Miss Mole

By E.H. Young

Book Overview

Who would suspect her of a sense of fun and irony, of a passionate love for beauty and the power to drag it from its hidden places? Who could imagine that Miss Mole had pictured herself, at different times, as an explorer in strange lands, as a lady wrapped in luxury and delicate garments, as the mother of adorably naughty children and the inspiringly elusive mistress of a poet?

Hannah Mole is a forty-ish spinster, haunted by her past and drifting from post to post-now a governess, now a companion for elderly women. She rarely lingers long due to a slightly troubled relationship with the truth, a tendency to speak her mind, and a fundamental mistrust of others. But Hannah's darker instincts are tempered by a stubborn self-respect and a surprising ability to find joy and inspiration in ordinary life. When she returns to her home town of Radstowe and takes an unpromising job in the home of the stuffy, widowed Reverend Corder and his daughters, she finds a situation in which her unique characteristics are not only appreciated but essential.

In Miss Mole, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1930, E.H. Young created her most complex, unlikely, yet eminently lovable heroine in a tale packed with rich characters, brilliant humour, and quiet triumph.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1913527212
• ISBN13: 9781913527211
• Release Date: August 2020
• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A stunningly good novel

I read this book after reading "The Misses Mallet", which I thought was brilliant. "Miss Mole" is even better. It is a tour de force character study of a funny, intelligent woman. Miss Mole is employed as a housekeeper, and through her eyes we see the foibles of those with whom she comes into contact. It is a tragedy that this wonderful author is largely out of print.

The world aslant

E. H. Young's delightful Hannah Mole is over forty, unmarried, and always on the run for new work as a companion, nanny, or housekeeper. Although proud of her work, she realizes her humorously sharp tongue and satirical perception of the world will always get her tossed from each new job; yet despite her hand-to-mouth circumstances, she keeps fairly happy by always amazing herself at the qualities and peculiarities of human nature. This much-loved, but little-known 1930 masterpiece, which details the return of Miss Mole to her favorite city of Radstowe (really Bristol) to care for a clergyman's family is told with an angularity and asperity befitting its great central character. Nothing in this novel is ever told straightforwardly, but always at a kind of slant like sunlight through spar; but this is the way Miss Mole herself views the world, and the result is a very comic and very intelligent novel by one of the most unjustly forgotten British novelists who might be best characterized (with her quirkiness and love of aphortism) as an early 20th-century George Meredith.