This is the first of my “book splurge” books that I picked up, and it’s really gotten me off to a great start. I devoured it in a single day, unable to put it down.
This book is a “Persephone Classic”. Persephone Books is a British publisher that reprints “forgotten twentieth century novels, short stories, cookery book and memoirs by (mostly) women writers.” They profess to print books which appeal to “the discerning reader who prefers books that are neither too literary nor too commercial, and are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget.” Best-selling titles were printed as “Classics”. I like to think of myself as a “discerning reader,” so I felt I had to give them a try.
Someone at a Distance was originally published in 1953. It is the story of what today might be an upper middle class suburban family, a happy family comprised of Mr. North, a book publisher who commutes daily to London, Mrs. North, a housewife who is lovingly devoted to her family, and their nearly grown children, Anne and Hugh. This family lives an idyllic life until “old” Mrs. North, Mr. North’s cranky mother, brings a woman from France to be her companion. This woman, Louise Lanier, is well-described in Nina Bawden’s preface:
The serpent that enters this happy family’s Eden is a latter-day Emma Bovary . . . the spoilt, imperious daughter of a bookseller in provincial France. She is escaping to England after a humiliating rejection by her lover . . . who has discarded Louise in order to marry a girl of superior social position.
The reader watches as Louise seduces first old Mrs. North and then her son, laying waste to the quiet tranquility of the North family.
This is not a new story – it’s one that we’ve all read many times. However, Ms. Whipple’s style first pulls you in with a family you can only love and admire, and then slowly and subtly exposes its vulnerability. You can see what’s going to happen but, like the legendary train wreck, you can’t look away. Even with a predictable plot line, the suspense of the story propels you forward.
At times the characters, including the many minor ones, may seem stereotypical, but are written so well that they each have a “strong, independent reality, both emotionally and their actions” (Bawden). There is something charming about a book where sexual situations are suggested, not graphically described, but in spite of the fact that this book was written nearly sixty years ago, there is a contemporary feel to it. And, finally, what reader doesn’t love a story with a satisfying ending? I’ll be looking for more Persephone Classics and recommend you give them a try!
Grade: A
