Reviewed by Harriet
In the year 1932, Miss Penelope Shadow published a book which instantly became a best seller. It was her fourth book and not, in her opinion, markedly superior to its predecessors. So in the secret recesses of her delighted, amazed and muddled mind, she attributed its success to its attractive title.
So begins the latest novel in the British Library Women Writers series, which I’ve been following and almost always reviewing since the very beginning.
The aptly named Penelope Shadow is ’one of those women who is never described without the diminutive: a sweet little thing, a funny little thing, poor little thing’. And indeed that is how the people who know her see her. She’s in her early thirties, quiet and unassuming, and when the novel begins she’s living with her older half-sister Elsie, who has just announced that she’s getting married and moving to Africa. Having made lots of money from her latest novel, Penelope has decided to buy a pretty house she’s spotted in the countryside and move there, to live alone for the first time in her life. But there’s a problem.
It’ll be awfully lonely,” said Elsie in as diffident a way as her forthright voice could speak. She was remembering that over a period of twelve years Penelope’s little foible of not liking to be alone in a house after dark, had caused her hostess a vast amount of inconvenience.
Miss Shadow’s heart had missed a beat or two as she too, and for the first time, remembered her abnormal nervousness.
Of course this is the 1930s and she’s well off, so she employs servants, who unfortunately never stay very long. And when the last one has walked out, Penelope cannot bear the solitude any more and sets off in her car to the nearest town to attempt to get a replacement quickly from the employment agency. But she’s reckoned without the snow, which falls faster and thicker by the minute, and soon she despairs of being able to continue and decides to stop at the nearest guesthouse for the night. And happily she soon spots a noticeboard:
And, oddly enough, though everything within sight was by this time thickly coated with snow which was falling so fast that Miss Shadow had twice had to clear the accumulation of it from her windscreen where the wiper was clogging, the momentous notice-board, with its back to the wind, was clear and perfectly legible. From a great way off Miss Shadow read its exhortation. “Turn Left,” it said, “for the Plantation Guest House. Historic Surroundings with Modern Comforts. Golf. Riding. Fishing, H. and C. in all rooms. Terms Moderate.”
Made for me, said Miss Shadow aloud. She had contracted the habit of talking to herself when alone.
Needless to say, the Plantation in no way resembles its description. It’s run down, dirty, full of strange foreign guests, and the food is disgusting. But Penelope is in luck. Terry Munch, a charming, handsome young man who is working there temporarily, takes pity on her, finds her a better room, fills her hot water bottle, and sneaks her an edible meal from the kitchen. Next morning, when she’s leaving, Terry asks if she can give him a lift to town. Realising he’s looking for a job, she offers him one, which he accepts gratefully. He seems like the perfect housekeeper and she’s delighted to have found him. Needless to say, one thing leads to another and before long they are married.
So will they live happily ever after? Unfortunately not. If you thought this was going to be a conventional domestic novel, you’d be in for a surprise in the second half, in which developments occur which can’t really be revealed in a review. However, the difficult, challenging and even dangerous events that take place have one highly satisfactory result. Penelope discovers that she possesses the courage and strength of her novels’ heroines, ‘those good ruthless spirits, Jane Moore, Xhalama, and Elizabeth Tudor’, and thanks to that, discovers that ‘the phobia had left her. She was now in every way qualified to be a lady living alone’.
Sadly the British Library seems to have stopped sending me review copies, so I bought this one for myself. And it was money well spent. It’s an excellent addition to the series and highly recommended.
Harriet is a co-founder and editor of Shiny.
Norah Lofts, Lady Living Alone (British Library, 2024). 9780-712355124, 196pp., paperback original.
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