The latest of Celia Dale’s novels to be reprinted, A Spring of Love, examines a relationship gone awry from the marital bed. When Esther, meets the dazzling gentleman Raymond, she can’t believe her luck having resigned herself to spinsterhood. But in classic Dale fashion all is not how it appears and, in an exquisitely paced slow extraction of truths, the mask that Raymond has so carefully created begins to slip.
Those who know Dale’s thrilling prose know she is fond of the mundane civility of British suburbia and it is in these quiet homes she seeks to disturb. She more than earns her title as a master of the domestic thriller; A Spring of Love is certainly the most irrefutable demonstration of the author’s skill to be reappraised.
Every walk down memory lane is a purposefully placed distraction and every change in Raymond’s eyes is a hint at the truth, placed with surgical precision. As seasons change and the slow-built intimacy of proximity sets in, Dale taunts with almost-revelations and near-misses until the final pages, by which time the reader is begging for the sword to drop.
A Spring of Loveby Celia Dale is out now (Daunt, £9.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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