Fri 21 Jun 2024
Reviewed by Tony Baer: ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING – The Blank Wall.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING – The Blank Wall. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1947. Pocket #662, paperback, 1950. Ace Double G412. paperback, ca.1965, published back-to-back with The Girl Who Had to Die. Included in Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s (Library of America #268. hardcover, 2015. Not yet confirmed: Before being published in book form “The Blank Wall” appeared as a short story in Ladies’ Home Journal.
[Added later, thanks to David Vineyard in Comment #2 and quoting from IMDb: “Her novel The Blank Wall (1947) was so popular in its day that it was made into a movie titled The Reckless Moment in 1949. In 2001 it was made into the movie The Deep End starring Tilda Swinson.”]
Mom is trying to hold the fort together while Dad is overseas, fighting the big war. Beautiful daughter is coming of age, 17, with the poor judgment prone to youth. She’s ripe for the picking, and a vulture swoops in to pluck.
Gramps has words with the scoundrel; shoves him into the lake. He thinks. He thinks he shoved him in the lake. The next morning mom goes to the boathouse and finds the scoundrel impaled on an anchor.
What should mom do? To what lengths will mom go to protect her family. There are no bounds.
The fortitude of this homemaker-cum-obstructionist mastermind shows the silent strength of maternal instincts facing an existential threat to her home.
Domestic thriller? The hell with nomenclature. It was good.
June 21st, 2024 at 9:39 pm
I have just discovered that the book is available online here:
https://archive.org/details/blankwall0000hold
Holding’s Wikipedia page is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Sanxay_Holding
As part of an evaluation of her work, Raymond Chandler is quoted as saying that she was “the top suspense writer of them all.”
While Anthony Boucher said of her, “For subtlety, realistic conviction, incredible economy, she’s in a class by herself.”
June 21st, 2024 at 11:57 pm
It’s hard to beat Holding who did for Domestic Suspense what Woolrich did for the noirish kind.
This, of course, was the basis for Max Ophuls fine 1949 film noir classic RECKLESS MOMENT starring Joan Bennett and James Mason.
June 22nd, 2024 at 12:58 pm
Thanks, David. I did not know about the Joan Bennett film until I read your comment. I’ve added its existence to the bookish information at the top of Tony’s review. While checking the film out on IMDb, I discovered another film based on the book, that being The Deep End (2001) with Tilda Swinton.
June 22nd, 2024 at 2:52 pm
The Reckless Moment is a major film.
In it the husband has just gone abroad on business, not in the Army. He thinks of anything beyond earning money as women’s work.So do the other males in the family. The wife is frighteningly alone in confronting this crisis. It’s a very feminist film.
I found The Deep End disappointing. But maybe I just didn’t get it.
June 22nd, 2024 at 10:36 pm
Ed Gorman on the novel (and on Robert Randisi):
https://newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com/2008/08/forgotten-booksthe-blank-wall.html
June 23rd, 2024 at 12:30 am
Thanks for the link, Todd. I surely miss Ed and his views on all sorts of books and films, I’m interested in. too/
Here’s another review of the book, this one by August West:
http://vinpulp.blogspot.com/2008/02/blank-wall-by-elisabeth-sanxay-holding.html
June 22nd, 2024 at 11:31 pm
Bennett is superb in the 1949 film as a woman whose strength grows with the seriousness of the problem. Mason has a fine part as a blackmailer with a soul.