'A very good novel indeed about the fragility and also the tenacity of love' commented the "Spectator" about this 1953 novel by Dorothy Whipple, which was ignored fifty years ago because 'editors are going mad for action and passion' (as she was told by her publisher). But this last novel by a writer whose books had previously been bestsellers is outstandingly good by any standards. Apparently 'a fairly ordinary tale about the destruction of a happy marriage' (Nina Bawden in the Preface) yet 'it makes compulsive reading' in its description of an ordinary family ('Ellen was that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife') struck by disaster when the husband, in a moment of weak, mid-life vanity, runs off with a French girl.Dorothy Whipple is a superb stylist, with a calm intelligence in the tradition of Mrs Gaskell (both wrote in the "Midlands" and had similar preoccupations). 'The prose is simple, the psychology spot on' said the "Telegraph", and John Sandoe Books commented: 'We have all delighted in this unjustly forgotten novel; it is well written and compelling'.

Someone at a Distance (1953) was the first novel by Dorothy Whipple Persephone Books published, although it was the last she wrote. We chose it because we think it is her best, an outstandingly good novel by any standards. Apparently a 'fairly ordinary tale about the destruction of a happy marriage,' Nina Bawden wrote in her Preface, yet 'it makes compulsive reading' in its description of an 'ordinary' family, husband commuting up to town, wife at home ('Ellen was that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife'). Disaster strikes when a young French woman visits (the scenes back in France are most beautifully described, with touches of Balzac or Maupassant) and calculatingly seduces the husband. He abandons everything for her; then there is no going back.

The effect on his wife and children, on his partner at work, the way his life is destroyed in an instant of mid-life madness, all combine to create a novel of exceptional insight. This is a strongly moral book, which shows Ellen as a fulfilled yet dangerous innocent, with a touch of smugness which blinds her to her husband's vanity. Yet neither of them are more smug, or more vain, than anyone else...which is why the novel has a universal quality lifting it out of the realm of the commonplace.
Dorothy Whipple is a superb stylist: not a 'fine' writer or a Modernist but a calm intelligence in the tradition of Mrs Gaskell and George Eliot. The first sentence, with its overtones about the tragecy to come, encapsulatges the novel's quality: 'Widowed, in the house her husband had built with day and night nurseries and a music-room, as if the children would stay there for ever, instead of marrying and going off at the earliest possible moment, old Mrs North yielded one day to a long-felt desire to provide herself with company. She answered an advertisement in the personal column of The Times.'
'The prose is simple, the psychology spot on' said the Daily Telegraph, while the Spectator called it 'a very good novel indeed about the fragility and also the tenacity of love.' Someone at a Distance was in the Evening Standard bestseller list, propelled there in part by the enthusiasm of John Sandoe's bookshop in Sloane Square, which commented in its booklist: 'We have all delighted in this unjustly forgotten novel; it is well written and compelling.' Someone at a Distance has now become one of Persephone Books' quiet bestsellers.

The tobacco plants, a cloud of white butterflies in the dark, sent out their evening fragrance. To Ellen in the sitting-room and to Avery outside the same thought occurred at the same time.
'It has just struck me,' said Ellen to Louise, dropping the mending to her lap, 'that that's what the scent is.'
'What is what my scent is?' said Louise with a deliberation Ellen sometimes considered insulting.
'The Nicotiana - the tobacco plant. Can't you smell it from the garden?'
'I smell something,' said Louise.
'Perhaps it is the same. I don't know.'
She turned the pages.
Avery, for one strange moment, felt himself enveloped in her scent. He seemed to be fighting it off, like fumes. He left the garden and escaped along the lane.

2007-10-17 The Power of a Compelling Story

'Someone at a Distance' is a novel I found utterly compelling from the very first line. Dorothy Whipple draws the reader in with such assurance yet the style of her prose is both understated and unpretentious. At the same time, one comes upon certain unexpectedly evocative passages which belie the straightforwardness of the novel as a whole. I was particularly struck by the following:

'If we could be seen thinking, we would show blown bright one moment, dark the next, like embers; subject to every passing word and thought of our own or other people's, mostly other people's.' (p.181)

How elegant and perceptive! I perceived some resemblances with another favourite novelist of that period, Elizabeth Bowen. Though these writers depart in style, they share a thematic preoccupation with the effect of environment on state of mind, the concept of home and the fragility of this idea. Similar existential concerns run through this novel, subdued at first though felt more palpably with the dispossession of Ellen and her children. The description of a home following the death or departure of the main resident as 'dead' chimes with Bowen's rendering of domestic space in her work.
The age-old art of story-telling is often underestimated these days when narrative high-jinks are the vogue. Whipple reminds one of the pleasure of complete immersion in a story and within an unfamiliar world which is simultaneously familiar in many ways. The Norths are, above all, an ordinary family and Ellen is an ordinary mother. Having finished the novel (within the space of a day and a half, I might add), I felt at such a loss that I immediately procured a copy of 'They Knew Mr. Knight'. This impulsiveness is testament to Whipple's skill as a storyteller and her power to move. This novel was, in all sincerity, a pleasure.