Someone at a Distance – Dorothy Whipple (Persephone)

From the Publisher 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.

This really is a beautifully written novel.  The sad story of the ruin of a happy family, may seem like something we have read before. However Dorothy Whipple writes so well, and with such feeling, that the reader watches the slow crumble of this likeable family with real regret. Things build slowly, culminating in the destruction of a once happy family. By the time the novel reaches this point, the reader feels they know this family intimately – people who are never happier than when they with one another.  Warm and fuzzy scenes of family life are so idealised that they contrast sharply with what follows.  The scenes in France are a beautifully observed depiction of small town French life,  with all its petty snobberies.  This was an absolute pleasure to read, as with all previous Dorothy Whipple novels I have read.