The continuing drip-feed of stories about governments and friendly-seeming internet giants sifting through our data has left some citizens feeling outraged and a bit duped. I have no doubt that they would sympathise with poor deceived Ellen North in Dorothy Whipple’s brilliant 1950s novel Someone at a Distance.
‘Ellen was that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife’, who works herself to the bone to make a cheerful home for her children and indolent, self-satisfied husband, Avery. When Avery’s mother employs a young French companion — the vain and poisonous Louise Lanier — we sense that Ellen may not be a happy housewife for long.
Louise wants to get away from her boring provincial town, and so advertises her services for French conversation and ‘light domestic duties’. Once ensconced with the Norths, however, she doesn’t lift a finger to help and wastes no time in getting the measure of her hosts.
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