Hours Before Dawn [Hardcover]

Celia Fremlin (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd; New impression edition (May 17, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575016299
• ISBN-13: 978-0575016293
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gothic in suburbia, December 27, 2001

By 

X.L. (Noisy le sec, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hours Before Dawn (Celia Fremlin Mysteries) (Paperback)

Celia Fremlin is one of the most underrated british mystery writers. She gave us near-twenty novels of a constant quality, sitting fear and nightmare in daily life, confrontating people next door to thrilling situations. "Hours", Edgar-winner for 1959, is one of her best works, often imitated (remember a Curtis Hanson movie, with Rebecca DeMornay...) but never equalled. Strenght of this book is the sharp observation of daily life of an housewife, her troubles with children, husband, insomnia... Powerfully written, plotted... A must.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My All-time Favorite Book, December 15, 1999

By 

Catherine Brown - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hours Before Dawn (Celia Fremlin Mysteries) (Paperback)

I read this book about once a year because it is so delicious. It's a great "read", quick and funny, and it's also a very, very smart commentary on domestic life in the early sixties in the USA. You will watch an ever more exhausted mother of small children encounter every day life as well as mysterious happenings from the gauzy gaze of exhaustion.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bite Your Nails!, July 10, 2010

By 

Catherine Lewis "cozy cat" (evanston, il usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hours Before Dawn (Mass Market Paperback)

If you are a student of seemingly minor social niceties and/or barbs you will thoroughly enjoy this tale of a woman who struggles to please her family, friends and neighbors while trying to ignore the signs of something bizarre happening. The play of the petty one-up-man-ship of the characters is superb and eminently believable in this depiction of an ordinary mother and wife living in England in the mid 1900s. The tension mounts slowly and remorselessly, culminating in a nerve-racking conclusion.