The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

Read Nov 2017

The story is told by Kerstin, a Swedish nursing aid for a schizophrenic patient living in Essex. It is an account written some 35 years after her year long stint with the Cosway family.

The Cosway family is made up of mostly women, the matriarch Julie, 4 daughters ( Ida, Ella, Winifred, Zophra) and the son-patient John. Except for Zophra who is a love child of her mother and their family doctor and heiress of a her husband's vast fortune, the rest of the Cosway women lives on the allowance from a trust fund. It is set up for the upkeep of John Cosway, an autistic but high functioning mathematician. The only way to the fund is through John until his death.

The Cosway women keeps John in a drugged state to control his autistic behavior and Kerstin is employed to look after him.

Kerstin captures her entire experience in her diary and documents with words and caricatures the happenings in the rambling Lydstep Old Hall. She discovers that John is drugged and uses the week when the matriarch was in hospital to wean John off his drugged stupor.

The Cosway sisters, Ella and Winfred shares a love interest, an artist who has come to live in the area. Winifred, despite her engagement to the village priest, continues her sordid liaisons with the artist.  Ida, the stoic housemaker sister and mother are closest to each other but towards the end, went for each other’s throat when Winifred is killed with a huge Roman vase on the eve of her wedding. The deed was attributed to John, the murder weapon being his favourite vase.

Kerstin realises her affection for her charge ( who earlier proposed to her though he does not understand what marriage is ) and wants to vindicate him of his alleged crime. She voiced her suspicion that John's behaviour at the crime scene was because his favourite vase is broken and not because his sister is dead. Her diary detailing the cut fingers of matriarch and Ida also did not go unnoticed by the investigating detective. Before both women face judgment, Ida burns down the house with her mother in the labyrinth library.

Within a short time after the death of Winifred followed by the matriarch,  John is sent to an asylum and Ella seeks comfort in her almost to be brother-in-law.

Kerstin leaves for London and marries her friend’s brother and a family acquaintance of the Cosways. 35 years later, she looks back at the events with Ella who maintains contact with her. Kerstin realises that the recordings in her diary has exonerated John from his crime.  

The book isn’t exactly fast paced but the end of each chapter leaves a teaser, inviting the reader to pursue the story further.  Vine is actually Ruth Rendell and in typical RR style, keeps the plot going even though the reader has an inkling what is to come as the plot moves along.