REVIEW
The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin
Virago £6.99
Celia Fremlin’s name is synonymous with tales of terrors lurking beneath the surface of familiar situations. In The Hours Before Dawn it’s easy to sympathise with Louise Henderson, when all around her seem to be living in a different world, calm and commonplace, and above all understandable. But Louise is so over-wrought with tiredness that it’s becoming hard to tell what’s real and what’s imaginary. The cause of her exhaustion is the fight to maintain a household where the husband is totally impervious to anything but his own comforts, two young girls who demand much attention, and above all a young baby who will not stop crying. Every night is the same. At two o'clock the crying starts with no respite till early morning light. Louise’s hours before dawn are most often spent in the dark, dank scullery, propped up against the mangle, the baby on her knee, trying to avoid waking anyone else in the house!
And this is where the real trouble begins. Louise and her husband have taken in a lodger, Miss Brandon, a classics teacher at the local grammar school. But something, to Louise, is strange about the lodger’s behaviour. Or is it? Perhaps she’s just too overwrought with tiredness? No one else seems to notice, or even much care. But as Louise’s waking and sleeping lives increasingly merge, she discovers that somehow the baby is the key, and has to find out what’s happening before something dreadful happens - if she can just keep awake!
Louise’s plight will strike a chord with many. The idea of a young mother confronted with the near-impossible task of running a home, looking after a husband and children on so little sleep is skilfully transformed into a tale of menace and terror. At times you really wish that she’d knock some sense into her husband, but this is the 50’s and not the 90’s - there’s little hint that he’s anything less than he should be. His lack of awareness only serves to heighten Louise’s feelings of inadequacy and detachment. The Hours Before Dawn is impressive in many respects: the tension and sheer force of the story-telling are fascinating, and Fremlin writes with a wit and insight that had me laughing out loud. The book works just as well now as it did when it was first published in 1959 (and won the Edgar Award for Best Novel) Read this and you’re in for a real treat. (EAL)