Celia Fremlin was recommended to me by a good friend (Lynn) on here ages ago and I've only just got round to reading my first of her novels. It starts with sensible Meg receiving a message from older sister (and often overwrought), Isabel about a problem with their half-sister, Mildred.

Fremlin's admirably plotted novels and short stories are about people leading lives of quiet or vociferous desperation in suburban backwaters . In this one, Meg, who is the youngest but most sensible of three sisters is summoned to a seaside resort by Isobel, who is worried about their older sister Mildred. Meg has a sister, Isabel, plus an older, half-sister, Mildred, who looked after her, after her mother’s death.

And as with Taylor's novels that sense of the Victorian era - how else to explain the several anecdotes from an elderly lady in her button-up boots. The characterisation is sublime, from the worrying sister Isabel to Cedric, who is not a main character. She seems largely unknown, but maybe this will be another hit for Faber, and bring her some of the recognition she deserves. The tension was still sky high, particularly during the isolation at the cottage, and I still found the book difficult to put down at bedtime.

Before she goes, she tells her boyfriend; the irresponsible, irrepressible, Freddy, that she is leaving. I was very satisfied with the ending, which I guessed, but not until I was a good way in, and other possibilities seemed to be exhausted. Fremlin breeds monsters from the minutiae of life and shows how lack of love and loneliness can cause them .Her second thriller, Uncle Paul, evokes a similar atmosphere of menace as the paranoia of her characters — and readers — combine to form a mood of increasing tension. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer.

An interesting first publication date, a time of flux with stuff from WW2 still hanging over people. Captain Cockerill was gallantly anxious that Mildred and her two sisters should accompany him for a walk along the promenade; and Meg could only hope that the poor little man was prepared for the way in which this simple proposal, in the hands of Mildred and Isabel, at once took on the character of a large-scale manoeuvre.It would be great if Faber carry on with these Fremlin reissues as they have quite a few in their Faber Finds series – The Parasite Person included! In the belief that Mildred would be far better off virtually anywhere else than in an isolated cottage with no amenities, Meg persuades her half-sister to move into a local hotel, a delightfully old-fashioned place with an odd assortment of guests. Isabel has married Phillip in some haste and seems to know little about him and Meg is the same, her fancy man, Freddy is fun to be with, but she has no clue who "his people" are. Meg joins them on holiday by the sea, where Mildred is staying in the cottage where she found out her husband, Paul, had tried to murder his first wife over fifteen years ago.