&sq=Qlik&lang=&file=File:Rendell%27sPortobello.JPG) First edition (UK) | |
| Author | Ruth Rendell |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Photomontage derived from pictures supplied by Getty Images |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hutchinson (UK) Doubleday (Canada) |
Publication date | Nov 2008 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 278 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0091925840 (hardback), ISBN 978-0091925857 (trade paperback) |
| OCLC | 244314490 |
Portobello is a novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, published in 2008. It is set in and around the Portobello Road in Notting Hill, London. Written in the third-person narrative mode, it follows the lives of a number of Londoners—rich and poor alike—living near the Portobello Road Market whose paths cross by accident rather than design. In other words, Portobello is about "the destinies of an oddly assorted group of people, whose only common characteristic is their postcode."[1]
Throughout the novel, something menacing seems to lurk behind every street corner, and the suspicion that something awful or sinister is going to happen any minute "(this is after all a novel by Ruth Rendell) is what hooks the reader" [2] As "one of the leading chroniclers of contemporary London",[3] Rendell has known the area and its inhabitants for so long that her "take on Notting Hill restores some of the rawness taken away by gentrification and the saccharine stammer of the film of the same name."[4]
- ^ Jane Shilling: "Portobello by Ruth Rendell — Review"[dead link], The Daily Telegraph (Telegraph.co.uk).
- ^ Lucy Atkins: "Portobello by Ruth Rendell", The Sunday Times (November 23, 2008).
- ^ Jane Jakeman: "The Fine Art of Mystery in Notting Hill", The Independent (November 21, 2008).
- ^ Chris Petit: "The Dropped Wallet", The Guardian (November 29, 2008).