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Piranha to Scurfy and Other Stories

Piranha to Scurfy and Other Stories

A short story collection published by Hutchinson in


The best of the collection is the title story, more horror than crime story, redolent of M. R. James. Ambrose Ribbon is another obsessive. He lives alone in a house he used to share with his dead mother. He keeps her room exactly as she left it, her pink nightdress folded on the bed. The title of the story refers to Volume VIII of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a book he associates with her.

Peter Guttridge 1

Ruth Rendell’s seventh collection of short stories also includes two unpublished novellas.

The second novella, “High Mysterious Union”, explores a strange, erotic universe in a dream-like corner of rural England and illustrates very atmospherically what range Ruth Rendell has as a writer.

Notes

Contemporary Reads 2

Footnotes

  1. The Guardian, 2000. ↩︎

  2. Book links may earn this site a small commission. ↩︎