Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #674732 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

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

Customer Reviews

WHODUNIT?...
This is a beautifully written, well nuanced novel of mystery and suspense that seamlessly moves between the past and the present. The past is told through the diaries of a Danish immigrant named Asta, who went to live in Edwardian England with her husband, Rasmus, and two young sons at the turn of the century. Settling down in East London in 1905, her loveless marriage and loneliness drove Asta to keep a journal of her innermost thoughts and experiences.

Though married to a man who spent a great deal of time away from home on business and with whom she seemed to have little in common, Asta added two more children to her family, daughters, Swanny, her favorite, and Maria, the youngest. Asta's lyrically written journals would chronicle of her life, her struggles as an immigrant, her hopes and dreams, and her adoration of Swanny. They would also tantalizingly hint at a secret that would, ultimately, impact on her daughter, Swanny, later in life.

Over seventy years later, those diaries, all forty nine of them, would be discovered and become a publishing sensation and a bestseller. Within its many pages would lie the missing pieces to a turn of the century murder mystery and the leads to the whereabouts of a missing child, as well as tantalizing clues to the puzzling circumstances surrounding Swanny's birth. This information would lie dormant until nearly a century after Asta first put pen to paper, when Asta's granddaughter, Maria's daughter Ann, would review the diaries and discover not only the secret of Swanny's birth, but the identity of a missing child, as well as that of a killer, who nearly a century earlier had butchered two women.

This is a book well worth reading, and one that will command the readers attention until the very last page is turned.

Intrigue, suspense and shadows from the past.
In 1905, a young Danish couple arrive in England with their two small sons. The husband, Rasmus, becomes a total Anglophile while his wife Asta, struggles with language problems,loneliness and depression as she is left alone with the children for long periods of time while Rasmus travels on business.To while away the hours, Asta starts a diary which she continues for the majority of her life. Years later, her descendants discover and publish the diaries which become an international success and which bring to life a number of unanswered questions about a sensational murder trial and the dubious birth of one of Asta's daughters. At first I struggled with the various characters, finding it difficult to place them in the right generations but all became clear eventually. The plot is involved, with red herrings strewn all over the place--an intriguing read and worth perservering with as all the solutions come right at the end of the book.

A true work of literature
Asta's Book is a rich and rewarding novel, not only a "mystery" but a complex social history of an immigrant family, Edwardian London, criminal trials and the place of women in society. The story centers on Asta, a hopelessly middle class Danish lady who moves to London with her husband and two young sons in 1905. Over the next several years, a series of events unfold that reveal questions about murder and a missing child. The format of the book is two fold; one voice is Asta's, her diary. The other belongs to Asta's granddaughter, Ann, who in the present time is trying to discover the secrets Asta removed from her diary. Secrets concerning the parentage of a daughter, Ann's aunt. Secrets concerning jealousy and rage, violence, and the terrible lies within he family. This story is like an onion with many skins; each chapter peels back slowly and reveals the next layer. Asta is a formidable character, full of contractions, and one of the most believable historic female voices in fiction. This book was a marvelous, wonderful find for me, a true gem.