No Private Heaven

by Faith Baldwin

No Private Heaven exists anywhere for Abby Wallace. At home she is merely one among many treasures, a showpiece of the famous Wallace Collection, valued for her beauty, her knowledge of art, and her graciousness as a hostess. Were she to go away, it would leave a blank spot on her father's wall, but not in his heart. Yet, a man of Norman Wallace's wealth does not easily part with precious objects ,and when Abby agrees to marry Barry Lambert, her father determines to get her back. To begin with, he'll take a new wife himself, the same glamorous young woman who had her own sights set on Barry...

325 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Faith Baldwin attended private academies and finishing schools, and in 1914-16 she lived in Dresden, Germany. She married Hugh H. Cuthrell in 1920, and the next year she published her first novel, Mavis of Green Hill. Although she often claimed she did not care for authorship, her steady stream of books belies that claim; over the next 56 years she published more than 85 books, more than 60 of them novels with such titles as Those Difficult Years (1925), The Office Wife (1930), Babs and Mary Lou (1931), District Nurse (1932), Manhattan Nights (1937), and He Married a Doctor (1944). Her last completed novel, Adam's Eden, appeared in 1977.

Typically, a Faith Baldwin book presents a highly simplified version of life among the wealthy. No matter what the difficulties, honour and goodness triumph, and hero and heroine are united. Evil, depravity, poverty, and sex found no place in her work, which she explicitly intended for the housewife and the working girl. The popularity of her writing was enormous. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, she published five novels in magazine serial form and three earlier serials in volume form and saw four of her works made into motion pictures, for an income that year in excess of $315,000. She also wrote innumerable stories, articles, and newspaper columns, no less ephemeral than the novels.

Reviews

[Caro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book and I still don't know what to really think. I was confused pretty much thru-out the entire thing. I don't know if it's because of the era or setting, how it was written, or because I can't really identify with any of the characters. I still don't really know where or when the book was set. It seemed it was modern (for when the book was published maybe) but still had a historic feel to it, like it was longer ago. I didn't really feel the main characters. It seemed like I didn't know either of them, I felt indifferent I guess. The other characters were about the same way too. Although at the end I got the gist of everything, I still feel I didn't know what was going on. It was almost like watching a foreign film with no subtitles and bad actors (couldn't get the feeling/emotions). I guess the story line was good, what I could assume was the main points. Oh well, maybe if I was born/raised somewhere or sometime else, I would get it more. Good luck.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this book quite as much as the other Faith Baldwin titles I've read. This one seemed a little uneven. The story begins with a portrait of the heroine, Abby Wallace, and her life with her controlling father, and follows her as she meets a young man, Barry, and is able to break free from her father and get married. The father doesn't give up the fight quite so easily, though, and the story follows the struggles of the young marrieds to break free from him as he tries to dominate their lives and ultimately destroy their marriage to get his daughter back. The focus of the book, though, was not always as clear as that summary sounds. At times it seemed as if the book were going to be a psychological study of Abby's struggles to have a normal relationship after the stifling way she was raised; and at other times, it seemed as if Abby were fine but everyone around her was in trouble. It all came right in the end, but it wasn't that compelling a journey.