Quick Chat: SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE

You know when you go into a book really knowing nothing about the plot, or the tone, or have any idea about what kind of book it will be, and then as you begin reading the characters seem as if they're falling into certain roles, and if those roles are what you think they are, then the novel will be a particular kind of story, and you don't want it to be that particular kind of story, because then some of the characters whom you have an affection toward will not end up so well, and the one character that you feel might be the interloper, will actually unravel and smash everything good and pure in the world, and as the reader you'll end up feeling stressed and emotionally mashed up by the end of the book? Yeah that is Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple. I mean that in the best way possible because it is a seriously fantastically written book, but as I began to read the novel there were so many small indicators that the novel would be much more than a beautifully written diversion, which I did not want to admit.

Please note that this is another beautiful edition from Persephone Books.

1/3 of the way through the novel, one of the main characters revealed herself to be evil, terrible, and ready to break up a marriage. That character is Louise Lanier. She is a from a small village in France called Amigny. Louise is desperate to get out. She thinks everyone and everything there is provincial and dull. One way in which she does this is by answering an ad placed by Old Mrs. North, a wealthy aging widowed matriarch looking for companionship. Louise goes to stay with Old Mrs. North in her estate in the country. While there, Louise meets Old Mrs. North's youngest son, Avery, his wife, Ellen, and their teenaged children Hugh and Anne. They make up the main cast of characters.

Louise believes the entire North family is foolish, because they are too rich and too happy. Now for the first part of the novel, she is mostly harmless, or at least I wanted her to be, but the she said something that is a guaranteed sign of her evil nature. In reference to the famous novel by Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Louise notes,

It was a book she knew by heart. The only character in literature for whom she felt a profound sympathy, with whom she felt an affinity even, was Emma Bovary. No one, she said to herself, understands better than I do why she did as she did. It was the excruciating boredom of provincial life (132). 

Emma Bovary is a notorious character in literature. No doubt she is an amazing character, extremely well-written and fully-realized. I love her. I love the novel. But she is a terrible person. And the novel is basically her being a terrible person, and using things such as 'the boredom of provincial life' as an excuse to do bad things. So the fact that Louise seems to completely empathize with her is a serious warning sign. After reading that, I froze and said to myself, 'Nooooooooooooo.' From that point on, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of dread, of just waiting to see how exactly Louise would do her damage. And she does all right. The rest of the novel is watching the North family unravel in slow motion, in which Louise is the main catalyst. It is a beautifully written trainwreck, and I love this novel. I just won't have the emotional faculties to re-read it any time soon.