Página inicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquise No Site
Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados do Google Livros

Clique em uma foto para ir ao Google Livros

Carregando...

Someone at a Distance (1953)

de Dorothy Whipple

Outros autores: Veja a seção outros autores.

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
6012539,009 (4.16)110
An outstanding novel about the fragility and tenacity of love.
Carregando...

Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Veja também 110 menções

Mostrando 1-5 de 25 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
4.5 stars
Madame north, Avery North's mother, answers an ad in the paper for someone to speak French with and do light domestic duties. Louise Lanier is ecstatic, when she shows her parents the picture of the house that Madame North has sent her.
" 'what does this Madame North wish you to do?' asked Madame lanier.
'Speak French with her,' said louise. She said nothing of her offer to undertake domestic duties. She was so anxious to go to England that she had presented herself as attractively as possible. But she avoided domestic duties so successfully at home that she didn't want them to know that she would undertake them abroad."

Louise lanier, who seduces the weak -spined Avery away from his wife, is an ingrata. She treats her loving parents like doormats. When her mother signs her up to tabling at a charity event, she lets her mother know what she thinks about that in cruel terms:
" 'louise,' Said her mother humbly, 'I'm so sorry. You must forgive me. I thought you would like it darling.'
'you were wrong,' said louise. 'A stupid provincial sale of work... All those stupid people. Oh, it is always the same,' she said in disgust. 'I wish I'd never come home.'
They were silent, their heads bowed over the empty cream pots. They did not look at each other.
'I shall go to bed,' said Louise harshly. 'I am very tired.'
She went round the table and laid her lips without warmth to her father's brow. 'Good night, papa...'
'Good night, maman,' she said, doing the same for her mother.
'Oh, louise. I am so sorry... '
Louise flapped a hand.
'No more,' she said. 'I've had enough.' "

Ellen, Avery's long-suffering wife, makes the supreme mistake of treating a man she loves nicely. Not realizing that men only take such women for granted, she sets herself up for failure when she asks Avery to be nice to louise. Ellen believes the best of everybody, to her own detriment.
Madame north, having died, has left Louise a large inheritance of money. Louise decides that she'll stay in England to make sure she leaves with the cash. Instead of setting Louise up in a hotel, Ellen, the supreme fool, invites her to stay in their own home.
At first, Avery does not like Louise, because her ugly personality is so obvious. Ellen urges him to be nice to her, as their daughter Anne needs help in French, and Louise reluctantly has agreed to conversate with her in french:
" 'But if she stays,' Ellen began again after a time, 'you will be nicer to her, won't you? You've been rather distant so far. I don't suppose she's noticed, because she doesn't know what you're usually like. But I could see that you didn't like her being always with us. Still, if she's going to help Anne with her french, you'll be a bit more friendly, won't you?'
.. "on the way home Ellen had been busy building up Louise into a friend of the family. But face-to-face with her now, she saw that she was as before - cold and self-centred.
Besides, she hadn't even set the table for supper. Only a woman and a housewife, perhaps, would have judged Louise on this point. But she was right; it was an indication of character.
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.
'I don't think I shall ask her to stay,' thought ellen, preceding Louise to the house."
but she does.

Anne and Ellen are going out one afternoon. But Ellen has forgotten something and tells Anne they must go back to retrieve it.
Walking across the grass, their feet make no noise, and they step in through the open French doors.
Avery and Louise are entwined on the sofa. Avery runs away like the coward he is, and only telephones Ellen to say that he's not coming back.
" 'Anne,' called her mother from the garden. 'Will you come to breakfast?'
'I'm coming,' Anne called back.
Their voices had changed and the things they said. They spoke levelly now and kept to the point. No happy squeakings and exaggerations from anne, no prolonged fits of laughter.
Ellen didn't wait for Anne now, as she would once have done, because she knew Anne didn't want her to. SHe walked across the lawn, indifferent to the neglected riot of the garden.
Signs of neglect were not so patent in the house, but they were there. Everything to do with the house seemed to have lost meaning and reason. A family is like a jigsaw puzzle. If a piece is lost, the rest no longer makes a pattern.
'He would actually marry her,' thought Ellen, reaching the breakfast table, her hand on the letter in her pocket.
He was cruel. He was callous.
'Let him go,' she thought, all at once blazing with anger."

Ellen has a dear little cat, called moppet. In her saddest moments, moppet is there to comfort her:
".. suddenly the little cat was there, purring and rubbing around her bare feet.
'Hello' said ellen, wonderfully cured by this arrival. 'Did you hear me? Would you like a drink too?'
.. Ellen was glad of her, but sleep was still out of the question. She picked up the book again. it was one Mrs brockington had given her, one of Evelyn Underhill's [inspirational]. She hadn't read it, and opened it at random now. It was just something to drive her eyes over, to keep them going until they closed.
'selfless endurance of pain and failure,' she read. 'The destruction of one's old universe, the brave treading of deep gloomy and miserable paths--all this is as essential to the growth of man's "top story" as the joyous consciousness of the presence of god.'
Ellen read it again. 'The destruction of one's old universe.' hers was destroyed. 'The selfless endurance of pain and failure.' She had to endure, but she wasn't doing it selflessly. 'The brave treading of a deep gloomy and miserable past.' she was treading them, but not bravely.
It was as if someone has spoken to her out of the silence, someone who knew, and her spirit, which had been thrashing about in resentment, anger, jealousy, self-pity, quietened itself to listen."
What utter b*******. One thing I did not appreciate in this book was the idea that all of this pain is "God's plan," and yet Ellen does take Avery back in the end, which cost this book one star. All this suffering and she's willing to do it all over again, for a MAN.

Although I was disappointed in the ending, I was much impressed by this author's writing. How delicately and thoughtfully and thoroughly she treats her characters' thoughts, emotions, their lives. I particularly loved the way Ellen was friends with all the old women living in the hotel, where she ends up going to live and work. Ellen was her supreme creation.
I will be reading more of this author, soon.


( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
The story is about an avaricious and tyrannical young woman and the destruction she wreaks among the nice people hapless enough to let her in the door. The novel was published in 1953 and is both slightly dated and surprisingly insightful about marriage, stability in relationships, the roles of shame and disappointment. Louise Lanier is a thoroughly awful villain, but Whipple resists giving her her due comeuppance, though we may suppose it will arrive eventually. ( )
  jdukuray | Jun 23, 2021 |
This was Whipple's last novel, and its publication in 1953 was met with a deafening silence from the critics. It's hard to see why at this distance: Whipple was obviously a clever, confident and witty writer, with a gift for spotting the telling detail. Probably it was simply that the literary world in the mid-fifties wasn't looking for ironic little stories about overprivileged upper-middle-class families in the Home Counties struggling with the post-war Servant Problem and worried whether they would be able to keep their daughter's horse if they were forced to move. Whipple might have done better to write about factory workers and teenage pregnancies, but then we probably wouldn't be reading her books now...

It's a very simple plot, the interest is all in the characters and detailed observation. A young French woman, Louise Lanier, turns up as companion to Ellen's mother-in-law, and then somehow incrusts herself into Ellen's own home, doing her best to seduce everyone within range without the slightest concern for the consequences. It turns out that she is on the rampage and determined to avoid going home to her parents' provincial librairie-papeterie because her prestigious boyfriend has dumped her to marry someone from his own social class.

Of course, all this gives Whipple a lot of scope for playing around with British prejudices about the French and French prejudices about the British, as well as exploring some of the horrors of post-war life for women like Ellen, who grew up in a class and time where the permanence and certainty of marriage made it redundant to think about marketable skills, and where expectations of the kind of home you would live in and the things you would do there were conditioned by the availability of cheap domestic service. Ellen has to face the realities of a world where you can't get live-in servants any more, but her husband and children haven't quite registered yet that it's the washing-up she's doing when she disappears after dinner — it's always fatally easy to be lazy when someone else does all the work without complaint.

There is an element of post-war reactionary panic here, but it is nowhere near so crass as — to take an extreme example — Angela Thirkell. Whipple clearly has a lot of sympathy with people who actually do useful work for a living, and she doesn't see post-war England as a massive conspiracy to do down "people like us". Sometimes she even seems to be quietly mocking her privileged characters, as when daughter Anne discusses the possibility of not going back to boarding-school and her father points out that "there are no schools here" — "here" being a small town half an hour or so out of London. Obviously, by "schools" he means "schools where people like us go".

The real joy of the book is in the many bizarre confrontations between people who can't begin to understand each other: the arch-conservative Mrs North and her housekeeper Miss Daley, star of the Chapel choir; Louise trying to give beauty advice to Ellen, who is the type who would rather have a new pair of secateurs than a pearl necklace; the lovely M and Mme Lanier trying to make sense of their daughter's world, and so on. A quiet delight, if very much of its time. ( )
1 vote thorold | May 6, 2020 |
"On the way home, Ellen had been busy building up Louise into a friend of the family. But face to face with her now, she saw that she was as before -- cold and self-centered.

"Besides, she hadn't even set the table for supper. Only a woman and a housewife, perhaps, would have judged Louise on this point. But she was right: it was an indication of character.

" 'I don't think I shall ask her to stay,' thought Ellen, preceding Louise into the house."
~~front flap

"Someone at a Distance has a deceptively simple plot about a deceived wife and a foolish husband. 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. 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."
~~back cover

It wasn't almost painful to read this book -- it was extremely painful. From the outside looking in, the reader sees Ellen as a loving wife and mother, and completely unaware of the danger living inside her house. The reader sees Avery as a loving husband and father, completely unaware of the danger living inside his house, and a crack of male "what if?" that Louise slowly broadens into disaster. I think every woman who reads this book, whether or not they're married, reads with the fascination of horror, and pictures herself in Ellen's place.

Louise is most skillfully delineated: the quintessential beautiful, angry and vindictive man stealer. From the outside looking in, the reader sees all her petty jealousies, her stunted and mean personality, and her very skillful manipulations guaranteed to attract men to her, and let her then rule them.

I couldn't put the book down: what was going to happen? Was Avery going to go off with Louise, perhaps marry her? Or was he going to come to his senses and return to Ellen? Ellen is the shining star of the book, soldiering on through sorting her finances and taking care of all the other grim, heart-wrenching details that have to be taken care of.

All in all, a tremendous book, even if so painful to read, evoking as it does fears of almost every woman -- that they are at risk from another woman who is the direct opposite of themselves. ( )
  Aspenhugger | Jan 26, 2020 |
Ellen loves her husband Avery for no discernible reason, and he loves her back in a totally-takes-her-for-granted way. Avery’s mother brings the scheming utterly selfish Louise into their lives. Disappointed when her lover ditches her for a more suitable bride (this read a bit like a Regency romance) she revenges herself on him by stealing Avery from Ellen.

I quite enjoyed this novel, although the first half dragged a little - Louise perhaps travelled between England and France more times than was strictly necessary to advance what there was of a plot - but after that things picked up. The very ending was so appalling that I am deducting a star for it. (less) ( )
  pgchuis | Mar 22, 2019 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 25 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha

» Adicionar outros autores

Nome do autorFunçãoTipo de autorObra?Status
Dorothy Whippleautor principaltodas as ediçõescalculado
Bawden, NinaPrefácioautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Bawden, NinaPrefácioautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado

Pertence à série publicada

Você deve entrar para editar os dados de Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Compartilhado.
Título canônico
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Lugares importantes
Eventos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Widowed, in the house her husband had built with day and night nurseries and a music-room, as if the children would stay forever 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.
Citações
Últimas palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
(Clique para mostrar. Atenção: Pode conter revelações sobre o enredo.)
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Idioma original
CDD/MDS canônico
LCC Canônico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

An outstanding novel about the fragility and tenacity of love.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo em haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Links rápidos

Avaliação

Média: (4.16)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2 3
2.5 3
3 12
3.5 11
4 52
4.5 11
5 48

É você?

Torne-se um autor do LibraryThing.

 

Sobre | Contato | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blog | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Históricas | Os primeiros revisores | Conhecimento Comum | 203,203,641 livros! | Barra superior: Sempre visível