Set on Edge by Bernice Rubens – #ABookADayInMay – Day 3

Today’s book is Bernice Rubens’ debut novel, Set On Edge (1960) and my friend Paul helpfully took a photo of my copy with me for comparison (I am on the right). Grier introduced me to Rubens’ work when she gave Rachel a copy of The Five Year Sentence and we did it for an episode of Tea or Books? – since then, I’ve been discovering how very many copies of her books are easily available in secondhand bookshops and I am amassing them at a rate of knots. At a slightly slower pace, I am reading them. Set On Edge must have marked Rubens out as the individual, odd, and brilliant writer that I am discovering her to be. Here’s how it opens: The trouble with family relationships is consicence, which is nearly always guilty. The Sperber family were guilt-riddled, and as no man will bear his guilt alone but looks for its source, finding there someone to blame or hold responsible, so the Sperbers sought out their rotten root. Each of them knew from the beginning where their search would lead them,…