Rather Dated February: Norah Lofts' 'Lady Living Alone'

[MotherofPearl]

Welcome to the 'Rather Dated' bookclub. I've lost the blurb we used to use at the start of each monthly thread, but we've been going for a couple of years and read a 'rather dated' book a month, usually.

We've read Norah Lofts 'Lady Living Alone' in February, for discussion in March.

I can't remember who recommended this one, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, so thank you. I stayed up late to finish it as I was riveted by the story and desperate to know how things would end for Penelope and the loathsome Terry.

I think what was so clever about this book was the way that Lofts played with readers' expectations. As the plot progresses and Terry declares his love for Penelope, you really want to believe that he means it. It plays on lots of romantic conventions. But all the while there's a feeling of slight mistrust, and of course that starts to grow as Lofts plants little seeds of doubt and suspicion about Terry's true motives. By the end it's turned from a romance into an absolutely gripping thriller. I could not put it down until I knew Penelope was safe (and the relief when she manages to get Terry into the well was immense!).

The other clever device was structuring the story around Penelope's fear of being alone at night, because by the end it's obvious that she's much safer alone than with Terry, and after she realises this her fear is conquered.

I am sure there is more to say but I'll stop there for now, apart from to say that one rather dated detail that struck me was all Penelope's smoking! Especially that night at the hotel where she stays up all night smoking and writing with the window shut! The food at the hotel sounded lamentable.

Thank you for starting off our discussion for this book, MotherofPearl! Thank you to Inaptonym for the recommendation!

This was a riveting read. I also felt compelled to keep reading and even flicked ahead to see if Penelope was going to be okay, especially towards the end. It's always a good sign when I need to read ahead!

I had no preconceived notions about the book, I just went blindly into it (much like Penelope taking Terry into her house).
I thought it was going to be a cosy domestic novel or at most a book about an unlikely marriage and its social ramifications. What a surprise to see it change genre and become a very dark thriller! As MotherofPearl has said, the writing was skillful. It was clever how seeds of doubt were sown and the reader forced to acknowledge the truth about Terry, the absolute creep! I was most relieved to see him get shoved down the well.

I experienced a range of emotions concerning Penelope from admiration to annoyance and relief for the happy ending. I was annoyed that she didn't give Terry his walking papers after she found out about the young woman and her pregnancy. All turned out well in the end and Penelope grew into the title of the book; a lady living alone. Talk about learning the hard way, however!

I enjoyed all the period details, especially Penelope driving her car and I agree about all the smoking! It was set in the 1940s I think?

Found you! Thank you for the directions. Off out now, but will post my response when I’m back. Suffice for now to say I absolutely loved it. What a great book.

Agree that this was a great read. I’d heard of Norah Lofts, though never read her, and thought of her as a writer of historical fiction. She published this under a pseudonym, I guess for that reason. But I loved how she made Penelope into a lady writer of historical fiction, felt like a bit of a meta joke!
I had no idea what to expect, so the genre shifting crept up on me, with an air of menace. I thought I was reading a humorous novel about a May to December romance, and it gradually turned into a quite frightening tale of gaslighting and cheating and financial abuse that felt very modern, in a rather dated way! Loved all the smoking, and the idea Penelope could just get into the car and drive it without being very good (or taking a test?). It was a real page turner at the end as I genuinely worried, because NL has already demonstrated she wasn’t afraid to shift genres, that the expected happy ending where Penelope survives might not happen. I was so relieved when horrible Terry fell down the well in the struggle.
One line made me laugh out loud, when the pattern on the carpet in the awful guest house was described as looking like pounded up liquorice allsorts.
Thank you for recommending this one.

Excellent points about Norah Lofts writing as Penelope Shadow and the dynamic of gaslighting, cheating and financial abuse in relationships which is still relevant today.

The line about the carpet was good. That guesthouse sounded ghastly. The food!

I enjoyed it and read most of it on a long train journey. Like most others, I knew of Norah Lofts but hadn’t read any of her historical novels - it’s interesting that she chose to use a male pseudonym for this, and that her characterisation of Penelope's books - which sounded rather like her own - had an edge of affectionate mockery.

However, I was also not remotely expecting the sudden switch in plot and the gear-change that made this into a novel about relationships gone bad and, ultimately, coercive control. I wasn’t sure that the tone of the second part of the book meshed that well with the first, which was almost quite fairytale-like (dare I say too that I did find it a bit baffling that someone who decides to live alone has….an inability to be in a house by themselves?!).

A very interesting choice, though! I doubt I’d have found my way to it otherwise, as I didn’t know NL had written anything other than her historical novels, and though I’ve bought a lot of the same BL series, I'd passed over this one.

It was an interesting hybrid of a book!

Nice to read everyone's reviews.

I agree with feeling frustrated with Penelope as it became obvious that Terry was trying to poison her. I kept willing her to realise and not to drink the lemon water he placed next to her bed!

I was frustrated that she kept taking him back although it was glaringly obvious he still had his bit of stuff on the side…..

That’s a very good point, @Terpsichore , about the two halves of the book not quite meshing. I did feel there was a noticeable shift in tempo, with the first half being a bit more leisurely in pace.

I was giving my husband updates on the plot throughout because it was quite melodramatic and entertaining and he called it as soon as Terry came home with Penelope and started making himself indispensable. Of course at that point I had no idea they would get married so argued he was wrong, and then had to read my husbands prediction come true as I read on.

Very entertaining read

Very good, BadSpella 😄

Sorry to show up so late - I fell down a Penelope-style work well (too soon? 😅)

I'd glad others have enjoyed this book, and I've enjoyed reading through your journeys through it! Quite surprised that I seem to be the only one who'd read Norah Lofts before - she's just the type of (unjustly) neglected middlebrow female novelist I'd expect other RD-readers would gravitate to, but maybe it's a genre preference thing? Or those 'formulaic bodice-ripper' covers they often have, when IME her books are more romances in the old sense - adventurous, dramatic (sometimes quite dark) but unsentimental on relationships, much like LLA. TBF I've only read 8 which is barely scratching the surface of her output....

And they absolutely did not help me predict what was going to happen in LLA - 😅actually my brain went full Catherine Morland when Penelope took that Wrong Turn and ended up at the Very Gothic Guesthouse. Reading the book for a second time, there were very strong hints dropped about Terry from the very beginning, noticed or intuited by P herself, but they blended in with the general creepiness and P's already heightened emotions in that snowstorm episode.

However, I think knowing the identity of the author did help reconcile me to some of the more convenient plot contrivances, once I read as a piece of historical fiction. (I realise this is only set in the very recent past (1932-37) relative to its publication in 1945 but given the enormous changes brought by the war, it might well have felt longer ago; the specificity of the dates and reference to the 1937 Matrimonial Causes Act also felt very intentional.) Penelope would have been one of the 'surplus women' from the last war, and it's only her new wealth that would enable her to be a LLA, which at that time would have meant with servants. (The 'servant problem' plot in the first section was full of great RD details, esp. the vegetarian housekeeper who runs off to join a cult.) While differing in genre/tone, the thriller plot also developed from her unusual social position - directly, with Terry, but more subtly in her treatment by other male characters: the benevolent but patronising/proprietorial lawyer and the doctor whose prejudices against 'silly, spoilt little women' nearly proved fatal.

Penelope could be exasperating but believably so IMO and I appreciated the pointed commentary about how differently society views similar flaws in successful male authors: eccentricity, impracticality and most of all selfishness (alone-ness). Though it was interesting how often P's 'artist' self (shadow) was treated as a separate entity, offering flashes of insight and distance, but also sometimes talking her out of the bleedingly obvious correct path. Fortunately it was also her 'writer's mind' that saved her in the end, by making her realise what Terry was, what to do about it, and how to get away with it. She really staked her life on creating/staging that plausible alibi - discovered 'an hour later' and there would have been no happy ending, for writer or woman (or us!)

Although, on a (less frantic) reread, the ending has a fair bit of dramatic irony - not just war on the horizon but an implication that the next phase of 'living alone' might involve not only the nice housekeeper but June and the baby too!

Very interesting post @inaptonym
Thank you!

That’s an extremely insightful post @inaptonym

I really liked the fact that Mrs Stornaway, despite being an unprepossessing, deaf, decayed gentlewoman and not much cop as a housekeeper, did in fact prove the heroine of the hour in insisting that the doctor take her back to the house and that they check on Penelope. I cheered at that example of female solitary and friendship.

That's so true, Terpsichore. I loved it too.

Spot the autocorrect in my post, which I didn’t see till too late - female solidarity, obvs.

Lol Terpsichore
I must have read it properly in my head :)* *

Great post @inaptonymand thanks again for recommending the book.

I agree with @Terpsichoreabout the female solidarity shown by Mrs Stornaway. I also thought that Penelope’s sympathy for June showed us a glimpse of female solidarity. Far from hating June she seems strangely drawn to her, and I liked that way that we are shown that they are both victims of the awful Terry, though in different ways. I think Penelope realises this, too.