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The Tree of Hands

The Tree of Hands

A stand-alone novel published by Hutchinson in

I discovered Ruth Rendell’s work thanks to Claude Chabrol’s film La Cérémonie. Chabrol’s film disturbed me so much that I wanted to know more about the writer whom I didn’t know. So I read five, six, seven of her books non-stop, and came across The Tree of Hands, which I thought was wonderful and would make a very good film. So I made it. I have never met Ruth Rendell but I know that she watched the film last week, in a special screening. I haven’t heard her verdict yet but was told over the phone that she enjoyed it a lot.

—Claude Miller

Once when Benet was about fourteen, she and her mother had been alone in a train carriage, and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife.

It was some time since Benet had seen her psychologically disturbed mother. So when Mopsa arrived at the airport looking drab and colourless in a drab grey suit, Benet tried not to hate her.

But then the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder that pushes three women to their psychological limit.

Notes

Contemporary Reads 1

Footnotes

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