Why read A Helping Hand?

Book cover of A Helping Hand

Book description

In the past months Mrs Fingal’s legs had grown very weak. She could move from the bed to the chair only if she held on to the furniture. ‘Be careful, dear,’ Mrs Evans would say, beating up the pillows and clearing away all the oddments hidden under them, ‘you don’t…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Helping Hand as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Emilia Bernhard

Author

It’s criminal that Celia Dale’s books are almost all out of print.

Dale dwells in the world of people you wouldn’t look at twice – nice old ladies, sympathetic homemakers, slightly out-of-date romeos – who practice a kind of cruelty that isn’t necessarily obvious to the outside world, but that is nonetheless terrible.

Helping Hand deals with a couple who hurry old ladies to their deaths by means of kindness that’s actually cruel, and a young relative of one of those old ladies, who is herself grotesquely self-centered and uncaring.

Fortunately, the book is saved by the presence of a…

From Emilia's list on The best books about subtle cruelty.