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.