276°
Posted 20 hours ago

A Helping Hand: Celia Dale

£4.995£9.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

In truth, Lena is selfish, irritable and impatient – qualities that Maisie soon turns to her own advantage by listening to Lena’s woes. Without spoiling anything, the theme of this book is something that tends to happen quite often today as people are generally selfish by nature. I read A Dark Corner some time ago and have plans to reread it soon, but A Helping Hand is completely new to me. A middle aged couple take in an elderly woman they befriend in Italy, with no good motive behind their actions.

As the story gets underway, we find the Evanses on holiday in Italy, ostensibly as a bit of a break following the death of Auntie Flo, whom the couple had been looking after in their home before the old lady’s death. This retired couple have a very lucrative racketeer where they take care of old ladies while they steal her pension and finally their will. I can most certainly recommend this one, and my thanks to Valancourt for bringing it back into print.In Helping with Enquiries there are only three main protagonists, their story revolving around the murder of the mother. Nevertheless, everything I’ve heard about her work makes me think she’s in a similar vein – all the more so as you’ve backed this up! Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. While Maisie is somewhat reluctant to have an outsider in the house, potentially disrupting their treatment of Mrs F, Josh is more willing, particularly given the girl’s attractiveness. We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.As Jenn Ashworth’s introduction to this new edition notes, Dale’s novel is tangled in the ‘the cold-blooded economics of care’ and the fact of how ‘easy it is for control to seep into our relations’. It's a good thing that I am one of those readers who doesn't need to find something likeable with the characters in a book because with only one or two exceptions, the people involved in this story are absolutely vile. You know what old folk are, they get used to things being just as they like them, just as they’re used to. I read this in one day and loved it for the way the author was able to depict the horrible ordinariness of a certain kind of evil. The comparison to Shirley Jackson and Roald Dahl is spot on: a creepy suburban horror story, not about ghosts or anything supernatural, but about some cruel yet ordinary humans.

Excerpts and links may be used, provided that the material is credited and referenced to JacquiWine’s Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. An absolute shoo-in for my end-of-year highlights, I devoured this brilliant, terrifying novel in my eagerness to reach the end. All the more haunting for its grounding in apparent normality – the flat, characterless feel of the suburban setting is brilliantly evoked.Elder abuse, before the term was commonplace, seems to be Celia Dale's writing theme across her work. Funnily enough, Fremlin popped into my head as I was reading this, even though I’ve yet to try her myself.

Celia Dale was born in 1912 and she was daughter of the actor, James Dale and was married to the journalist and critic, Guy Ramsey until his death in 1959. In essence, Maisie treats the old lady like a child, confining her to bed for long periods and scolding her for the little accidents and spillages that occur. Every time the debate around assisted suicide comes up, we hear of the need for firm safeguards to be put in place to actively prevent something akin to this, where family members and ‘carers’ might apply subtle pressure to an elderly or infirm relative to sign away their life. Most of the characters in this novel are over 60 years old so they do repeat themselves to great effect. while it’s very obvious this was written in the 60’s and some of the old british terms went right over my head, this story fully unnerved me.At first, all is sweetness and light at the Evanses following Mrs Fingal’s arrival; but slowly and stealthily, the tone beings to change. I’m broadly supportive of assisted suicide in appropriate circumstances, but the safeguards have to be in place to avoid misuse/coercive control. One of the things Dale does so well here is to let the reader in on what the Evanses are up to, slowly but surely as the narrative unfolds.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment