Press Coverage Winter 2003

The Blank Wall was described by Philip Oakes in the Literary Review as ‘clearly a book with a lasting appeal. What it applauds is a woman’s determination to protect her family, come what may. Strong reader identification perhaps, or just good, civilised writing. Congratulations to Persephone Books for brushing off the latest layer of dust. Good housekeeping, good publishing.’ And the Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘The mix of the everyday and the extraordinary is deft... A most welcome return to print.’

In its review of Tea with Mr Rochester the Independent on Sunday commented: ‘At her best Frances Towers’s prose style is a shimmering marvel, and few writers can so deftly and economically delineate not only the outside but the inside of a character. Her women have layers, and the writer penetrates deep into the core, into the parts of the soul that are barely consciously acknowledged... ‘Don Juan and the Lily’, ‘Spade Man from over the Water’ and ‘Strings in Hollow Shells’ are marvels, novels in miniature. Watch out for the quiet little woman in the corner in Towers’s stories. There’s always more going on there than you can possibly fathom.’ The Guardian noted: ‘Her social range may not be wide, but her descriptions are exquisite and her
tone poised between the wry and the romantic.’ And Best of British magazine ran a feature about us in which it called calling the stories in Tea with Mr Rochester ‘elusive, unsettling, almost Gothic – and beautifully written.’

Plays International wrote about Manja: ‘This magnificent novel... effortlessly connects individual lives to social currents...Gravely sardonic, in a manner not dissimilar to Odon von Horvath, this utterly compelling chronicle reads splendidly in Kate Phillips’ translation.’

Lettice Delmer, according to Home & Family, ‘is a novel in verse – but don’t let that put you off. You’ll be so gripped after the first few pages that you won’t even notice, and later you’ll recall how clever and poetic it is. It won’t be easy to forget the tragic heroine, just as it’s difficult to forget Hardy’s Tess.'

Nottingham County Lit admired The Priory, ‘the third Whipple novel to be republished by Persephone Books. Her sharp eye for detail and the nuances of family relationships together with her wry wit are a delight.’

For ‘A Little Light Reading’ in the Sunday Times Helen Dunmore chose The
Wise Virgins. ‘It’s a passionate, cuttingly truthful story of a love affair between two people struggling against the prejudices of their time and place. Leonard Woolf’s writing is almost unbearably honest as he describes Harry, full of ‘desire. waiting and excitement’, yet unable to rouse any answering feeling in Camilla.'

Finally, the excellent website bookslut.com posted a review of Someone at a
Distance: ‘Whipple weaves a story that is everything of which a serious reader might dream. It is not only entertaining material, but is also a social commentary. Whipple manages to convey a lesson, or at least an observation, about the damage one’s actions can do if one does not consider them carefully; she does so without “preaching”, and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. Her gift to her readers, though, is not her ‘moral’ but her story, and the way it envelops them in the most mundane and the most extraordinary sorts of ways. “It is a great gift to take an ordinary tale and make it extraordinary reading,” Nina Bawden says in her Preface,and this describes Whipple’s writing to a tee.’ You can read the full review here.