According to Ruth

by Jane Feaver

This beautifully crafted story about a marriage break-up and its effect on four children delicately reveals how lives can overlap and impinge on one another through proximity, suggestion and resemblance — and how secrets and lies eventually surface.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2007

Reviews

[Elizabeth Ducie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting portrayal of a marriage in crisis; seen primarily through the eyes of the eldest daughter, but with other POVs along the way.

[Kat Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compassionate telling of how the complexity, grief, messy humanness of life affects us all, as told through Ruth's subjectivities. I really enjoyed this and hope my first novel (ever hopeful) could be as poignant and charming as this.

[Daisy Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

got better as it went on - didn't entirely get it - the thing with the hands and the empty person called John - was he Robert's father - and who knew that?
But like the prose style of it - original

[Linda Lipko · Rating 4 out of 5]

This debut work is quite remarkable. The story takes place in 1979 in the remote Northumbrian countryside of England where four children witness the imploding and painful unraveling of their parent's marriage.

At times slow and steady, it is an insightful journey of 15 year old Ruth who desperately tries to make sense of her parents, her emotions toward her siblings, and Robert, a local farmers son who holds an attraction in her dismal and sad life.

Woven with Ruth's story is the overlapping tale of Robert and his family who recently lost a beloved son.

The author excellently captures the feelings of young Ruth who floats like a leaf on a rapid current while trying to find a soft landing on shore.

The remote countryside serves as an excellent setting for the bickering of the parents, the squabbling of the siblings, and the keen sense of loss as tightly knit families become unwound.

Recommended

[Dianne Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant, heartbreaking and laugh out loud funny, we see through the eyes of shy teenage girl named Ruth living in a battered rundown farmhouse. Her needs are simple but fervent. It was a joy to read until the last few chapters (no spoilers). The story's events and Ruth's voice rang true, even the brutal ending. It's definitely worth a read on Kindle Unlimited, not sure I'd pay the full price for this. I read the paperback version while convalescing - strange to have a book like that lying around a hospital.

[Sally Whitehead · Rating 3 out of 5]

A languorous portrait of the "archaeology" of a dysfunctional family during the Summer of 1979 in their remote and, mostly isolated, run-down Northumberland cottage.

Told largely from the perspective of adolescent daughter Ruth, it recounts the subtle, gradual and painstaking ways in which insurmountable cracks begin to appear and splinter people away from one another.

[Esther Huntington-Whiteley · Rating 3 out of 5]

'I just love having something to do outside of my life.'

I liked this (I think), but I'm not sure I entirely understood what had happened by the end.

It felt like something which was meant to be representing something else.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dark. Good capture of a 15-year-old in a confused world. I'd have trouble recommending it though.