Cats who gallop around cars often come to a bad end, and as with the rabbits in Monica Dickens' The Fancy, I was always subconsciously waiting for something awful to happen to little Moppet. And there is a little black and white cat, who first appears galloping to meet Avery and Ellen as they drive up to their home. I felt much sympathy for Monsieur and Madame Lannier, who can never do anything right for their difficult daughter but love her all the same. I also liked Anne, their daughter, who lives for school holidays and her horse Roma. Like many middle-class women after the Second World War, she doesn't have help in the home, so she's always rushing around, trying to do too much, but happy in it. She is a good person, a loving wife and mother, busy in the home and expressing her love in domestic cares. I liked Ellen very much from the start, so my sympathies were with her throughout the story. Eventually Louise comes to stay with Ellen and Avery, and it's then that the trouble begins. North, Ellen and Avery and their children. As the story develops, it moves back and forth between France and England, between Louise and Mrs. We learn something about her life in her small provincial town, and why she wants to leave it behind for England. We are introduced to the Frenchwoman, Louise Lannier, in the next chapter, as she announces her new post to her parents. North doesn't advertise but answers an advertisement, in the personal column of The Times: "Young Frenchwoman desires to spend July, August in English home. Throughout the book Ellen and Avery are so realistically described that it is almost painful to read: this is a deeply involving and perceptive novel by the literary heir to Mrs Gaskell.Īctually, there's a slight inaccuracy there: Mrs. Avery North has been contentedly married to Ellen for twenty years, they have two children and live in the rural commuter belt outside London when his mother advertises for a companion, the French girl who arrives sets her sights on Avery and callously threatens the happy marriage. Someone at a Distance has a deceptively simple plot about a deceived wife and a foolish husband. I think the editors did a neat job of summing up the plot in their back-cover blurb: So I was very pleased when I saw a Persephone edition of this on the library sale cart - for all of $1. She is an author I have learned about only recently, from some of my favorite bloggers (including Anbolyn, Jane, and JoAnn). This book was my introduction to Dorothy Whipple.
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