<DIV><p>“A very good novel indeed about the fragility and also the tenacity of love.”—<i>The Spectator</i></p><p>Written in 1953, the last book by best-selling novelist Dorothy Whipple, <i>Someone at a Distance</i> is a quietly gripping story about the destruction of a marriage. Ellen is “that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife” who loves her life in the English countryside. She tends her garden, dotes on her children, and, when she remembers, visits her cantankerous mother-in-law. This domestic bliss, however, is shattered when her husband, in a moment of weak mid-life vanity, runs off with a French girl.</p><p>Dorothy Whipple is a superb stylist with a calm intelligence in the tradition of Mrs. Gaskell. In her preface, Nina Bawden states, “it is a great gift to be able to take an ordinary tale and make it compulsive reading. It is all in the telling and Whipple is a storyteller—an art that cannot be taught, cannot be learned, an art only a few writers are lucky enough to be born with. . . . <i>Someone at a Distance</i> is a brilliant account of frailty and folly.”</p><p>Born in 1893 in Lancashire, England, <b>Dorothy Whipple</b> wrote nine extremely successful novels, two of which were made into films. She also wrote short stories and two memoirs. She died in 1966.</p></DIV>