Customer Reviews

Hours Before Dawn

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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.

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.

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.

Written in 1958, this is both a mystery and a social commentary on a housewife's life during the 1950's. Louise is a stay at home mother of three little girls, the youngest only six months old. She seems to be going a little bonkers, possibly suffering from some post-partum depression. She and her unsympathetic husband rent a room to an oddball sort of woman. The book's creepiness begins when the odd renter, a teacher, moves in. Suspense builds as does Louise's nuttiness until the final pages when the crashing climax reveals all. This writing is pretty typical of the 40s and 50s style of suspenseful novels, and reminiscent of du Maurier, Rhinehart, and Christie. There's a lot of dialogue, a certain amount of action, a good deal of suspense, and no sex or foul language. Some of which makes it a little dull in places. However it's worth the read, and if you like all your ends tied up the author does a wonderful job.