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The Blank Wall (1947)

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1903155320 (ISBN13: 9781903155325)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Persephone Books

review 1: The Blank Wall is a suspense novel set during World War II. Lucia Holley lives with her two teens and her father in a lakeside house. Her husband, Tom, is somewhere in the Pacific and her frequent letters from him are one of the only bright spots in her life. Her daughter, Bee, is in art school and has been dating an unscrupulous man called Ted Darby. When Lucia tries to stop the relationship she inadvertently immerses herself into a dark, dangerous and completely unfamiliar world she doesn’t know quite how to navigate.The mystery part of this novel is definitely thrilling and well-done, but the more interesting aspect of the novel for me was the questions it raises about homemaking and motherhood. When the novel opens Lucia’s life has already altered with her husband ... moreaway at war. However, she is still the isolated homemaker she has always been, only thinking about planning meals, how to keep her father entertained and her children’s future. When she is forced to come into contact with the outside world through her conflict with Bee’s boyfriend, she realizes that men still find her attractive, that she has the strength to navigate life outside of her home and she discovers the sad fact that her children have a limited view of her capabilities and don’t respect her.Lucia’s narrow existence has stunted her character – she’s naive, childish and has an unrealistic view of how to handle problems. Her son David treats her like a little girl, chastising her about taking the boat out on the lake by herself. Bee is disgusted with Lucia and doesn’t have any regard for her especially after she interferes in her love life. The only one who looks up to Lucia is her father who is even more childish than she is.I don’t think Holding is knocking being a wife and mother, but she is questioning if it somehow stunted the character of the young women who married and then were sucked into family life so completely. Lucia has certainly been sheltered by her husband and it makes me wonder how many women were challenged beyond anything they had ever known when their husbands left for war.
review 2: A suspense novel written by a now-nearly-forgotten writer who was greatly admired by both Alfred Hitchcock and Raymond Chandler. I look over the Goodreads reviews and find that most people were interested by the same thing I was--the "dated" quality of the main character's preoccupations and motives. As a thriller it is only average, if that; but as a window on how a real upper-middle-class housewife during WWII might handle the sudden disruption of her carefully maintained world, it is extremely interesting. Present writers producing novels set before the mid-20th century all seem to project their own interests onto the characters. This one is the real thing, actually written at the time it represents. We have a housewife who, to keep up appearances and maintain her family's reputation, gets involved in moving and hiding a corpse, and then in dealing with blackmailers on the one hand, and a polite but persistent police detective on the other. Would any current writer think of producing something like this to explain the protagonist's actions?--"But her husband and her children did not consider her beyond criticism. She belonged to them; whatever she did affected them; their pride, their good name in the world lay at her hands. They would give her love, protection, even a sort of homage, but in return for that she must be what they wanted and needed her to be." less

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