Leave Her to Heaven

Leave Her to Heaven by Ben Ames Williams was such an excellent read. Originally published in 1944 and made into a 1945 movie which won the lead actress an Academy Award, this is a story of obsession and jealousy. If this book was published today, I believe it would be overdone instead, this book is subtle and builds slowly until you realize when Ellen says “I will never let you go” to Richard, she really means it.

Richard Harland meets the beautiful Ellen on a train and they turn up as guests at the same ranch in New Mexico. Although his inner voices are telling him to walk away, they fall in love and marry within two weeks of meeting. At first delirious with happiness, Richard eventually sees how pathologically jealous of him Ellen show more is. She doesn’t want anyone else to come into their inner circle and this includes his younger, crippled brother, her sister, or even their unborn child.

The story is told in flashback sequence and slowly the reader learns about Ellen and how she manipulates people and events to her advantage. The author is a true storyteller and although slightly melodramatic, I was totally drawn into the story and found this a hard book to put down for any length of time. I love the movie based on this book and so I was eager to see how the book compares to it. I am happy to say both are great fun and Ben Ames Williams has created a deeply flawed but brilliant character with the self-absorbed cruel Ellen. Although some may find Leave Her To Heaven a little dated but for me it was reading perfection. show less

I thought I was going to like this story even more than I did. Having seen the movie several times, I thought it would be interesting and entertaining to go deeper, especially into the Ellen character, into her noir depravity.

Ellen is sometimes mentioned as the most fatale of femme fatales, unrelentingly malicious. And that’s true of Ellen in the book.

It kicks in when she meets the story’s protagonist, Richard Harland, on a train from Chicago to New Mexico. Neither knows it but both are bound for a visit to the same ranch in New Mexico. They are seated across from each other in the train’s observation car. Harland is completely taken and distracted by Ellen’s beauty, daydreaming himself into a fantasy. Ellen coincidentally is show more reading a novel written by Harland himself. She falls asleep while reading it, with Harland still staring at her.

In fact, once she awakens, she’s the one to apologize for staring at him, saying that he looks very much like her father.

It’s a moment when Ellen’s obsessive, possessive love for her father passes like a spirit from her deceased father to Harland. Before their visit to New Mexico is over, they are married. She vows, with too literal a truth, to never let him go.

And Ellen’s mother chimes in to Harland, “She’ll eat you alive and gnaw your bones!”

And she does, figuratively anyway. She can’t bear anything that intrudes on their life together. Harland’s devotion to his younger brother Danny, stricken with infantile paralysis, is a threat. Ellen plots his removal.

Turn after turn, this is Ellen. Bearing her own child, by Harland, she finds the unborn child a threat. Like Danny, it must be removed.

She is driven, not just as femme fatale to the man she’s ensnared, but to herself as well. Her possessiveness is self-destructive. And, in classic noir style, we watch it unfold, as it threatens to take down Harland, Ellen’s sister (and of course, rival), Ruth, and herself. She’s a human grenade.

But as I said, the die is pretty much cast from the beginning. Ellen is not really deep or complex — that’s one thing I was missing in the story. The noir inevitability she nurtures is linear and clear — what makes the story more than ordinary is just that hard groove of ruthless possessiveness.

One thing that caught me was the experience of Harland’s despair. The author makes us experience it right along with Harland. He’s as stuck as stuck gets when he realizes who he is married to, the things she has done and will do, and the condemned life he feels he has to live from that point on.

Okay, pretty gloomy. You have to be a serious noir fan, I think, to enjoy such a reading experience.

If you’re not, and you get on the train with Harland and Ellen anyway, hang in there, because things will get better. Much better for Harland and others in his life by the end of the story. Maybe even a little too much better, as if the author just couldn't let the story end as darkly as it wanted to.

The writing itself didn’t flow as quickly as you might expect of a more pulpy noir, like a Hammett or a Cain story. It moves a bit slowly.

But the author does perform some nicely done stylistic turns — the beginning of the story is told first from Harland’s perspective, then Ellen’s, and then from Harland’s brother Danny’s. It’s like three trains headed for an intersection.

Okay, enough train metaphors. show less

As another reviewer commented, Harland is a character who thinks with his penis. Ellen Harland is a master manipulator. This author certainly knows how to make you hate his character. Ellen is a well-fleshed-out character that is beautiful on the outside, and a hideous, reeking monster on the inside. The feeling I got from Richard Harland was of a wife-whipped man, but not much more. The last part, the court scenes, did drag on a bit. Overall, however, worth the read.

Too long!

My parents were both avid readers and often discussed their reading choices with me. This is probably why I have an appreciation for classic literature between the 1930s to the 1970s.
Leave Her to Heaven by Ben Ames William is one such classic, published in 1944. I had previously read two of his historical fiction novels and was excited to listen to an audiobook of one of his other works. I was rewarded with another excellent story.

Leave Her to Heaven does not actually have any dates in terms of specific years. I have tried to date it by the omission of any mention of war, the existence of airplanes, Warm Springs operating as a polio institution, and have come up with anywhere between the 1920s to the late 1930’s. I tried researching show more it to pin it down but was unable to.

The main character is Harland. He is a successful author, raised in privilege. Since the death of his parents, he now supports his younger brother Danny who is recovering from infantile paralysis, polio. Harland is in his thirties and Danny is thirteen. They have a very close relationship before Danny is sick and afterwards they become even closer. They keep each other strong as they struggle with Danny’s recovery.

Harland’s relationship with Danny lives at the heart of the book. He is not a person seeking fulfillment in a relationship. He tries to keep Danny as active as he can be and tries to find activities they can do together. When he and Danny are invited to a friend’s ranch in the west, Danny encourages Harland to go although he cannot accompany him. As Harland travels by train, he notices a beautiful woman reading his latest book. This beautiful woman, Ellen, is headed to the same ranch he is.

When they meet on the way out to the ranch, Harland is enchanted by her beauty. Ellen immediately sets her cap for him even though she is engaged to a lawyer in Maine. At the ranch, Ellen’s sister, Ruth and mother, watch as Ellen manipulates her way into marrying Harland before they leave the ranch. He is not truly in love with her but allows himself to be swept of his feet.

Ellen will stop at nothing to possess all of Harland. She is jealous of his brother, his writing, or anything that she is not wholly the focus of. It is a fascinating study of a woman whose possessiveness becomes deadly. While some characters realize there is something wrong with Ellen, others are easily manipulated to fulfill her plans. No one is safe while Ellen breathes. Or even after.

Mike Dennis does a wonderful job narrating the book. He does a great job with the male vs. female voices. The language in the book reflects the time period in which it was written. Mr. Dennis handles the dated language well. It flows and seems very natural. I would definitely listen to another book narrated by Mr. Dennis. The production quality was excellent.

Audiobook provided in exchange for fair review. show less

My original Leave Her To Heaven audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

My parents were both avid readers and often discussed their reading choices with me. This is probably why I have an appreciation for classic literature between the 1930s to the 1970s.
Leave Her to Heaven by Ben Ames William is one such classic, published in 1944. I had previously read two of his historical fiction novels and was excited to listen to an audiobook of one of his other works. I was rewarded with another excellent story.

Leave Her to Heaven does not actually have any dates in terms of specific years. I have tried to date it by the omission of any mention of war, the existence of airplanes, Warm Springs operating as a polio show more institution, and have come up with anywhere between the 1920s to the late 1930’s. I tried researching it to pin it down but was unable to.

The main character is Harland. He is a successful author, raised in privilege. Since the death of his parents, he now supports his younger brother Danny who is recovering from infantile paralysis, polio. Harland is in his thirties and Danny is thirteen. They have a very close relationship before Danny is sick and afterwards they become even closer. They keep each other strong as they struggle with Danny’s recovery.

Harland’s relationship with Danny lives at the heart of the book. He is not a person seeking fulfillment in a relationship. He tries to keep Danny as active as he can be and tries to find activities they can do together. When he and Danny are invited to a friend’s ranch in the west, Danny encourages Harland to go although he cannot accompany him. As Harland travels by train, he notices a beautiful woman reading his latest book. This beautiful woman, Ellen, is headed to the same ranch he is.

When they meet on the way out to the ranch, Harland is enchanted by her beauty. Ellen immediately sets her cap for him even though she is engaged to a lawyer in Maine. At the ranch, Ellen’s sister, Ruth and mother, watch as Ellen manipulates her way into marrying Harland before they leave the ranch. He is not truly in love with her but allows himself to be swept of his feet.

Ellen will stop at nothing to possess all of Harland. She is jealous of his brother, his writing, or anything that she is not wholly the focus of. It is a fascinating study of a woman whose possessiveness becomes deadly. While some characters realize there is something wrong with Ellen, others are easily manipulated to fulfill her plans. No one is safe while Ellen breathes. Or even after.

Mike Dennis does a wonderful job narrating the book. He does a great job with the male vs. female voices. The language in the book reflects the time period in which it was written. Mr. Dennis handles the dated language well. It flows and seems very natural. I would definitely listen to another book narrated by Mr. Dennis. The production quality was excellent.

Audiobook was provided for review by the narrator. show less

El amor llevado al límite, la obsesión enfermiza, los celos maniáticos, la necesidad de poseer al amado... La historia de una mujer, Ellen Berent, que, loca de pasión, arrastra a todos los que la rodean a la perdición y al desastre... A un abismo del que ella tampoco logra escapar.