Elisabeth Sanxay HoldingRecensioni

Es una noche de mayo cargada de lluvia y tristeza, una de esas noches en que nadie debería estar solo. Corren los peores años de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y Lucía Holley, sentada en su habitación, escribe cartas afectuosas y aburridas al marido que está en Europa luchando. Abajo, en el salón, andan Bee y David, sus dos hijos adolescentes, y el padre de Lucía. Esa estampa típica de una familia americana de mediados del siglo pronto se verá trastocada por el asesinato de un hombre que intentaba seducir a Bee. De repente, los hechos se precipitan, y Lucía, ama de casa y madre ejemplar, será víctima de un extraño chantaje, una mezcla insólita de violencia y ternura a manos de un hombre que finalmente la obligará a replantearse su vida entera.

Jake Duff is a successful middle-aged man on his second marriage, to the lovely Regina (Reggie.) But Jake is dissatisfied with her every action and imagines her inferior to his deceased first wife. In the house too, are his 7 year old son, his governess (whom Jake is beginning to see as a better bet than Reggie....a "real woman") and a handsome Irish chauffeur....
As Jake's drinking becomes excessive, as his plots and jealousy grow...and this is told completely from his point of view.....the reader awaits a dramatic denouement...½

Lonely wife Lucia Holley writes dull letters to her husband, serving in WW2. Meanwhile she, her affable elderly father and two judgemntal teenage kids - and a housekeeper - live a respectable life.
When 17 year old Bea is found to have been consorting - and writing incriminating letters- to a dodgy older man, Lucia is resolved to nip their liaison in the bud. However the situation goes horribly wrong...
This is a memorable work as it combines a tense-making thriller with really well drawn profiles of all the characters. Lucia feels overwhelmed, determined to keep her family together at all costs, to tell no one anything. She also feels dismissed and despised by Bea (who mocks her mother's uneventful life); criticized by David (she doesn't conform to what he expects of a mother) and inferior to the competent housekeeper.
Nothing is black and white- criminal Donnelly was arguably a finer character than Lucia...

What a great book--somehow this is at once completely of its time--maybe to some it would even be dated--and yet it feels completely fresh. Beautifully and economically written, and such a wonderful depiction of the heroine's interior life.

Finely drawn thriller, following a well-to-do housewife caught up in seedy underworld dealings while her husband is away fighting in WW2. All of the characters are well-developed, but the relationship between the mother and daughter in particular has an interesting trajectory. Holding even manages to make her villains appear sympathetic through sparse prose and an empathetic lens.

Quick read about a woman in the 1940s and the depths she will go to protect her family. Lucia Holley does not like Ted Darby, a man with whom her 17 year old daughter Bee has become involved. Lucia tries to keep them apart, but that only drives them closer together. When Lucia discovers Ted dead in a boat near their home, she is frantic, and decides to hide the body.
This kicks off a series of events with unsavory characters. She is blackmailed by Nagle, and then further harassed by Donnelly.
This is a mystery written in 1947, with a mix of everyday life and extraordinary circumstances.

#TheBlankWall #ElisabethSanxayHolding

THE BLANK WALL is, essentially, the story of Lucia Holley. She is a New Yorker but has rented a house outside the city while her husband is away at war. She lives with her ageing father, two teenage children and a lone servant. From the outside her life appears perfect, perhaps aside from the hardships associated with wartime, but from her perspective Lucia’s life is anything but perfect. And that’s even before her 17 year old daughter Bee hooks up with a much older, married gangster-type. She is socially awkward and feels like a failure as she compares herself unfavourably to the neighbours and other women she knows.

With domestic suspense being in vogue at the moment it’s a shame that Holding and authors like her aren’t receiving more of a resurgence. THE BLANK WALL is at least as good as any of the modern tales bearing the categorisation and a whole lot better than a most of them. It’s genuinely tense and suspenseful, really never letting up on the calamities befalling poor Lucia. Lucia is never one of those loveable characters that worms their way into a reader’s heart but I grew increasingly sympathetic towards her. Holding paints a picture of a woman overwhelmed by the gulf between the expectations everyone has of her and her ability, or lack thereof, to live up to those expectations. Though I can’t actually imagine the human being that could give Bee and David what they’re looking for in a mother; they are a pair of insufferable, patronising ingrates. At least that’s how I view them at my age. I did wonder how I might have viewed them when I was closer to their age than their mother’s.

Lucia alternates between displaying amazing strength and an almost debilitating sense of failure as she faces an unwanted dead body, being blackmailed and the deep embarrassment of not having enough money to protect her loved ones. She hides these terrors from everyone, especially her absent husband who she writes to every night without giving even a hint of what’s really going on in her life. She doesn’t want to worry him. Only Sybil, the housekeeper, has some idea of what’s really happening. Until Lucia meets the nice(ish) gangster. Martin Donnelly, who seems to fall under Lucia’s spell, is the only character in the book I never fully believed but perhaps that’s because I’ve seen too many mafia movies.

Although it’s 70 years old this year THE BLANK WALL does not feel dated in the way that some older books do. I’m sure many women, and to be fair a lot of men too, would sympathise with the feelings Lucia goes through when she is confronted by things outside her control and being unable to do all the things her loved ones need her to do. The depiction of a supposedly ‘normal’ woman quietly unravelling is totally compelling and feels very ‘now’. A highly recommended read.

The Girl Who Had to Die is a most unusual crime novel. It takes place on a cruise ship and later at a wealthy family's estate. It is at once a tale about a femme fatale who enchants men and drives them to ruin. It is also a tale of madness, despair, suicide, love, murder, and, although you think you know who has lost their mind, there are points where you wonder if they've all lost their minds.

Most of the story is in dialogue or streams of thought, meaning there is limited action. And it all takes place in narrow settings, but somehow it's so fascinating that it's hard to put down. Perhaps it's the interplay of romance, madness, blackmail, and murder, but then again it's pure madness and that perhaps gets the reader's attention.

My latest foray into older domestic suspense is a definitely creepy story called Lady Killer. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding wrote mysteries from the late 1920's until the early 1950's, and a few of her books have been reissued by Stark House Press. See the following post for a bit more information about her books.

Lady Killer tells the story of Honey Stapleton and her much older husband Weaver who embark on a boat trip from New York to the Caribbean at the beginning of the novel. Their marriage is beginning to deteriorate, and the challenges of being on a small ship with a decidedly strange cast of travelers make their marital problems stand out even more. Honey begins the journey feeling suspicious of the couple in the neighboring cabin, the newlyweds Captain and Alma Lashelle: she worries that the Captain is trying to murder his wife, and the rest of the book involves her attempts to get any of the other passengers or crew members to take her suspicions seriously. There also is a mysterious death on board and a couple odd forays onto islands for short excursions, all which seem ominous as well.

It's a compact novel, it's a creepy novel, but it's not exactly my favorite kind of story. I gravitate towards more plot than suspense. Holding is so good at creating the claustrophobic atmosphere on the boat and in Honey's head that I felt myself having to take breaks. The payoff was quite good, though. I'm glad I tried this author, and I'll return to her when I'm looking for something really suspenseful again.

The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

"DEAR TOM:

Bea is going to Gracie's camp for a week or two. I think it will do her good. It really is pretty dull here."

Every night Lucia writes dull letters about everyday life to her husband a commander somewhere out in the Pacific during WWII. She knows they are dull, but they are intended to give him a vision of a placid life where everything carries on as normal. Lucia wonders what Tom's life is like and what, after two years of war, he is like, who he has become. She and Tom married when Lucia was eighteen and she has been a housewife ever since. She lives with her teenage son and daughter, her elderly father, and their maid in a house near the shore. The daughter Bea, is being particularly rebellious, and Lucia doesn't think she is handling her very well.

I found this novel frequently darkly humorous, though I'm not sure it was meant to be read that way. Lucia is a middle class suburban housewife, struggling through life's domestic minutiae in the midst of wartime shortages, and incidentally having to get rid of bodies, raise $5,000 to pay off blackmailers, and make small talk over lunch with new friends at the sailing club. She will do anything to protect her family from the danger that surrounds them, and yet the family keeps getting in her way. Her father invites one of the blackmailers in for a drink, her children suspect her of having an affair with the man and try to prevent her going anywhere on her own lest she attempt to meet him. Gangsters are repeatedly being told to wait for her in the boathouse, and are repeatedly kept waiting hours, either because Lucia is waiting for her family to get out of the way so she can get to the boathouse unseen, or because she cannot stop herself from making the beds, cleaning the bath, and doing the mending before she goes out to see them. Even when the police come to interview her she keeps them waiting while she mends a hem. In some respects the thing which is most frightening in the book is the hold Lucia's family has on her. Her children, particularly her daughter, view her with contempt because her life has been so dull and predictable, yet the whole family leans on her so much that she realizes that here she is, an adult, unable to go anywhere or do anything without being questioned, having to account for her time and actions, having no time to herself, no freedom. The reality of Lucia's situation is, of course, nightmarish.

I enjoyed it, and so did Raymond Chandler, who wrote to Hamish Hamilton "For my money (Elisabeth Sanxay Holding) is the top suspense writer of them all. She doesn't pour it on and make you feel irritated. Her characters are wonderful: and she has a sort of inner calm which I find very attractive." Alfred Hitchcock included The Blank Wall in the 1959 collection of his favourite suspense stories.

The Blank Wall was filmed in 1949 by Max Ophuls with the release title 'The Reckless Moment', starring James Mason and Joan Bennett, and the 2001 film 'The Deep End', starring Tilda Swinton, was also based on this novel.

Another one of those nice Persephone books.

She hung up the telephone and stood beside it, irresolute, flustered. There are such a lot of things . . . she thought. People are idiots to talk about getting married and being your own mistress, so much more free than women with jobs.
If Bee comes back and finds the dishes in the sink . . . Even unsuspicious Father would think that was queer . . . What reason can I give for running out of the house?

Blank Wall is an enjoyable thriller written in 1947 and set during World War II. Lucia Holley is a middle-class housewife living in a lakeside house in New York State with her elderly father and teenage son and daughter while her husband is in the forces. When her daughter takes up with a disreputable older man, Lucia is desperate to get her away from him, but things go horribly wrong and she is forced to confront blackmailers and lie to the police in an attempt to protect her family and save her daughter from ruin. But this isn't easy for a 1940s housewife whose family expect to know where she is at all times, even with her housekeeper to help her.

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Jacob Duff has it all: A beautiful and much younger second wife, a young son, a nice suburban house a train ride from the office in New York City and a position in society he was born into that shapes him. Now one year into his second marriage, Jacob questions his decision to wed a woman he feels will never fit into his mold of the proper wife for a man of his social station, but he is cognizant that any decision he makes will face the stern scrutiny of his Aunt Lou, whose wealth Jacob will inherit upon her death. What to do....

My Review: A Canadian Book Warbler made me do it. She warbled so loudly about this book that, well, what's a mere mortal to do except give in, order one, and read the damned thing? And now, like Raymond Chandler before me, I am a fan and have several other Holding novels to read.

Boy do I owe that Canadian big for this. What a fun, exciting, and well-made psychological novel of suspense this is. I was completely riveted. Mr. Jacob Duff is our PoV character, and a more revolting, self-pitying, entitlement-driven piece of work is impossible to imagine. Mrs. Reggie Duff, young and beautiful but of a lower social class than Duff is, has a loving heart, a naive trusting nature, and a poor education. Jay Duff, scion of Duff's late wife and himself, is a typical boisterous boy and loves his stepmama Reggie a lot, while alternating between fear of and indifference to his father.

Not one of these folks will emerge from the novel unscathed. Duff the snob wants to divorce Reggie because she's not well-bred; his eccentric Aunt Lou won't hear of it, reminding Duff that he married Reggie for exactly that quality and now he needs to suck it up and deal. Whiny spoiled Duff begins to scheme, to cast about for ways and means to get his own stupid, selfish way.

In the course of doing exactly the wrong thing, Duff manages to kill, cause the death of, and/or ruin the lives of every single person in his way. He's despicable. And yet Holding writes this story, from his PoV remember!, in such a way that it's really unputdownable. I am delighted that I read this entertaining and suspenseful book.

Excellent. Suspenseful and full of detail of immediate post WW2 US. Very different from almost anything else I have read.

A young bride, married to a much older man, sets out on a cruise to the Caribbean. Pretty soon she becomes suspicious of the man in the next cabin--who may be trying to murder his wife! To make things worse, her own husband is acting even more strangely than usual and has no sympathy at all for her suspicions. Luckily, there are other interesting passengers she can try her ideas out on. The book, written in an old-fashioned style as a third person narrative solely from the young wife's point of view, is pretty absorbing, but the ending, despite a few unexpected curves, doesn't completely satisfy. Still, Holding is an interesting writer and does a great job of taking us to a different time and place, though it was contemporary to her. Several of her books are available for free on munseys.com, but her most often praised book, THE BLANK WALL, is not. I will probably seek it out one of these days.

Book description/summary:

Jacob Duff has it all: A beautiful and much younger second wife, a young son, a nice
suburban house a train ride from the office in New York City and a position in society he was born into that shapes him. Now one year into his second marriage, Jacob questions his decision to wed a woman he feels will never fit into his mold of the proper wife for a man of his social station but he is cognizant that any decision he makes will face the stern scrutiny of his aunt, who's wealth Jacob will inherit upon her death. What to do.....

Review:
I had no idea what to expect from this very plainly bound red hardcover book I purchased way, waaaayyy back in 1990 and which has been stored in a box in the crawlspace of my parent's home until now. I have never heard of Holding as an author and can only assume I purchased this one because I was going through a phase of finding and buying older books I would stumble across at garage sales and swap meets. According to Wikipedia, Holding was much admired during her day. Raymond Chandler, one of the top writers of detective fiction during its golden age of 1920–1940, said of Holding that she was “the top suspense writer of them all.” Well, okay then. Good to know.

Jacob Duff is anything but likeable as a character - he is rude, deems people that do not meet his standards of appropriate appearance, behaviour and manners as unworthy of his attention, and he has very little tolerance for much of anything.... not even the alcohol which he consumes like a fish. I started to get a hangover just reading about his drinking. Holding is a great writer for capturing a strong yet ordinary protagonist who makes a careless mistake and gets caught up in bizarre circumstances. The supporting cast are also strong but the focus of the story is all on Jacob, his thoughts and the actions he takes so the supporting characters remain a bit of a mystery to the reader - and are great for helping drive forward Holding's tightly woven plot.

Published in 1946, this story does have a dated quality to it, so I was rather surprised how much this story grew on me. Holding knows how to draw in a reader like me, who is a bit skeptical and who usually doesn't gravitate to novels of suspense or hard-boiled crime. By the time I had reached the half-way mark, I was hooked waiting for a train wreck but not 100% sure that a train wreck was going to happen. Will I read more Holding books? You bet I will, if I can get my hands on any. Might need to consider reading a Raymond Chandler novel, since I have never read any of his works, either.

As an aside, I was rather surprised to see that Holding actually started out her writing career writing romance novels during the 1920's and it wasn't until after the American stock market crash in 1929 that she shifted her writing focus to the more lucrative genre of the detective novel. Interesting fact, IMO.

This book was very flawed, but I enjoyed it anyway.

A woman, Lucia, is caring for her teenaged children in WWII North America. Her husband is away at war, but she is well-off enough to keep her faithful maid who runs the place. The daughter has been hanging about with an unsavory type in an attempt to broaden her horizons and not end up like her boring mother. This fella ends up being accidentally killed, and as an aside, someone comes to blackmail Lucia with letters from her daughter to this ruffian. Presumably it would ruin the family name if news of her association with the dead man gets out. Lucia, it turns out, will do anything to prevent this shame.

So. The blackmailer is good-cop, to his partners bad-cop and has feelings for Lucia. He ends up trying to help her, but only ends up complicating matters. It is never made clear why he falls for Lucia, or why she warms to him, considering he is blackmailing her and that she loves her husband.

She ums, ahs and agonises over everything all the time, and is generally a scatty lead character. But I was ready for a story that I could just read and take in easily, so it sat relatively well with me.

Lucia Holley is a middle-aged housewife, living somewhere in America during WWII. Her husband is away, and she is raising her two teenaged children on the homefront. After her daughter begins dating an unattractive, married man who then turns up dead, Lucia inadvertently becomes involved in the crime when she attempts to cover it up in order to protect the person she thinks killed the boyfriend.

Holding wrote this novel at around the same time that Patricia Highsmith was writing The Talented Mr. Ripley series; and while The Blank Wall isn’t quite as suspenseful as Highsmith’s books, it belongs to the same school of psychological suspense novels. The plot moves quickly, and Holding doesn’t waste her words in order to convey the tension of the plot. The reader really feels Lucia’s inner struggle as she tries to cover up the crime and carry on as usual. It’s interesting that once people start to notice her odd behavior, the attribute it to the completely wrong reasons—but they make complete sense to the people around Lucia because the truth is so bizarre! In that way, I thought this book was well-written.

I was disappointed, however, with the ending of the book, since things seemed to go on as usual without any kind of consequences. I definitely think the ending could have been improved upon. Also, the story line with the mysterious Donnelly is kind of predictable (but sad). A good book, but not my favorite Persephone.½

Complete with crime map on back cover.

Review is for "The Innocent Mrs. Duff," the first novel of the book. It's a pulpy noir about an alcoholic husband and his much younger wife, told from the unreliable point of view of the husband. Quick read, only somewhat satisfying.

I had never heard of this author before I saw her recommended on LT, and this is the first book I have read purely on the basis of such a recommendation. It aso helped that it was a Persephone edition, in beautiful plain grey covers, which just made me want to pick it straight off the library shelf. I really enjoyed it.

The main character is Lucia Holley, a mother living with her two teenagers and her father while her husband is away in the navy during WWII. Her daughter has become involved with an “unsuitable young man”, and Lucia tries to dissuade them from continuing their relationship. This is the starting point for a series of events which I can’t discuss too much without ruining it for those who want to read it, but it involves murder, blackmail, and deception.

What I found interesting was Lucia’s amazement at how “normal” everyday life still seemed to be, despite the very not normal things that were happening. She can’t believe everyone doesn’t see all her surreptitious actions written on her face. When they do begin to think she’s being a bit odd, they jump to completely the wrong conclusions – and they don’t like it, because to them she is just so ordinary and normal (which I suspect is even more important in wartime than otherwise). She herself starts to get better at understanding other people – her children, her maid, the various shady characters she has to deal with - and realizing they may have their own agendas and thoughts, rather than just focussing on herself and assuming that everyone is the same.

Events do get a bit surreal, and some characters are harder to believe than others, but I thought the portrait of an ordinary woman being drawn into extraordinary events one step at a time was good and it kept my attention. I think there’s also a secondary theme – setting the book during the war means that Lucia has to deal with things that her husband would surely have handled if he had been there, and I think some of the things wouldn’t even have happened at all if it hadn’t been wartime. Although she is not happy about what happens, I think she does surprise herself by how well she deals with it all.

All in all, a good read. I would be encouraged to pick up other books by this author.

02 June 2009 - from Ali, who found it in a charity shop in Southwold

When Ali asked if I'd like this duplicate copy of one she owned that she found in a charity shop (why do we only find duplicates? It's not like either of us has the complete set!!) I had a look on the Persephone website and wondered if it was quite my thing, being in effect a murder mystery. I thought the same when I picked it up to read it. But as soon as I met the heroine, Lucia, and recognised in her a typical Persephone Lady (often a mother, often a wife, devoted to her family but with a rich inner life of her own - of course!) and then started to get caught up in the fast-moving and wryly funny plot, I was enjoying myself... and all of a sudden it was late at night with absolutely NO ability to put the thing down! I loved this book - I loved the sweet blackmailer, the more and more complex situations, and the completely believable heroine, dealing with murder and mayhem much as one would handle a recalcitrant toddler or an awkward garden party.½

I really loved this book. Prior to finding this particular edition in a used bookshop on a trip, I'd never actually heard of Holding. I was pleased and surprised to learn that the film, The Deep End (2001, dir. Scott McGehee and David Siegel), was based on The Blank Wall, because it's was a fantastic film and remained with me long after viewing it; needless to say, I had hopes for the two novels contained in the book.

Holding's prose is has an incredible clarity to it. It's crisp, sparse, and clean; in many ways it reminded me a of modern Minimalist painting. It was refreshing to read. Obviously, if you prefer lush, highly descriptive writing, then you probably will not like this book. The narrative, while not necessarily straightforward, is certainly not complex, and completely dependent upon character development. I found the pacing to be perfect; it was brisk enough to move the plot along, but without feeling rushed, and lingered in just the right places for just long enough.

I think that, of the two novels, The Blank Wall is stronger than The Innocent Mrs. Duff, but really it probably comes down to a matter of personal opinion. Holding's work is absolutely worth a read; highly recommended.

A curious book, in which a lot happens, but mostly to the main character, Lucia. Many of the other characters, most of which are her close family, don't really know what's going on, but it is their changed reactions to only slight deviations in behaviour from a woman whom they thought was just a boring housewife & mother which make the book fascinating.½

This Persephone book no. 42 was first published in 1942 – and is set just outside of New York. A middle aged women – Lucia gets herself horribly mixed up with the concealment of a death while trying to protect her 17 year old daughter’s reputation. I enjoyed this little suspense novel, although there were elements of the plot that I was unconvinced were realistic – of course the novel was written in a different time, and people may have acted in ways which to our modern thinking seems bizarre. For some reason the whole novel had the feel of a black and white film for me, as I read I could so easily see the action played out in my head by 1940’s movie stars – maybe it just reminded of an old movie I saw a long time ago but couldn’t quite bring to mind. Anyway despite being unconvinced by some of the plot – the novel remains a taut suspenseful read: quite unputdownable and, I should imagine a great example of suspense type novels of this period.½