The Blank Wall

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 show more 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... show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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.

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 show more 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. show less

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.

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 show more 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. show less