Reviews for Crocodile Bird

The average rating for Crocodile Bird based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-05 00:00:00 Nigel Vise Nature or nurture, what creates a psychopath? The Crocodile Bird is a deep dive into those troubled waters. A young mother and her daughter live in isolation in a gate house that is the approach to a gorgeous, venerable country estate called the Shrove. Eve Beck, the mother is as beautiful as she is damaged, and her pathology revolves around the Shrove estate. She loves her refuge and will never willingly leave it. She will go to great lengths to destroy those who threaten her ability to live there. Liza Beck is the voice of the piece, she is on the outside looking in and trying to understand her mother and also the world. Her mother's retreat from society, is purposefully done so that Liza will never be tainted by it. Liza learns from her mother, a brilliant scholar, everything she needs for the intellect, but not what she needs to survive in the outside world. Liza also sees horrific violence, the result of her mother's trauma. Liza is a brilliantly constructed character with nuances to her understanding that you don't see coming. This is not a mystery. You know who does the murders. This is about the why.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-18 00:00:00 Tim Zitzelberger 101 Nights … Stories told to a boyfriend by that small bird who picks the teeth of a crocodile and remains unhurt. How did it all begin; how did it get so far? Having a mother who is Oxford schooled but now mysteriously is the warden of an old manor in a remote UK setting, a manor that furthermore is only occasionally visited by its´ is owner, did give now 16-year-old Liza childhood experiences few others would have had. Being home schooled she reads Latin and French and recites Shakespeare by heart from an early age, but have never seen a television set. She has never played with other children, never ridden a train or have seen a newspaper. Liza is living a back-to-the-nature life with her mother Eve, protected from the outside world in nearly all aspects. Living by the land, eating healthy and have no real worries. But something must have happened, something sinister, or Eve has a feeling, a premonition, that something is about to go terribly wrong. From the late afternoon till around nine o´clock Eve contemplates the future of her daughter. The decision she gets to is fairly easy, Liza has to go, leave the only place she knows, to be cast into a modern, a fast moving 90´es world in which she has very little experience. She must go now or latest in the early morning before the police return … And so it all begins. The story of two women, one in her thirties and one in her teens, told by a teenage girl. Two women that in some areas are so strong that nothing would break them and in others have lost grip totally. A story of loss, deceit, half promises and not least of how to build and how to keep a safe haven for yourself and the one you love. It makes no sense to overanalyze, everything is there for your taking, if not exactly served on a silver platter. There are so many it-could-have-happened scenes and scenes you can recognize from reports from Family Services. Ruth Rendell portrays the women expertly, her reputation for psychological thrillers is absolutely deserved. A book that made me breath a bit harder and a couple of times wet my eyes, certainly a much deeper reading experience than I expected.