writer. The atmosphere, Tim’s house on the Suffolk coast, the Alaskan landscape, all add to the effect that the narrator wants to convey: his being haunted by the memory of his former lover Ivo…
No Night Is Too Long is not the best story ever imagined by Rendell/Vine, but it is probably one of the best written. How she can so convincingly write as a first-person male narrator confused about his sexuality is a wonder. Her characters are complex, neither good nor evil, sometimes likeable and sometimes detestable. The only thing I found fault with is Rendell’s sense of time: the story is meant to be set during the late eighties but which 24-year-old man still holds a woman’s arm in the eighties? Granted, I think Vine wanted to give him an old-fashioned, almost Victorian side. What I found more unlikely is that some students take it for granted that a man is bound to marry a woman because they lived together for a couple of months, as is the case with Tim and the girlfriend he has before meeting Ivo… Also, I has a problem with Vine comparing Tim to a young Robert Redford… When I was reading the part narrated by Tim (there two other narrators toward the end) I was quite content with picturing Tim looking like Jude Law, maybe because the shallowness of his character reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s lover, interpreted by Law, in the movie Wilde, as well as Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley, even if both movies are posterior to the writing of No Night Is Too Long), but after he was compared to a young Robert Redford, whose looks in his twenties I wasn’t able to summon, I had to picture a later Redford, which didn’t quite match with my idea of Tim’s character… But it certainly is my fault for not watching enough young Redford’s movies…
Well, I am being picky… No Night Is Too Long is another wonderful achievement by Rendell/Vine, whose more recent novels as Rendell have been disappointing (Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, The Babes in the Wood)… Anyway, I think I am increasingly preferring Vine to Rendell… They could make a great movie out of this novel, with of course, Jude Law as Tim Cornish (instead of a younger Robert Redford!) and Rupert Everett as Ivo Steadman…
Rating: 4/5
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