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Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2010), Paperback, 276 pages
Description
Rachel Waring is deliriously happy. Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city--and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But as Rachel sings and jokes the days away, her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far. In Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar finds humor and horror in the shifting region between elation and mania. His heroine could be the next-door neighbor of the Beales of Grey Gardens or a sister to Jane Gardam's oddball protagonists, but she has an ebullient charm all her own.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member gwendolyndawson
This wonderfully original novel examines the happy side of madness. Rachel Waring, a middle-aged spinster living in London with a cantankerous flat-mate and a dead-end job, unexpectedly inherits from a forgotten aunt a beautiful but dilapidated Georgian mansion in Bristol. As a result of her
This book’s genius is its close first-person point of view. The reader witnesses everything from Rachel’s increasingly unbalanced perspective. Determined to always look at the bright side, Rachel slowly descends into a gleeful kind of madness, but we’re never quite certain whether Rachel is truly insane or merely optimistic. By turns, we’re charmed by her and embarrassed for her. We laugh at her numerous follies and cringe at her missteps, all the while wishing her the very best. Wish Her Safe at Home is a remarkable achievement in characterization and a refreshing examination of the brighter aspects of madness. Thanks to NYRB Classics for reviving this novel, which was first published in 1982.
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unforeseen good fortune, Rachel decides to remake her life. She quits her job and moves to Bristol where she lovingly refurbishes the house and, in the process, becomes obsessed with a former occupant from the 18th century.This book’s genius is its close first-person point of view. The reader witnesses everything from Rachel’s increasingly unbalanced perspective. Determined to always look at the bright side, Rachel slowly descends into a gleeful kind of madness, but we’re never quite certain whether Rachel is truly insane or merely optimistic. By turns, we’re charmed by her and embarrassed for her. We laugh at her numerous follies and cringe at her missteps, all the while wishing her the very best. Wish Her Safe at Home is a remarkable achievement in characterization and a refreshing examination of the brighter aspects of madness. Thanks to NYRB Classics for reviving this novel, which was first published in 1982.
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LibraryThing member cameling
Rachel has fond memories of an elderly aunt who has since passed on and left her a rambling broken down house in Bristol. She decides to leave her job which she didn't like, a pessimistic housemate and use money her mother left her to move from London to Bristol and do up the house.
She uncovers the
Even as we watch her slip slowly but surely from reality into her own cozy and extremely fun world, we see it from her point of view, in which she's always positive, always singing away, always cheerful and has some incredibly funny conversations sometimes with herself and often with unsuspecting townspeople who just don't know what to make of her. Although she's slipping away into her own alternate reality, there is nothing scary or depressing about her journey. If anything I find myself cheering for her along the sidelines .... I just hope she didn't sign certain papers certain people were pushing her to sign. humph!
She uncovers the
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history of the original owner of the house and there begins her own journey .... a journey of a woman whose mind is slowly but surely unraveling into a psychedelic world of hallucinations and make believe. What's interesting about this though is that her craziness isn't scary ... at least not to us, the readers. We love her, we are anxious about her, and we fear for her sometimes when she meets with and interacts with certain people in Bristol because we sense that they are trying to take advantage of her gentle and eccentric ways. It's possible that they can see she's getting a little bit addled, and we are feel repulsed by them, without any real evidence that they're intending her any harm. That's the genius in the writing ... Benatar has done a brilliant job, IMO, of making us feel what Rachel should be feeling if she were only more mindfully aware.Even as we watch her slip slowly but surely from reality into her own cozy and extremely fun world, we see it from her point of view, in which she's always positive, always singing away, always cheerful and has some incredibly funny conversations sometimes with herself and often with unsuspecting townspeople who just don't know what to make of her. Although she's slipping away into her own alternate reality, there is nothing scary or depressing about her journey. If anything I find myself cheering for her along the sidelines .... I just hope she didn't sign certain papers certain people were pushing her to sign. humph!
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LibraryThing member Kasthu
In the midst of Royal Wedding Madness, I incidentally picked up a copy of Wish Her Safe at Home, set during another time of Royal Wedding Madness (thirty years ago). Rachel Waring inherits a house in Bristol and moves there from London, abandoning her old job and roommate for a life of idle
At first, the story is quirky and charming, a kind of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Going in to the novel, I liked Rachel right away; she’s youthful, exuberant and carefree, and doesn’t seem to care what the people around her think of her. Rachel seems socially awkward, saying and doing things that are “off” (in fact, for a while while reading I thought that she has Asperger’s or something).
But it becomes clear about halfway through the novel that there’s something not quite right with her or the way that she thinks. It’s one thing to be obsessed with Roger, the gardener, especially when he’s young and good-looking; but Rachel’s obsession with Horatio, the previous owner of the house, becomes creepy and eventually tragic as Rachel’s true mental state is revealed. Stephen Benatar’s prose style is sparse and effective, detailing Rachels’ descent precisely. This is an extremely moving novel, one that I liked much more than I thought I would.
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dissipation. She becomes obsessed with her 20-something gardener, as well as the first owner of the house she lived in—who lived and died two hundred years ago.At first, the story is quirky and charming, a kind of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Going in to the novel, I liked Rachel right away; she’s youthful, exuberant and carefree, and doesn’t seem to care what the people around her think of her. Rachel seems socially awkward, saying and doing things that are “off” (in fact, for a while while reading I thought that she has Asperger’s or something).
But it becomes clear about halfway through the novel that there’s something not quite right with her or the way that she thinks. It’s one thing to be obsessed with Roger, the gardener, especially when he’s young and good-looking; but Rachel’s obsession with Horatio, the previous owner of the house, becomes creepy and eventually tragic as Rachel’s true mental state is revealed. Stephen Benatar’s prose style is sparse and effective, detailing Rachels’ descent precisely. This is an extremely moving novel, one that I liked much more than I thought I would.
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LibraryThing member bookmagic
Rachel Waring lives in London, works at a boring job and has a roommate she doesn't like very much. When her great-aunt leaves Rachel a Georgian mansion in Bristol, Rachel decides to move there and start a new life. But she invents stories and creates a history for herself that isn't true and
my review: I put Wish Her Safe at Home on my tbr list after seeing a plea from Aarti at Booklust for people to read this amazing book. Then I decided it would be perfect to review for Spotlight Series on NYBR Classics.
This book was an excellent choice, I knew I could trust Aarti! I loved Rachel almost from the beginning. She is 47 years old but you would never know it from her behavior. I enjoyed her manic and crazy conversations probably more than I was supposed to.
When Rachel moves to Bristol, she becomes infatuated with Horatio Gavin, a man that once lived in her house in the late 18th century. She buys a painting of him, decides to write a fictional account of his life and generally acts as if he is her secret lover. Until she tries to make it real.
Her conversations with the townspeople were fascinating as she lies to them and imagines unreal rebuffs.
Here she is at the chemist buying soap, very early in the novel:
...That, to, seemed an unnecessary scrap of information. I definitely wouldn't be returning here. "Then maybe we'll be seeing something of you. Nice"
It was almost what he'd said before. This time I wasn't fooled. They could make a dupe out of you once... But in their arrogance they supposed they could go on doing it, time after time after time.
She also assumes that a friendly conversation with a vicar has turned and that he is addressing his entire sermon to her. She becomes more manic as the book goes on and becomes friendly with a local gardener and his wife.
I loved that you could not always tell what was real and what was Rachel's imagination and I felt pulled into her world. And it really is her own world, she has no idea of what is happening around her. Rachel seemed ageless and though the book takes place in 1981, the time period seemed irrelevant. This book is brilliant and British and Rachel is a fantastic protagonist. She will stay in your mind long after you finish. I also thought this cover was perfect for this book. Highly recommended!
my rating 5/5
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imagines relationships that aren't there. Her increased mania leads to complete madness.my review: I put Wish Her Safe at Home on my tbr list after seeing a plea from Aarti at Booklust for people to read this amazing book. Then I decided it would be perfect to review for Spotlight Series on NYBR Classics.
This book was an excellent choice, I knew I could trust Aarti! I loved Rachel almost from the beginning. She is 47 years old but you would never know it from her behavior. I enjoyed her manic and crazy conversations probably more than I was supposed to.
When Rachel moves to Bristol, she becomes infatuated with Horatio Gavin, a man that once lived in her house in the late 18th century. She buys a painting of him, decides to write a fictional account of his life and generally acts as if he is her secret lover. Until she tries to make it real.
Her conversations with the townspeople were fascinating as she lies to them and imagines unreal rebuffs.
Here she is at the chemist buying soap, very early in the novel:
...That, to, seemed an unnecessary scrap of information. I definitely wouldn't be returning here. "Then maybe we'll be seeing something of you. Nice"
It was almost what he'd said before. This time I wasn't fooled. They could make a dupe out of you once... But in their arrogance they supposed they could go on doing it, time after time after time.
She also assumes that a friendly conversation with a vicar has turned and that he is addressing his entire sermon to her. She becomes more manic as the book goes on and becomes friendly with a local gardener and his wife.
I loved that you could not always tell what was real and what was Rachel's imagination and I felt pulled into her world. And it really is her own world, she has no idea of what is happening around her. Rachel seemed ageless and though the book takes place in 1981, the time period seemed irrelevant. This book is brilliant and British and Rachel is a fantastic protagonist. She will stay in your mind long after you finish. I also thought this cover was perfect for this book. Highly recommended!
my rating 5/5
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LibraryThing member Artiluna
When Rachel Warring unexpectedly inherits a mansion from an estranged aunt, she abruptly quits her job, abandons her roommate, and leaves London to live as a "lady" in Bristol. As Rachel begins her new life, the reader soon discovers that her perception of reality seems "off" somehow. People never
The book is slow, sometimes confusing, but interesting. I wanted to trust Rachel as a narrator, but it soon becomes clear that she is anything but objective. I found myself excusing Rachel and thinking "she's still not that far gone," but as the book climaxes I watched with discomfort and pity as this sweet, broken woman, descends quickly into madness.
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respond to Rachel as we expect them to, and all her interactions feel awkward. Her reminiscence of her girlhood, her intense imaginative flights, and Benatar's allusions soon reveal that she is a cross between a Blanche DuBois, desperately clinging to a facade, and an Ophelia, scarred by missed opportunities at love. The book is slow, sometimes confusing, but interesting. I wanted to trust Rachel as a narrator, but it soon becomes clear that she is anything but objective. I found myself excusing Rachel and thinking "she's still not that far gone," but as the book climaxes I watched with discomfort and pity as this sweet, broken woman, descends quickly into madness.
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LibraryThing member helynrob
Picked this up at random on a library bookshelf and want to give myself a pat on the back for doing so. Benatar subtly handles the ever-increasing delusions of Rachel Waring in such as way that the reader can identify with and wish to defend and protect her. The only sense of place that is sharp
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and clear for the reader stems from Rachel's interior world. The "real" world is indistinct--so much so that I had to keep reminding myself that it was set in the 1980s and not decades earlier. I also had to give up trying to construct a solid visual of Rachel since her physical descriptions came solely from her own perception and those that are (possibly) trying to manipulate her. Show Less
LibraryThing member Welshwoman
I bought Stephen Benatar's book from the man himself, here in my local market. A charming man, he explained that the book had been written over a quarter of a century before and he had published it himself. I was thrilled to read in The Sunday Times magazine that the book has been taken up by The
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New York Review of Books as it really deserves to be widely read. Show Less
LibraryThing member emily_morine
Stephen Benatar's Wish Her Safe at Home is the most laugh-out-loud fun I've had with a book in a long time. Even if the laughs were accompanied by cringes; even if the fun was the kind that you can get peeking out from between the fingers you're holding up in front of your eyes; and even if I kept
Wish Her Safe at Home is the unreliable-narrator novel par excellence. We realize right away that Rachel is a bit off. It only takes a few more pages to realize that she is refashioning what we might call neutral reality into a universe that revolves around Rachel herself—a place where strangers in tea shops are fascinated to learn about her rocky relationship with her mother; a place where sermons are preached to her alone, and a chemist's banal chit-chat is a veiled promise of love and romance; a place of songs, dances, and encounters with new friends who are uniformly impressed with her singing voice, her fashion sense, and her elliptical, coded references to popular culture. Here she is, for example, at the christening of a friend's baby:
But then of course there were his friends, his and Celia's—I musn't lump them in with the rest—although surprisingly they weren't quite so easy to distinguish as I'd assumed that they were going to be.
"Friend or foe?" I asked a tall and rather handsome young man whom I considered to be one of the likelier contenders. "In place of a Masonic handshake," I genially explained.
"Excuse me?"
"I mean, friend or...?" "Family," I had nearly said. Luckily at the eleventh hour I remembered my diplomacy. "Well, let me propound it to you in another way: if this were an invasion of the body snatchers would you be one of the bodies or one of the snatchers?" I laid my hand on his sleeve. At parties—well, especially at parties—it was always one's duty to be as entertaining as one could. "Of course, it does occur to me I'll have to examine your answer very carefully! For would a snatcher admit to being a snatcher? Wouldn't he try instead to palm himself off as a body?"
A lot of what distinguishes Rachel's voice can be seen here: her tendency to treat strangers she's just met as if they were in on some coded joke; Benatar's hilarious use of adjectives and adverbs ("I genially explained") to play up the difference between Rachel's perceptions and those of the people around her. In another great example of this, Rachel claims that she "executed a few unobtrusive dance steps" while waiting in line at the pharmacy. Do the people around her think her explanations genial or her dance steps unobtrusive? Does it matter?
Indeed, one of the most winning things about Benatar's book is that, despite careening ever more quickly along the slippery slope to utter mania, Rachel is hard not to like. Even though I am aware, while reading, that her version of events may not be "accurate," there is a part of me that prefers her sunny, magical version of the world to the one in which strangers in tea shops don't give a damn about one's mother, and banal shop chatter is just a way to fill the empty minutes. In her own mind, Rachel is some kind of mash-up of Scarlett O'Hara, Cinderella, and Gypsy Rose Lee, and spending time in her world is often a lot of fun, even if it's also intensely awkward when the reader is caught between his own perception (Rachel is acting radically inappropriate), and Rachel's perception (that she is acting like a gracious lady of the Georgian aristocracy/antebellum South/Broadway stage).
And in fact, Broadway musicals, along with Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, and occasionally a Tennessee Williams play, seem to make up the entirety of Rachel's cultural universe. When she trips through town with a song on her lips (which is often), and despite the book being set in 1981, that song is generally by Harry Warren, Jerome Kern, Noël Coward, Bing Crosby, or similar. As a childhood lover of Broadway musicals this was great fun for me personally, but it did give the novel a strange, unseated feeling: except for a mention of the royal wedding between Prince Charles and Diana, these events could have been taking place any time after the Second World War. This contributes to the feeling that Rachel is floating in her own mental stew, unmoored from any contact with the solidity of the present day.
It also made me wonder, at times, whether and to what extent Rachel should be read as a coded gay man. I certainly don't want to imply that gay men are the only lovers of the Broadway stage; far from it. But it is a genre often associated with the gay theater culture, and many of the great song- and book-writers have been gay or bisexual. Tennessee Williams, too, was a gay playwright who addressed themes of sexuality in many of his works, and Rachel identifies herself with his character Blanche DuBois. Blanche, like Rachel, descends into madness—in Blanche's case, after precipitating her husband's suicide by telling him that his homosexuality disgusts her. In telling her own story, is Rachel also trying to disguise male homosexuality by casting herself/himself as a straight woman? She does, throughout the novel, construct her own femininity in more and more outrageous ways, eventually reaching a point where she goes around perpetually clad in a wedding dress like a chipper, showtune-singing Miss Havisham. By this point she's definitely in drag, whether or not she is biologically female. So too, much of her lust for the young gardener and law student Roger, which on the surface is inappropriate because of their age difference and contractor/client relationship, mirrors the longing of a gay man for a straight man:
He was nicely tanned and muscular and worked without his shirt and though I kept being drawn towards the window of my bedroom I found him almost unbearable to watch; in particular the way he swung his pick when breaking up the concrete. And when I went to speak to him, to settle some fresh point or take him out a cooling drink, I was really afraid of what my hands might do. Fly up to feel the film of moisture on his chest? Fondle that coat of darkly golden hair? Dear Lord! The embarrassment! Whatever would one say? "Whoops! Please forgive me! I thought there was a fly." It was like experiencing a compulsion to punch a baby's stomach in the pram, or to use on someone standing next to you the carving knife you held.
He was only twenty-one.
But despite such unsettling irrelevancies I felt blest to have him there: somebody straight and vigorous and clean who might one day achieve eminence and who would certainly love widely and be widely loved, spin a web of mutual enrichment from the threads of many disparate existences: a beguiling web whose silken strands must soon make way for even me.
Is it coincidental that Rachel describes Roger, admiringly, as "straight" while thinking about how widely he will be loved? Would any of this have occurred to me had I not known that Benatar himself is gay?
I'm not sure if this reading is wildly off-base, but then again, Rachel herself is so out of touch with the divide between imagination and reality, that the reader is often unclear on which of the events she reports are actually true and which imagined. Given her obsession with the tropes of popular romance, it's especially hard not to look askance at events that might fit into those tropes. Even her inheritance of her great-aunt's Georgian mansion, which happens in the first few pages and precipitates the entire plot of the book, looks suspiciously novelistic—and yet, scenes that follow seem uncomfortably real. Similarly, Rachel tells a story of going to a party and wowing all the guests with her virtuosity at reciting Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott." It seems very unlikely that the party guests actually reacted as she reports, and yet a whole series of real-seeming events, some of them unflattering to Rachel, result from said reactions. Should we conclude that the entire string of events is imaginary? Or that the events happened, but the other people involved had different motivations from the ones Rachel assigns? Benatar does an excellent job of blurring the line between real and imagined, while at the same time making Rachel's descent into madness abundantly clear. And even as she disintegrates, I find myself hoping for the best for Rachel. I so enjoyed the time we spent together.
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groaning and wincing as I compulsively turned the pages, the fact remains that I could hardly tear myself away from Benatar and his perilously deluded but always optimistic heroine, Rachel Waring. Wish Her Safe at Home is the unreliable-narrator novel par excellence. We realize right away that Rachel is a bit off. It only takes a few more pages to realize that she is refashioning what we might call neutral reality into a universe that revolves around Rachel herself—a place where strangers in tea shops are fascinated to learn about her rocky relationship with her mother; a place where sermons are preached to her alone, and a chemist's banal chit-chat is a veiled promise of love and romance; a place of songs, dances, and encounters with new friends who are uniformly impressed with her singing voice, her fashion sense, and her elliptical, coded references to popular culture. Here she is, for example, at the christening of a friend's baby:
But then of course there were his friends, his and Celia's—I musn't lump them in with the rest—although surprisingly they weren't quite so easy to distinguish as I'd assumed that they were going to be.
"Friend or foe?" I asked a tall and rather handsome young man whom I considered to be one of the likelier contenders. "In place of a Masonic handshake," I genially explained.
"Excuse me?"
"I mean, friend or...?" "Family," I had nearly said. Luckily at the eleventh hour I remembered my diplomacy. "Well, let me propound it to you in another way: if this were an invasion of the body snatchers would you be one of the bodies or one of the snatchers?" I laid my hand on his sleeve. At parties—well, especially at parties—it was always one's duty to be as entertaining as one could. "Of course, it does occur to me I'll have to examine your answer very carefully! For would a snatcher admit to being a snatcher? Wouldn't he try instead to palm himself off as a body?"
A lot of what distinguishes Rachel's voice can be seen here: her tendency to treat strangers she's just met as if they were in on some coded joke; Benatar's hilarious use of adjectives and adverbs ("I genially explained") to play up the difference between Rachel's perceptions and those of the people around her. In another great example of this, Rachel claims that she "executed a few unobtrusive dance steps" while waiting in line at the pharmacy. Do the people around her think her explanations genial or her dance steps unobtrusive? Does it matter?
Indeed, one of the most winning things about Benatar's book is that, despite careening ever more quickly along the slippery slope to utter mania, Rachel is hard not to like. Even though I am aware, while reading, that her version of events may not be "accurate," there is a part of me that prefers her sunny, magical version of the world to the one in which strangers in tea shops don't give a damn about one's mother, and banal shop chatter is just a way to fill the empty minutes. In her own mind, Rachel is some kind of mash-up of Scarlett O'Hara, Cinderella, and Gypsy Rose Lee, and spending time in her world is often a lot of fun, even if it's also intensely awkward when the reader is caught between his own perception (Rachel is acting radically inappropriate), and Rachel's perception (that she is acting like a gracious lady of the Georgian aristocracy/antebellum South/Broadway stage).
And in fact, Broadway musicals, along with Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, and occasionally a Tennessee Williams play, seem to make up the entirety of Rachel's cultural universe. When she trips through town with a song on her lips (which is often), and despite the book being set in 1981, that song is generally by Harry Warren, Jerome Kern, Noël Coward, Bing Crosby, or similar. As a childhood lover of Broadway musicals this was great fun for me personally, but it did give the novel a strange, unseated feeling: except for a mention of the royal wedding between Prince Charles and Diana, these events could have been taking place any time after the Second World War. This contributes to the feeling that Rachel is floating in her own mental stew, unmoored from any contact with the solidity of the present day.
It also made me wonder, at times, whether and to what extent Rachel should be read as a coded gay man. I certainly don't want to imply that gay men are the only lovers of the Broadway stage; far from it. But it is a genre often associated with the gay theater culture, and many of the great song- and book-writers have been gay or bisexual. Tennessee Williams, too, was a gay playwright who addressed themes of sexuality in many of his works, and Rachel identifies herself with his character Blanche DuBois. Blanche, like Rachel, descends into madness—in Blanche's case, after precipitating her husband's suicide by telling him that his homosexuality disgusts her. In telling her own story, is Rachel also trying to disguise male homosexuality by casting herself/himself as a straight woman? She does, throughout the novel, construct her own femininity in more and more outrageous ways, eventually reaching a point where she goes around perpetually clad in a wedding dress like a chipper, showtune-singing Miss Havisham. By this point she's definitely in drag, whether or not she is biologically female. So too, much of her lust for the young gardener and law student Roger, which on the surface is inappropriate because of their age difference and contractor/client relationship, mirrors the longing of a gay man for a straight man:
He was nicely tanned and muscular and worked without his shirt and though I kept being drawn towards the window of my bedroom I found him almost unbearable to watch; in particular the way he swung his pick when breaking up the concrete. And when I went to speak to him, to settle some fresh point or take him out a cooling drink, I was really afraid of what my hands might do. Fly up to feel the film of moisture on his chest? Fondle that coat of darkly golden hair? Dear Lord! The embarrassment! Whatever would one say? "Whoops! Please forgive me! I thought there was a fly." It was like experiencing a compulsion to punch a baby's stomach in the pram, or to use on someone standing next to you the carving knife you held.
He was only twenty-one.
But despite such unsettling irrelevancies I felt blest to have him there: somebody straight and vigorous and clean who might one day achieve eminence and who would certainly love widely and be widely loved, spin a web of mutual enrichment from the threads of many disparate existences: a beguiling web whose silken strands must soon make way for even me.
Is it coincidental that Rachel describes Roger, admiringly, as "straight" while thinking about how widely he will be loved? Would any of this have occurred to me had I not known that Benatar himself is gay?
I'm not sure if this reading is wildly off-base, but then again, Rachel herself is so out of touch with the divide between imagination and reality, that the reader is often unclear on which of the events she reports are actually true and which imagined. Given her obsession with the tropes of popular romance, it's especially hard not to look askance at events that might fit into those tropes. Even her inheritance of her great-aunt's Georgian mansion, which happens in the first few pages and precipitates the entire plot of the book, looks suspiciously novelistic—and yet, scenes that follow seem uncomfortably real. Similarly, Rachel tells a story of going to a party and wowing all the guests with her virtuosity at reciting Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott." It seems very unlikely that the party guests actually reacted as she reports, and yet a whole series of real-seeming events, some of them unflattering to Rachel, result from said reactions. Should we conclude that the entire string of events is imaginary? Or that the events happened, but the other people involved had different motivations from the ones Rachel assigns? Benatar does an excellent job of blurring the line between real and imagined, while at the same time making Rachel's descent into madness abundantly clear. And even as she disintegrates, I find myself hoping for the best for Rachel. I so enjoyed the time we spent together.
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LibraryThing member MargaretdeBuhr
Very uninteresting for me. Felt it was from a time period much earlier than it was. It read more like it would be a play or theatre production.
LibraryThing member dawnymae
Rachel Waring is a spinster and is left a Victorian home by her aunt. She decides to quit her job and be a lady in Bristol. The house is enchanting and she quite decides to write a book and becomes odd in her behavior to the community, yet sees nothing wrong with herself but is critical of those
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around her. She makes a slow descent into madness much as her aunt did. This was a slow book, yet had snippets of interest. The dialogue was good, especially with herself! I can't say I would recommend it to many as it is not mainstream fiction, and hard to get swept away with the story. Show Less
LibraryThing member wandering_star
Wish Her Safe At Home is narrated by Rachel Waring, a post-menopausal spinster who unexpectedly inherits a large, if tumbledown, house in Bristol from an eccentric great-aunt. On the spur of the moment, she decides to leave her boring administrative job and grumpy flatmate, and make a new life for
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herself. At the start of the book, Rachel is hilariously eccentric - but then you realise with a jolt the extent of her delusions, and the book becomes both funny and appallingly sad. This is redeemed slightly with a suggestion towards the end that Rachel actually knows what's going on, and has made a conscious decision to believe that she is living in a much better world - but I still longed for someone who could give her the love that she craved. Show Less
LibraryThing member collsers
Despite her eccentricities (and later, her madness), Rachel Waring was an undeniably real character. Her feelings and reactions to every situation are ones with which I could readily identify as a reader; countless of her actions reminded me of things that various women in my life would do. This
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realness is the leading strength of the book, and is why I still found Rachel popping into my mind days after I finished the book. What struck me as most unsettling as Rachel descended into madness was the seamlessness with which it was written. As a reader, I couldn't pinpoint the moment when it all began; by the time I realized she had lost it, it was too late for me to retrace her path, which I feel points to a truly well-written character study. Show Less
LibraryThing member MSarki
Certainly a book not for the weak. This is a brilliant story that does involve insanity. Delusions run wild, just as the narrator voices exactly what we were thinking as well. But slip and slide we shall, and down to great depths of disrepair. Charming and evocative, this is a novel unfortunately
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rarely read. Show Less
LibraryThing member tairngire
A wonderful exploration of a woman's psyche, The book's writing allows the reader to feel both drawn in by the narrator's unusual view of her surroundings and isolated as you realize that the narrator's point of view and what is actually happening are two very different things. Benatar subtly
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blends believable characters and situations into a somewhat creepy novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member vickielanette
Wonderful Book!!! Made me want to continue reading on.... I would recommend this book to anyone because it is simply a good read. Vickie
LibraryThing member zibilee
Rachel Waring is a middle aged woman working at a dead end job and living with a caustic and slovenly roommate. When her estranged aunt dies leaving her a beautiful but rundown mansion in Bristol, Rachel decides to pack up her life, quit her job and move in. As she sets about repairing and
My awesome friend Aarti, from the wonderful blog Booklust, has been raving about this book for a really long time, and since I trust her opinion on books implicitly, I went right out and bought a copy after reading her review. I am pretty sure that it was one of her best reads of the year, and after reading it, I can certainly see why!
Rachel is your typical downtrodden woman. Living with a roommate she barely tolerates and working at a job where she is almost invisible, she has become very morose and unhappy. Though she ties to put on a brave face, she can't help feeling a bit resentful at the turns her life has taken, and though she does not know how to escape her situation, she longs for a better life for herself. The past has not been kind to Rachel and it was easy for me to see just why she wanted to escape it and move on to better things. When the news of her inheritance comes to her, her attitude shifts completely and she begins to anticipate the life she will now be able to move on to. I felt a little sorry for her in the beginning of the book because she seemed like a really good person who had been dealt a raw hand at life, and I was really excited that she would be able to leave her confining life for something more fruitful and advantageous.
But almost from the minute she steps off the train in Bristol, Rachel begins acting in strange ways. First of all, she seems to take liberties in her conversations with others, peppering her speech with unlikely asides and seemingly personal revelations. The strangers she meets are good humored about these conversational faux pas, but while I was reading, I became a bit uncomfortable for her and wondered if all these unlikely things that were running through her mind were running out of her mouth as well. It was embarrassing and heart-wrenching to watch her cast about with conversational weirdness and see the reactions that this brought. As a reader, I sympathized with her and thought that maybe her new and exiting life had somehow made her a bit more exuberant and forthcoming and chalked up her behavior as eccentricity. I thought that perhaps Rachel was so excited about her new life that she felt she had to share her joy with others. I really felt like she was a kind and convivial woman, and that perhaps others just didn't understand her jovial attitude.
As Rachel begins to settle into her new home, she decides to begin working on a novel charting the life of a mysterious man who once lived in the very house that she now owns. She makes a ritual of her writing and also begins a long slide into mental uncertainty. Though her new friends at first don't seem to notice the oddness that overtakes her, she harbors secret delusions about the subject of her novel and at times her madness seems to have a deep sexual component. Soon it is evident that there is something not right about Rachel and the others around her begin to wonder about her mental faculties. She begins to create a new past for herself, one where she is both recognized and loved and where it is safe for her to dream and hope. Rachel is not troubled in the least about herself, for hers is a frivolous and joyous type of madness that always leaves her heart and spirit buoyed.
As the book reaches it's stunning conclusion, Rachel, once the master of her own destiny, is now at the mercy of others and forced into a horrible situation by her friends. I wasn't sure what to make of these friends and was very uncertain about their motives. Oh, it all seemed on the up and up, but I couldn't help but have ominous feelings about them and their plans. Rachel, at once lost, afraid and alone, is left to fend for herself, a situation that tore at my heart and made me very uncomfortable, for I had grown fond of this lovable and unpredictable woman. I felt that for all her instability, she deserved to be recompensed in a better way than she had been.
I think that Benetar did a wonderful job in the creation of Rachel and her story. Not only was she a very sympathetic character that I could relate to, she had the ability to draw me close and dream for her. Her life was not what she wanted it to be, so she altered it, and really, is there any harm in that? Though it cost her a great deal to be unerringly positive and brave, she was all these things and more, and it was humbling to watch her fall. It was troubling to me to see Rachel scared and confused and at the mercy of those with questionable motives, all her carefree whimsy gone. I kept hoping for a different end for Rachel, and although I saw her careening towards destruction, I was not prepared for it when it happened.
I am so thankful to have had this book recommended to me, for I feel that it was a reading experience quite unlike any other I have had. I think that others who are led to this story really have a great ride ahead of them and I recommend this book heartily for not only it's particularly dogged heroine, but also for Benetar's wonderful portrayal of what it must be like to slowly go mad. A brilliant read and one that will end up in my permanent collection.
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replenishing the house using her small savings, Rachel's outlook is one of hopefulness and vigor. Soon she is interacting with the small community, making friends and considering a literary project. As the days turn into weeks in Rachel's new home, she strangely begins to lose touch with reality, becoming increasingly odd in both her personal habits and in the eyes of her friends. Rachel has a plan, it's just not a very realistic or plausible plan, and as she slides further and further into a jolly type of madness, those around her can't help but notice and become fearful for her. Both frightening and at times funny, Wish Her Safe at Home documents one woman's tragic spiral into the unknown recesses of madness.My awesome friend Aarti, from the wonderful blog Booklust, has been raving about this book for a really long time, and since I trust her opinion on books implicitly, I went right out and bought a copy after reading her review. I am pretty sure that it was one of her best reads of the year, and after reading it, I can certainly see why!
Rachel is your typical downtrodden woman. Living with a roommate she barely tolerates and working at a job where she is almost invisible, she has become very morose and unhappy. Though she ties to put on a brave face, she can't help feeling a bit resentful at the turns her life has taken, and though she does not know how to escape her situation, she longs for a better life for herself. The past has not been kind to Rachel and it was easy for me to see just why she wanted to escape it and move on to better things. When the news of her inheritance comes to her, her attitude shifts completely and she begins to anticipate the life she will now be able to move on to. I felt a little sorry for her in the beginning of the book because she seemed like a really good person who had been dealt a raw hand at life, and I was really excited that she would be able to leave her confining life for something more fruitful and advantageous.
But almost from the minute she steps off the train in Bristol, Rachel begins acting in strange ways. First of all, she seems to take liberties in her conversations with others, peppering her speech with unlikely asides and seemingly personal revelations. The strangers she meets are good humored about these conversational faux pas, but while I was reading, I became a bit uncomfortable for her and wondered if all these unlikely things that were running through her mind were running out of her mouth as well. It was embarrassing and heart-wrenching to watch her cast about with conversational weirdness and see the reactions that this brought. As a reader, I sympathized with her and thought that maybe her new and exiting life had somehow made her a bit more exuberant and forthcoming and chalked up her behavior as eccentricity. I thought that perhaps Rachel was so excited about her new life that she felt she had to share her joy with others. I really felt like she was a kind and convivial woman, and that perhaps others just didn't understand her jovial attitude.
As Rachel begins to settle into her new home, she decides to begin working on a novel charting the life of a mysterious man who once lived in the very house that she now owns. She makes a ritual of her writing and also begins a long slide into mental uncertainty. Though her new friends at first don't seem to notice the oddness that overtakes her, she harbors secret delusions about the subject of her novel and at times her madness seems to have a deep sexual component. Soon it is evident that there is something not right about Rachel and the others around her begin to wonder about her mental faculties. She begins to create a new past for herself, one where she is both recognized and loved and where it is safe for her to dream and hope. Rachel is not troubled in the least about herself, for hers is a frivolous and joyous type of madness that always leaves her heart and spirit buoyed.
As the book reaches it's stunning conclusion, Rachel, once the master of her own destiny, is now at the mercy of others and forced into a horrible situation by her friends. I wasn't sure what to make of these friends and was very uncertain about their motives. Oh, it all seemed on the up and up, but I couldn't help but have ominous feelings about them and their plans. Rachel, at once lost, afraid and alone, is left to fend for herself, a situation that tore at my heart and made me very uncomfortable, for I had grown fond of this lovable and unpredictable woman. I felt that for all her instability, she deserved to be recompensed in a better way than she had been.
I think that Benetar did a wonderful job in the creation of Rachel and her story. Not only was she a very sympathetic character that I could relate to, she had the ability to draw me close and dream for her. Her life was not what she wanted it to be, so she altered it, and really, is there any harm in that? Though it cost her a great deal to be unerringly positive and brave, she was all these things and more, and it was humbling to watch her fall. It was troubling to me to see Rachel scared and confused and at the mercy of those with questionable motives, all her carefree whimsy gone. I kept hoping for a different end for Rachel, and although I saw her careening towards destruction, I was not prepared for it when it happened.
I am so thankful to have had this book recommended to me, for I feel that it was a reading experience quite unlike any other I have had. I think that others who are led to this story really have a great ride ahead of them and I recommend this book heartily for not only it's particularly dogged heroine, but also for Benetar's wonderful portrayal of what it must be like to slowly go mad. A brilliant read and one that will end up in my permanent collection.
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LibraryThing member bookworm_naida
Wish Her Safe At Home was at times funny, sometimes odd, a bit sad and sometimes disturbing.
Rachel Waring is in her mid-forties, lives in London, has a job she dislikes and rents an apartment with her outspoken, chain-smoking roommate.
When Rachel's aunt passes away and leaves her a mansion in
As the story flows, Rachel has flashbacks about her past, mostly about her mother. You get to know that her childhood wasn't an easy one. Her mother was overbearing and cold. She hints that her father molested her.
Once she arrives in Bristol, you see how she interacts with people she meets and their reactions toward her, which are sometimes strange and a bit detached. Rachel is also a bit innapropriate at times when speaking to others. You kind of get the sense that she doesn't fit in, and is awkward in social situations. She tends to try too hard to be funny, or friendly when dealing with others. You also get the feeling that her perception of things isn't really on point. It's almost like she lives in her own little world.
As the book flows the reader gets to see what is going on in Rachel's mind and it is a read that is really hard to put down, especially towards the end. There are a few 'OMG!' moments. One thing that really creeped me out about this book is that since Rachel is narrating the story, the reader is seeing it through her point of view. The reader can only guess as to what is actually happening.
I did find the book hard to follow during some parts and found myself re-reading certain bits, mostly because Rachel would flashback, then flashforward to the present time and conversation. At other times I would re-read passages just to savor them.
I recommend this book if you want to read something a little different. This is a story that begs to be discussed. It's the kind of book that haunts the reader long after the last page is turned.
Rachel Waring is in her mid-forties, lives in London, has a job she dislikes and rents an apartment with her outspoken, chain-smoking roommate.
When Rachel's aunt passes away and leaves her a mansion in
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Bristol, everyone expects Rachel to sell the large house or to rent it out, instead she decides to move in. She leaves London behind, much to her roomates dismay and dislike. As the story flows, Rachel has flashbacks about her past, mostly about her mother. You get to know that her childhood wasn't an easy one. Her mother was overbearing and cold. She hints that her father molested her.
Once she arrives in Bristol, you see how she interacts with people she meets and their reactions toward her, which are sometimes strange and a bit detached. Rachel is also a bit innapropriate at times when speaking to others. You kind of get the sense that she doesn't fit in, and is awkward in social situations. She tends to try too hard to be funny, or friendly when dealing with others. You also get the feeling that her perception of things isn't really on point. It's almost like she lives in her own little world.
As the book flows the reader gets to see what is going on in Rachel's mind and it is a read that is really hard to put down, especially towards the end. There are a few 'OMG!' moments. One thing that really creeped me out about this book is that since Rachel is narrating the story, the reader is seeing it through her point of view. The reader can only guess as to what is actually happening.
I did find the book hard to follow during some parts and found myself re-reading certain bits, mostly because Rachel would flashback, then flashforward to the present time and conversation. At other times I would re-read passages just to savor them.
I recommend this book if you want to read something a little different. This is a story that begs to be discussed. It's the kind of book that haunts the reader long after the last page is turned.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JoanieS
I nearly quit reading this book more than once. What really could have been a compelling storyline, came across as a mishmash of broken thoughts.It probably was intentionally written that way,but it did not make for a good read. I had a hard time connecting with the main character.
I find British
I find British
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literature a little more difficult to read and this book was no exception. Show Less
LibraryThing member burritapal
In this beautifully-crafted story, Benatar brings to life a character, Rachel, who feels the world and the creatures in it too strongly. She lived with a controlling, powerful mother so long that it warped her sensibility. From the introduction by John Carey, "among the griefs over other's
Rachel is mocked, used, and misunderstood by those around her. We wish her the best, and as her story advances, "We fear for her. Our hackles rise when others approach her. We harbor black suspicions about anyone who seems out to deceive her. Benatar encourages this paranoia in us by not letting us know about other people's motives" ... and we only"wish her 'safe at home.'"
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suffering lodged deep in her memory is the death of the gentle young man in Paradise Street who had a club foot and kept the rabbit in the backyard, and was knocked down and killed when she was 10." These feelings...[are] "an index not of social maladjustment but of pathological hypersensitivity...Because she is so defenseless against the world's cruelty, she can only withdraw." Rachel, like us "disturbs, to put it bluntly, because Rachel, the mad narrator, is very like us. Admittedly, she takes things to extremes. Traits that we all recognize in ourselves are, in her case, blown up into intense inner (and sometimes public) dramas." Rachel is mocked, used, and misunderstood by those around her. We wish her the best, and as her story advances, "We fear for her. Our hackles rise when others approach her. We harbor black suspicions about anyone who seems out to deceive her. Benatar encourages this paranoia in us by not letting us know about other people's motives" ... and we only"wish her 'safe at home.'"
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1982
Physical description
263 p.; 8.14 inches
ISBN
159017335X / 9781590173350