'A very good novel indeed about the fragility and also the tenacity of love' com
mented the "Spectator" about this 1953 novel by Dorothy Whipple, which was ignor
ed fifty years ago because 'editors are going mad for action and passion' (as sh
e was told by her publisher). But this last novel by a writer whose books had pr
eviously 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 d
isaster 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 preoccup
ations). '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'.
